Funeral Song for the Elemental Lords
Funeral Song for the Elemental Lords
Though I am bound by chains, my soul is free.
I'm the only one who can save myself.
Controls
Arrow Keys: Move, Jump, Interact, Use Element (once gained)
* WASD can be used for Up/Left/Down/Right.
Z/X: Switch Element
* C/V, H/J, or K/L can be used instead of Z/X.
Enter: Select menu options
* Spacebar or Switch Element buttons can also be used.
Escape: Access pause menu
*There are useful things there, so don't forget about this.
Credits
Everything except music was created by by Sylvie & Aria of Love ♥ Game.
The following people playtested the game:
- Droqen (https://droqen.itch.io/)
- Gate (https://gate.itch.io/)
- Hazel (https://hazely.itch.io/)
- Hubol (https://hubol.itch.io/)
- John (https://farawaytimes.itch.io/)
- Kastel (https://kastelpls.itch.io/)
The music is taken from the game DJ Max Portable (PSP). The songs used are:
- Oblivion by ESTi
- Ask the Wind by Forte Escape
- RED by Croove
- MASAI by Croove
- SIN by ESTi
- Eternal Memory ~ A girl's Dream ~ by M2U
- Ray of Illuminati by ESTi
- Sunny Side by Croove
- Out Law by Croove
- NB Ranger by M2U
- Oblivion (Rockin' Night Style) by NieN
- One the Love by xxdbxx
- BLYTHE by M2U
- End of the Moonlight by Forte Escape
- Chrono Breakers by NieN
- Every Morning by ND Lee
- Luv Flow by 3rd Coast
Design Notes
Notes written by Sylvie & Aria about the design of the game are available.
The design notes are free to download and can be downloaded below.
The notes contain major "spoilers" and assume you are familiar with the entire game. Our recommendation is that you read them after seeing the game's "true ending". Reaching the true ending will probably take around 3 to 6 hours on a first playthrough, but could be longer (some players have reported times of around 10 hours).
Download
Development log
- v1.1Aug 07, 2024
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
great game! i liked the hint system and the ability to kill the demon bosses fast. (i hate bosses.) i recall never "legitimately" beating any of the bosses in sylvielime either... i also liked aria highlighting where to go on the map. i did figure out much of the stuff on my own. i often yearned for a walkthrough video. this is a true old school style game. still never figured out the secret language. only sylvie could have made this. great job!
I really wanted to just leave a comment that only said "Pig disapears when touched from behind", but I also really wanted to leave a comment that was more than one line...
This game is very simply all about kitties!! And naturally the many ways you can push them all about the land. I still feel there must be some secret quintuple stacked kitten strategy that I haven't found but which would surely shock the whole land, if discovered... I just think the cats are very fun to push around... Actually all the different ways of combining or not combining elements were very unique feeling, not just the cat technology! Each run somehow really does feel unique which is surprising!
I loved the bosses also! Especially the blade doll and its jumping habits. It seemed like there was probably multiple different approaches to beating it and idk I just enjoyed learning about its interest in jumping and bumping its nose into the wall!
Finally I must mention the very best thing of the whole game, which is also the very first thing of the whole game, which is how you let out a perfect little squeak every single time you respawn/hit a save point. Gahhhh.......
The ladders in this game are awesome
really good game... i know the intention was to make something small but it did pay off - for me this reaches the highs of other love <3 game games like sylvie lime... the movement tech was really interesting and fun. the story is nice too, it's simple but it works well, and there are lots of fun mysterious moments that build on it a lot (the mysterious executioner crashes etc)... you should be proud of this one
The line from the design notes about how the player is expected to develop "a close relationship" with the world has really fascinated me. I'd love to see how the world evolved over the course of the game's development. It seems to me the ability to produce such a deep world in only a few months is very impressive.
Oh, what a wonderful piece of work it was!
Really really great to walk around the world and find out what kind of world we are in here, and also to unravel the mystery as deep as the abyss.
I am a skilled SylvieGame player, and that allowed me to struggle through the True Lord and the bosses in demon form without getting stuck.
The storyline that exposes your inner self, the thrill of solving the puzzles, the cuteness of Sylvie in her various forms, this game really has a lot to offer despite the small screen, meow~!
thank you for another song, sylvie and aria!
the difficulty level of this felt perfect to me. i managed to reach the true ending while feeling like it was a struggle but not getting discouraged. (i did ask aria where i was supposed to go one time near the end.)
