Eternal Darkness was an inspiration, even when the magic and sanity system of the game is much more simple, so no worries.
We have some ideas about expanding this concept, but I'm not sure if it will be the next project. Probably adding some "combat" so the incantations are not just to solve puzzles. But they are only ideas for now, so you won't hear from us for a while! D:
Hi there, I am DragonExplosion and I am a Youtuber. If you like my videos, please leave a like and subscribe at my channel.
I would like to thank the creator for inviting me to play the entire game as it is definitely an honour on my end to play the full game. This was a really interesting horror game revolving around the main character investigating the mysteries and darkness in the Nameless City. As the main character gets deeper and deeper in the city, he uncovers the dark truth and secret of the city through the use of glyphs.
The game has a really cool storyline and a lot of effort was placed into telling the story of the world and working on the game mechanics of glyphs in the game. It made the experience more meaningful and fun especially with the inclusion of glyphs and great storytelling. I felt that the game could have made greater use of the glyphs instead of just using it for opening sealed areas and sealing the wind statues as I found the glyphs very interesting and it was definitely the main attraction for me other than the storyline.
It would also be cool if more horrific events or other events happening in the game as the main part of the game became more of running down the stairs and not dying due to psyche overload.
Overall, I enjoyed the lovecraft experience and the amazing adventure into the depths of the Nameless City. Will be looking forward to more games in the future. Thank you for reading my comment and I wish you good luck in your future endeavours.
A short but very interesting game. Journey into a city lost in time, and discover the secrets lurking in the shadows. An absolute recommendation of a game, and true testament to cosmic horror done right.It runs perfectly well on Steam Deck as you can see by pressing the link below:
Thank you so much for sending me your game, you really did an incredible job adapting the Lovecraft story into a game! The design of the Idol was great, it really created a feeling that the city was once home to some form of religious group with the amount of carved idols you can find throughout the ruins.
I just bought the game and I'm really looking forward to playing it. However, I am running into a bit of a bug where WASD and ESC keys don't work. All other inputs do work funnily enough. Hopefully there's a fix to this.
Yes, it happens as soon as the intro story ends and begins in the desert. I can move the mouse and camera; there is a bit of drifting though. I made sure to also disconnect my PS5 controller just in case that was causing the drifting issue, but it still occurs.
I'm using Windows 10 and a XBox controller, but I can't replicate the bug on my end. It may be related to the PS5 controller.
Can you try these to check if the game works for you?:
Start the game after you've disconnected the PS5 controller. If it still doesn't work, disconnect the controller, restart the PC and try the game again.
We have an 'unofficial' support for the gamepad. Try to move the player with the left stick and the camera with the right stick. You still need to use the mouse to click on the UI elements (like new game or options).
The full control scheme with gamepad is:
Move: left stick
Camera: right stick
Crouch: L1/R1
Torch: circle
Interact: square/X
Journal: triangle
Sorry if some of these workarounds are annoying! Hopefully 1 works for you.
Wow, I loved the demo of the game, it’s a really interesting start and I can’t wait to see how you expand upon the game. Really can’t wait to see if you delve further into Lovecraft stories.
This was fuckin great. I got some Eternal Darkness vibes from the runic casting mechanic. The way the sky/day/night changed quickly was definitely unsettling. I loved it.
I can't wait to play the full game!! the voice acting, the visuals, the atmosphere was all AMAZING!!! I had a blast playing! I can't wait for more!! Heres my blind reaction to the game it starts at 10:30!! Thank you!!
Very cool. I loved the whole visual and audio environment. Very creepy. I especially loved the... other visuals. I think it might have giving me some inspiration for something I've been dealing with in a game I've been (very slowly) making.
Such a fantastic game with such a wonderful atmosphere. Lovecraft is a favorite, so I needed to play this one.
FOV meter might be something to consider for future updates as it becomes difficult to navigate in certain areas. Overall though, beautifully made game that really kept me wanting more.
You've nailed the atmosphere. The Nameless City was always one of my favorite HPL tales. The extremely low FOV was hurting my eyes though as the demo was ending. Perhaps future updates could address that as I'd love to see this as a fully finished experience.
Here is my opinion about the game so far. I do love the retro style to me cause the less crazy graphics are easier to process and not get overwhelming to look at and it is more of a classic style game feel the images when picking up the artifacts were really creepy and I kind of got some cool creepy haunted vibes of an unknown abounded society.
