Released Latent - Prologue

Life. Potential for Greatness. Potential for Devastation.
The world is in ruins. Reality is fleeting. People are vanishing.
Uncover the truth. Fulfill your Greatness. Be the change.

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Spoiler: Screenshots

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Latent 1.2.1
Latent (Post-Jam)

Post Jam includes a small "thank you" in the credits, as well as an alternative ending.

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You are Yan, an Ifrux.

The world around you has been falling apart. Earthquakes scar the land, opening canyons, destroying paths between towns, removing any connection between you and others of your kind.

Reality has shattered. The distinction between reality and dream, real and fake, truth and lie has never been more tenuous. Is all that you see real? Is all that you hear the truth? Should you trust yourself, the man in your dreams, or allow yourself to be guided by the strings of fate?

Discover what is happening in the world. Interact with the objects around you. Fulfil your Greatness.

A lot has changed internally since Prologue's release. This game, as is, is semi-canon

Spoiler: Note

The game ended up being far from what I had envisioned it to be. My time management was a bit too sloppy, so many things had to be cut down or cut out entirely, for now.

I had quite a bit of fun making it as my first Jam game and will continue developing it.
Expect Latent to be released a full-fledged game, someday.

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Resources

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Game was made using Essentials V17.2.

Made by Ott.

Spoiler: Credits

Essentials was created by:
Flameguru
Poccil (Peter O.)
Maruno

With contributions from:
AvatarMonkeyKirby
Luka S.J.
Boushy
MiDas Mike
Brother1440
Near Fantastica
FL.
PinkMan
Genzai Kawakami
Popper
help-14
Rataime
IceGod64
SoundSpawn
Jacob O. Wobbrock
the__end
KitsuneKouta
Venom12
Lisa Anthony
Wachunga
and everyone else who helped out

Terrain Step Sound by:
gamer_guy

Blackchancery Font from:
1001fonts.com

Sound Effects from:
notificationsounds.com
soundsnap.com
freesound.org
Quake 2 - Jump Sound

Sound Track (including unused) from:
Dark Souls 2:
Queen of Drangleic

ICO:
Coffin
Darkness
Heal
Prologue

Mass Effect 3:
An End Once and For All
Wake Up

MGS 5 TPP:
V Has Come To

Silent Hill:
Claw Finger

Silent Hill 2:
Alone In The Town
Heavens Night
Morning Calm
Prisonic Fairytale
Promise (Reprise)
True
White Noiz
Forest

Silent Hill 4:
Room of Angel

Silent Hill Homecoming:
The Terminal Show

Sunless Sea:
Hull is Other People
Opening Screen
Sunless Sea

The Evil Within:
Fallen
One Eight Four On-scene
Where It All Begins

TPR - Dark Souls:
Gwyn, Lord of Cinder

TPR - Final Fantasy IX:
A Melancholy Tribute To Final Fantasy
A Song from Her Memory Song of Memories
Aboard the Hilda Garde
Another Nightmare Return of the Evil Mist
Cleyra Settlement theme
Distant Memory
Esto Gaza theme
Fleeting Life Limited Time
Frontier Village Dali
Kingdom of Burmecia
Memoria
Not Alone
Pandemonium
Rose of May
Terra
Unforgettable Sorrow
Unrequited Love

TPR - Final Fantasy VIII:
Balamb Garden

 

[Ott]

First uwu
/s

EDIT: I am aware that there are several typos and misspellings currently in this first version, as well as one or two incomplete events. They shall be corrected by tomorrow.

 

[Ott]

Latent has now been updated to V1.1. It merely fixes the typos, a few events to keep up with the in-game continuity (aka, not talking about things that aren't in the map, or have already happened), as well as the option screen for the most part.

