Polterguide
Created by WalKey Talkie
Langston Key & Walker McDonald
Voted Most Innovative in Universal University Game Jam!
In Polterguide you explore dungeons, leave signals for your friends once you die, and try to break all the seals of the apocalypse to end the world. Think gartic phone meets a dungeon crawler.
Controls:
WASD to move
Mouse to Look
Left Click to interact and draw
Left Shift to sprint
(as a ghost)
Space to fly
How to Play:
Note: this is an online game and unstable connections or disconnecting breaks the game unfortunately. When in doubt just reload the page!
Type a name into session name to join that session or create it if it hasn't been made yet.
Type a unique name into player name and choose a color.
The game is most fun if the only way you communicate is via the in-game ectoplasm signal system, so don't talk like in among us!
The goal is to reach the end of each dungeon where you can break the seal and ascend. Once you ascend you can help your remaining teammates by going to their dungeon.
When exploring the dungeon, your candle has a limited amount of time before it goes out. The traps are made to be unfair, the only way to get some are with the help of ghosts!
When you die, leave signals for your fellow cultists by drawing on the walls. Remember, as a ghost you can fly and go through walls!
Once you are out of ectoplasm the round is over and you must wait for all other cultists to reach their ultimate fate.
This continues until everyone reaches the end of a dungeon and ascends or the team is out of rounds.
Have fun!
Post Jam Patch
- fixed major bugs of ghosts "dying" again, and other players death states impacting clients
- added new game options to lobby (dungeon size, time, % chance of features, and more)
- synced dungeon settings across clients
- added lobby name to screen while waiting for game to start
- fixed off by one bug with dungeon visit sequencing
Credits:
font
dungeon wall assets
random dungeon names
from this TTRPG
All other art & music was made by me, Langston :D
Comments
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phenomenal concept, unparalleled vibes.
It took quite a number of attempts to get a run without any major bugs. We often found ourselves dying suddenly to impalement, multiple times in a row, including as a ghost, causing all kinds of weirdness like being able to paint while alive and flying around with a candle. I believe that a ghost triggering spikes has something to do with it but cannot confirm.
But after that hour of janglin the program around, trying different browsers and OS's, when we finally matched and synced up the game was terrific. What a joyful gameplay loop, deciphering the scribbles of other players and writing your own are both really engaging. Loved how easy it was to put together a lobby, we had a ton of fun just doodling in there. I think if we experienced fewer bugs in the dungeon, this would straight up be a hit, baby. This ones a banger, and I hope it continues to be updated or expanded upon in the future. Great work!
Thank you so much for your detailed feedback it is beyond appreciated!
I just took a look at the code and the ghost dying to spikes was a silly error and easy fix luckily, so I'm going to release a post-jam patch with that in a couple weeks along with more settings to tune in the lobby.
I'm so glad you found it the loop enjoyable once all the technical issues were sorted out! I still have plenty of interesting ideas for the design so if I ever get a good opportunity I would love to make this into more fleshed out game. :)