Some things I think could use some fixing was first I felt like the vision was zoomed in too much and in the tight spaces, it was too hard to see where to go for a bit. I also think the book with the symbols using them to say things were a bit confusing to open those gates and I felt like I just clicked and figured it out in the future try adding more like a feel of that the sounds combine together a lot more. There also were some cracks where I could see out of the boundaries of the game so maybe seal them up with a wall or something else the locations were when getting the second artifact and when you left the temple after getting both of the artifacts.
Other than that I'm trying to not be negative about this project and was giving you ideas for fixing and helping the overall project and I could see some good effort made into this game and felt like a good small title to try out a great job.
Don't worry about sounding negative, you don't sound like that at all and your feedback is very helpful. We are going to release a revised version of the demo (hopefully this week) that addresses most of your concerns.
Loved the sound design - on my first playthrough I got stuck due to a game breaking bug when opening the first wall (probably I clicked on the wall while reciting the Glyphs - as the wall disappeared I could no longer move, look or interact with anything, no key was working anymore).
It's nicely immersive, the atmosphere really gave me the creeps!
A few things that I believe could use some work. Maybe they're like this by design, but I personally didn't like them:
1) The extremely strict Field of Vision - it gave me a bit of nausea after a while. I understand it may look less cinematographic but it reminded me of when Doom got me sick by sliding along the wall perimeter while trying to find some secrets.
2) The mouse rotation choppiness. Coupled with the point above, made the experience less enjoyable. Why is the mouse look so clamped vertically?
3) V-sync was off - had plenty of screen tearing while turning around. That boosted even further point 1 and 2.
Minor:
4) Excessively overbright/saturated colours. Playing the game while using the torch on an average HDR display put quite some strain on the eyes.
5) At the beginning of the game the music volume overshadows the narration - maybe tweak the mixing a bit?
Wishlist:
6) The game text/script being supervised by a native English speaker. Maybe it was just me but a few sentences didn't sound right.
Looking forward to play the full game - keep up with the great work! :)
By the way - the use of generative AI to create creepy supernatural alien-like images was spot on!
Thank you so much Alessandro for taking the time to play our demo and for your precious feedback! 1) You are definitely right. Some other players made the same observation and we are now testing again the game to find the perfect fov. Will hopefully update soon! 2-3) We'll look into that. I haven't personally experienced V-sync issues but we'll test again for sure. Did you play the Windows or the Mac build? 4) Yes, I noticed something similar too. It has something to do I think with the textures, the PSX shader, and the light when it gets too close to objects. We'll try to improve that. 5) Yes, I guess that was because I wasn't feeling too confident about my voice-over, so I probably subconsciously hid them a bit. Just a little case of impostor syndrome :) 6) We had some friends helping us, but we'll definitely double-check the scripts again. Sometimes we were probably trying to achieve a more poetic and Lovecraftian way of writing, but it's not easy!
About the bug I found while opening the first wall - I probably interacted with the wall, opened the book, clicked on the glyphs and deactivated the wall - all while the initial interaction dialogue was playing. So it probably left me in a non-responsive state. Considered that players are likely to experiment a bit there it may happen again :P I was a bit puzzled as you could only do much with just 2 glyphs, but then Arx Fatalis came up to my mind ;)
2) Win11, but I'm developing with Unity as well on the same rig, so I'm quite sure I didn't have V-sync forced Off in the nVidia settings
4) You're probably in gamma colour space so it's probably just how the torch lights the book. Maybe you could have 2 different lights on the torch, a dimmed one for the book, and the standard one affecting all other layers? Just a quick and dirty idea :P
5) It's really just at the beginning, when the music is particularly dominant - you can only appreciate one thing at a time :)
6) It's nothing major, I've been picky. The script was almost flawless - a few item descriptions left me wondering. I'm not a native speaker myself so I understand you're up for a challenging task!
Keep up with the great work - I'm looking forward the next update.
PS: I'm not sure if it fits in the game, but if you keep having such large environments you may want to consider a sprint key in open areas - and just walking elsewhere? I understand that running may ruin the immersion, so you maybe a "fast walk" would be more appropriate then a "run" key. I'm not sure myself - you'd definitely not want to add any UI for stamina or run so... Up to you to experiment if you haven't already. I saw a few gameplay video and I believe someone was crawling in open areas, or running wildly down some stairs. I wonder if keeping track of "sanity" would keep the player a bit more on the edge...
