Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Unto the Eight
By threeli
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 401 | 3.52 | 103 | |
| Fun | 611 | 3.07 | 103 | |
| Innovation | 422 | 3.25 | 103 | |
| Theme | 759 | 2.94 | 102 | |
| Graphics | 146 | 3.98 | 105 | |
| Audio | 234 | 3.53 | 101 | |
| Humor | 206 | 3.16 | 98 | |
| Mood | 174 | 3.71 | 98 |
I had planned on hosting the files on my website, but of course it's not working today so it'll have to be google drive for now. I'm unsure if I can edit this page later but (assuming my page decides to work) I may try and host it there or itch later on. Please let me know if the links don't work for any reason. Thank you!
(EDIT) Whether or note I can change the files later on, I will get an itch page for the game and attempt the HTML5 version.
Wow, the HTML5 version is messed up. The game appears to work as intended, but the manual doesn't escape properly (it requires that you specifically press Escape to back out of it).
Its quite a hard game, but I love the atmosphere you created! The dialogue makes it feel like I'm only seeing a small glimpse of a bigger world.
Not bad gameplay. But the author wants, that in every step player should afraid of being dead. Good music, but I think, voxel style is not a good idea
Like the atmosphere that the visuals and music creates
The atmosphere of the game is very good, I really enjoyed the art and music.
Very good work, I am impressed.
What button do you press to START the game? (I'm on the web version, you said it was a little off but still works as intended?) Judging just based on the screenshots however, it looks pretty good.
Nice visual style! its kinda hard to see where you can go though, and you die from cold rather fast, so it took me a couple of tries to make even a little bit of progress. But definitely very impressive for a game made in a weekend!
I love the graphics. The sounds are nice as well.
The game in itself looks a bit too much based on having to refill fire and energy. But I may be missing something.
Heckin' impressive to create a world like this in 48h ^^ Well done! I enjoyed it a lot :D
@mkmuffi It should either be Enter or Z to start the game. I hope you'll play even if the web version is a little off, it's a pretty big world to explore even if you never beat it!
@steven-c thank you, I've had a lot of people tell me that it's way too hard. I was going for it being very fair but difficult. I may have gone overboard. I'm pretty sure I'm going to rewrite it and expand it, and if I had more time I would've liked to add difficulty settings.
@loig I spent most of my time on graphics, so I really appreciate the kudos in that department. As for the difficulty, I'm hearing the feedback loud and clear. I think the southern areas should've been way more accessible, and I probably should nerf the speed at which your temperature drops. Thank you for the feedback.
@gaminghamster thank you so much, I hope you'll play it again whenever I finish the expanded version!
@syrsa123 Thank you, I love working on worldbuilding and this means a lot to me!
@gui-miottto thank you, I feel like I went as far as I could in the time, and I'm looking forward to expanding the world and making it all a little more approachable.
@roofloorwall thanks! I'm going to have to have a big think about the difficulty curve. I think the lack of sleep and my closeness to the design made me blind to how impossible it might be if you didn't design it, haha.
This is a really neat idea. I can imagine someone spending a lot of time finding the ideal path (speed running) this game. Even though I tend to not like games in this genre. I thought the art was cohesive, the audio was solid, and the world building was thorough. Overall pretty cool stuff.
Constructive criticism, some of the pixel art didn't quite read the object for me, but I eventually figured it out.
@evil-villain-games thank you. I tried hard to create a space with an extremely flexible route to victory, but yeah after I was done I wondered about the potential for optimum routes. Thank you for your kind words, and yeah as I'm pretty sure I want to rewrite and expand the game I absolutely need work on making sure all the art reads well.
I really liked the super low-res pixel art, looked great IMO. I'm generally not someone who goes in for super hard games, so you may want to take this with a grain of salt, but I felt that the lighting mechanic detracted from the exploration element of the game. For me, the main draw was to explore and see what's out there. You're not going to win on your first run, but that's ok because you gathered information. But if you're on super low light level, you probably won't manage to see much of the current area before you succumb to the cold.
Also, a minor complaint, but it was a little annoying when enemies were right beside a screen edge (like the snakes immediately north of spawn) because you couldn't tell if you were about to step in on top of one.