(spoilers down here)
it made me feel that even when i am struggling with something, it doesn't mean that i am "bad" at doing it. it felt intentional to me that some parts of the game were designed to be struggles before reading the design notes, and seeing your struggles in the notes and in the story of the game made me want to struggle harder to make games. (and to take better care of myself.)
i liked the puzzle that involved the kitties and i was happy that there was a bunny in the game. and dressing up in all the costumes was great.
it was funny seeing the nods to those sylvieish games by other people in a sylvie game. this might be the first sylvieish sylvie game because it has elements that are similar to sylvie games.
i found one tiny little bug, in the downloadable windows version, if you unplug your headphones and then plug them back in, the background music will start again and play over itself.
i'm still looking for my answer to the question at the end. i think it would be hypocritical of me to say that it is worth it without working harder myself. but i want to believe that it is and i want to try harder, and most of all i hope we can find ways to make things without as much pain.
I have now read the design notes. It is interesting to me how different what I thought was going on in the game was from what you had intended to be going on. I certainly didn't feel like the pieces failed to fit together but I also didn't know your name was Sylvie or that the game was metaphorically about a specific real person until after playing it. For me, the layers of interacting things was the highlight-- I, in fact, quite like multi-purpose content in videogames, although the idea that Animal Well was doing anything new with that annoys me since it's been a feature of countless video games since at least the Atari 2600. The poor quality of game journalism is hardly your fault, though. The multi-purpose nature of the elemental powers is cool, but much more compelling to me was the multipurpose nature of the characters and rooms. I was particularly suprised to find out that what I had assumed were cosmetic changes-- like the eye things-- had mechanical effects (I didn't use the hint or help system at all, so I didn't know about the flower or glasses effects, but I found the one and three eye ones, and Aria tells you about the double jump as well although I hadn't noticed the costume change and had immediately reversed becoming a devil), and that getting to the True Lords without their elements was an intended feature of the gameplay, rather than accidental sequence breaking (although it sounds like you were supposed to have two abilities to get to them and doing it with just one wasn't actually intended. Woops :/ Downside of exploration-based gameplay with skill requirements, I suppose).
In any case, I thought it was cool, I didn't mind coming up with the details of how everything fit together on my own and I came up with a pretty detailed (but completely unintended it would seem) setting and explanation for what's going on. I didn't think Wind made any less sense than the others, honestly Fire is the one that seems kinda out there because Love and Wind are both trying to do impossible things (If I love them enough, surely they must love me back/If I try hard enough, surely the world will be fixed) but while relationships and society are both things that are ultimately outside our control and so no amount of Sylvie-blood can effectuate that last little piece the Lords are looking for, Fire just wants to make stuff and that's not really, like, dependent on external forces or anything. It made associating the talisman of Body with the Lord of Wind an interesting choice because the implication seems to be that internalized artistic demands are destructive even separate from physical limitations because of their obsessive, time-consuming nature. Maybe Fire's line is "If I put enough into my art, surely it will be perfect".
Lastly I would say that parables are not trivial or trite, but difficult works to create that express moral truths in a multifaceted way. I think you are concerned about making something that is expressing a simple message, but there's nothing wrong with a simple message-- the simplicity of a statement need not belie a shallowness to its truth. Furthermore, the game's highly abstract nature provides plenty of space for people to try and put the things together themselves. That said, if the game was intended as a parable about taking care of ones self, I don't think it was terribly successful in that regard-- the literary form seems much closer to stream-of-consciousness writing like e.g. *The Bridge* than e.g. Luke 15. That's an extremely difficult form, though, and it sounds like you were hoping for it *not* to be that, anyhow.
Idk. I guess I just think you're selling yourselves short on this piece.
P.S. In the design document you seem to be concerned about the game being too difficult. I don't think any of the challenges took me more than 30 mins individually, and I'd say the game was challenging enough to be fun, but a bit on the easy side. I know you suggested True Ending no outfits, but that's basically what I already did and not getting to wear a flower is sad. I didn't look at the helps, but if the boss difficulty slider goes the other way it might be nice to put that somewhere else or signpost it or something so people don't miss it thinking that section is just to make the game easier. Although if it just changes the bosses' hp that sounds more annoying than fun as a change-- the regular false lord fights took me the longest of any boss because it took me until the second one to realize I could moonwalk with the sword if I pressed right and left at the same time (which kills the boss in seconds, so I actually thought it might be a glitch, but it looks like it was intentional though intended more for the Fire jump than the sword). Speed ups or something might be fun, though.
