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[Alce]

In the final stretch for the demo! Hopefully should finish it sometime this weekend or early next week.

Been adding sound effects from Freesound and I added a royalty-free song I found thanks to Reddit. Was looking for something ambient, like the relaxing Knytt Underground OST, but it was hard to find something that fit. Eventually though, a post on /r/gamedev led me to the Wanderlust EP which I liked a lot, so I'll be using a couple of songs from it in the demo.

In other updates, I implemented special "power-up" torches that permanently increase the size of your light, which extends the time/distance you can use different items (in case of the demo, only the boomerang). My design dilemma though is that I originally considered having all the torches scattered around the level increase your light, but to balance it they had to be really small increases... but the problem I encountered with that approach is that the increases became so small they weren't noticeable...

It's an issue I want to keep on thinking about, but I'll keep it as is for the demo.

[Pixel Noise]

Re: torches - either fewer torches, with more noticeable increases, or keep the same # of torches, but only have the light increase on every 3rd, 5th, etc torch (and again, make it more noticeable)?

[Al_B]

I like the premise of this game. I'll definitely play the demo when it's out.

[Keirley]

Just wanted to say that I also really like the idea behind this. Interested in playing the demo when it's out!

[Lares Yamoir]

At first I thought this is supposed to be a horror game, but from reading the thread it doesn't seem that way.
Now I'm interested to see where this is going instead  .

[Josh Bossie]

This'll sound petty, but my first thought about a world in eternal night is "why isn't is all that dark?"

You might want to consider making it much darker

[Alce]

@Pixel Noise Interesting solutions! While I'm not so sure that would work, it gave me another idea: experience bars. Lighting up torches fills up an EXP bar, and once you fill it you "level up" your light size. That way there's an incentive for lighting all the small torches you can find and I can still keep the special torches (which give a bigger exp boost than the normal ones). 

@Al_B @Keirley @Lares Yamoir Thnaks :D The demo is finally out, check out the link below.

@Josh @ WARP DOGS Not that petty tbh! It's an important point. In the end, I'm using the darkness to add to the world/ambience more than anything. I could make it much darker, which would make light neccesary to see what's happening, but that would completely change the game mechanically. A prototype I made a long time ago was pitch black except for the lights,and it played really differently.

Now what everyone was waiting for... the demo is finally out! It's a 5-10 minute browser game.

Play it here!

The purpose of this demo is to decide whether to keep on working on this idea or not, so any honest feedback is appreciated! Controls are explained in-game.

[Pixel Noise]

without having played the demo yet, something that just crossed my mind - maybe you can have pockets/areas of deeper darkness? So like, your light level needs to be at a certain amount in order to see through those areas? Could add a bit of variety and depth to the world/gameplay?

[Lares Yamoir]

I played it through. It was interesting, but I wish there was more to it to be honest (gameplaywise, maybe lore even). Also encountered two bugs:
1) Sometimes the animation of the character would freeze while walking (couldn't figure out why exactly in the short time)
2) On the screen with the bullet shooter and the blue torch barrel: If you light the barrel, the shooter won't stop spawning bullets and it's possible to "die" before you can get over the spawning bridge. So far ok, but the switch for walking over the water has been set (or so it seems). On player respawn the torch is out again and the bridge has despawned, so I assumed I had to light the torch again. The bridge spawned, but now I couldn't get over it. I had to die again in order for it to work.

I hope you work more on the game. I think it has potential.

[Mochnant]

I played as well.  I do agree the gameplay is simple, which is not necessarily a knock against it.  That said, I think the idea of lighting the barrels to materialize bridges is a little gamey.  I think there needs to be a better reason to play than that.  Perhaps trees and grass in the dark would could return to bloom as you relight areas of the world?  Perhaps more lore would help, too, as pointed out above.

I'd like to see the game be darker, but I know you mentioned that you were not looking for a more intense experience that a dark game would bring.

I'm also not a fan of the boomerang, which didn't seem to add a lot for me, and seemed to allow peeking into sections of the map not intended to.

[Alce]

Thank you both for the feedback!

@Lares Yamoir Lore sounds like a really interesting idea I hadn't considered, will look into it. Thanks for the bug reports too! I'm curious though, what do you think of the boomerang?

@Mochnant The gamey-ness is something I hadn't thought about, thanks for pointing it out.

[Lares Yamoir]

I'm curious though, what do you think of the boomerang?

It was a little difficult to use in the beginnng, because the boomerang can change screens and it needs to be caught in order for the fires to be considered activated. The later one especially is not really intuitive. However after a few tries I got the hang of it, so it is fine for me.
The feature itself I think is really important for the game in it's current state, so I would keep it in and design some tricky puzzles around it. 

[Alce]

I see, thanks!