Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Deep Winter
By copito
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 901 | 3.42 | 36 | |
| Fun | 1038 | 3.13 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 1192 | 2.95 | 36 | |
| Theme | 978 | 3.45 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 203 | 4.24 | 37 | |
| Mood | 304 | 3.86 | 36 |
Oh the mood on this one! Too bad there's no audio. That would be something else...
Kudos for TWO 2D isometric characters in a game jam game! (Also, please teach me how to do something like that...)
Henry's "ah well" moment made me laugh a little.
Would be nice if there was a HP bar, but it's not necessary.
One issue: when I try to resize the game window, game crashes with this:
ss.png
Hey thanks for giving it a go! Do you have a log file from the crash? I imagine i'll do a post jam version with some audio and a couple more monsters but I just didn't have time :D
I LOVE the art style. Sadly I couldn't get it running on my Mac, but the screen shots are super pretty!
I LOVE the art/mood, the game definitely gets the player into it. The gameplay was really smooth, though I found fighting in the purely white rooms with no visible walls nearby was weird. I'll echo the want for an HP bar. I never died so I never really had a feeling of worry about it.
hey thanks for giving it a go, I definitely agree about the lack of additional set dressing in the more open rooms. Annoyingly I didn't even think of it until play testing after the jam was over
The artstyle is great, I'm a big fan. The world might be a bit empty, but it helps to fuel a sense of loneliness and dread. Nice game for a jam with good use of the theme!
I really love the empty, desolate feel - I think it suited the tone perfectly. I was shocked at the end! I thought the enemies were fun to fight as well. I actually liked that there was no health bar.
hey thankyou for the positive review! I thought the lack of punctuation (due to a technical glitch) and rushed dialogue combined with fully fading out the last scene made the story almost impossible to understand it sounds like you at least got the gist of it though which is really reassuring thanks!
nice game but to bad there is no audio
As everyone says, the art is absolutely beautiful and I really enjoyed the combat.
I like the art style, it reminded me a lot of Hyperlight Drifter. I struggled to understand what was happening in the game or what I was supposed to do, maybe some more helpful text after each reset?
The art is really beatiful. I liked especially the monsters. I think the mood of this game is just spot on. You really feel the loneliness of the main chracter. Some cool music or at least sound effects would be a nice touch to it, though. The combat was fun, but I think that a health bar would be nice.
The character design is really cool and the game feels good even with the unconventional controls. I think just adding a bit of grass would fill out the world more, and some feedback for attacks, deaths ect.
This game just _Feels_ good. Smooth satisfying sprinting on snow (would love to see trails), time consuming sprite sheets, light weight, this game is _ALL SET_
The monsters and main character sprite are top-notch! Some ambient music and a few sound effects would surely improve the experience, but even without them I had fun play.
Really great art style. It has a very relaxing vibe to it. Although I must say reaching the end and just seeing "Oh Henry just died" The end. That was pretty disappointing haha
hey thanks for giving it a try, finding henry is the end of the first of 3 "memories" in the game intended to explore the hunters past, I don't think it says "the end" after that.. well hopefully not!
Nice game, the feeling is nice, art too. Congrats
This game and concept is similar to one of the old FLASH games, but it's cool!
The character animations look very nice, and I like the overall mood. As the others have already mentioned, it could certainly benefit from some sounds: even basic sfxr sound effects can go a surprisingly long way in improving the game feel!
The mood and art style are amazing :heart_eyes: Couldn't get used to the controls, especially in combat. Could use some sound.
Hey thanks everyone for trying my game
@toasteater I am hoping I get time to do a post jam version with sounds but it's more complex than just making the wav files as this game is written without an engine in C++ and I forgot to integrate a sound API before the jam. I will integrate FMOD before the next jam but I'm not sure if that will happen today or in 3 months
@maclav sorry you found the controls awkward, the gameplay is based on diablo but I didn't have time to integrate targeting enemies sorry!
The art in this game is really something else I love the detailed pixel art used! great job! Gameplay was fine a bit awkward to control but it worked. Good entry
A Fun little game. I actually really enjoyed the art direction the most. I managed to get to the end. The story has a good idea behind it. However it is a Jam, so obviously it can't be developed to its full potential. I would've totally 'digged' a roll mechanic.
Great entry! The art is great and I loved the design of the enemies, so unique! I was skeptical of the controls when I first read them but I think they actually work quite nicely. One thing I wish the game had was some sort of reticle for aiming, either just something on the mouse to help stand out against the snow or a vector that points to where the player is aiming. Other than that keep up the good work!
Nice job! Art and mood are very good! At some point there are too many enemies but reason to kill them, you need to give some bonus or something! Anyway, nice entry!
I didn4t encountered a signel enemy. Is it a bug or am I dumb ?
@wakobu the first part is to rest at a camp (not the one you start in) to complete the first "loop" after that enemies should spawn on future loops
I love the art style (and its really well done!) and the game play is simple yet super fun. I like that the enemy shots arent 100% accurate because it allows for the threat of enemies to scale with the number of them One of the sounds (i think the footsteps) only played in my left ear. Other than that its great!
Like others, I loved the art style here! Those animations were great.
I also wish there was more reasons to explore and keep hunting enemies but understandably time was limited.
At first I hated the controls, but after a minute I started to like them a lot. Reminded me of Hyper Light Drifted / Transistor - I really liked the mood and the theme, footsteps are a nice thing. In the last level I just avoided the enemies, gave up on killing them all.
