Dark Rescue is a platformer game where you play as a witch looking for her lost cat. The primary mechanic is that the player's light source is limited. On jump, the light pool increases but only as long as your jack-o-lantern has enough light energy. Light energy can be gained by "trick-or-treating" (i.e finding orange candy collectibles). Dark energy (collected through purple candies) does not deplete your light energy stores, but it will "disorient" your witch (i.e. reverse direction of controls). Witches hate ghosts, they can "spook" you to death if you let them get too close. Other included mechanics are common platformer standards -- moving platforms, pushable blocks. [Esc] to pause.

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WindowsBuild.zip 26 MB

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I love the artworks in this game. They are amazing and they fit well together to match the theme. The background music also contributes to a chill, adventurous and magical game atmosphere. However, it would be really nice if the music can be added to the start page as well. The instruction at the beginning of the game is really helpful, but it would be a lot better if you can make the font bigger and easier to see. The idea of the limited sight is really interesting (it's a little hard for me but I liked the challenge), and the levels are designed just enough to keep the player intrigued and motivated to keep playing. Good job!

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I absolutely love the assets and the whole limited sight idea. I loved the animation on the opening screen as well and how instructions were provided to help the player understand how to play. I agree with the other comments though on how having the instructions disappear when you collide with a tombstone did not work well. Especially in the opening where there are multiple of them lined right after the other. The first time I played the game I ran right through them and didn't realize till the last one after which point I could not get the previous instructions back. Maybe don't destroy the tombstones so people can go back and reread the instructions if needed. I also really liked that collecting purple candies reversed controls. It was really creative and added an extra element of difficulty for the game. 

The art style of this game is on another level! I really like all the sprits and all the light effect. Together with the background music, it gives the halloween vibe, consistent with the candy collection theme. Yet I did encounter some bugs with moving the character. At one point in the game, the left arrow was for moving right, and the right level is for moving left (in reverse).

I think the art style of this game is really polished and I really like the light effects of this game. Everything fits pretty well together. Details like the death animation, background movements, glowing effects around the candy clearly suggest a high completion of the game.

There are some minor bugs: I died when hitting a normal tile with an enemy on it; the pumpkin didn't disappear after death. The level selection menu and the pause menu can be improved by making more sprites and using the same fonts. More bgm can be added in different scenarios. But overall the gameplay is pretty satisfying and enjoyable.

I really like the aesthetic of the game; all the art and assets used go well with each other and  nothing seem out of  place (except maybe the text on the  tombstones). The music also fits very well with the theme of the game. I like the tombstone text in the beginning prompting the player to do something, although it could be a bit small and hard to read for some people.

The game is fun and I like the light mechanic forcing you to remember where platforms. There are some things that aren't intuitive though. I first had the misconception that jumps were tied to light energy, but it turns out they were independent. Another thing was that since orange candies give you  light, it would make more sense that dark candies takes away your light. The tombstones properly  explain this though so it should be fine.

I'm a huge fan of games that take advantage of different senses and really makes the player use their brain. The light mechanic is so great with how it's implemented, and forces the player to remember things while playing such as platform locations and enemy locations. It's also extremely fair. Overall, this is the strongest part of the game to me, which is great since it seems to be it's core defining trait.

The music and sounds are wonderful, but perhaps implementing a volume control tool would be nice as personally I found it a bit loud for me.

As reported in another comment, I too encountered the bug where it felt like as I progressed through levels my FPS was dropping. By the last level, the game was starting to become difficult to play. 

One issue I had in the beginning is the tombstones which serve as your tutorial are hard to see at first, and since they're destroyed upon contact, I accidentally ran into a few right away and missed out on what they were trying to say. Maybe instead of destroying the tombstone, have it stay so the player can walk back and re-read if they make that mistake and hit the ground running? Additionally, maybe having the special blocks (the pushable block, the spinning block, the moving block, etc.) in the tutorial level would be nice to educate the player and familiarize them. 

Besides that, the gameplay feels good. Your goals seems rather clear and the objectives are very visually obvious. The purple candy is very quickly taught to be a nuisance, but not a nuisance like the ghosts which make it interesting. Sometimes the player has to take on the nuisance to get the objective, creating some interesting moments and decision making. 

The game is very attractive from the title page for having animation of the main character which reminds me of the old mobile games that are similar to this setting with no start button. Allowing the player to choose a level is another remarkable feature that improves the player's efficiency at experiencing the game. The game setting is interesting in that taking the purple candy could reverse the control. The art style of the game is cute and consistent throughout the game.

There is a bug at 2nd level that after collecting the candy the witch would die when trying to jump from the platform

to the other platform with candy. Besides, it is weird that from level 1 to 5, the game has lower and lower frame rate for me which could be elaborate further. The difficulty level might also need adjustment that the witch will die when touching monsters but there are too many candies to collect. Either the level goal could be clearer such as presenting the number of candies to be collected or add some new candy that could help block several times of monsters' attack. The meaning of the candy bar could also be specified as well. This could be providing one immune shield when collecting enough candy rather than simply consume candy when jumping. What's more, double jump doesn't seem to work throughout the game, hint about using double jump 

This game was very interesting and fun because of how the player's movements and interactions in each level reflect the game's theme. There could be more lighting to show more of the level as the player is going through each level. There could also be more platforms and obstacles so that the player has to move around obstacles to get to each level. The platforms on each level could also have varying graphics so that there is more creative design as the player goes through the level.