7) One last thing: pacing. I'm realising only now that the character is a bit... speedrunning between quite some scary events, especially at the end - I'd be quite shocked if I had those visions. I can't tell how, but maybe we could add a bit more drama to such terrifying events? I'm not a writer so I don't have any suggestion on how to manage that. Bigger environments? reduced walking speed? Passing out? (fade ins/out). I did inspect everything around, but someone could just skip the hints and the mental state of the character entirely? Just my 2 cents.
I really enjoyed the graphics and the presentation of the environment, i'm a fan of using the foreign language to gain access to doors by creating words/commands, would love to see the full game. Thank you for making this! 3rd Game.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Loved the game! I really wish we get to see more Lovecraft adaptations/inspired games by you!
Loved the game, fantastic stuff. Made a little video of it, check it out if you want to. Or don't. Can't wait to see what Paradnight Studio does next!
Thanks for the review! :D It's very thoughtful.
Eternal Darkness was an inspiration, even when the magic and sanity system of the game is much more simple, so no worries.
We have some ideas about expanding this concept, but I'm not sure if it will be the next project. Probably adding some "combat" so the incantations are not just to solve puzzles. But they are only ideas for now, so you won't hear from us for a while! D:
Glad you enjoyed it! I'll be following whatever you do going forward so can't wait!
I would like to thank the creator for inviting me to play the entire game as it is definitely an honour on my end to play the full game. This was a really interesting horror game revolving around the main character investigating the mysteries and darkness in the Nameless City. As the main character gets deeper and deeper in the city, he uncovers the dark truth and secret of the city through the use of glyphs.
The game has a really cool storyline and a lot of effort was placed into telling the story of the world and working on the game mechanics of glyphs in the game. It made the experience more meaningful and fun especially with the inclusion of glyphs and great storytelling. I felt that the game could have made greater use of the glyphs instead of just using it for opening sealed areas and sealing the wind statues as I found the glyphs very interesting and it was definitely the main attraction for me other than the storyline.
It would also be cool if more horrific events or other events happening in the game as the main part of the game became more of running down the stairs and not dying due to psyche overload.
Overall, I enjoyed the lovecraft experience and the amazing adventure into the depths of the Nameless City. Will be looking forward to more games in the future. Thank you for reading my comment and I wish you good luck in your future endeavours.
Thanks for playing and for the review! :D
will you be adding an option to invert the vertical mouse axis? only thing keeping me from playing
For the next update, we are planning to add controller support for the game and the option to invert the Y axis (for both mouse and controller).
We don't know when the next update is ready sorry! But if you follow us on itch you'll get the notification.
Thank you!
Hi! We just updated the game yesterday to add full gamepad support. There's also the option to invert the Y axis of the camera too.
awesome! thank you!
Excellent game! A wonderful and magic dream from which I didn't want to wake up!
My most sincere congrats to the devs, the best tribute to Lovecraft I have ever played!
Thank you! :D
Thank YOU for making it :D
Really enjoyed the demo and was not disappointed by the full version. I still love the weird images and the atmosphere of the entire game.
Thanks for playing the game! :D
A short but very interesting game. Journey into a city lost in time, and discover the secrets lurking in the shadows. An absolute recommendation of a game, and true testament to cosmic horror done right.It runs perfectly well on Steam Deck as you can see by pressing the link below:
Thanks for playing the game! :D And thanks for playing it on Steam Deck too, it's nice to know that it works well on it.
Probably the only appropriate use of generative AI tools in gaming I've seen.
Great job on the game!
Thanks for playing the game, I'm glad you liked it! :D
I just bought the game and I'm really looking forward to playing it. However, I am running into a bit of a bug where WASD and ESC keys don't work. All other inputs do work funnily enough. Hopefully there's a fix to this.
Thanks for playing the game! And sorry for that bug.
Does this happen when the intro story ends and you start in the desert, or later? And can you move the camera?
And also, which operative system are you using?
Thanks for replying!
Yes, it happens as soon as the intro story ends and begins in the desert. I can move the mouse and camera; there is a bit of drifting though. I made sure to also disconnect my PS5 controller just in case that was causing the drifting issue, but it still occurs.
I'm currently on Windows 11 64bit.
Thanks again :)
Thanks for the info!
I'm using Windows 10 and a XBox controller, but I can't replicate the bug on my end. It may be related to the PS5 controller.
Can you try these to check if the game works for you?:
Sorry if some of these workarounds are annoying! Hopefully 1 works for you.
Thank you for the game, I enjoyed it very much!! Here is my full playthrough:
Thanks for playing the game! :D
Alpha Beta Gamer brought me here.
Thanks for playing! And actually, you won't need to wait too much for the full game.
