The Basement

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!

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!!

Is the game fully finished and needs no more updates from now on?

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!

Giving it a go, but I wanted to know, is it a full game or a short demo?

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.

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.

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.

Lovely game, hope to see more from you