Beyond the Pond (Honest Jam V)

One bright, but cold late summer morning, the monotonous daily routine of the otherwise very vivid wildlife community around the small pond got disrupted by an incident. The little mouse Max wants to investigate the strange phenomenon, but therefore has to face his biggest fears. During the process, he learns a lot about himself and friendship.

DISCLAIMER:

This game covers difficult topics like being different, genetic defects, bullying, grief, anxiety, depression, loss, death, near-death experiences, being a victim of violence and mutilation. If you are sensitive to such topics, please do not play the game!

The story and all characters are fictional, but might be inspired by real life. The characters and their actions are intentionally exaggerated to make their message unmistakably clear.

Despite trying to keep the game humorous, the game is not suitable for children.

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EDIT: FIX OF A GAME BREAKING BUG, December 13th 2022: There was a bug in the original upload which prevented approximately 50% of the story from playing. I uploaded an updated version without the bug "fatal-bugfix_2022-12-13" and kept the original version. There is no backup of the web version. I am very sorry and would like to apologize to everybody who played the game already and was wondering about the sudden ending...

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Background:

Made for the Honest Jam V. The Theme of the Jam was "Explore".

Direct Usage of the Jam Theme: Underwater Exploration, finding the cause and solving a mystery.

Indirect Usage of the Jam Theme: Exploring Character/Vegetation Modelling, Procedural Generation, Texture Baking, Painting over 3D Renders, Lighting, 3D Game Development, Physics Overrides, Story and Character Design, Music Recording/Mixing/Mastering

Implemented Accessibility measures:

See "About" in main menu.

Originally intended to be a 3D Adventure Game, the scope had to be reduced to an interactive Story due to issues with the physics engine, which could not be solved during the duration of the game jam.

For list of used assets, please see "sources.txt" in the Downloads Section or "About/Credits" in the main menu.

Control Scheme:

Enter/Space: Dialog

ESC: Menu

W: Up

S: Down

D: Stop/Forward

A: Stop/Reverse

E: Light

Q: Hard Reset

R: Currently not used

Known Bugs

• For certain key combinations, speed can go to infinity. To prevent this, wait a few seconds between button presses. And if it occurs, press Q for a hard reset.
• Dialog boxes/texts can overlap
• Songs do not play sometimes
• Volume controls not working properly


Recommendations:

Despite being able to be played in the browser, it is recommended to play it directly on the hardware. In the browser version, issues with dropped frames and audio latency occur or the game will not play at all. I could achieve the best results with Firefox; Chromium does not even load the game (WebGL Error).

Screen resolution: 1024x600 (minimum), 1920x1080 (recommended)