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[Nuprahtor]

NoahRain

Nameless character must save his world. He does not know what to do, he has no clues.

An important hint appears  when game-session starts

Cover art (in main menu) - Jammes Baffit

Controls:
WASD - movement
Mouse - camera look

Screenshots:

Download
(for Windows)

Download
(for Mac)

[Nuprahtor]

Thanks for plating, Gabriel Verdon!

The only things I would recommend is making the footstep sound a little less abstract, and maybe texturing some of the models as they kind of look unfinished right now.

Yes, so far I have not very good at modeling, but I'm trying to improve my skill.
I uploaded a version for Mac.
I've never done builds for mac before, so I do not know whether it will work correctly (I have no Mac)

[Nuprahtor]

Worst of all, when no one pays attention.
I need criticism, guys.
This is my first attempt at making a game with non-obvious gameplay, I want to know your opinion about it.
And yes, I want to know whether the mac version is correct (especially the keyboard control).

[ham and brie]

The Mac build wouldn't run until I added execute permission for the binary. I guess RAR doesn't store permissions.

I quite liked the atmosphere, enough that I finished the session (that's a slightly odd term...) despite not particularly enjoying the gameplay of wandering in an open space.

[oyog]

The atmosphere is great.  The sameness of it all makes it extremely surreal and I actually really like the objects being untextured.  It makes it feel more dreamlike, more undefined.  That said, I do find it particularly frustrating that each "stone" is exactly the same model.  The way I personally make mental maps is using landmarks and for each landmark to be the same is incredibly confusing.  And then there's the flood.  To introduce a constant change to an environment I was unsure of to begin with makes it nearly impossible to discern where I've already been.  If that's what you were going for then you've succeeded, and well done.  It just doesn't make the game enjoyable for me.  I simply can't tell which towers I've visited from session to session.  Alternatively to creating unique "stone" landmarks it might be less confusing for me if each arc lightning lit up in a different color for each tower, though I could imagine that taking away from the atmosphere.

Now, on the other hand, I've only played five or six times now and I hadn't been making much effort to map the objects or dunes.

Suppose I'll have to give that a try.

[Nuprahtor]

Thank you for your attention, guys, for me it means a lot
I was inspired by increpare`s Cities of Day and Night when creating this game. But I tried to convey in the game a unique atmosphere of hopelessness through graphics and unusual gameplay and ending of the game.
I hope I got it 

[fraxcell]

It took me a couple tries to finish, but I loved the atmosphere and the transition between above water and below water, something that few first person games seem to get right.

[unsilentwill]

I want to play this, but it's stuck at the title screen. 

[mcc]

I was like and then I was like and then I was like

Mac version worked fine for me.

Not sure if I'm going to make the effort to see whether it's possible to "win" or not.

A tiny bug. The rain "splatter" effect when the rain falls to the ground? Well sometimes I would see one of those effects appear huge, like taking up half the screen, and sometimes I would see them appearing off the ground, or in the sky. I'm not sure but I think what was happening in those cases was that a raindrop fell on the "camera lens" but was still drawn parallel-to-ground.

[Nuprahtor]

It took me a couple tries to finish, but I loved the atmosphere and the transition between above water and below water, something that few first person games seem to get right.

Thanks for feedback!

I want to play this, but it's stuck at the title screen. 

Oh, is it some kind of bug? What is the configuration of your computer (operating system, hardware)?

I was like and then I was like and then I was like

Mac version worked fine for me.

Not sure if I'm going to make the effort to see whether it's possible to "win" or not.

A tiny bug. The rain "splatter" effect when the rain falls to the ground? Well sometimes I would see one of those effects appear huge, like taking up half the screen, and sometimes I would see them appearing off the ground, or in the sky. I'm not sure but I think what was happening in those cases was that a raindrop fell on the "camera lens" but was still drawn parallel-to-ground.

Oh, I hope you liked it.
Yes, I forgot to configure ignoring the collisions for the rain drops and capsule of the character

[unsilentwill]

Windows Vista 64bit, Core 2 Duo, 2.33 GHz, 4 GB of RAM

I found the output_log if it helps anything:

Mono path[0] = 'C:/Users/Will/Downloads/NoahRain/NoahRain/NoahRain_Data/Managed'
Mono path[1] = 'C:/Users/Will/Downloads/NoahRain/NoahRain/NoahRain_Data/Mono'
Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [nvd3dum.dll 8.16.11.9107]
    Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
    Vendor:   NVIDIA
    VRAM:     256 MB
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=0 DF24=0 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=0 SlowINTZ=0
<I> Initializing (RawInput).

