Distant Paradise
Distant Paradise is a short sci-fi metroidvania.
Explore the mysterious temple and its surroundings to find new movement abilities that will allow you to reach more places. But be careful, many monsters roam these halls... Can you find your way out? And can you uncover the secret purpose of this place?
Story
Sent from Earth to scout the outer reaches of space, you crash-land on the planet Soror.
Under its dead black sky, you find a mysterious temple built by an ancient civilization.
Explore it! It may hide the key to your survival...
About this game
Distant Paradise was made in a month for the Metroidvania Month 28 game jam. For this entry, I wanted to experiment with a web build, so I created a new engine from scratch for the occasion.
Coming up with both new tech and a brand new game in just a month was definitely a challenge. This is why I call this game a "microvania": it's a short, fun adventure that can be completed in an hour. It's not as feature-rich as my other games, but it does run in your web browser!
The story also acts as a coda for my previous games, Silent Paradise and Lost Paradise, though you don't need to have played them before, they're all standalone stories.
Instructions
The game can be played either in your web browser or as a downloadable Windows executable. In both cases, a gamepad is highly recommended.
Here's the mapping for a QWERTY keyboard:
(It's not currently possible to change this mapping but that's something I would like to add in the future.)
If you encounter any issue with the web version, I encourage you to download the Windows build instead.
Known Firefox issue
If you use Firefox and get an error message telling you the game can't access local storage and won't be able to save your progress, right clicking on the game and selecting "This Frame > Open Frame in New Tab" may fix the issue:
The game has been tested without issue with Chrome.
Download
Install instructions
Unzip the archive and start "DistantParadise.exe".
Or use the Itch App to automatically get update in the future!
Development log
- Distant Paradise Postmortem15 hours ago
- Distant Paradise version 1.18 days ago
- New game alert: Distant Paradise is out!23 days ago
Comments
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I've explored the entire map but I'm missing 2 Vitamaestria? Also, does this take place before or after Lost Paradise?
For the missing items, you may want to look back near the ship or look for unexplored rooms on your map. About whether or not it takes place before or after Lost Paradise, I will only say there are hints in the game ;)
The downloaded game is bugged and unplayable for me. Everything is moving at like 10x speed. Not just controls, but even the sprite animation, everything is like moving way too fast
oh well works ok in browser
It's probably because you forced VSync to OFF in your GPU settings. Turning it to ON or back to "Use the 3D application setting" should fix it.
I had implemented a safety measure to assume the game was running at 60 FPS in case the time elapsed between two frames was measured to zero (because web browsers can be very unreliable), but that safety can actually be triggered on the desktop version every other frame if the game runs uncapped at more than 1000 FPS (which is the case for me with VSync OFF). So the game believe it's running at 60 FPS when it's really rendering 1000 FPS, which is why everything is going too fast. I'm going to move this "safety" to only be in the web build. The fix will be part of the post-jam version.
Thanks for letting me know! I hope you can still enjoy the web version ;)
Nice! This is a great game!
Thank you!
Good game, but every time you open the map in the browser version, fullscreen deactivates.
It's because I use the "Escape" key as an equivalent of the "Select" gamepad button, but most browsers also use it to exit fullscreen and won't let you disable this behavior. I will probably have to choose another key for this then, or at least provide an alternative. Thank you for letting me know, I will see what I can do for the post-jam update :)
There's an issue with Vitamestria item's text, when I collected my first one it said I only had two left to go and when I got my second one it said I only had one left before I got a heart, but in the menu it says you need 4 of them to get a new heart
The message is correct, you only need 3 to get a new heart. It was a last minute balance change and it seems I forgot to update the description. Thanks for letting me know, I will fix it for the post-jam update ;)
i LOVED the game and i 100% it(All map,max health,every ability,all messages
and the ending.)
I'm glad you enjoyed it! ;)
nice game as usual, even though the control scheme makes it obvious that this was done as a challenge and not as elaborate and fine tuned as msot of your other games.
doing the jump dash block-trigger stuff in the right order and quickly enough sure required some muscle memory to built :-)
Author did state in the instructions that a gamepad is highly suggested. Keyboard is almost user friendly with a couple of quite challenging areas. Definitely muscle memory is required!
I did finish it with a keyboard but that jump dash block-trigger wasn't a lot of fun. Almost as bad was the teleport jump dash stuff in some rooms but still manageable.
Yep, I literally had to place the fingers of my left hand over the 3 keys, obviously in a kind of weird fashion, and muscle memories the order in which to push the buttons down XD
Yeah, it's sjut that I played about all his previous games and they were super comfy on keyboard.
Well I aint got no gamepad and wont get one either, keyboard 4 the win!
My games don't usually feature much platforming challenges, so it was me experimenting a bit with that. It's definitely a bit cramped on the keyboard (though you can also use the E key to switch blocks, as it's equivalent to the Right Shoulder Button), which is also one reason I want to add rebindable controls in the future.
I dont mind the platforming at all sicne, leaing the weird keyboard finger palcement issue, it's actually quite chill to do.
Like you always know what to press in whzat order, just gotta do it :-)
As long as we dont meet supermeat boy levels (which i dont have the reflexes and reaction speed for to do comfortably) I dont mind :-)
really great game , just wish the jump key was space !
Thank you! Most of my games have rebindable controls, but this one uses new tech and I didn't have the time to implement that feature for both the desktop and web versions. That's definitely something I would like to add in the future!
There is some odd behavior in Chrome where the up/down arrow scrolls the page. FireFox I could not get the game to load. I just went ahead and downloaded it. Looking forward to it :)
That's weird indeed, I never encountered those issues with the machines and browsers I tested it on. The Chrome issue can probably be avoided if you switch to fullscreen in the settings. Do you get an error message from Firefox?
Anyway, that's why there's still the option to download it. I hope you enjoy the game! ;)
No errors in the console in FireFox. Just get the "A script on this page is slowing down the browser..." notification. On multiple refreshes it loaded the menu screen but with no images or fonts.
Downloadable works fantastically.
After getting to the room where you have to jump, switch blocks and dash multiple times, I understand the controller recommendation. That took quite a lot of attempts on keyboard but is do-able.
This is really nicely polished. Really intriguing story and outside of the jump/switch/dash room movement and control is nicely crisp.
Good luck in the jam!
If resources took a long time or failed to load, it may have been a temporary issue with itch's CDN. The site's availability seems to have been a bit spotty lately...
And yes, that room was the entire reason I added Right Shoulder Button as an alternative for switching blocks. I may have to tone it down a bit for the subsequent versions.
Glad you enjoyed the game! ;)