Fantastic review @Crigence thanks for taking the time. I agree with pretty much everything you said. It’s definitely a “lite” game without score or specific goals. The only real reward is opening free play for making it to the wizard. This idea originally started as a choose your own adventure mini comic but it never made it past the concept stage, so that may be why the game feels a little unconventional. When I posted it to itch, I labeled it as Interactive Fiction. Lol.
Glad you liked the music and the references in the illustrations. 28+ of each was a real challenge in two weeks.
Oh. And Johnny Reb is a generic term for a Confederate Soldier. I knew some of my references might be a little obtuse, but I didn’t have a lot of time to rework the pages.
And when you shave the Amish Farmer you see that you’re leaving a little hair around the chin. The jump from farmer to sound cloud rapper makes me laugh every time. Actually, that’s pretty much every reference in the game. If it made me laugh then I kept it. Haha!
august silence is, even though I have limited experience with the genre, the best Metroidvania style game iv’e ever played on or off Flowlab. Technically speaking, even coming from a more experienced developer like me, the game’s an absolute marvel and sets a new standard for the big-releases of Flowlab (Such as Sol or HAKK3R 2). Though this games “Scary” elements are more stylistic than anything, if you love 2D retro shooters, you will certainly love august silence!
+Great main menu (Despite being mostly blank)! Constant movement, good music. Well-done!
+From the minute to see “Unknown lifeform detected. Sending distre-” You know EXACTLY what this game is going to be straight from the get-go. Overall, good jo-
+The aiming system is intuitive, the gun pointing at the mouse is technically impressive and the crosshair looks great (Even if it is somewhat distracting), though having it be transparent or less in-your-face would be nice
+There are so many small details in this game that add up to make an incredibly immersive experience, such as shooting the ground and having the screen shake accordingly, blood splattering as you strike enemies or slashing water and having it actually splash based on range! I love it!
+This game is a master of Flowlab “Show don’t tell”. This game has 0 dialogue (After the intro) and yet it works! You’re just given your toolkit and the game pans out naturally from there. VERY well-done!
+An important thing to remember about this game is that it’s a horror game, and in that regard the game does a fantastic job at easing you into the gameplay. If I had to metaphorically describe it, I’d say while most Flowlab horror games just flood-gate every trick up their sleeve out after a certain point (Ex. The Facility), this game intelligently trickles horror at you as you play
+It’s very obvious this game takes inspiration from the greats of gaming horror, with the (Very necessary) inclusion of ‘Saferooms’, or the slow, ominous tick of the fuel going down for example
-The description for the game is unprofessional, to the say the least…
-Annnndddd after all that praise, we finally found an issue. There’s a room in the game that will suddenly start draining your health when you enter it and nothing you do will stop it. While it’s obvious that the room is there to teach you how dying and respawning works, I’d argue the player should learn that naturally by dying under normal circumstances since… You know, this is a horror game?
-Tiny nitpick, but the game probably should do a little more to explain to you that the water in the ‘Saferooms’ can regenerate your health, perhaps via a sign with a red cross on it?
-I had to stop playing because I got stuck in a room, for some reason phasing through platforms didn’t work for me (Assuming that’s what I was meant to do…)
*Since I never got to complete the game, can someone please explain to me why it’s called “august silence”?
Visuals - 5 (Does an incredible job at making the player feel claustrophobic, absolutely well-done!) Sound - 4.5 (What can I say? Does a fantastic job at setting the tone and is overall well-done!) Story - 3.5 (Vague, but on purpose) Controls - 4.5 (Very intuitive!) Difficulty - 3 (Overall a very relaxed game) Stability - 4 (Buggy controls, but that’s all)
Final Score: 4.5/5
Incredibly well-made game with incredibly intuitive mechanics and a sexy learning curve. What’s not to love?.. The occasional bug, actually
Thanks so much! I know it’s kind of a vague title.
There’s some more extra story stuff That i plan to add a bit later that kind of ties into the title, but to put it simply, it takes place during august, and the space station is for the most part silent, since everyone is dead.
and btw, the room that your health ticks down that you talked about is a room with no oxygen. your oxygen is the blue number in the bottom right corner, if it starts going down, you need to get out unless you have the oxygen tank, which raises that number significantly. I probably should have made that more clear in the game
Well remember – I only got to play for a few minutes because I couldn’t get across a bridge because sprinting was busted and phasing through platforms was broken (Something I lightly mentioned in the review with the-
I only got to fight 1 enemy and it was honestly pretty easy, so that difficulty of 3 is just what iv’e seen so far. What i’m trying to say is don’t take difficulty advice from that review
@F3Art
I forgot to give august silence an opening paragraph,
Sorry about that, here’s the games finished paragraph, I’ll admit due to it being a while since I played the game I was extra reflective during it (@rcreger’s Sol and @browngr’s H4KK3R 2 were roped into it for example) but here’s the new opening:
when you were saying sprinting was busted, were you trying to sprint before you got the speed boots? Again, this would be my fault for not saying in the description something like “press shift to sprint (once you have the speed boots)” or something like that.
I really need to make things more clear in the game, especially the fact that backtracking and taking different paths is important for progression.
If you already had them, I really don’t know what the problem could be, That’s definitely something I should look into.
sorry for all these questions, I know you’re busy with reviews and such
It would be bad, but your game is more metroidvania, as crigence pointed out already, so you’re all good. This is because you are attacking the enemy. Now, if your game was more like Dead Space, where you are constantly being attacked, it would be a big issue.
Visuals - 5 (Does an incredible job at making the player feel claustrophobic, absolutely well-done!)
Sound - 4.5 (What can I say? Does a fantastic job at setting the tone and is overall well-done!)
Story - 3.5 (Vague, but on purpose)
Controls - 4.5 (Very intuitive!)
Difficulty - 3 (Overall a very relaxed game)
Stability - 4 (Buggy controls, but that’s all)