<RI> Input initialized.

desktop: 1680x1050 60Hz; virtual: 1680x1050 at 0,0
Non platform assembly: data-03007E10 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-0306A0F0 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-0306E768 (this message is harmless)
Non platform assembly: data-030767B8 (this message is harmless)
Platform assembly: C:\Users\Will\Downloads\NoahRain\NoahRain\NoahRain_Data\Managed\Boo.Lang.dll (this message is harmless)
Cannot add font resource
 
(Filename: ..\..\Runtime\Filters\Misc\Font.cpp Line: 815)


Unloading 4 unused Assets to reduce memory usage. Loaded Objects now: 125.
Unloading 3 Unused Serialized files (Serialized files now loaded: 0 / Dirty serialized files: 0)
Could not get Glyph outline: 'S'
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Internal_Draw(Internal_DrawArguments&, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Internal_Draw(IntPtr, Rect, String, Texture, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Draw(Rect, GUIContent, Int32, Boolean)
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Draw(Rect, GUIContent, Int32)
UnityEngine.GUI:Button(Rect, GUIContent, GUIStyle)
UnityEngine.GUI:Button(Rect, String)
scr_main_menu:OnGUI()

[..\..\Runtime\Filters\Misc\Font.cpp line 918]
(Filename: ..\..\Runtime\Filters\Misc\Font.cpp Line: 918)

Could not get Glyph outline: 't'
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Internal_Draw(Internal_DrawArguments&, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Internal_Draw(IntPtr, Rect, String, Texture, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Draw(Rect, GUIContent, Int32, Boolean)
UnityEngine.GUIStyle:Draw(Rect, GUIContent, Int32)
UnityEngine.GUI:Button(Rect, GUIContent, GUIStyle)
UnityEngine.GUI:Button(Rect, String)
scr_main_menu:OnGUI()

And then it repeats that from "[..\..\Runtime\Filters\Misc\Font.cpp line 918]

[mcc]

POST CONTAINS SPOILERS OR SOMETHING I GUESS?

OK went through and actually played this to the end! Here's a more coherent response.

The first time I played this I totally misunderstood what was happening. I thought there was only one tesla coil; I didn't realize the map was nearly as big as it turned out to be, and I assumed the "four towers" referred to the buried masonry. Because of a coincidence, the flooding in my area started right after I activated the first tesla coil I found; I thought that activating the tesla coil had somehow triggered the flooding, so I had this mental model like, okay, you start walking and the rain starts falling, you find a tesla coil and the water starts rising, the water rises until...? I found the highest spot I could find and waited to see what would happen as the water rose. As it happens, my vantage point was just exactly far enough away from the tesla coil that when I looked at it I could see just a dull blue glow at the edge of my perception; I watched the water engulf the coil, my little island, and eventually myself. It was actually really gorgeous, as imagery!

Here's the thing: At this point, I thought that was the point. This is the problem with "increpare-style" games-- it's generally not at all obvious if there is a win condition, or if there's more to it than seems on the first playthrough. The "session failed" language is a hint there's some way to not-fail, but that's ambiguous. So I didn't clearly think there was a "good end" until I came back here and saw a post from someone saying they'd beat it.

Okay, so second playthrough. This time I go about things a bit more systematically. I deduce (though I still don't know if this is right) that the big black "tree" objects form a sort of path, and that if I take more than 30 steps in any direction I'll probably get lost and the line of trees is probably the only way to keep a bearing, so I try to follow along that. This time I find three separate coils. I then keep following the trees. But one way or another, they're leading me the wrong way. This run was actually, by far, my most interesting playthrough. I convince myself, briefly, that the trees actually are leading me somewhere-- that I found the first three coils pretty quickly but the fourth one is way out, just far enough that you can barely get there before there's no land left to walk along. At this point this really interesting gameplay emerged that got more interesting as the water rose, between the heavy fog, the ambiguous directional markers indicated by the trees and the water line, and the difficulty of maintaining your sight of the tree-line (and for that matter your orientation) in light of the fact that, as the water rises, walking along the high ground frequently takes you far enough away from the trees it causes you to be at risk of losing sight of them and excursions through the water reduce your visibility to near zero. I find myself zigzagging along the edge of foothills, dashing through water from mound to mound, desperately trying to keep up with the trees... eventually, I drown. At first, I seriously think-- okay, I dicked around just a bit before I found the three coils, maybe if I'd really hoofed it I could have made it to the end of whereever the tree line is going. But I can't quite convince myself of this.

And of course this wasn't what was happening at all, and the long tree line I followed was just leading me nowhere. (I'm assuming I wasn't just going in circles or I would have run into the coils again?) I blow a couple more playthroughs exploring...