Thank you for the detailed thoughts!
I think you are more skilled than the average player if you found the game on the easy side, especially if you also reached some True Lords with only one element (which I knew was possible in some cases, but didn't really intend players to do unless they were trying some kind of challenge run). I'm glad it was still difficult enough to be fun though. The boss difficulty slider is only for making the game easier, and was added after a playtester spent around 45 minutes trying to beat one of the false lords (not the demon form). Even though "struggle" is supposed to be a big part of the game, I felt like if the difficulty was ultra hard, then too many people would just give up....
I would say that reaching the true ending without costumes is not that much harder than how most people approach the game. It's only really different if you relied a lot on the devil/angel or the unlockable help features from Aria. The secret ending becomes a good deal more convoluted and time-consuming without costumes if I remember correctly, though not much harder in terms of execution.
Aria wanted to add that she doesn't actually know much about parables as a literary form and just thought it was a name for a certain kind of simplistic moralistic story. It's interesting that you mention stream-of-consciousness writing because sometimes I feel like the way I design games is to let it flow out of my consciousness....
We are coming around to feeling better about the game after seeing more people's reactions and seeing some people say that they did find it moving. A friend said that the story feels like an "emotional space" you can explore and play around in and I like thinking of it in that way.
Hi! It's really cool to see another person getting into Sylvie games and taking the time to think about them deeply. I am really excited to see what you think of Sylvie Lime!! (And the hundreds of others, of course :D)
One thing I wanted to briefly mention since Sylvie was too polite to point it out in her own reply: that bit about Animal Well in the design notes is a joke :) Sylvie is very well-acquainted with the history of games in general and Metroidvanias in particular, as you may enjoy reading about in her Sylvie Thoughts series.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply she didn't know video game history, I merely was remarking upon what I see as the lack of journalism in the article itself. Excited to try more of the games, although none of the ones I've tried so far have been this good (but they've been short things like If I clear 50 Stages Maybe I'll be Loved. I'll try Sylvie Lime once I finish Love
I think very few of my older games are similar to this in terms of length and ambition, but Sylvie Lime is probably one of the closest. It's different in many ways though. I often try out new things, so when someone likes my newest release, I worry they won't like any of the older ones as much....
Also, Love is really amazing.
I just spent like 8 hours grinding this stupid room in it and you know what you get for beating it? Turned to stone ;_;
Also I like pretty much every genre of game (although not equally-- I tend to have a higher bar on Interactive Fiction/Visual Novel/Dating Sim type games and a much lower one for 7drls ) so I wouldn't worry (and also what I think doesn't really matter that much, I'm just a dude on the internet ;P). So far they've been fun, just not as engaging due to the difference in scope.
I couldn't find any way to see in the dark, unless it's one of the helps.
Also, escape to where?
To see in the dark, you need three eyes. When the kind sister heals you after the evil one gives you the same deal she gave Odin, she gives you an extra as well. The evil sister is located in the upper left third of the central heart-- try using Love or Wind where the three shades go up and down together.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Ok, sorry. From start: go right to the staircase, then jump left over to where the attacks are coming from. You need to jump over the attacks with good timing to make it to the screen to the left. There you will see an enemy jumping up and down and shooting the attacks. You can jump under them with good timing, or deal with them any other way, but you need to go left. From there you will need to use fire, love, or wind to cross the chasm by jumping across with recoil, turning the enemy into a platform, or jumping up from the bottom respectively. You are trying to go left without going up. When you do this you will see a row of three enemies moving up and down in a short hallway. Turn them into kittens with love and ride the middle one up to find the 'evil' sister (you can also make the jump with wind, but it's a little tricky since you have to dodge the enemies as well then). She will cut out one of your eyes and eat it, but in the process give you the power to see what's hidden-- false walls will change color so you can tell where they are.
