Anima Ostium
With the power to summon portals between realms, venture to save those stuck in limbo. It is a dangerous task with perils hiding in the dark
(Web version currently has performance issues. Download the windows version for a better experience.)
Instructions
Amass 5 Lost Souls and bring them back to the circle.
- Move - WASD
- Aim - Mouse
- Summon Portals - Space
Credits
- Music & SFX - Gustav Tosting
- Programming - Elias Jonsson
- Pixel art - Linda “Zolah” Lundqvist
- Level Design & pixel art - Christoffer Lundberg
Patch Notes
v1.0
- Added soul counter - Intro room has 5 small rune-circles that indicate how many souls that have been collected.
- Added lights - Small lights that light up once you get close. Makes it easier to see where you have already explored.
- Added new monster - New monster with some abilities of its own now roam the halls. Watch your back!
- Added SFX - Picking up and collecting souls, winning and dying now have new sounds.
- Added player animation for placing doors
- Adjusted visuals of outer walls
- Varied speed of grabbed souls - Souls orbiting the player now rotate at different speeds, making them easier to tell apart.
- Camera now pans toward cursor
- Improved visibility of enemies - Should now be less common to die without even seeing the monster.
- Fixed bugs
- Fixed soul counter not resetting on death or win
- Fixed instances of enemies getting stuck on furniture
- Fixed soul counter not resetting on death or win
v0.5
- Fixed double portal crash - Fixed a bug that would crash the game when the player summoned a portal and attempted to summon another portal while the first one was still opening.
- Fixed soul counter - The game now properly completes when 5 souls are collected. It's also no longer possible that fewer then 5 souls spawn in the level.
- Soul placements - When the player collect multiple souls, they are spread out so it's possible to see all of them.
v0.4
- Dynamic music - Fixed dynamic music not progressing
Download
Install instructions
Download zip-file "Win_Build_vXX.zip" and extract the contents to an appropriate folder somewhere on the computer. Then double click the "Anima Ostium.exe" file in that folder.
Comments
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So. I played this for a bit, enough time to get a feel for the game, how it controls and what the goal of the game was. I would say that it is a great start for a game, I would have loved to see where it would have gone had it not been for the gamejam time limit.
The visuals looks nice, and you can mostly tell what things are supposed to be.
I found the music worked really good to set the mood and make you feel a bit uneasy, a little bit on your toes. It would have been nice if the music loop was a little bit longer with a bit of variation. It was nice choice to make the spirits make sounds so if you payed attention you could tell if it would be a good idea to place a door on the wall or not.
The controls were simple, so no risk that you wouldn't understand how to move about. I felt that the flashlight could have been a few degrees bigger in the area it illuminated. I could not get along with the camera though. I feel it would have worked better if it had stayed centred on the player, because when walking up or down there was not a lot of room to the edge of what you could see.
The instructions could have been a little more informative, as I first thought that you had to lure back the evil spirits to the portal. But once I found the first of the good spirits it all became clear. The information that the evil spirits were guided by actual line of sight would have been good to know and that the furniture actually made them lose sight of you.
A feature that I would have liked to see was some way to tell where the portal was in relation to the player. It was not until I hit the boundary walls I was able to be sure where I had to go to get back to the portal room. And also a counter of how many spirits you have rescued would have been good.
The biggest flaws of the game would have to be optimisation as I had to borrow my partners pc as mine could not handle running the game in the browser. And the downloaded version had the wrong folder structure and made my anti-virus software flagged it as a threat. (This have though been resolved during the time that I wrote this)
And it might have been good to have a way to shut down the game other than a Alt+F4
All and all this game was a nice experience. I would like to see more from this creator team.
Thanks for the really generous feedback!
Definitely a lot of details we would have loved to implement if given more time, especially when it comes to polish and more visual indicators.
We agree the game's performance is a huge flaw and I tried to frenetically fix it in the final hours of the jam. Unfortunately couldn't get a solution working in time.
When it comes to the music our composer actually made multiple layers to it that would get added as played. You made me realize I accidentally left that disabled in the build. Gonna upload a quick fix for that.
Again, thanks for the in-depth review. If you want to see more you can check out my page here on itch. Some of the games there are made with other collaborators but "Turtle Tumble" (while quite different in theme) was made by mostly the same people who made this game.
this looks amazing! im not sure if its a problem on my end but i dont have any sound! :(
I found the introduction a little confusing, and im not too sure what the things im meant to be gathering look like. i touched a spinny blue guy and it put me back to the start, i dont know if that was a good thing or if i died :(
love the animations for the portals opening! very spooky! & the lighting was amazing! had me feeling proper on edge & spinning around checking for enemies
Hmm... no idea what the sound issue is, it is working on my browser so I would have to look into that.
The spinny blue guys are what you should collect and bring back to the start. They shouldn't put you back at the start as you touch them though. Maybe you accidentally got caught by an enemy who you didn't see.
We definitely tried to go for a spooky, eerie vibe so really glad you think we got it right!