In Our Midst

[OneDollar]

In Our Midst



In Our Midst is a short point and click adventure paying homage to a certain popular multiplayer game. You play as an alien who has managed to infiltrate a spaceship and disguise itself as one of the crew, and now you have to eliminate the rest of them...

Download the game!
Play the web browser version here!

This is an entry for April 2024's MAGS competition "Finish Your MAGS Game". Check out the thread here to play the other entries and vote for your favourite.

As always comments, bug reports and games database ratings are very much appreciated!

[WHAM]

Finished the game and had good fun with it! It's by far the best Among Us related or inspired thing I've seen so far and I got a few good laughs out of it as well.

One question from me:

Spoiler

I got the ID card from the locker and tried to use it on the scanner for the freezer. For the first several times I tried this I just got the error boop and an X on the screen, but after leaving the room and coming back later it suddenly worked. Did I trigger a bug that resolved itself?

[close]

[OneDollar]

Thanks for playing, glad you liked it!

One question from me:

Spoiler

I got the ID card from the locker and tried to use it on the scanner for the freezer. For the first several times I tried this I just got the error boop and an X on the screen, but after leaving the room and coming back later it suddenly worked. Did I trigger a bug that resolved itself?

[close]

Spoiler

It's a reference to the infamous card swiping task in Among Us where going too fast, too slow, or just being unlucky makes you repeat the task, often several times in a row.


Arguably it's meta knowledge, which I usually try to avoid. Repeatedly trying the card does swipe it at different speeds which is supposed to indicate something different is happening on each click, but it might be too subtle, or four swipes might be too many to ask for. I would have put different "too fast", "too slow", "bad read" messages on the panel for each attempt, but I was trying to keep this game as text-less as possible. Maybe I'll add different error graphics when I do a bug fix release post MAGS.

[close]

[WHAM]

Oooooh, I see now! Having never played the fabled Amogus myself, I had no idea!

Spoiler

Maybe instead of text it could have used different error icons, so it doesn't look like the same action and error are being repeated in the eyes on an uninitiated player? Fast forward icon, stop hand icon, sadface icon. It would give a player like me the idea that repeated attempts might at least have different errors or outcomes.

[close]

[OneDollar]

Yes, I think that's a good idea. I've got at least one bug to fix, so I am planning to put out an updated version once MAGS is done.

[heltenjon]

Played it to the end and liked it very much. My kids have been very into Among Us, but it's been too fast for me the times I've tried. But at least I'm familiar enough with the concept to get most of the jokes.

I love the textless approach - makes it more cartoony. I also enjoyed the manipulation of the machinery, which made for a very nice puzzle.

[bicilotti]

A very good production that does many things right!

Graphics are simple and functional and yet the author managed to put in some interesting cinematic sequences, a teachable do-more-with-less moments for all game developers. The UI, walkcycles, PC and NPC walking speed, everything is slick and comfy, aimed at not wasting the player's time, good!

Having an adventure game without words is not easy but this game manages to do it and do it superbly: you will feel the spaceship-induced claustrophobia, study your crewmates habits and finally send them to their untimely death. Even puzzles suggest cohesiveness, as multiple locatons and items will be relevant more than once.

A bug and a suggestion:

Spoiler

- After you killed yellow, you can summon him again with the bell in the kitchen.
- The ventilation shaft puzzle imho should not be reset after the robot cleans the oil spill.

[close]

[OneDollar]

Thanks for the kind works heltenjon and bicilotti!

Sometimes I feel like I use text as a bit of a crutch to explain away why a logical puzzle solution doesn't work, or to try and add flavour to otherwise boring environments. I wanted to challenge myself to make something as text-less as possible to no longer have that excuse and to make the game more easily accessible as a bonus. I'm not sure I'll stick with it for future games, but it was definitely an interesting challenge.

I'm glad the 'game feel' works for you. There's a lot of games out there, so if someone chooses to spend time playing mine I don't want to take that for granted. I think there's still a place for deep, slow-paced adventure games that players can immerse themselves in, but that's not the kind of game I've made (so far anyway ). I try to be conscious of keeping the player engaged and entertained, and I think abrasive or awkward interfaces are a sure fire way to lose people's interest. Nobody likes walking 5 minutes across the game world to try and solve a puzzle just to be told "That doesn't work". I don't always get it right, but I do try.