From there, go to the other sister in the east. To find her, go back to start, then go right, up the stairs, then go down and left through the fake wall below that you can see through now, dodging the attacks the enemy on the platform shoots. Follow that path into the Tearstained Catacombs (purple walls, True Lord of Wind's area), then walk right through the checkpoint, through a fake wall on the top right, to a room with a ladder. Climb the ladder and you will see a fairy (if you can see fairies) and a woman. Talk to the woman exactly once and she will give you three eyes, which lets you see in the dark. If you talk to her again, she'll restore your eyes to normal and lend you glasses (four-eyes is the pun), which have no effect, and you can give her the glasses back by talking again to return to normal, at which point you'd need to get an eye eaten again to be able to return to seeing in the dark with three eyes.
FInally got the true ending! This was a wonderful song, which I enjoyed a lot. This is everything I'm looking for in an indie game, it was worth all the work you both put into it :)
Also galeforce broke my fingers.
Never underestimate the value of good sleep!
Playing Sylvie games and then reading the Design Notes is the premier way to learn about designing games & making games that everyone is talking about. Nobody else is telling all the people about how to make games. You have to play the games and read the Design Notes. When you understand the Design Notes you will become powerful and put your own beautiful reality into the world. At only 360 kilobytes it's a deal you can't afford to pass up.
Beautiful game, thanks.
10 hours, 09 minutes, 23 seconds was my time to the true ending. I’m not very good at hardcore platformers. But your games make the experience so friendly and welcoming even for someone like me. (i really liked the way Aria's assistance worked in this one. it felt good to have to work on little side-quests for the ability to make things easier, and then to be able to easily turn your powers on and off to use them selectively. i ended up barely using any helps and no hints, i think largely thanks to the nature of the way it was offered to me, and that let me have a challenging but not impossible experience.)
the structure is fantastic. the way it gives you these initial promises about what sort of game it is and what sort of progression to expect, and then gently twists your expectations and understandings around, while always remaining fundamentally true to those initial promises. you get to explore this structural space at the same time as you explore the game map, and you learn new ways to understand the game map as you get to know it better and better, and it all fits together. this sort of thing is a staple of sylvie games and it's always great, but here it's truly artful.
the music choices are right-on and fun. the jumping felt good. it was great fun to get Sylvie all kitted-out, so to speak. the key sections were a real highlight, for me they were a special reward for having taken time to understand the way the map fits together.
the fable-like story is metaphorically rich, all the symbols both obvious and obscure at the same time. different from the previous Love Games games i’ve played, sort of playing up the dreamy and indirect aspects of your worldbuilding, which i thought was cool.
(Spoilers…)
And to answer your question: It was worth it to me… but does that make it “worth it”? I expended great effort, and through this you reminded me to take care of these parts of myself and to take care of the way that i do so, and it was beautiful and good. But is this result worth that greater effort that you put into it, that wrenching from your heart? Does “worth” even mean anything? I struggle to answer these questions for myself every day, and the struggle becomes nearly unbearable every time I put something out into the world. I hope that you can find ways to learn answers for yourself.
I am a very big fan. The mechanics and such were simple, but it was clear that so much went into this game. I love that you guys put your names into the game. That's incredibly iconic lol. I love all the hint system and I may or may not have used and abused it during my play through. Thank you Aria for holding my hand through the whole game. She should have been on the end screen :). I am going to keep an eye out on anything else you lot make. Thank you for the 3+ hour experience.
(spoilers)
my route: Bad End -> Windless (Devil/Poison Clear) -> Fireless -> Loveless -> True end (Used Angel/hints for some statues). Pig Party, Bone Zone and the Wind Move complexities were highlights. Also liked the art a lot in the heaven area.
Outside of those I really liked how layered/dense this game felt - revisiting each cavern over the multiple runs, finding new nooks that weren't there before. There feels like something resonant between this and the game's narrative elements about the world being composed of someone's fragments: the various parts of the world take on symbolic meaning: the void at the bottom, escaping through heaven on the top, the true lords being locked away in the far, difficult fragments. It was interesting how the level design feels like it progresses through three modes - the false lords/Heart arc feel like a less extreme adventure platformer...but there's a sense of something being held back... which is then unleashed in the three True Lord routes. Then to wrap it up, the game has all sorts of interesting light-hearted tricks and moments you're required to play through through the True Ending run. Something about that felt really in communication with how the narrative elements played out. Very neat!
Is the hint system wrong? Having wind and fire leads me to the green area but the green npc asks me for fire and love. or maybe theres something else i have to do
Yeah, there is something else you need to do there.