 

[Ekat]

Just got through playing Latent and I had an awesome time! I made some notes as I went along. I included them all in spoilers. ^^

My Observations

Spoiler: Spoilers

1. Right off the bat I noticed that you changed the icon for the game.exe. (Resource Hacker truly is wonderful.) It's a small detail which I appreciated, and I'm all about the small details.
2. In terms of sound, I really liked the choices you made for the soundtrack, BGM and beyond. Even adding new collision and cursor SEs instead of the standard Pokémon ones was a nice change. They fit the atmosphere much better.
3. An offshoot of the sound point is that I noticed the contrast between the SEs/MEs you used. Since they were louder than the BGM, they "popped" a little more, if that makes sense.
4. On the subject of contrasts, I really liked the graphical style of the game as well: it was simple but effective, and very eerie. I also appreciate that you didn't go for pure (255,255,255) white when making your tileset, because that would've made the visuals much harder on the eyes.
5. The screen changing tone when you interact with objects also helps this. White text on a mostly white background would've been a mess after all, as would have any coloured text.
6. The world map is soooooooo cute.
7. I don't normally check the "description of adventure" message in Essentials games, but I did this time. Unlocking the extra question after that was a neat detail. (I chose Fírinne/Truth [I didn't look it up in Translate until afterwards, I swear.] so getting even more answers later on was also nice.)
8. I love Ghen.
9. Those mysterious "!" storage barrels make me think about MGS. I hope in future installments there's some flavour text about a snake being in one.
10. Not being able to put the orb on the pedestal killed me throughout the prologue. I even went back to Zaitha after I was returned to Sutton, to see if there was something I could do. (There wasn't, but nice touch with having Yan saying the orb must have gone missing if you go back there.) Finally getting it at the end was weirdly satisfying as a result.

A Few Touch-Up Points

Spoiler: Spoilers

1. In terms of what I feel could have been improved with the game, I wish there was a little more to do beyond exploring the area and interacting with a couple objects. I understand that this is just the prologue, and that you were pressed for time, but even a few simple puzzles would have (after dealing with the orb, the pun is fully intended) rounded things out. Despite this, I still feel like the prologue did an interesting job of starting the worldbuilding, and giving the player questions so they would want more. Or in my case, to put the orb on the pedestal.
2. In terms of bugs/typos, other little nitpicks, I didn't seem to notice anything else. I'll bet Michael caught practically all of them the other day. The only thing I did notice was with this area, where I assume you don't want the wall's end to be visible.

Overall on this, great work man! It's really cool to see what people can do with Essentials, and I hope you make more interesting developments with Latent in the future.

 

[Ott]

Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time with playing Latent, Ekat, and glad to hear you enjoyed it, as well as thank you sooooo very much for the obs and touch-ups!

Secondly, regarding your Observations and Touch-Up Points, I replied to a few of them in the spoiler’s bellow: (yes it has actual spoilers for people who still haven't played it)

Spoiler: Observations reply

1. The game.exe icon was a last moment thing. I really couldn’t stand the default icon, so I had to do myself a favour and change it, else it’d drive me insane.

3. I am guessing this is referring to like, the item pickup sound effect? For the ladder, orb and others? Other than the grass sound effect, which was a tad too loud as Michael had mentioned, the pickup sounds were at 80 volume, but I lowered the BGM to 20, played the SE, and raised it back up. Least during my testing, without lowering the BGM, the SE’s were barely audible depending on the songs and which moment they were at, reason I wanted to make those audio cues “pop” least this is what I believe you were referring to?

4. It took me waaay too long before changing it from pure white to slightly grey instead. Wasn’t sure if it was “not white” enough to not hurt, but glad to know it is!

Spoiler: Blinded by the light. Also 2nd/Alpha version of Yan

6. Glad to see this is an appreciated feature by most people! :D Will definitely expand it and improve it in the future.

7. Shame to hear not many people are taking Deireadh, but rather the “more correct” path. But interesting to see someone also took time in checking out what the words meant! I purposely wanted to leave it vague and confusing, but still have some truth to the words in the signs and their significance.

8. And Ghen loves you!

9. There is flavour text about a snake in a box, however! Check Zaitha for clues where to find it. Or ask Chromuh. But yes, the ! marks are a slight nod as well.

10. In 1.0, I had forgotten to add that bit of text. But after being told a similar thing should be added earlier on (since it was more obvious), I knew someone would should check back other pedestals, even if they were way out of the beaten path. But slight spoiler for the future,

Spoiler: Plot spoiler

the “light” orb you get at the end, that’ll be your starter. All other "blank" orbs are pretty much broken or empty "pokeballs", as for the "dark" orbs or the "tiny" orbs that I haven't shown yet (but are in the tileset), well, that Im really not gonna spoil.