I really missed some visual indication for getting shot - a red screen flash would be enough to let me know that I've been hit. Nice 2d pixel art! The end, "polished" product that I imagine in my head is really something that I'd like to play or spend 15$ on steam!
The graphics are great. The monochromatic palette really helps the mood, although the mood is broken by the dialog (in particular "Oh Henry died nevermind") I would have preferred if the controls were WASD, but apart from that, really good entry!
@robonaut121 hey thanks for giving it a go; I feel like I screwed the dialogue up in this, the character you play is the ghost of a dead hunter and the dialogue is supposed to imply her growing detachment from her memories but.. eh I made a mess of it. It was extremely rapidly written and the broken punctuation rendering didn't help much. But enough excuses I'll try to do better next jam!
For context most of the scene art (trees / wall decoration etc) was made in the last hour before the submission deadline... so there wasn't much time for polish or features to keep the player engaged.
@copito Wow! I didn't realise the story actually went that deep! Good work!
Neat little game but to be honest I barely understood anything that's going on. I guess Henry is a fox and he's dead? I had some thoughts while playing the game I'd like to share. 1. You seem like you know what you're doing with art, your animations and sprites are awesome, but there are no shadows in the game, no shadows for the arrows / trees / characters. In general light is a must for establishing atmosphere. Just a few god rays or shadow circles can go a long way and it doesn't take any time to throw them in so there's no excuse for not doing it. 2. Same goes for the sounds, googling 'free winter forest ambience' and slapping it into the game takes minutes. 3. You could foreshadow more, play with the idea of who is henry, maybe he's a human? What if it's a child? Could be a tense story if you had like a dark forest, have a snow storm going or something... But that's just my ideas. 4. Why is there a wall in this frigid forest? :D You could use just the trees.
Anyways, congrats on your entry! Nice one.
HOW can those few pixels look so lifelike? o: Impressed by the spritework you've done!
I loved to read your comment about the background story of the protagonist! Would love to see the finalized vision one day or at least a spinoff game in the same world!
@trexxak @xk-the-name I thought it might be worth adding a short story synopsis here since I know I did a bad job of fleshing it out and I've half explained it in various comments.
*spoilers*
----- game story ----- * I need to find henry, he shouldn't be out on his own - (can't remember what happened to her dog) * Finds the body of her dog: * Oh henry died. Never mind - (Her dogs fate isn't the main thing on her mind) * What was it I was doing here - (can't remember why she's here and has forgotten about her dog) * Finds a slaughtered animal: * There's food here, that's right there was food here before. We came to look for food, I wonder if henry is ok - (remembers she was looking for food and contrasts her current perception of a world of nothing but ice with a previous world with animals and food) * I wonder how long I've been here - (can't remember anything) * Finds her body: * That's right we couldn't find enough food, I was called Jenny right? Maybe I can rest now - (remembers her name and rests in peace)
----- overview -----
The story follows the ghost of a hunter who came to the waste lands to hunt animals for food, however she couldn't find any and after loosing her dog (Henry) froze to death. In the game she is haunted by effigies of her body freezing as she tries to understand her situation until eventually she finds her body and rests in peace.
@trexxak I'm glad you liked it. In many ways I would like to do a "full" version of this game maybe 1 hour long priced around $5 but I have too many other projects on my plate sadly
@xk-the-name Thanks for the feedback, I would certainly have liked to add more graphical polish and fluff but there just wasn't time. Obviously downloading sounds would have required me to opt out of audio anyway but I would have added sounds if it weren't for the lack of code support in my C++ code base at the time of the jam. Sorry!
Nice gameplay, the most satisfying was the sound and feel of shooting arrows :D that baaaaase Reminded me of hours spent playing diablo2. Cheers!
@pawciu awesome thanks for giving it a go! Diablo 2 was actually a game I used for reference for this, the archers movements should be pretty close to the amazon from d2 as I captured some gifs from her movement in d2 and them as reference for animating the character. The archer AI is also based loosely on how the archers move in d2
ahh, i really like this! no doubt the character animation work is my favorite part it's pretty great! i also appreciate the effort that comes with working in C++ without the benefit of engines and quick-to-use visual tools
it all felt a bit wandery and like i wasn't quite sure where i was going or if i was progressing -- but at the same time i kind of enjoyed that aspect of it and found it oddly relaxing! the constant cycle of the character constantly realizing and immediately forgetting kind of mirrored that experience and complemented it in a way, heh -- as the game continued, i wasn't sure if more exploration was expected of me and didn't realize i had completed it until i read your synopsis of the story events -- overall, i very much enjoyed it!
some recommendations: * in the post-jam version, the footsteps using positional audio made them always play in one ear when you move left and right which was a bit strange, i would recommend using an audio source with no stereo panning for most sounds like that emitted by the player * the camera being fixed to the player made it move a bit sharply, i would recommend using something like `std::lerp()` to have the camera smoothly interpolate to the player's position each frame! just the little details to make things that extra bit nicer~
@jjoeyay interesting idea about smoothing out the camera movement, I don't think this is directly related to character movement rather to a deliberate decision to quantize everything to the pixel art grid. I do agree though that perhaps for this style of game it would be nicer to move the camera with screen pixels.
I think Enter the Gungeon probably allows the camera to move with screen pixels while say Nuclear Throne snaps it to art pixels, I think the snap gives a more raw visceral feel but in the case of this game that's not really what I was after. Might be something I'll revisit in future if I do another slower paced pixel art game.
Thanks for your feedback! (And yes sorry the sound is a bit crap)