I don't know how the sister got the magic powers when you fought her. That also raises the question if the mc had magic powers as well. Also the light mechanics above ground were an interesting twist.
I don't understand how to run the game. I've tried using a file runner for the 7z windows version but nothing works. I'm heavily confused, please help!!
Sorry to hear that. So you are on windows? You just need to extract the downloaded 7z data using a unzipper like 7zip or winrar and then run the executable called "TheBasement" in the extracted folder.
Ok, I did a part 2 playthrough for The Basement. Unfortunately, I had to rage quit.
It's once a game a beautiful game, with heavy lore that I really want to get into, but right now, with the slow movement, and the current difficulty level, its really preventing me from progressing. I may give it another go in a week or so after I am no longer raging ;).
On a separate note though, I might just be a horrible gamer and that none of what I say actually matters. Hopefully I'm back later with a part 3 :)
Just started playing the game and posted my first playthrough, atleast of the start of the game. I'll be posting part 2 in the future. This is a difficult game to say the least.
It is completely finished, the only possible patches in the future would come if we find more bugs that need to be fixed. But as far as we know it is almost bugfree and it is a game in completed state :)
I absolutely love this game! the puzzles are challenging and require a few tries before you finally manage, but they still aren't too hard. The music and looks of it are also absolutely amazing.I just kind of wish that you could have multiple games at once and wouldn't have to delete the old one when starting a new one, this would be very practical if I want to start a new game with friends but not delete my old game. Also, the slow movement speed is painful when you just died and have to walk all the way back. Other than that, you three did an amazing job with the game!
thanks a lot :D unfortunately the option of multiple saves just wasn't possible to do in our time-constraints but I agree that it would make it more fun. Also glad to see you enjoy it enough to do multiple runs.
played it for the first 5 minutes and i gotta say i am impressed. Fantastic game. It is well designed but I think maybe the ambiance needs a little more work.By ambiance I mean to make the player feel like he is back when he was 5 years old and going down the creepy basement. You can do this through ambience scenery like cobwebs flickering lights (at the beginning) and maybe some harmless scares. Because we all thought we saw something scary in the basement but it was just a flickering shadow.
the game is great visually and audio wise, but the stealth is so clunky i cant even finish the game! you move slow as molasses, enemies take forever to leave you alone once you enter a lit up area like a lantern, and saves aren't often enough, so whenever you die you have to retread ground you've already seen and its boring to get back to where you were. make the player faster and make saves more accessible and you've got a great game, but for now its borderline unplayable.
Here we go! Part 1 of 4 of my playthrough of your game. The next parts will go up daily, if you are interested - which I obviously hope you are.
Now to get to all of the good stuff right away - I LOVE a lot of things about this game. I love the premise, I love the monster designs, I love the concepts behind the majority of the puzzles, I love the wonderful pixel art and the music, the immensely well placed scares... you've created an awesome world down in that basement, and crafted a very cool horror story that racks things up at all the right beats. Wonderful stuff, all around, so absolutely pat yourself on the back there.
However, as I am sure will become clear through my playthrough - it is also incredibly frustrating, and I didn't make that a secret in my earlier comment.
I understand you want to create tension, and to do so you have ramped up the difficulty. I do, however, feel that you are on some levels confusing "challenge" with "hair-pulling irritation". The concepts are fine - a slow character with only matches and light to keep enemies at bay. However, it constantly feels like everything is just a little short - like the matches last just a little too shortly, like you move just a tad too slow. In particular (SPOILER) the boss fight with Cathrin feels like it's meant for a game where you play a different character, and several puzzles, while fine in concept and I mostly had no issue figuring out after a few tries, had me dying multiple times before I could even move far ahead enough to see the things I needed to see in order to piece the puzzle together. And with the limited save states and slow movement speed, that resulted in every death meaning a sloooooow jog back to where I was, doing all the same tasks again and again and again. Death didn't become a punishment for failing a fair challenge. Death became a chore I had to deal with to try again, and a punishment for playing in the first place.
You will hear me get very frustrated over the course of the game, and judging from comments below, I may simply have had a uniquely hard time with the game and played badly overall, and playing frustrated probably doidn't help. I will concede that. I do still feel there are times where the sheer frustration of the gameplay overpowers what is otherwise an excellently crafted horror experience, and I try to make it very clear in the video what my problems are.
To put it as short as I can: Under normal circumstances, I would probably have given up halfway through out of sheer irritation more than anything else. But the aesthetics, the story and the atmosphere made me keep going - on top of just plain old stubbornness after having invested a lot of time. And I don't think that's the ideal state to put your player in. But then, we might simply disagree on the style of challenge we like.