Finally I get a playthrough where I find two coils almost immediately, and find all four coils very very quickly. Apparently the coils are all clumped together in one tiny area (so why the apparently huge map?) This oddly didn't feel as satisfying as the two playthroughs I describe above where I "lost"! The ending is a nice closure to the implicit "story" of the game but it didn't "feel satisfying" (esp. because the final cutoff was so abrupt and I was standing in a weird place where it wasn't clear whether I'd just been crushed by the falling thing or not!)

I did quite like this game! I liked the concept, I liked the aesthetic, I liked the approach to "storytelling" as it were. I liked running around and not being quite sure whether I could see dim shapes in the sky or not. I've kinda conditioned myself to like this stuff though. It does seem like in its current state it might be a bit inaccessible to someone who isn't already familiar with art games.

It seems to me, basically, you don't do quite as much with the concept you've got as you could, and there's so many red herrings in this that it's easy to get frustrating. The game does nothing to let you know when you're on the wrong track, and if you go more than 20 steps in the wrong direction, in any direction, it's likely you'll never get back. This struck me on the first playthrough, when I almost walked out into the big open empty expanse near where you start-- I thought, if I go this way I'll never make it back. What I didn't realize is that since the point is to find four coils that are really very close to each other, this is also the case in the areas where there's "stuff"-- if you wander around too blindly in the hills you'll never make it back to the area with the coils since even if you find the tree line you won't know which direction to follow it. But walking around blindly is the only way to win.

It seems like you could structure things a little more intentionally to harness the few subtle gameplay elements you've got here, and make the sort of sense of constant disorientation that the game creates into something that the player has a chance to actually manage and take countermeasures against instead of just a source of frustration-- for example, by embracing that weird bit of emergent gameplay I stumbled across where you're trying to follow the treeline despite ever-rising waters, and doing something like moving the coils further apart and forcing the player to follow the trees to reach them. If you were careful about it, and if there were a reason to keep moving once the water has risen significantly, you could probably actually make some really interesting constantly-changing maps out of the way the waterline moves as the water rises. I dunno if that's the only way to do it. But it does seem like it would be good if you could find some way to clearly reward the player for trying to make some use of the limited information they have and adopt some strategy like oh hey, these trees are a method of orienting myself, I should take advantage of that. As it is the game doesn't really seem to reward you for anything particular and there's not really a strategy you can adopt ahead of time that will make it more or less likely you'll succeed at finding all four towers-- whether you win or not is just a matter of whether you happen to initially set off in the correct random direction such that you find all four towers instead of just wandering off into indifferentiable wasteland.

Unless I'm missing something

Some kind of more technical points: - It might be good if there were some kind of a hint-- visual, audio, whatever-- how much more time you have before you drown, when underwater. Screen dimming, rushing in your ears, something. The fact you never knew, when underwater, how long you had left did add a sort of suspense, but it was a cheap sort of suspense. - Do you start in a random place each time? - One more tiny bug thing-- if you do full screen on a monitor which is wider than 640x480 aspect ratio, at least on the mac, the picture appears stretched. This is totally not noticeable in the main game; however, it makes the menus look a little weird.

[Nuprahtor]

unsilentwill
Thanks for logs. It seems that problem in font, I trying to fix it, but I dont know how  
mcc
Wow! Thank you for such an extensive review!

It seems to me, basically, you don't do quite as much with the concept you've got as you could, and there's so many red herrings in this that it's easy to get frustrating. The game does nothing to let you know when you're on the wrong track, and if you go more than 20 steps in the wrong direction, in any direction, it's likely you'll never get back. This struck me on the first playthrough, when I almost walked out into the big open empty expanse near where you start-- I thought, if I go this way I'll never make it back. What I didn't realize is that since the point is to find four coils that are really very close to each other, this is also the case in the areas where there's "stuff"-- if you wander around too blindly in the hills you'll never make it back to the area with the coils since even if you find the tree line you won't know which direction to follow it. But walking around blindly is the only way to win.

It seems like you could structure things a little more intentionally to harness the few subtle gameplay elements you've got here, and make the sort of sense of constant disorientation that the game creates into something that the player has a chance to actually manage and take countermeasures against instead of just a source of frustration-- for example, by embracing that weird bit of emergent gameplay I stumbled across where you're trying to follow the treeline despite ever-rising waters, and doing something like moving the coils further apart and forcing the player to follow the trees to reach them. If you were careful about it, and if there were a reason to keep moving once the water has risen significantly, you could probably actually make some really interesting constantly-changing maps out of the way the waterline moves as the water rises. I dunno if that's the only way to do it. But it does seem like it would be good if you could find some way to clearly reward the player for trying to make some use of the limited information they have and adopt some strategy like oh hey, these trees are a method of orienting myself, I should take advantage of that. As it is the game doesn't really seem to reward you for anything particular and there's not really a strategy you can adopt ahead of time that will make it more or less likely you'll succeed at finding all four towers-- whether you win or not is just a matter of whether you happen to initially set off in the correct random direction such that you find all four towers instead of just wandering off into indifferentiable wasteland.