@wheybags Solid feedback, thank you. I even nerfed the light mechanic right before I posted (it was harder) - but clearly I didn't go far enough. The off screen enemy issue is pretty serious annoyance. I'll have to think about more feedback for the player to prevent it. I was thinking about some kind of audio based clues about the world state. As I mentioned above I also would like to make the southern regions way less punishing. Anyway, thanks for the feedback and for playing!
I liked the way you had to be calculated when navigating the enemies. The game is easily addicting as you learn a little each time on how to survive and complete the objective. The dialogue is humorous and adds to the narrative. It took me a couple tries to fully understand the timing on my health and lantern so that I knew when to look for the supplies. Overall enjoyable! Would play again.
@katarina-buckley wow thank you! I spent way too long writing the dialog so I'm glad it's being appreciated at least a little. I hope someone will eventually win, maybe you!
really impressive considering only 48 hours to make this game has a very big sense of scale and mystery, I haven't seen everything but it feels almost impossibly huge
atmosphere is great and I love the idea of taking a lot of the interlinking systems and mechanics that old school roguelikes and games like dwarf fortress have and trying to merge that with something more akin to Zelda
love the art as well
@diabolical-sloth this is big praise. I spent the last maybe 8 hours or so focused solely on adding in content. I'll put out a map of the world in the itch downloads sooner than later so people can see how big the place is. As far as the mechanics I wanted to keep it simple and deterministic. You could literally chart the thing with graph paper. I have a ton of ideas for the expanded version, but I think the simplicity is central to it working at all. Anyway, thanks again. I really appreciate the compliments.
Facts: - This pixel art is quite fantastic - These controls are very satisfying
Super impressive. I want more :smiley:
This is very well made! I love the way the heat/fire works, but maybe it's a little fast to go out. Being able to hold a direction would be nice. Oh and the way the music changes to become eerie is a nice touch! Well done!
The art is amazing, the lighting mechanic sets a nice mood, and the sound effects are very satisfying! It's quite difficult, but this is a world I would spend a lot of time in. Really awesome job.
Loved the atmosphere! The temperature gauge seemed to move a little fast, but otherwise everything was amazing. Really great job!
I'm going to have to be on the "it's too hard" camp. I probably missed something, but I couldn't understand how to not freeze to death and the light doesn't stay for long enough. It seems to be a world worth exploring, there seems to be a lot of NPC that have stuff to say and all, but knowing that it'll be short, dark and lead to having to redo the same path again after kind of broke it for me. Which is very sad because the game is very pretty and seem very interesting. One little thing about the controls : having to spam the arrow keys all the time is a bit annoying, being able to just hold a key would have been better.
@secret-magic-404 thank you! I've been hard at work on a very-different, though somewhat similarly styled game called Protobug. For now though, I think I'm going to take a break from it and remake UTE bigger, better, and with difficulty options. If you want more, there should be more!
@blackopsben @masaru I've already been considering both how to make the world seem more fair and to add in difficulty options to the expanded-remake for interested players. I can't believe I didn't consider adding hold to move, it's such a courtesy move. I will definitely add it in - thank you for the idea! Also @masaru I can see the frustration, so I hope you'll play the expanded version when I finish it!
@tetrapteryx @jakegames2 thank you both, I tried really hard to convey the world. The great thing is even though I whipped it up as concretely as I could in two days - I left a ton of threads for myself to pull. I've never done a JAM before, but I was surprised at how organically the world developed.
Very cute game! Felt like a very big world, with the npc's discussing events happening elsewhere to hint at you to go there. That part reminded me of zelda games and their exploration. I thought the light mechanic was pretty neat, but I think it could be used differently to create some checkpoints around the map. With this, you might be able to limit access to some areas and subconsiously lead the player in a desired path? might be something to look into. The visuals were great and sound accompanied it well. Nice work overall!
@corbeng Oh! As in you could light the candles or some similar mechanic to create safer areas? I like this idea a lot. I do however want the players to explore and architect their own paths, (as opposed to say, having there be an optimal one from the start) but I think this idea still works to encourage that, maybe even more. Hmm. Thank you!
Also, originally (but cut due to lack of time) enclosed structures would've kept you warm which is something I will have in the final game.
