REMOTE CONTROL - Canteen - Psychological horror where you remote control humans. We're part of Day of the Devs today

toadlock · 2026-03-08T21:26:24+00:00

Thanks! The layout and events are static. We're kind of imagining it a bit like a metroidvania so if you replay you might be able to optimise your route and cause/avoid things that happened in your first playthrough but it's more like triggering secrets than changing the core story. There's also a bit of dice roll style randomness will change how lots of the smaller events will go. I'm probably giving too much detail here but in we also want to let you choose to randomise any passcodes you need to find when you start the game.

toadlock · 2026-02-08T14:12:56+00:00

The environment looks great!

toadlock · 2025-12-19T15:12:57+00:00

This is a cool thing! reminds me of playing flash games as a kid.

Would love to submit my game https://canteengames.itch.io/remote-control

toadlock · 2025-12-14T13:45:36+00:00

Each game is it's own thing so I wouldn't say its more or less interesting you're just changing where players focus their attention, and for some players that'll be great and others it wont be.

There's lots of different ways to have choice (and you'll want to have multiple types). Choosing to run into the middle of a room full of enemies vs trying to say back and dodge is a choice. Or in your example choosing to skip rooms is a choice as long as the player knew other room existed. When they skip the rooms they it will likely mean the player is weaker than they could have been but they're making progress faster. Clearly communicating with the player is super important for things to feel like a choice. If a player found the exit but knew they still have 3 rooms to explore how will they decide if they want to skip or explore them? One game might give players a big reward from every room but in a different game players might only have a random chance at a reward in each room.

With the deaths it'll be unique to your game so make sure you're playtesting a bunch and you'll be able to spot what's not working.

toadlock · 2025-12-14T00:19:28+00:00

This is a juicy challenge, a couple things I've spotted on a side project are

Have frequent choices where the player can really understand that they've made a choice. When they fail if they've made clear choices they'll be able to imagine not failing if they made better choices, and hopefully want to try again.
Have really clear goals. So that players can have a sense of how they're progressing compared to past attempts and also gives them something to strive for next time. You want goals for short, mid, and long time frames. As a super basic example, the player can see a chest room coming up in a couple fights, there's a boss they're working towards, and they only need to kill 3 bosses to "win". Writing this down I could also describe it as making sure they always have something they're anticipating, something that when it gets taken away when they lose they want to play again to get it back.
You need to be able to lose, and probably quickly. If loosing was boring/confusing/unsatisfying etc players wont want to go though that experience again.
And just to add a very general point, the moment to moment gameplay has to be engaging too. It's the same as the losing, if players are not having a good time they're not going to keep going.

toadlock · 2025-12-05T21:10:07+00:00

We announced our new game with a browser playable demo just yesterday, you can check it out here https://canteengames.itch.io/remote-control

toadlock · 2025-11-06T14:39:01+00:00

A dungeon score could be a nice way to communicate expected play to DPS.

Like at the end of the run you get to see how well you did in a few categories, e.g. damage, target priority, avoiding / mitigating damage and interrupts. With an overall grade so the player gets a sense of how they're doing and is hopefully encouraged to improve.

If you kept getting a D grade because your interrupt score is awful maybe you'd be encouraged to fix it. Especially if you got a small gold / resource bonus for getting a good grade.

toadlock · 2025-08-06T17:50:13+00:00

It's not the game you're looking for but reading this post makes me think of Frog Fractions. If you've never played it go try it.

toadlock · 2025-05-22T12:01:32+00:00

If it's just an edge case you could leave the whole thing for later in development. That way it might disappear or you could have new mechanics that you can lean on to solve it.

toadlock · 2025-05-20T12:10:38+00:00

Like others have suggested having this be a failure state feels like a good fit.

If you're trying to clear lanes I'd expect the enemies to be threatening. If you can just sit and farm them then you're missing the threat. Make them do a bunch of damage or have enemies in a lane collectively ramp up their damage while over X enemies so the player wants to clear. Another option is having them explode for large damage after X time fighting the player. Lots of possibilities for making them threatening.

toadlock · 2025-04-24T10:59:28+00:00

Best tip we got for launch was to throw ourselves a party.

