The Dreaming Keep
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
What darkness takes thee this eve, hero? Indeed thine dreams are fraught, wracked with terrors, and thine mind sinks ever into some fell gloom...
Press TAB/ESC when in-game to open thine menu. LEFT CLICK to use thine sword. RIGHT CLICK to use thine magic. Press SPACE to jump. Thusly, end the nightmare.
Download
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Development log
- Update 1.0.117 days ago
Comments
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The sounddesign on this one goes craaaaazy this was such an experience.
Good fun. Great atmosphere and good use of SFX to support it. Actually honestly the sound design was terrific throughout. I liked the visuals but I did struggle to read the text e.g. when picking up the doodads or in the pause menu. Enemy designs are, in my opinion, great: completely unreadable but extremely evocative. Oneiric. I can't help but wonder more about our hero and where they find themselves.
Game feel is good, too: hitstun and feedback had some real zhuzh. Projectile speed was right, and though I found the sword swing speed slow, it was obviously intentional and ended up being good friction. I didn't like the level design at all. But like, again, obviously, it's intentionally and intended to create friction.The platforming at the end of each section was very welcome and I'm sooooooo appreciative the water doesn't kill you at the end of the forest path. The ending of each section was visually very striking and was great use of the filter/dithering/palette/lighting/whateveryoucallit. Also, I don't normally like head-bobbing, but here it was totally fine.
The path to the right: I struggled with combat so much that I gave up and just juked past all the enemies. Too easy to get caught in corners. The path to the left: try to juke the enemies and you'll die to a projectile in the back. But if you're facing the projectiles you can weave around them. It's good practice for the boss! And you can corner-trap the mages a bit. Speaking of the boss, it was very hard but perfectly fair and I did eventually manage.
spoilers/strategy for boss fight
Circle-strafing is the way to go, so up your mouse's sensitivity until you can do it smoothly. I circle to the right, because (it's not obvious but) those orbiting swords are the source of the boss's physical attacks and moving in the same direction as the orbit gives you more time to blitz in and out. Minions only spawn after you force the boss to teleport away, which means you have aaaaalllll the time in the world to eliminate the minions every time they spawn. They can drop health and magic and your winning run will probably include one or two of those lucky drops. I don't know if pickups last forever but they last a long time, so don't rush in to grab one; you can afford to wait, if you need to.
When the boss does the beam attack, you either need to be moving perpendicular to them OR hiding behind a pillar. And you really need to stuff your face into the pillar's bosom to be totally safe. Get up on in there. Don't bother trying to hit the boss with magic while he's doing the beam stuff. It's not worth it.
If you get to the part where the boss does some ABSOLUTE PS1-STYLE BULLSHIT then you're just one more "phase" away from victory.
spoiler/bug
The first time I "won," I killed the boss then died to his projectile. I spawned into the cutscene, but the cutscene didn't play: I just stood there, sword out, with no control over my movement. Had to alt+f4 and start again. Not likely to happen, but definitely could.
I loved the game's look and atmosphere! It’s the kind of artistic visual style I enjoy seeing in games. There were two points I found difficult to deal with: the text—at least on my machine—was hard to read due to the pixelated shader. At one point, I lost track of where to go and ended up "stuck" in a corridor, with no real idea of how to get out. That said, it’s a great game! I’ll be following the project’s development.
Ended up having to play through the first part of this game twice. It was very satisfying to breeze through the dungeons entirely on muscle memory. Maybe it's because of this contrast but good god the final boss fight is LONG!
Wrote this while I was taking a break from the fight and as soon as I went back I beat the boss first try too. Game fair and balanced and perfect length actually.
Short, sweet, interesting game! Hard game. Slightly outside my usual wheelhouse, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Would definitely recommend to anyone who wants to get their ass kicked for a couple of hours