This is very, very cute and I have to play it again to see if I can get farther (I've only managed to deliver to two characters). I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if it wasn't turn based but nevertheless this was fun and I loved the whole mood.
@ladybenko interesting thought! Is it specifically the turn based that you find annoying? Or the movement? I'm open to reconsidering that element of the gameplay, but I felt like it was critical to allow contemplative decision making in an otherwise pretty harsh game. Either way thank you for the praise!
The graphics combined with music and dialogue make for a really nice atmosphere. It's surprisingly hard too (which is not bad). The only annoyance I had is that some buildings are cut in half because of room transitions but that's a minor thing. Really impressive game, loved it very much. Congrats! :D
@deseteral yeah! I designed the world space early on taking into account the screen transitions, but didn't end up having time to fix individual rooms. There were even a few "two tile tall" characters I had to rush move towards the end. This is a similar problem to offscreen enemies providing no feedback. All things to fix!
Thank you for playing, and for the praise!
@threeli I found it a bit frustrating in the northern area, where there's some kind of wall/fence with a very narrow entrance and you need to scroll through different areas to get it. It was swarmed with enemies and it was really difficult to predict their movement and learn where to move to avoid them… specially with the stress of running out of light and warmth.
To be fair, I'm not _that_ used to play turn-based rogues, so that might be the issue here :) Anyways, it's a great submission, and just wanted to congratulate you again for a very good job.
the pixel art in this game is absolutely adorable and amazing! i'm a big fan of pixel art and the way you wove it in with the music of the game was nice and fitting too :two_hearts: i hope you go through with creating a full build of this game because i'd love to see it be developed further! nice work :smiley:
@threeli if you ever make this into a full game I would be very interested in playing that!
@ladybenko I think there's a few areas with some overly annoying entrances, and I regret putting enemies in the Pale Keep! It's something I intend to fix, as I want it to be difficult but also fair! I really appreciate you playing it and leaving some kind words
@carolinewang Thank you! I wanted to do a ton more with the music, but alas someone decided to enter a 48 hour competition.
@deseteral @carolinewang I am absolutely going to turn this into a full game! The encouragement is very rewarding, thank you.
Simple and fun I really liked your idea of exploring the depths of the woods!
@softground Thank you! I tried to keep it simple, I'm glad it delivered and that you enjoyed it.
:heavy_check_mark: The visual style is great, reminds me a bit of Baba is You.
I think the idea is good, and has potential to be expanded later on :slight_smile:.
It's interesting to see temperature :thermometer: as a mechanic encouraging movement, usually that would be used for hunger so for a change of pace it's nice.
:x: I'm going to get in the train about the difficulty, even after five attempts I've barely been able to reach 440 steps or so :sweat:.
@train27 Thank you, I'm excited to see where I can take the idea, and the world. As for how brutal it is, I'm thinking through a couple difficulty options for the expanded version. I have some neat, thematically appropriate ideas, one of which would be glowing eyes for a permanent view distance increase. I'd like to offset things like that though, with some kind of penalty. Not really to keep the game so punishing but to make different options feel different rather than just cheat codes.
Anyway, thank you for the kind words!
Yeah you killed it with the exploration! I freaking loved that art style, nothing too complex but good colors and just sick pixel art which I could really appreciate.
I am kind of in a rush so unfortunately I wasn't able to finish (I still might try later), but for what I had time to play the mechanics were really good and simple, super straight forward. Satisfying movement and nice interactive stuff, which made the thing a lot more interesting! And yeah for the time I had going north was a BAD idea lmao. Music was also epic and fitting in its own way :laughing:
Cool to hear that you have a plan to make this a full game, going to be super interesting to see it, since even though it's a pretty simple game it has a lot of potential and just feels super wholesome. I'll hit you up with a follow on LD to see if you post some milestones while developing it! :rocket:
@raffe thank you! Yeah as I was designing it during the compo I realized by the second day that literally anyone showed interest I was going to work on rewriting it and making a full game out of it. I'm glad you think it the simplicity confers potential. That's kind of what I thought, and I don't think it would have to become much more complex to offer a lot of enjoyment.
And as every one has told me, I need to dial back the punishing difficulty. Anyway, thanks for checking it out!
i love this game ! it remind me "mimit" x) you did pretty good job !
