FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD47 → Lost In The Woods

Lost In The Woods

By patrickjr

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4803.0827
Fun5212.7427
Innovation3823.1226
Theme494.2226
Graphics2823.4827
Audio4911.8725
Humor3462.3523
Mood4392.8925

Comments

ashley-koett 2020-10-05 01:02

omg i love this game. the idea is awesome. i haven't beat it yet but it's fun. great job!!

aarimous 2020-10-05 01:05

I like the art style, not sure what the torch's are for. I ended up using them to mark where I had been. Never found the hole. Maybe I'm suck looping through the wood and there isn't a hole.. if that's the case nice theme, if it's not I think this game needed a little more gas.

patrickjr 2020-10-05 03:36

@aarimous There is a hole somewhere. You are right about the torches: they are there to help you mark where you've been. The entire map loops in on itself like a weird disfigured checker pattern. You just gotta find the right path. Thanks

patrickjr 2020-10-05 03:41

@ashley-koett Thank you very much!

diaonic 2020-10-06 00:27

Nice job overall, few suggestions. Remove the collider from the torch, placing one while walking and then having to walk around it was pretty annoying. Diagonal movement would be a nice addition too.

Nice work! Love the art

dusho 2020-10-06 12:40

really nice art.. could use some background music.. also at it was mentioned, diagonal movement would be nice

edomiyamoto 2020-10-06 12:42

Hey good job for a compo ! Managed to find the hole btw. It's cool to explore this forest and mark down places. Bit of advices: -Removing torches is a good thing, but colliding when we place them while walking is meh. -A bit of soundtrack would add a lot to the mood, consider making something, even a tiny loop, so that players are not bored

And I guess that's it ! Liked it :)

gwinnell 2020-10-06 12:42

Tried many different routes but could not find the hole. ☹️ Agree on both points of @diaonic's feedback. Also music! Great use of theme tho!

zimny11 2020-10-06 12:46

Cool game! I actually found a hole and finished the game, I think :)

masonmasonoff 2020-10-06 13:00

Cool game I think the game would have looked better if we had played at night And I didn't find the hole

star-sought 2020-10-06 13:15

I really like this! It's a great use of the theme. I love the feeling of being lost, and I think the misaligned world tiles are a great way to achieve that in a video game. The first time I wrapped back around to my tent was a fun shock. The torch placement is a smart feature--it's something active to do as you wander that gives you the sense that you're making progress. I think without the torches, the game would rely too heavily on memorization and random wandering, and would become frustrating much more quickly. Great job!

Oh--I also loved all of the little set pieces around the world. It was very exciting every time I found a new area.

patrickjr 2020-10-06 19:12

@diaonic @dusho @edomiyamoto @gwinnell @star-sought

Thank you very much for the feedback! You guys are absolutely right about the torches, I should have made the player not collide with them. Diagonal movement would indeed make it feel much better.

As for music, I agree that it would make the game so much better. Unfortunately I don't know a thing about music nor how I could make game music. If any of you know any free tools I could use to make game music can you please share it with me? I would really like to have that in my future games.

Thanks

edomiyamoto 2020-10-06 21:04

@patrickjr Making music while not into it at all is a bit complex but not undoable ! For me the start was to get LMMS which is a free music software (and I do all my jams and even more with that). You can download things called "VST" on the internet for free who are basically "instrument" or even use it as it is. There are a lot of tutorial on "how to make a song in 10 minutes" on youtube, check it, train yourself a few hours, you'll get the basic quickly !

patrickjr 2020-10-06 21:59

@edomiyamoto Thank you very much. Music was always missing in my games.

arttu-halonen 2020-10-08 12:32

The way the map loops around itself is really cool, it looks seamless and feels like being lost in an enchanted forest, stuck running around in circles! The game also looks nice, but it needs a bit more audio (forest background, footsteps, maybe music?) to keep the player engaged. Solid entry!

eugenik 2020-10-09 16:29

Best game jam game I've played yet! Good job!

sop-the-turtle 2020-10-10 01:32

This was a fun game. I like how it looped in a non-standard way but it felt seamless. Nowhere did it feel like there was a "jump" or anything. You stuck to the theme very well too. I did eventually find the whole but I definitely had to think about where I had been and where I hadn't been though. This was a good job. Thanks for making it!

maychant 2020-10-10 01:37

~~A gender reveal simulator, very nice.~~

It was a bit of a challenge. I just walked into the rabbit hole by accident at the end. I like the concept and the art style fits what it's trying to do.

patrickjr 2020-10-10 03:23

@arttu-halonen Thank you! I wanted to add more sounds but ran out of time. I will keep that a higher priority for my next games.

@eugenik Thank you very much!

@sop-the-turtle Thanks. Making a seamless system took me a while.

@maychant "A gender reveal simulator" lmao, thanks.

peachtreeoath 2020-10-10 04:47

Wow, very unique take on the theme. In respective, I'm surprised there aren't more Lost Woods type of games so this is brilliant.

At first I didn't get what the torches were for, I just kinda spammed them (as I'm sure others did). Once the level finally looped, I had an ah ha! moment. It immediately made the whole game better because I knew what I was about to get into.

I eventually did find the hole. I'm sorta glad I had unlimited torches because I felt free to place them. I do wonder what it'd be like if you only had say, 5 torches and you had to pick up previous ones.

Annoying? Maybe. Strategically interesting? Maybe?

Nice entry overall. How difficult was it to make that kind of looping world?

patrickjr 2020-10-10 18:45

@peachtreeoath Thanks for the elaborate review! I did consider adding a limited number of torches, though I ran out of time. It's probably for the best, as you said it would likely be annoying. Making the looping world was tough at first, but once I figured out how it would work the programming wasn't difficult. Took me about a day.

The whole map is just one regular world repeating. It's organized in a sort of grid. The game only has 9 tiles generated at once: the one the player is on and the 8 around it. Each "room" is a prefab which has a reference to the types of rooms surrounding it. When the player enters it, it creates those new rooms (if they aren't already there), and destroys the rooms far from the player. The rooms at the far right create rooms at the far left, and rooms at the far left create rooms at the far right. Same with up-down. There is also a program which keeps track of torch placement in each room type.

peachtreeoath 2020-10-10 19:14

Ahh ok nice. I thought you may have been teleporting the player around but that sounds much easier!

jimbly 2020-10-13 02:49

I found the hole! I'm... not quite sure what was going on, though it eventually became clear that the world was not looping in a regular fashion, I couldn't tell if there was any rhyme or reason to how it was looping, so I found the hole mostly by accident, not because of figuring anything out. Fails as a puzzle game, but succeeds as a surreal adventure =).

gamescodedogs 2020-10-15 05:04

Very good and complex game for the compo. I really like how it feels in general :) Best of luck!

ditam 2020-10-18 20:03

A very cute game, and impressive for the compo, congrats! I found the rabbit hole, but I was cursed to wake up by my tent again... am I really stuck in a loop, or is there a different way out?

Our games are name brothers, my entry is called A Day in the Woods :)

ladymistleaf 2020-10-23 00:04

Very nice game! The only hole I managed to find was the rabbit hole, so I didn't get to escape the forest.