Yeah I found it and then deleted my save file by accident lol
Nvm I'm probably just dumb but just in case Ill keep the comment up
Yeah no, its fine I figured it out thanks to the thing you get from the glasses lol
This was wonderful, thank you.
Yet another Love Game banger with a super memorable world and great writing
Game seems awesome so far. I didn't think I could make progress otherwise and I wasn't too suspicious of the objective, so I killed the False Lord of Love, but when I went to the celestial garden with the key I got afterwards it looks like you are supposed to be finding the true lords instead, but then when I reached the end of the area there's a portal that reads identical to the one where I killed the False Lord and its not active anymore so I assume you need to get there without killing the false lord, but I don't know how I would get the key without the power of Love (or, honestly, how I would then get to the end portal of the gardens without it in an area that felt like love-themed puzzle platforming). I wonder what I am missing...
Found another fairy that clears things up. You aren't supposed to not kill them after all it seems.
But maybe you are supposed to kill them later than I did after talking to the True Wind Lord without having met the false one yet... idk. I can't imagine making it to the True Wind Lord without both fire and love...
I made it to the True Lord of Love with only Wind powers. That was intense! I'm honestly not sure if I'm doing this the way you are supposed to or not but it was extraordinarily difficult compared to the rest of the game, though still very fun and rewarding. Looking forward to seeing where this all leads.
I've found this puzzle that says 'Aria was here' in psuedo-braille (upside down) but I don't know what to do with that information...
Got what says its the true ending, but I never did solve the pseudo-braille puzzle :(
Game is awesome 10/10, will show to my best friend. Thanks for making this!
this game has some of the most interesting platforming mechanics i've seen. I'm not super into platformers tho. It's just that dodging is very predictable to the point where it doesn't feel as precise as it is idk how to express it.
BTW this kept crashing very quickly for me in Brave and Chrome but seems to work fine in Firefox
Thanks for letting me know! That's strange, for me it seems to work on both Firefox and Chrome, although I only tried playing for a few minutes on Chrome.
When you say "very quickly", what do you mean? Does it crash on the title screen menu, or only once you get in-game?
If you have time to help me debug the issue, after it crashes in Chrome, can you try the following steps?
Funeral Song for the Elemental Lords Gameplay
This is what I think of playing the game.. I was talking while playing, although the difficulty remained normal and so didn't need to say anything, but such various things happened? It seems the lords were actively conspiring to direct me, contributing to the feelings in the game. though I played desperately, I am satisfied with what it is like not to tame the lords contained ininside this game.
The theme to deepen relationship with world is special here because how its implemented, I think it actually undermines initially connecting with the world in the players own way. Can try and make sense of this like, you just use things that come from the game itself to learn it as a type of efficiency, well the game is moreso expressive for you which is nice.
I'm in love with the love transform sound effect!! Mew mew...
I beat all the elemental lords! I wonder what to do now...
Minor bug (spoiler image!), rot13: Jura qlvat gb na ryrzragny ybeq, vs lbh ubyq gur qbja xrl, lbh'yy ragre gur svtug jvgu gur birejbeyq HV.
Edit: fixed in v1.1
Thanks, I noticed this before but I forgot to fix it. I'll see if I can fix it soon.
Got the true ending! This game is awesome, seriously great pacing, and there's so much cool stuff near the end.
In terms of difficulty I think this is on the easier side of Sylvie games. The platforming was really fair, tons of variety, nothing frustrating about it at all. Definitely worth your time.
Thanks for letting me playtest the game. I wish I got to show more footage of how I played, but I didn’t want to give poor feedback while I was sick.
I’m still working my way through the game, and one of the ways I think this game succeeded is how committed it is to its own ethos. The game is more difficult than Sylvie Lime and is closer to the browser-only games in terms of pure Sylvie platforming and puzzle design. But I keep taking a stab at it because it’s so polished and focused on bringing out the platforming quirks of the game.
Unlocking several elements and figuring out how to traverse with it was so fascinating. I also liked how the story needed to be pieced together. It felt like I was uncovering a game, which reminded me of games like TUNIC and La-Mulana.
I look forward to more people discovering the game with me because it’s very fun, difficult, and full of secrets. I enjoyed talking about the game with others. It feels like it’ll be a modern Sylvie classic.