@nyanpierre I love the art style of Minit (I think that's what you were referencing?!) so that's a big ole compliment. I appreciate the kind thoughts!
I really REALLY love the music. Really nice.
@lrl64 Thank you, when I was booting up Ableton I didn't know if I was going to be able to work/think quickly enough to make anything worth the time lost. There's actually two whole stems of the track that got cut for time. But I'm beyond happy a few people noticed the track.
Makes me feel like I'm playing a spiffed up version of frogger. The gameplay was very fun, the atmosphere was very well done, the music was very fitting. I feel like you could have on-boarded the player into the mechanics a little better (via a show-don't-tell approach) Just because it's emulating old-games, doesn't mean it has to replicate their bad habits. No knock against the jam entry though, it's a lot to get done in 48 hours ! Great job !
You made this in 48 hours? What? This is superb, I'm pleasantly surprised and deeply impressed. Thank you for creating this :heart:
I agree with the general feeling that it is hard, tough and somewhat unforgiving, but these are conscious design choices — they're features, not flaws. As someone pointed out, it reminds me of Minit-like games. The gameplay is puzzle-esque in the sense that you have to die often to understand how to better optimize your routes for the next "run". The only pseudo-criticism I have with this game loop is that it's kinda tough to play it all the way through the end while rating games for the jam. But I love it all and would gladly pay for a full version, please keep working on it.
10/10, probably the best game I've played so far :trophy:
@wooliii I really did want to have an in game mechanic safe zone to allow the player to learn, in fact I even had one early on - but it was pretty incomplete so I had to cut it. I’m going to reintroduce the idea for the real version. I’m glad you liked the music, and had at least a little fun playing it!
@pijamar wow. This is maybe the best compliment I’ve ever gotten for any project. I’m really happy you were able to read the level of intention with which I tried to design the flow and loop.
I did consider making it smaller but I really wanted anyone who played it to feel like they could really explore.
I’m very excited about turning it into a full game and I’ve got a ton of ideas for it. I’m only waiting a little bit so I can internalize all the feedback I get on this sort of prototype.
Thank you for the encouragement!
Lovely artstyle and fun gameplay. Very polished for a Ludum dare game. I didn't manage to finish it but I'm bookmarking this to get back to it later. Well done!
Extremely good ! The art is fantastic, the music very nice and fitting, and the general creature and world design is wonderfully weird. You feel the world living while playing, and this is seriously impressive for a game made in 48h. I'm in awe of what you did.
While it is indeed hard, I don't think the game in itself is too hard ; I believe the real difficulty is the lack of checkpoints. But I also see why you have to do everything in one go, it's also about planning your path, so I don't really know if it's possible to implement checkpoints in such gameplay. I think the really hard thing is when you don't have light anymore, then you are basically screwed if you are too far from a cold fire. Maybe making a shadow of entities just adjacent to the player would be nice ; like, the same sprite for all entitie, something that says "hey there is something here, but you can't see what it is. Will you interact on it ?". I believe it would fit very well on your movement system.
Overall an excellent experience. I'll try again because I did not manage to finish it. I'm also curious to see the full map and might look at it in the source code (but after finishing it, don't want to spoil myself !)
Maybe it's just been too long since I played games like the original Zelda but I felt a bit lost, and dying was so frequent it kept me from wanting to explore more. Loved the artstyle!
Very nice looking and playing game, I especially love the art-style which is like the mix of old NES adventure games and modern rogue-likes.
Yes! you were supposed to link me to your game to shamlesly promote! And I'm glad you did! I enjoyed it a lot, what a fun little adventure. Had so much fun getting lost and finding myself again. Thank you for sharing, good stuff
@linus-lindberg @jorenkv thank you both! I really enjoy trying to work within the constraints of 8x8 and it was almost too much to add more constraint to the compo, but I couldn't help myself.
@littlegamer the shadow idea is pretty brilliant, I hope you don't mind if I steal it. I've been thinking about checkpoints a lot. I think the best way to work around it in the full version would be to allow checkpoints if the player wants, but have some sort of tradeoff. If you do look at the source I apologize in advance - I did not write it for other humans to look at. It's some of the worst code I've ever written, as I was just in a sprint to the finish pretty much the whole time haha! Thank you for the praise, and for the genius idea!