Spoiler: Touch-ups reply

1. Sadly, yea. The deadline really put a dent on what I was able to do and what I could achieve. I did plan on continuing the prologue a bit beyond where it currently ends, having a few battles and whatnot.
As well as expanding the few “puzzles” it currently has to make them more complex. Having to explore around Zaitha, following clues and hints to find the key, rather than just have it laying around in the open, and more to do with the “holes in the wall” and returning back to Vermilis. It would be more like your hub map, having to return there from time to time to complete puzzles, find new paths, be taken to different areas that naturally loop back to Vermilis. Basically, the map would start out small at the start, but slowly grow the more you explore the world and complete puzzles, tasks and progress the plot.
Also wanted to have your choice in Quadrivium affect more than just the town of Sutton (check Deireadh) and a few lines at the end. Things I’ll gladly take into consideration for the post-jam and will definitely improve on!!

2. Yup. Michael and LJ really found most of the typos and small nitpicks in grammar/phrasing, except that wall. Not much of a deal breaker to warrant a fix rn, but it is a tile error! Will have to ask for more playtesters in the future before releasing it.

 

[Ekat]

Spoiler: Plot spoiler

the “light” orb you get at the end, that’ll be your starter. All other "blank" orbs are pretty much broken or empty "pokeballs", as for the "dark" orbs or the "tiny" orbs that I haven't shown yet (but are in the tileset), well, that Im really not gonna spoil.

Oh yeah, that's another thing I forgot to mention when talking about the game:

Spoiler: Spoilers

The three choices were a nod to picking your starter in Pokémon, right? I didn't really think about it until afterwards, but I totally got that sense of "what could each of these mean for the game, what should I pick, etc" sense that I felt as a kid picking starters.

 

[Ott]

They will be, yes. Again, sadly time didnt really leave me much room to add that feature in,

Spoiler: hey look, future plot spoiler

but i do hope to make your choices really affect how the game progresses and is played in the long run!

 

[Invatorzen]

This was probably one of my favorite jams I've ever played, while being short it was still really different and had it's own charm. I'm 100% looking forward to future updates. I am really liking the world that you're creating and I can not wait to see more! The game is pretty mysterious, but you get a feeling of where it's heading with the story.

Spoiler: My few issues

*A nitpick, but the controls screen text outline should be the same as the in-game text outline. It'd be easier on the eyes.

*I like that you can save at the bed, though I think it should ask after the player wakes up if they'd like to save as it's likely not everyone will interact with the bed.

*While all other sound effects were changed, you decided to keep the jumping SE from the Pokémon games. Just seemed out of place to me.

Spoiler: What I really liked

*Loved that when I asked questions in the intro it gave new options.
*Ominous music is super fitting, sets the tone well.

*Really liked the new sound effects, especially the one for the first door.

*I absolutely love how interative the world is. There's dialogue for everything.

*The old school overworld map was pretty unexpected, but it's unique enough that I like it!

*That skyrim reference

*Choices make me want to replay and see what will change

I don't know what else to say other than I'm genuinely really excited for this game.

 

[Ott]

Again, thank you so much for playing through it BJ! Hearing that people liked it and care enough to leave feedback and their thought on the game means a lot to me!

Spoiler: Few Issues reply

Honestly, the control screen text is something I completely forgot to change. I changed the icons at some point and evented the Intro before heading off for the night that day. I may have forgotten to note down the text on a "todo" file and never checked the option till release. That is totally my bad, dashed with a pint of forgetfulness.

Hm. The second point is a good one to consider. Guess it can he hinted a bit better to the player to try and interact with the bed, so they learn what happens when they do. Any opinions on the "non-coloured" beds, and how those dont allow you to save, unlike the coloured ones? Tried to hint that too to the player in Sutton, and again in Antor, how only the blue beds are savepoints.

The jump sound effect was something that was taking me too long to find a decent one. Again, I maaaay have accidentally forgotten about it, till I started playtesting. I found the default SE a bit hillarious and amusing, so I just didnt bother with it for the Jam since it only happens twice. Will certainly change it of course going forward.

