Crimson Story

[teamcrimson]

After several sleepless nights, we're very happy to finally present Crimson Story.

Crimson Story is an action adventure game about life, death and love made by me, Kano Kaimana and Braden Vardan.

This game was inspired by a recent tragedy that personally affected me deeply, and after hearing about the contest it proved to be the perfect opportunity to make this game a reality.

We are pretty happy with how a month of work turned out, and despite the short time span the final version of the game ended up very close to what we intended initially.

We really hope you enjoy it, and hope this game will mean something to you.

We meant to post a trailer of sorts after the deadline, thinking we could add media afterwards so we'll have to post it here instead once we have it.

We'd love to hear what you think about the game, specially since we are planning to do an extended version of it later on.
 

Cheers !

Note: We recommend a gamepad to play this game, though a keyboard is ok too.

Download and more screenies here​

 

[Matseb2611]

Heya. I've played a fair bit and here are my impressions so far:

I absolutely love the art style! This is seriously fantastic work. I kept repeatedly saying to myself 'This is so pretty' or 'This looks amazing' as I've been progressing through. It looks like something out of a comic book or a graphic novel. And the serene background music works really well with this style and the theme of death and afterlife.

The gameplay itself feels like a simple hack and slash. It wasn't anything extraordinary, but I did find it quite fun to fight the enemies as the character movement is quite fluid and the enemies tend to change as I get further, but the controls can be a bit tough at times on the keyboard (maybe it plays better on a gamepad). Also I find the mechanic of my sidekick shooting where I aim to be a bit useless, because aiming is hard and most times he tends to miss. Maybe if he had an auto-lock on enemies if they're close, it'd be better to use.

It's nice there are save points. Most seem to be well-placed just before the harder encounters, though I thought there was a bit too much distance between the 1st and the 2nd (maybe there was one and I simply missed it). Oh also, the dialogue when you talk to someone is a bit slow. It'd be nice if it came on a bit quicker.

So far I am liking the game. It's got a great atmosphere with its unique art style and nice music. Maybe a bit more polish would do it good because the idea is very promising. I'm a bit stuck at the moment though. I got to a part where there is a gap in the road. I can't seem to jump over it because the gap is too wide and the jump doesn't get me that far. Is there something else I should do to cross it?

 

[Indrah]

Here's my very quick and sketchy take on the game (link for info on why it's so short and all that jazz)




 
+Graphic style is interesting
+Controls are responsive enough.
+Generally does not bog the action down with tedious scenes.
-The smaller windowed resolution cuts off the text.
-The stark coluors can hurt the eyes after a while.
-The lack of detail makes things a bit confusing during the action.
-Camera pans out too far, making the action even more fuzzy.
-Impact effects when you hit things make the screen shake, which is disorienting.
-Overall the “action” is a mess of confusion (mind you, I’m not action oriented so my perception could be wrong).
-Camera pans during cutscenes are too slow
-Got stuck and could play no further.
 
To the developer: if this is as I assume an early-ish demo, I don’t have much to say. There’s a bunch of stuff that feels “early build”, but that would make sense. The overall style is simple and intriguing, but there’s not much to it right now.
 

 

[teamcrimson]

Matseb: Thanks a lot for your feedback, I'm glad you are enjoying the game

The sidekick does locks on the enemies you are facing. Admittingly some UI indication that a certain enemies is locked on would have made wonders and make the whole system more obvious.

You need to double jump to get across the gap. You can do so by pressing the jump button while already in the air.

This mechanic should have been perhaps mentioned in the mini tutorial at the beginning but oh well

Indrah:  Well I really appreciate the fact that you took your time to evaluate and give constructive feedback on the game (some of which I agree completely) but I think you were perhaps a bit too harsh when you say it feels like an early demo for a game and has very basic gameplay when you barely got out of the tutorial area (roughly less than 1/4 of the complete game) and got stuck immediately afterwards (by a nasty bug, eh).

Without knowing what's ahead it's kind of hard to make out what exactly the game is about. It's not meant to be a pure hack n' slash game even though I admit it's easy to mistake it for one. In fact, you may have to finish more than once to actually understand what we tried to replicate and why the fighting is even part of the game.

But well, perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean, or why you feel that way but regardless I still appreciate what you are doing, and I'm sure the other devs will appreciate it too