FINALLY WE'RE ALONE
This game was made as part of the 2025 Indie Game Clinic Music Video Game Jam.
You're trapped alone in a locked school with your obsessed stalker. You rejected her but there's more than one way to be together forever. Move to the beat of your heart while finding all the keys to unlock the exit and escape. Crypt of the Necrodancer meets horror.
How to Play:
- Controls: WASD / Arrow keys to move
- Move on the beat of your heart.
- Collect all 6 keys to open the exit at the front and escape.
- Be wary, she can hear EVERYTHING and her knife is DEADLY.
Credits:
- Huge shoutout to Brody Stole My Pony for the awesome track and their permission to use it for this game. Go check out their latest album STAY DOWN STAY DEAD if you enjoyed this song!
- Monster asset made by Kasuga
- Player asset made by samiibrahem614
- School environment assets made by styloo
- Key asset made by RealityForge
- And many thanks to my wife, The2lu, and nightbat13131 for their excellent playtest feedback on the early prototype
Comments
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Appreciate the feedback, really has me thinking.
I tried a version with quarter note movement but due to the bpm of the song it was a little more difficult to play. I recently watched a clip of Baldi's Basics and it had me thinking if it would be better if I kicked the rhythm movement and kept that only for the enemy. Similarly as you collect items maybe she starts moving faster. Whole notes -> half notes -> quarter notes -> eighth notes as you pick up items or something? I'm also debating a first person camera as well, since it fits the horror feel a bit more. Wish we had more time!
Since you don't have a penalty around missing beats, I think not being able to hit all of them might be okay? Gives the player more opportunity to advance?
Gradually Moving faster could add more stress around a boss - or if you only ever have the one enemy. Doubling every time might be to much, but there are ways to work in more movement for sure.
If you have more enemies or enemy types, they can move on different beats of the measure: type A moves on1st, type B moves on 2nd... And then really dangerous enemies that move on 1st and 3rd. Not sure what's been tried and failed in this genre before, so not sure how well those ideas do or don't execute with players.
What I ended up doing was keeping half note movement but allowing her to move diagonally but the player is still restricted to 4 directions. And then (spoiler) for the final key she moves to quarter note movement. Even that was almost too much so your analysis was spot on. I love your idea of adding more enemies, almost could do it Silent Hill style while still having the "main" enemy. And subsequently more genre study would be important I agree, the main rhythm grid movement ones I found are CotND, Cadence of Hyrule, and then this indie one called Steampunk Pirates. Patapon also might be good inspiration here. If there's any others you happen to remember let me know!
Hi, i played for a couple of times. Here is my feedback on the questions: 1. Moving on the beat was quite easy after a little practice. Like you have mentioned in the points below, once there is sync with the audio, it will feel much smoother! 2. I think for a short level like this it was pretty easy (took me 2 tries to get to the exit with the spheres) But if you make larger levels, it will definitely be a nice challenging puzzle. What i thought could be make it a bit better is maybe if there was a bit of random movement to the monster? Right now its easy to guess since its predictable and so it feels a bit easy. 3. I think the pacing is perfect, but if you added some off beats or missed beats.. it would add a nice variation. Right now its just a constant 1 2 3 4 rhythm, so it may need some variation especially if you have longer levels. 4. I think the goal is pretty solid, collect spheres and get to the exit. Maybe you can add a bit of a pacman type mechanic where if you eat a particular powerup, you can harm the monster? You can try for later levels .Overall feels like a nice prototype for a game, excited to see the final version of this :)
Thanks for the much needed feedback! The monster behavior is something I definitely want to improve. Now that I have the main level greyboxed and there's enough space I'm thinking of giving her chase and patrolling modes. Maybe the chase triggers after she sees you and then instead of a movement every two notes she randomly switches between moving on every note and every two notes. That along with some penalty for missing a note might make for some tense situations.
And I'm not sure if I'll have time to work on varied beat patterns but I agree that it would make things more interesting T_T
The level layout looks good! Hope to play this soon, all the best :)