A bug and a suggestion:

Spoiler

- After you killed yellow, you can summon him again with the bell in the kitchen.
- The ventilation shaft puzzle imho should not be reset after the robot cleans the oil spill.

[close]

Spoiler

Nothing stands between Yellow and a meal, not even death. Yellow's 'resurrection' is the main bug I need to fix in the next release, but as it's not game-breaking (I think?) it can wait until after MAGS.

I did consider whether to reset the vent arrows or not. Honestly, and despite what I've just said about game feel, that's in there to add a bit more of an obstacle to the player. I was worried that players would brute-force the puzzle without understanding it by just toggling random arrows until they get the result they wanted. I was worried the game was going to be too easy and short so I also added hotspots to the vents, posters, steering column etc which do absolutely nothing, and left the ability to use items on other items in, again just to slow the player down.

[close]

[sthomannch]

I enjoyed it a lot. Nicely done and good puzzles! I also liked the text-less approach

[OneDollar]

Now that MAGS voting is over I've updated the game to version 1.0. This fixes a few bugs (thanks to the people who pointed them out), improves feedback on one of the puzzles, updates the save/load interface to be more graphically consistant, and now it does nice things like asking for confirmation before you overwrite save files or try to quit.

As always if you find any more bugs or have any more feedback let me know!

[heltenjon]

Today, my 10-year-old son played this. He's played a lot of Among Us earlier, and he liked this game very much. I gave him advice of the general kind, like "Now that you have a key, go back to all the other rooms and see if you can use it somewhere. He needed help to find the hotspot for the vent system, but figured out the vent map puzzle by himself. I asked him about

Spoiler

the need to use the card swipe several times, and he replied that he did it multiple times because that's how it is in the original game. Spot on, OneDollar!

[close]

He had the most trouble with killing Yellow because

Spoiler

he kept trying to use inventory items on the extension coupled to the toilet instead of simply clicking on it.

[close]

So thumbs up from my son! 

[OneDollar]

I'm glad he enjoyed it, thanks for showing it to him and for the feedback

[jumpjack]

I don't know anything about "Among us", so figuring out what's the objective of the game was quite hard, especially because it's quite unusual thatin an adventure game you have to kill them all!
So, a "kill them all" sentence at the beginning would help.
It would also helo a fridge door which does not cover the card reader....

[OneDollar]

Thanks for playing!

So, a "kill them all" sentence at the beginning would help.

I was trying to keep the game as text-less as possible, so I tried to show the goal with the opening cutscene and crossing out the red crew member's icon at the start, while leaving the other three coloured in. Text-less is hard though, there's definitely some things that aren't as clear as they could have been if I'd just written them out.

It would also helo a fridge door which does not cover the card reader....

It's a puzzle Seriously though, that was a concious decision to simplify things.

Spoiler

If the player can change the temperature while the door's open, that means extra animations are needed for freezing and thawing with the door open as well as closed. I'd also need to figure out what happens if the temperature is changed while the chef is standing in the freezer, but the door isn't closed yet. The number of states that the chef and engineer could be in were already making my head hurt, so it made sense to simplify the player's options.

[close]

[sthomannch]

A game without text is perhaps more difficult, but I think it was a great idea. If Aliens visited us it would be a challenge to communicate, no matter if visual or with sound. But even talking with animals on Earth can be surprisingly difficult:

  https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/156500155770874423/

I struggled a little bit with using

Spoiler

the card reader several times

[close]

But the puzzles seemed fair to me and I enjoyed the game a lot. Well done!

[jumpjack]

It's a puzzle Seriously though, that was a concious decision to simplify things.

Spoiler

If the player can change the temperature while the door's open, that means extra animations are needed for freezing and thawing with the door open as well as closed. I'd also need to figure out what happens if the temperature is changed while the chef is standing in the freezer, but the door isn't closed yet. The number of states that the chef and engineer could be in were already making my head hurt, so it made sense to simplify the player's options.

[close]

This is not my point. My point is that  I din't notice the card reader until 100th time I entered the room, and only because I read around there should be a card reader somewhere, because the reader is hidden behind the open door! So I clicked 1000 times the badge ON THE FRIDGE!