Please don't misunderstand any complaints I express in the playthrough. I LOVE what you have created here. But I do believe the game could stand a slight re-balancing to make it ust a little bit more bearable, and make you just a little more excited to retry what you just failed - instead of hammering through out of sheer stubborn irritation.
I still loved The Basement, absolutely. And I hope to see more exciting stuff from you.
Hey, thanks a lot, Im already excited to watch your video! Reviews like that are super helpfull to improve our projects! For now I need some distance from the game to reflect on it but I might patch it in the future in order to better the balance of the speed and other aspects you mentioned.
I think it's still a great compliment that apparently the atmosphere we created was strong enough to pull you through even the harder parts and Im glad you experienced the story all the way through and hopefully also play my improved future projects :)
Alright, made it all the way through. Conceptually and artistically, the game is fantastic, but the execution is where it falters. The slowness of the character makes death more tedious than frightening. Having to go get the sewer key multiple times was a slog. And it doesn't really make sense that you can only use a bed once. I'd suggest switching that mechanic for diary pages. It'd tie our story more closely to Cathrin, and it's a more finite resource than a bed.
Edit: I do disagree with Eshball on the puzzles, though, they were fine. Heck, I thought the moth guarding the switching station was super clever.
Edit 2: Also forgot to mention that none of the vertical cart models contain coal. Figured out I could burn the second batch of moths by accident.
Wow, thank you a lot for this very constructive and in-depth review. Glad to hear you like the concept, story and art and didnt get to frustrated on the Puzzles! Yeah, the walkspeed is kinda slow, but it couldn't be much faster since you can already defend against most dangers with your light and shouldnt be able to outrun everything. But I see how it can get annoying after several deaths at the same part. We also intend to patch the coal-graphic bug, it unfortunately only triggers sometimes... In any case thank you, Im glad you made it out of the basement and we will take the criticism seriously in order to improve this and future projects :)
I have been playing your game today, and aside from finding parts immensely frustrating - for reasons I hope to elaborate on in a gameplay video - I love it!
--SPOILERS--
However, I cannot for the absolute life of me get past the (I assume final or nearly final) watery area of the game, immediately after defeating the dog.The area is enormous, the map I found (the penultimate journal) doesn't seem to line up with the actual area, and I just cannot figure out where to go or what to do in any order whatsoever. I can get the raft to a giant log near a flammable bush, and I am assuming I need to burn that bush - but the stone platforms make it impossible to get the raft close enough.
Nearby there is another big rock platform with those slime-shooting things, and a mine cart. That makes me think I need to move my raft there and somehow get the minecart on it, but once again that seems mpossible - especially with the leeces gnawing at the boat. I can't even swim ahead to see what else is there without doing due to the character's slow movement speed and the three-hitpoint system.
I would appreciate any pointers whatsoever, as I have spent nearly 45 minutes in that area getting nowhere in a hurry - sine a general proble mwith your game is a complete lack of any direction on how to solve certain things, or ability to scope out the area without dying in order to figure it out. I would hate to give up after getting this far, but right now I see little other way.
Please respond with at least a hint to a solution. Your game is lovely, and I want to experience it to the end.
First off, thank you a lot for your critique, I'm glad you enjoy the game and made it this far :) We are aware that the game is partly very challenging, which is on purpose, but I acknowledge that parts of the experience can get frustrating. You are almost at the end, so it would be a shame if you wouldn't make it through, therefore from here on out:
______SPOILERS_AND_SOLUTION_____
The map in the diary only pictures the area the raft is in, with the black parts being isles and landmasses. The goal is to get the raft trough most of the level without it breaking.
You can light the tree on the right of the raft's spawnpoint by lighting the minecart and pushing it into it(just like in the mines). The lever for the mine-rails is to the right of it. after that you can progress with the raft to the right where the tree was, where you can access the saveroom from another side again and save, and then progress upwards with the raft.
I hope you will make it with these hints and in any case we are very excited for your gameplay video :)
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I'm gonna play this game. It looks pretty cool
Hi! Would you be interested in a Spanish translation for this game? If so, please contact me!
We had a lot of frustrating fun with this one :) Concept, look, and sound of the game amazing. But man, the creatures were aggressively persistent!
Cool game !
What is your game engine ?
There are a lot of cool monster designs.
Spoilers
I don't know how the sister got the magic powers when you fought her. That also raises the question if the mc had magic powers as well. Also the light mechanics above ground were an interesting twist.