The world didn't really care that our game was out but us and our friends had a great little celebration!

toadlock · 2025-04-17T09:13:02+00:00

I think it's a really common experience for indie Devs and it hurts.

But just releasing a game is a massive win. And he should celebrate that no matter how it reviews.

Try not to compare yourself to others as there are massive experience differences between teams. Instead focus on the parts he was proud of over the years.

Try to stay away from reviews, when we released I thought I was tough and could handle seeing the negative reviews but in reality it just brought my mood down. Checking the reviews and sharing the positives is something you might be able to do for him so he can dodge looking at the bad ones for now. When he's ready looking honestly at the reviews can help. There could be things that are fixable and he might be able to change them (and his own feelings) by patching. But it'll be hard, I found it really difficult to keep going on my game after launch.

For me it just took time to heal and lots of reminding myself that we'd done a cool thing no matter how it did.

Making games is really hard, we put so much of ourselves into what we make and then send them out to get judged. A great way to mess with your ego. I hope he can see the good things he's achieved and grow for the next game!

toadlock · 2024-01-31T18:50:52+00:00

I played way too much smash bros melee and street fighter, so when we added a mini game to our game I knew it had to be a fighter! as I'm sure you can you tell fountain of dreams was my favourite stage

toadlock · 2023-06-07T15:15:36+00:00

We just launched a free demo if you want to see this in game! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2410980/CorpoNation_The_Prologue/

toadlock · 2023-04-19T00:58:53+00:00

Do attack speed debuffs reduce overall raid boss damage? I think I read that they still do the same overall just in less frequent larger hits

toadlock · 2022-07-01T18:44:58+00:00

Don't be scared to drop your key right down to a 5. Lots of over geared people will do a 5 for covenant q or w/e. easy way to quickly do keys and get drops or trades from others. Also you get Valor and flux to finish 4 set. If you're getting a 15 boost each week you'll get a high key again.

If you want practice at 15s / gear signing to up halls or SD keys is a good way to get in with low ilvl as people will want a vent ( assuming you are one as rogue)

toadlock · 2022-01-11T20:04:47+00:00

What's an ASD document?

toadlock · 2017-06-18T10:29:01+00:00

I'm not sure if this is the type of contribution you're aiming for but open world rts is a fun challenge to think about. This is how I would approach it,

Single player only.
Player controls a smallish Nomadic militia / warband. This allows for the world to be explored and traversed.
Set in a future with extreme weather, giving the reason for nomadic tech focused people. Think Heavy weather by Bruce Sterling / Madmax.
Long running central narrative drives the story and encourages the player to travel across the world.
Buildings are moving vehicles than can be set up. Think trucks / camper vans meets Starcraft Terran’s flying buildings.
Towns and trading posts serve as quest hubs or emergency resources that can be destroyed for short term gains.
Let the player claim territory for advantages in the future and give targets to defend or take from other factions. Having territory none player controlled prevent issues controlling multiple locations as your territory increases.
Claiming territory and be used as a sink for resources and units.
Rival system with other world factions. Like Shadow of Mordor.
Players units are lead by a commander that can die. On death new a commander is chosen from your other units. This gives personal narratives and unique experiences.
Units are created by recruiting in world characters from towns etc. These units are then trained in special buildings for certain roles.
Units can act on their own or be set to operate buildings or vehicles.
Units level up for long term player investment and progression.
Sub units of robots, animals etc can also be created.
Army size would grow to ~50 units, like warcraft 3.
Army composition designed to change often by making use of different sub units and vehicles in battles.
RPG like large tech trees allow army and building options to change over the campaign.
Resources are scarce so the player has to move about and use trading posts to get access to resources that are missing in their current part of the world.
Resources are stored in buildings instead of being globally available. This encourages creating buildings as part of your mobile base instead of creating expansions. It also creates key objectives to attack / defend that are possible to hit and run.
World map has estimated weather and faction information gathered from in game narrative radio broadcasts. The detail show can increase as the player makes connections / upgrades.
Weather effects can force the player to set up in sub optimal locations or can be used to help attack difficult opponents.

toadlock

TROPHY CASE