Spoiler: Really liked reply

That will certainly be a big thing as I keep developing! The more you ask, the more questions and answers you may find. I feel like it would incentivize exploration and curiosity?

I forgot to mention that to Ekat, but a big thanks to LJ for it! Picking the music was the first thing I did before developing and got the chance to ask LJ for feedback and he approved all of it. Even suggested the "Queen of Drangleic" music for the title screen!

Cannot have too much interactivity! (it can, but Ill try and manage the content, so it's not too useless or too overwhelming!)

Again, glad to see people keep liking the World Map map! Not much more I can say about what's in store for it in the future other than refining it!

Spoiler: You know it

Hope that more players will enjoy the different choises and outcomes. I swear they'll have an impact, and be better than 3 different coloured endings!

 

[Ott]

Latent has now been updated to V1.2!

A few of the issues posted above have been resolved, such as:

>The Controls screen text colour being too light.
>Better Controls icon for Z, F, C, X. (along with a resource pack update to include those diff icons).
>A tile error in a map in Sutton.
>Few more interactable object in the last map.
>Few sentences were changed here and there.
>Eventing error when asking "What's happening" a 2nd time in the Intro.

Spoiler: Oi, spoiler here m8!

>Hinting at the player to interact with the bed, so they learn how to save.

 

[Aryesh]

Very dark game floo or fool

 

[Kartik]

Just finished the game,

First of all, It looks amazing, The story is amazing so far, The soundtrack gave me chills, The title screen and font is beautiful as well.
The tileset needs improvements though (can't really complain as you did the rest of the things in the game jam.)

Looking forward to the game's future releases

I also think you cut down the border feature (or maybe I just can't find it), hope to see it back later.

 

[Ott]

I also think you cut down the border feature (or maybe I just can't find it), hope to see it back later.

Thank you so much for playing and having enjoyed it as well!
And yes, sadly I commented out the border feature from the options (it's still there if you wanna open the script up and see).
It was bugging the images and screen flashes and I couldn't get to fix them without putting too much time in to it. It will definitely return and with more border options in the future, for those that do enjoy it!

 

[Greninjauzumaki]

I simply enjoyed playing this game. I loved the way the game takes you on this journey where the player doesn't exactly know what's going on and what he is doing and his purpose as mentioned in the game. You also chose the perfect soundtrack which complements the effects and surroundings for this queer world. You know a game is good when you want the game to be longer. I am looking forward to playing the game's sequel. Amazing job!!

 

[Ott]

Thank you so very much! Hopefully I can deliver with future instalations of the game!

 

[Cadeorade5]

I just played the game and I loved it. It'll be up on my channel soon but I just really wanted to say how great the game was. The music was so immersive and matched everything perfectly. I can't wait to see what comes from this game!

 

[Ott]

Latent - Prologue has been updated for (hopefully) the last time.

The new post jam update, which is in a seperate download link as to not interfere with the jam version, includes:

>Renamed "holder" to "pedestal" instead
>Four hidden light orbs around the world, each with some dialog that allows you to unlock an alternative ending (i just wanted to tease people ;P)
>Fixed grammar in one event
>Added a "thank you" note to the credits
>You can now read Yan's diary

How to unlock the alternative ending:

Spoiler

Spoiler: Are you sure you want to be spoiled?

Get the 4 orbs at:
Sutton: Check the graveyard at the Southern most point, near the 3rd house.
Underground: Check the lonely grave, on the other side of the bridge.
Antor: Check the sea, on the Eastern most point of the beach.
Zaitha: Check the field of red flowers, just south of one of the storage houses.

After all 4 orbs are collected, continue with the game. At the end pedestal, you will get a different message rather than the credits. Head back to Sutton, enter the first house and go check up on Auspex. A new orb should be located there.

After this last update, I will be working on the actual game of Latent, which will be a full indie game now.

 

[Ott]

Latent - Prologue (and Post-Jam) have both been updated.

Both versions had the unused songs removed to cut down on file size.
Credits were edited, so they no longer have the unused songs.
Fixed a minor bug.
Added a save point before the end.

 

[Ott]

Sorry for all of the delay. The download link should now be working again.

 

[Ickle]

How do you read Yan's diary?