I am seeing Jigglypuff in the picture at the top of the page, right?
I don't understand how to run the game. I've tried using a file runner for the 7z windows version but nothing works. I'm heavily confused, please help!!
Sorry to hear that. So you are on windows? You just need to extract the downloaded 7z data using a unzipper like 7zip or winrar and then run the executable called "TheBasement" in the extracted folder.
After a lot of struggle and vulgar words, I finally got it running!! :D
Ok, I did a part 2 playthrough for The Basement. Unfortunately, I had to rage quit.
It's once a game a beautiful game, with heavy lore that I really want to get into, but right now, with the slow movement, and the current difficulty level, its really preventing me from progressing. I may give it another go in a week or so after I am no longer raging ;).
On a separate note though, I might just be a horrible gamer and that none of what I say actually matters. Hopefully I'm back later with a part 3 :)
Just started playing the game and posted my first playthrough, atleast of the start of the game. I'll be posting part 2 in the future. This is a difficult game to say the least.
Is the game fully finished and needs no more updates from now on?
It is completely finished, the only possible patches in the future would come if we find more bugs that need to be fixed. But as far as we know it is almost bugfree and it is a game in completed state :)
I absolutely love this game! the puzzles are challenging and require a few tries before you finally manage, but they still aren't too hard. The music and looks of it are also absolutely amazing.I just kind of wish that you could have multiple games at once and wouldn't have to delete the old one when starting a new one, this would be very practical if I want to start a new game with friends but not delete my old game. Also, the slow movement speed is painful when you just died and have to walk all the way back. Other than that, you three did an amazing job with the game!
thanks a lot :D unfortunately the option of multiple saves just wasn't possible to do in our time-constraints but I agree that it would make it more fun. Also glad to see you enjoy it enough to do multiple runs.
thanks will make more
played it for the first 5 minutes and i gotta say i am impressed. Fantastic game. It is well designed but I think maybe the ambiance needs a little more work.By ambiance I mean to make the player feel like he is back when he was 5 years old and going down the creepy basement. You can do this through ambience scenery like cobwebs flickering lights (at the beginning) and maybe some harmless scares. Because we all thought we saw something scary in the basement but it was just a flickering shadow.
9/10 because i love pixel art xDD
This was a great game to play. I will admit to loving the style and I can't wait for more from you as a creator. Keep it stylish!!!!
Alright, got the full playthrough edited!
Giving it a go, but I wanted to know, is it a full game or a short demo?
Thank you :) It's a full game
the game is great visually and audio wise, but the stealth is so clunky i cant even finish the game! you move slow as molasses, enemies take forever to leave you alone once you enter a lit up area like a lantern, and saves aren't often enough, so whenever you die you have to retread ground you've already seen and its boring to get back to where you were. make the player faster and make saves more accessible and you've got a great game, but for now its borderline unplayable.
Here we go! Part 1 of 4 of my playthrough of your game. The next parts will go up daily, if you are interested - which I obviously hope you are.
Now to get to all of the good stuff right away - I LOVE a lot of things about this game. I love the premise, I love the monster designs, I love the concepts behind the majority of the puzzles, I love the wonderful pixel art and the music, the immensely well placed scares... you've created an awesome world down in that basement, and crafted a very cool horror story that racks things up at all the right beats. Wonderful stuff, all around, so absolutely pat yourself on the back there.
However, as I am sure will become clear through my playthrough - it is also incredibly frustrating, and I didn't make that a secret in my earlier comment.
I understand you want to create tension, and to do so you have ramped up the difficulty. I do, however, feel that you are on some levels confusing "challenge" with "hair-pulling irritation". The concepts are fine - a slow character with only matches and light to keep enemies at bay. However, it constantly feels like everything is just a little short - like the matches last just a little too shortly, like you move just a tad too slow. In particular (SPOILER) the boss fight with Cathrin feels like it's meant for a game where you play a different character, and several puzzles, while fine in concept and I mostly had no issue figuring out after a few tries, had me dying multiple times before I could even move far ahead enough to see the things I needed to see in order to piece the puzzle together. And with the limited save states and slow movement speed, that resulted in every death meaning a sloooooow jog back to where I was, doing all the same tasks again and again and again. Death didn't become a punishment for failing a fair challenge. Death became a chore I had to deal with to try again, and a punishment for playing in the first place.
You will hear me get very frustrated over the course of the game, and judging from comments below, I may simply have had a uniquely hard time with the game and played badly overall, and playing frustrated probably doidn't help. I will concede that. I do still feel there are times where the sheer frustration of the gameplay overpowers what is otherwise an excellently crafted horror experience, and I try to make it very clear in the video what my problems are.