Thanks for playing! :D
This was a solid psx! Nice work\
Full Demo No Commentary
Thanks for playing the game!
Thanks for playing the game, I'm glad you liked it! :D
Wow! I loved it! For a demo, I can see all the hard work you put into it, I can't wait for the full release!
Thanks for playing the game!
Not a man of culture I see.
Loved it!!! You can sense the eerie Lovecraftian atmosphere...
Thanks for the video!
Comments below clip;
A desolate environment, where a lonely soul tries to make sense out of senselessness.Just play it :o]
Well done and kudos to all involved!
Thank you, and thanks for playing the game!
This was so beautiful! I love the retro style, and love that we get to use the words to explore different parts! I look forward to more!
Thanks for playing! :D
great short game, probably one of the weirdest PSX game i've ever played lmao. keep up the good work!
Thanks for playing!
This was fuckin great. I got some Eternal Darkness vibes from the runic casting mechanic. The way the sky/day/night changed quickly was definitely unsettling. I loved it.
Yes, Eternal Darkness was an inspiration. I'm glad you liked it! :D
I truly enjoy Lovecraft's work. Great short indie game. Keep up the great work.
Thanks for the video!
I can't wait to play the full game!! the voice acting, the visuals, the atmosphere was all AMAZING!!! I had a blast playing! I can't wait for more!! Heres my blind reaction to the game it starts at 10:30!! Thank you!!
Thanks for playing the game! :D
Very cool. I loved the whole visual and audio environment. Very creepy. I especially loved the... other visuals. I think it might have giving me some inspiration for something I've been dealing with in a game I've been (very slowly) making.
Thanks for the video! :D I'm glad it inspired you. Give a shout when you have something!
You're welcome and thanks!
I move at a glacial pace. Probably be a long long time before I finish :)
Excellent work, good to experience a horror deeper than jumpscares! Not anything wrong with them, just great to mix it up!
Thanks for the video!
Thanks again for the game!
Such a fantastic game with such a wonderful atmosphere. Lovecraft is a favorite, so I needed to play this one.
FOV meter might be something to consider for future updates as it becomes difficult to navigate in certain areas. Overall though, beautifully made game that really kept me wanting more.
Thanks for the video! We increased the FOV a bit on our last update, but we'll try to add a FOV meter on the next update.
Thank you for the game! Appreciate the FOV update you guys rock!
You've nailed the atmosphere. The Nameless City was always one of my favorite HPL tales. The extremely low FOV was hurting my eyes though as the demo was ending. Perhaps future updates could address that as I'd love to see this as a fully finished experience.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! We updated the game and increased the FOV a bit. Hopefully, for the next update we'll have an adjustable FOV instead.
Love the fact that is inspired by H.P Lovecrafts works. Keep it up, I want to see a full game out of it!
Thanks for the video! I'm glad you liked it :D
SO NICE
Nice Game
Gameplay en español¡Muchas gracias por el vídeo! :D
This was a really interesting horror game. I enjoyed the setting of an unexplored temple in the desert. Great work!
Thanks for the video, it was a great and helpful commentary!
This was a pretty fun little game, I liked the concept and visuals, good work :)
Thanks for the video, I'm glad you liked it! :)
Really great atmosphere going on here, so claustrophobic :)
Thanks for the video! I'm glad you liked it (and that you found it claustrophofic :) )
Show post...
AMAZING DEMO DEV
Thanks for the video! :D
The game looks really awesome. Love the visuals, the mystery and the atmosphere.
Thanks for the video, I'm glad you liked it!
Here is my opinion about the game so far. I do love the retro style to me cause the less crazy graphics are easier to process and not get overwhelming to look at and it is more of a classic style game feel the images when picking up the artifacts were really creepy and I kind of got some cool creepy haunted vibes of an unknown abounded society.
Some things I think could use some fixing was first I felt like the vision was zoomed in too much and in the tight spaces, it was too hard to see where to go for a bit. I also think the book with the symbols using them to say things were a bit confusing to open those gates and I felt like I just clicked and figured it out in the future try adding more like a feel of that the sounds combine together a lot more. There also were some cracks where I could see out of the boundaries of the game so maybe seal them up with a wall or something else the locations were when getting the second artifact and when you left the temple after getting both of the artifacts.
Other than that I'm trying to not be negative about this project and was giving you ideas for fixing and helping the overall project and I could see some good effort made into this game and felt like a good small title to try out a great job.
Thanks for playing the game and the feedback!
