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[The_Ulf]

Welcome to the Forest of Ephemereal!






Currently in Beta.
Download: Mac (_b2), PC (coming)

"Ephemereal is an experimental art game about manipulating preconceived notions to create a growing sense of fear and isolation. The player enters the game as 'the hero' and must slay the vile Groblin that lurks in the woods. As they begin their quest, they catch a glimpse of this beast, fleetingly, at the edge of the screen. If they give chase, the Groblin will lead them deeper and deeper into the strange and dark forest of Ephemereal."

Ephemereal is a game maker project I began as an art assignment.  The concept for the current direction of the game is thus (*SPOILER ALERT SORT OF*):

Convince the player they're playing some manner of Zelda clone (it's probably immediately obvious what the art direction is 'inspired' by) to make them assume things about the game.  The randomly generated forest scape should appear as an allusion to the classic lost woods implying some correct path to take to escape or other such navigation puzzle (when in fact it is just random).  The groblin looks to be a classic sort of monster you would expect to slay easily, but is actually unkillable (you can hurt him and scare him off but he never dies, despite his bleeding).  The mushroom gnomes are more dangerous than the monstrous groblin as they have no scruples about stealing your possessions.

Eventually, it may become clear that you cannot win, you can only survive as long as possible in the growing darkness or find new ways to die. (*END SORT OF SPOILERS*)

I'll have an .exe available soon, will update once that's available.  A friend suggested I post this all here to see what people thought of it and for more ideas.  It's still pretty rough right now (especially collisions, the hero gets stuck on tall mushrooms and it's possible for you and the groblin to get pushed into and stuck inside all sorts of silly things), but it's already exceeded my expectations for what I set out to try and accomplish.






Gnomes are dicks.

[Destral]

Very interesting premise, I look forward to trying this out and see if you accomplish what you are trying to achieve with the game. 

[Ouren]

Yay! Something I can actually download and play without being arsed to reboot.

Interesting concept, but I played for about 5 minutes. never once had a gnome dick me over, or got a sense that the Groblin was unkillable. I finally just closed the program and then read your "summary".

I like the concept, but it has to become more apparent more quickly. I can't imagine having this at a gallery show, and just never finding out the real "tricks" and "meaning" of the game in a "gallery viewing" time allotment.

Good luck!
-Wolf

[Seth]

There's very little sense of this impending doom you're trying to convey.  You only have two items you can lose (and I practically had to try to lose the sword), so it's unclear that the game is unwinnable--it just seems like its hard for a while.  Again, with that, you don't really get the sense that you're going deeper and deeper into the woods, since there's an overall level of sameness about each map.  And I think the fact that you can die is not effective in spelling doom--it just gives the impression that they're is always another shot at the game.

I think if you gave the hero considerably more items, or even if the gnomes just started stealing the hero's clothes or something, and made the levels change progressively, somehow.  Maybe make the forest more claustrophobic, or wide open.  Perhaps, eventually, after you've lost all your items, the Groblin and gnomes stop taunting you, and you're just alone and wounded, where your endgoal isn't even killing the Groblin anymore, you're just hopelessly trying to escape the forest in some sort of lost woods situation as the darkness closes in, maybe you see shadowy figures outside the corner of your eye, and the music stops.

Also, you should add music and sound effects to the game.