Unless I'm missing something Smiley

Yes, you offer a very interesting idea about constantly-changing maps, I took it on a note. I have one bad quality - after the release of the game, I can not make any serious changes. This game (session) was created hard for me, though it has no complex coding or beautiful graphics. Most of the development, I was thinking that I want to get, and how to do it. But the technical side of the game was done very quickly, as well as graphic content.
Such feedback helps me to improve my games

Some kind of more technical points: - It might be good if there were some kind of a hint-- visual, audio, whatever-- how much more time you have before you drown, when underwater. Screen dimming, rushing in your ears, something. The fact you never knew, when underwater, how long you had left did add a sort of suspense, but it was a cheap sort of suspense. - Do you start in a random place each time? - One more tiny bug thing-- if you do full screen on a monitor which is wider than 640x480 aspect ratio, at least on the mac, the picture appears stretched. This is totally not noticeable in the main game; however, it makes the menus look a little weird.

In early development, I was planning to make footprints in the sand, but the shame I was unable to properly implement this 

Do you start in a random place each time?

No, but towers are placed in a random place (fixed random - three places for each tower)
About fullscreen - I thought Unity supports such aspect ratio, but it seems it is not so.

[mcc]

Yes, you offer a very interesting idea about constantly-changing maps, I took it on a note...

Well, one thing I was trying to point out is that you have the constantly-changing maps *now*, by intent or not, if you take long walks along the trees you will wind up seeing some very interesting mutable terrain (maybe sometime try just walking along the trees as long as you can until you drown, as if reaching the end of the trees were your goal).

No, but towers are placed in a random place (fixed random - three places for each tower)

Oh, that is interesting. ( One "good" thing about this is makes it virtually impossible your players could create maps ) So I guess what happens is I played (and failed each time) until by random coincidence I got a playthrough where randomly all 4 towers were placed near each other.

This does kind of heighten the "there's probably no way to win on purpose" problem, I think, but it's also interesting because it means by random chance some players will probably wind up with VERY interesting structure to their maps and still wind up completing the game.

The only frustrating thing about the end to me was that once I saw [what I thought was] the final structure [since I thought all four towers were close by design], I thought the game up until then had been basically punishing me for exploring.

I have one bad quality - after the release of the game, I can not make any serious changes.

This may not be so bad, it may be better than the other option at least (what I do is I keep tweaking things until they're perfect, and that means I never release anything!!)

[Nuprahtor]

Oh, that is interesting. ( One "good" thing about this is makes it virtually impossible your players could create maps Smiley ) So I guess what happens is I played (and failed each time) until by random coincidence I got a playthrough where randomly all 4 towers were placed near each other.

This does kind of heighten the "there's probably no way to win on purpose" problem, I think, but it's also interesting because it means by random chance some players will probably wind up with VERY interesting structure to their maps and still wind up completing the game.

I tested game with all random tower placings, and all of them are passable
There is a clever way to find all the towers
Of course, sometimes I found the last tower, being neck-deep in water. However, out of 10 attempts, I was drowning only 3-4

This may not be so bad, it may be better than the other option at least (what I do is I keep tweaking things until they're perfect, and that means I never release anything!!)

Yes, it needs happy medium 

[kivan117]

I know Linux isn't a supported platform, but I thought I'd give the windows version a try under wine just for kicks. Everything worked perfectly fine except the mouse didn't move the camera. Made it very difficult, since my view was restricted to one direction. Not a bug, since it isn't a supported OS, but thought you as the developer might be interested in knowing what happens.

I liked the feel of the game. Reminded me of a dream scenario. Unexplained, no clear goal but with failure still somehow an option. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find more than one tower due to view issues.

[Nuprahtor]

Thanks for feedback, kivan117!
It will be awesome, if  Unitech will add Linux support for Unity Web Player  (if it possible, of course)

[ithamore]

I've only been able to find 3 out of the 4 towers so far. I like the atmosphere.

I didn't like having to use Esc to go back to the menu. I was hoping it would automatically load the menu screen after a couple of seconds.

[Nuprahtor]

ithamore
Thanks for playing!

I've only been able to find 3 out of the 4 towers so far. I like the atmosphere.

The atmosphere is better revealed when all the towers were found. This will be a brief moment, but it is very important for the concept of the game

I didn't like having to use Esc to go back to the menu. I was hoping it would automatically load the menu screen after a couple of seconds.

I had to think about it, sorry

[Inanimate]

I really like the game so far. Very oppressive... it'd be nice if you could see your lit tower through the fog, to give you a better sense of direction, although I'm sure you are actively NOT doing that.

Drowning to death was also quite terrifying. So dark...