Don't worry about sounding negative, you don't sound like that at all and your feedback is very helpful. We are going to release a revised version of the demo (hopefully this week) that addresses most of your concerns.
Thanks for the video! :D
Loved the sound design - on my first playthrough I got stuck due to a game breaking bug when opening the first wall (probably I clicked on the wall while reciting the Glyphs - as the wall disappeared I could no longer move, look or interact with anything, no key was working anymore).
It's nicely immersive, the atmosphere really gave me the creeps!
A few things that I believe could use some work. Maybe they're like this by design, but I personally didn't like them:
1) The extremely strict Field of Vision - it gave me a bit of nausea after a while. I understand it may look less cinematographic but it reminded me of when Doom got me sick by sliding along the wall perimeter while trying to find some secrets.
2) The mouse rotation choppiness. Coupled with the point above, made the experience less enjoyable. Why is the mouse look so clamped vertically?
3) V-sync was off - had plenty of screen tearing while turning around. That boosted even further point 1 and 2.
Minor:
4) Excessively overbright/saturated colours. Playing the game while using the torch on an average HDR display put quite some strain on the eyes.
5) At the beginning of the game the music volume overshadows the narration - maybe tweak the mixing a bit?
Wishlist:
6) The game text/script being supervised by a native English speaker. Maybe it was just me but a few sentences didn't sound right.
Looking forward to play the full game - keep up with the great work! :)
By the way - the use of generative AI to create creepy supernatural alien-like images was spot on!
Thank you so much Alessandro for taking the time to play our demo and for your precious feedback!
1) You are definitely right. Some other players made the same observation and we are now testing again the game to find the perfect fov. Will hopefully update soon!
2-3) We'll look into that. I haven't personally experienced V-sync issues but we'll test again for sure. Did you play the Windows or the Mac build?
4) Yes, I noticed something similar too. It has something to do I think with the textures, the PSX shader, and the light when it gets too close to objects. We'll try to improve that.
5) Yes, I guess that was because I wasn't feeling too confident about my voice-over, so I probably subconsciously hid them a bit. Just a little case of impostor syndrome :)
6) We had some friends helping us, but we'll definitely double-check the scripts again. Sometimes we were probably trying to achieve a more poetic and Lovecraftian way of writing, but it's not easy!
Thanks again!
No problem, I was genuinely intrigued by it.
About the bug I found while opening the first wall - I probably interacted with the wall, opened the book, clicked on the glyphs and deactivated the wall - all while the initial interaction dialogue was playing. So it probably left me in a non-responsive state. Considered that players are likely to experiment a bit there it may happen again :P
I was a bit puzzled as you could only do much with just 2 glyphs, but then Arx Fatalis came up to my mind ;)
2) Win11, but I'm developing with Unity as well on the same rig, so I'm quite sure I didn't have V-sync forced Off in the nVidia settings
4) You're probably in gamma colour space so it's probably just how the torch lights the book. Maybe you could have 2 different lights on the torch, a dimmed one for the book, and the standard one affecting all other layers? Just a quick and dirty idea :P
5) It's really just at the beginning, when the music is particularly dominant - you can only appreciate one thing at a time :)
6) It's nothing major, I've been picky. The script was almost flawless - a few item descriptions left me wondering. I'm not a native speaker myself so I understand you're up for a challenging task!
Keep up with the great work - I'm looking forward the next update.
PS: I'm not sure if it fits in the game, but if you keep having such large environments you may want to consider a sprint key in open areas - and just walking elsewhere? I understand that running may ruin the immersion, so you maybe a "fast walk" would be more appropriate then a "run" key. I'm not sure myself - you'd definitely not want to add any UI for stamina or run so... Up to you to experiment if you haven't already. I saw a few gameplay video and I believe someone was crawling in open areas, or running wildly down some stairs. I wonder if keeping track of "sanity" would keep the player a bit more on the edge...
7) One last thing: pacing. I'm realising only now that the character is a bit... speedrunning between quite some scary events, especially at the end - I'd be quite shocked if I had those visions. I can't tell how, but maybe we could add a bit more drama to such terrifying events? I'm not a writer so I don't have any suggestion on how to manage that. Bigger environments? reduced walking speed? Passing out? (fade ins/out). I did inspect everything around, but someone could just skip the hints and the mental state of the character entirely? Just my 2 cents.
I really enjoyed the graphics and the presentation of the environment, i'm a fan of using the foreign language to gain access to doors by creating words/commands, would love to see the full game. Thank you for making this! 3rd Game.
Thanks for the video! I'm glad you liked the glyphs mechanic :D