"Silent" Ritual

Throw on your cultist robes and complete rituals as quickly—and quietly—as you can! Use pillows and rugs to navigate 9 different ritual setups, addressing whatever goes wrong while keeping your own noise in check!

Dev's note:

"Silent" Ritual was created as a practice game for a cancelled game jam.  I'd greatly appreciate feedback from any other aspiring game designers who'll give my project the time of day. In the name of helping people learn, here's what I've considered along the way.

• This game originally saw you trying to reach 100% ritual completion within a given time limit----no letter grades, just a binary win/lose condition. That experiment ended with a pivot to a scoring system based on the percentage you could achieve within the time limit. I finally switched from that to the current system (score based on time with a fixed completion target) to give more leeway for player experimentation upon entering a new level.
• Some levels play more into optimizing setup, while others focus more on execution. This isn't a bad thing per se, but it makes the gameplay toe an awkward line between puzzle and action. In hindsight, it may have been better to lean hard into one aspect or another.
• The downtime between "disruptions" used to be a major problem. The lengthy gaps of inactivity couldn't be solved by simply boosting activation rates, as that would make players fall behind too easily. I got the idea of the spinning incantation by watching a tester fidget with the controls between disruptions; its addition solved the problem by making this window valuable rather than a drag.
• Adding more personality to each room was considered (different objects making noise in different ways, etc), but ultimately sacrificed at the altars of readability and time.
  
• I'm still torn on how to handle stationary turning. You originally did so by simply tapping the appropriate direction, but this made it too easy to accidentally take a step. Having the Interact button keep you stationary came about when I realized that I usually only did a quick turn when I intended to use that key next anyway.

Asset Credits - Sprites:

• "16x16 DungeonTileset II" by 0x72 (itch.io)

Asset Credits - Audio:

• "clair air.wav" by insinger (freesound.org)
• "Fairy Ambiance - Binaural Chimes" by Vrymaa (freesound.org)
• "Footsteps --- Essentials" by Nox_Sound (Unity asset store)
• "Small Sound Kit" by Sound Works 12 (Unity asset store)