To put it as short as I can: Under normal circumstances, I would probably have given up halfway through out of sheer irritation more than anything else. But the aesthetics, the story and the atmosphere made me keep going - on top of just plain old stubbornness after having invested a lot of time. And I don't think that's the ideal state to put your player in. But then, we might simply disagree on the style of challenge we like.
Please don't misunderstand any complaints I express in the playthrough. I LOVE what you have created here. But I do believe the game could stand a slight re-balancing to make it ust a little bit more bearable, and make you just a little more excited to retry what you just failed - instead of hammering through out of sheer stubborn irritation.
I still loved The Basement, absolutely. And I hope to see more exciting stuff from you.
Hey, thanks a lot, Im already excited to watch your video! Reviews like that are super helpfull to improve our projects! For now I need some distance from the game to reflect on it but I might patch it in the future in order to better the balance of the speed and other aspects you mentioned.
I think it's still a great compliment that apparently the atmosphere we created was strong enough to pull you through even the harder parts and Im glad you experienced the story all the way through and hopefully also play my improved future projects :)
Alright, made it all the way through. Conceptually and artistically, the game is fantastic, but the execution is where it falters. The slowness of the character makes death more tedious than frightening. Having to go get the sewer key multiple times was a slog. And it doesn't really make sense that you can only use a bed once. I'd suggest switching that mechanic for diary pages. It'd tie our story more closely to Cathrin, and it's a more finite resource than a bed.
Edit: I do disagree with Eshball on the puzzles, though, they were fine. Heck, I thought the moth guarding the switching station was super clever.
Edit 2: Also forgot to mention that none of the vertical cart models contain coal. Figured out I could burn the second batch of moths by accident.
Wow, thank you a lot for this very constructive and in-depth review. Glad to hear you like the concept, story and art and didnt get to frustrated on the Puzzles! Yeah, the walkspeed is kinda slow, but it couldn't be much faster since you can already defend against most dangers with your light and shouldnt be able to outrun everything. But I see how it can get annoying after several deaths at the same part. We also intend to patch the coal-graphic bug, it unfortunately only triggers sometimes... In any case thank you, Im glad you made it out of the basement and we will take the criticism seriously in order to improve this and future projects :)
Hello there
I have been playing your game today, and aside from finding parts immensely frustrating - for reasons I hope to elaborate on in a gameplay video - I love it!
--SPOILERS--
However, I cannot for the absolute life of me get past the (I assume final or nearly final) watery area of the game, immediately after defeating the dog.The area is enormous, the map I found (the penultimate journal) doesn't seem to line up with the actual area, and I just cannot figure out where to go or what to do in any order whatsoever. I can get the raft to a giant log near a flammable bush, and I am assuming I need to burn that bush - but the stone platforms make it impossible to get the raft close enough.
Nearby there is another big rock platform with those slime-shooting things, and a mine cart. That makes me think I need to move my raft there and somehow get the minecart on it, but once again that seems mpossible - especially with the leeces gnawing at the boat. I can't even swim ahead to see what else is there without doing due to the character's slow movement speed and the three-hitpoint system.
I would appreciate any pointers whatsoever, as I have spent nearly 45 minutes in that area getting nowhere in a hurry - sine a general proble mwith your game is a complete lack of any direction on how to solve certain things, or ability to scope out the area without dying in order to figure it out. I would hate to give up after getting this far, but right now I see little other way.
Please respond with at least a hint to a solution. Your game is lovely, and I want to experience it to the end.
First off, thank you a lot for your critique, I'm glad you enjoy the game and made it this far :) We are aware that the game is partly very challenging, which is on purpose, but I acknowledge that parts of the experience can get frustrating. You are almost at the end, so it would be a shame if you wouldn't make it through, therefore from here on out:
______SPOILERS_AND_SOLUTION_____
The map in the diary only pictures the area the raft is in, with the black parts being isles and landmasses. The goal is to get the raft trough most of the level without it breaking.
You can light the tree on the right of the raft's spawnpoint by lighting the minecart and pushing it into it(just like in the mines). The lever for the mine-rails is to the right of it. after that you can progress with the raft to the right where the tree was, where you can access the saveroom from another side again and save, and then progress upwards with the raft.
I hope you will make it with these hints and in any case we are very excited for your gameplay video :)
quick question: where did you find that map? I am replaying the game at the moment and i just cannot find it
Lovely game, hope to see more from you
Thanks a lot for playing!
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great pixel art!