@jorenkv I've heard quite a bit about the difficulty taking away from peoples desire to explore further, which is a hard pill to swallow - hopefully when I turn it into a full game you'll give it another chance. I do plan on adding difficulty modifiers!
@lesinvisible I appreciate the kind words, and Zelda is always a good reference point for "open world" design, even if I didn't specifically have it in mind when writing this game.
@bicheste Getting lost and finding yourself is something I'd like to focus on in the expanded version - assuming the punishment for getting lost is nearly always death as it seems to be for a lot of players now! I'm glad you liked it.
I think you did a good job capturing a cohesive art style for the game. I find that particularly hard to do sometimes for Jams/Compos. The kinda offtune audio was a nice change of pace from the usual tunes that you find in games like these. The overall game mechanics were straight forward and easy to catch onto as well. However, if you're thinking of making this into a full game I would maybe try and expand a bit on the overall complexity of the system. The movement is turnbased right? If so maybe you can add another mechanic on top of that. What that might be exactly I'm not sure.
Upon full release of a game like this, I think I'd highly look forward to seeing you artistic expression with new environments as the game progresses. Good job!
@pookipoot Thanks! It's really a fairly small tileset copied a few times because last minute I didn't feel I had time to write a proper tile system with palette swapping and all that. Importantly I have a ton of ideas with where I can take the game visually.
You're totally right that it's too simple currently for a large scale game. I'm thinking about how I can balance any additional mechanics with player expectation. I suspect even just having more interactivity in the world would go a long way to increasing the staying power.
As for the Audio, not to get in the weeds, but I used a synth plugin called [Chiral](https://fors.fm/chiral) and just messed with the params in real time. I'm glad you noticed the fluctuations, because that's where most of that hour went haha.
Anyway, thank you for the thoughts!
This is a nice game, the art style is nice and the music adds to the atmosphere of the game. The main problem I have is that you have to know where to go or else you are going to die. Not having an easy way to manage your resources feels a bit harsh. Having firepits and stuff near delivery places rewards you for completing a delivery for example.
Having only space for one package seems a bit weird as well, finding a package giver only realizing you can't deliver theirs yet, so having to go deliver your current package, then go back to the guy seems a bit of a roundabout way.
Overall it is a complete game with a lot to discover, nice work!
@bridgeonastick the idea for a sort of inbuilt thematic reward system is wise. I'll more than likely include that in the full version. As I have written somewhere in this wall of comments I originally planned on having the buildings warm you up, but the feature got cut for time.
I may stick with the one package at a time thing, to force the player to explore the world - but only if it makes sense to do so, and doesn't foist unnecessary backtracking on the player. I'm glad you brought it up though, you're the first one to do so and it's something I should consider.
As for the resources comment, what do you mean by that? I'm considering a little inventory where you can set a few items to keep for longer treks, but keeping it very limited. Would that help to solve the issue?
Thank you for the feedback and for the praise.
Design is cool, I like feeling like I can sense what the creator wanted me to do. A nice juicy little burst of stress every time I get a little bit farther without dying, with appropriate music to go along with it. It’s kind of addicting. Very nice!
@boneking thank you! I wanted to keep the pressure on but not go too far. I feel like, based on the majority of the comments I went way too far. I think the core idea works but needs serious tuning.
@threeli Something like an inventory would help I think. Honestly, the biggest issue is the visibility, not health or warmth. Once you can't see it's up to luck whether or not you survive. This is just a suggestion, but I think having an item that lights up the whole screen, but ends when the player moves gives players more chance of survival. And only have one of them available and refresh when you deliver a package or something like that.
@bridgeonastick hmm, I'll have to think about that. Single use items with a some sort of cost to acquire is a pretty solid idea. I'm adding it to the rolling list of ideas. Thanks!
Beautiful game and fantastic overall atmosphere and mood! Really good level design too. I really like the concept as well and the simplicity of the input. It is very difficult, but I think with this type of game it almost has to be difficult or it becomes too short. Great job on this!
@omid-ghavami Wow thank you for the high praise!
@threeli "the shadow idea is pretty brilliant, I hope you don’t mind if I steal it." Of course I don't mind ! I'm even glad you like it ! Thanks for the follow on Itch.io by the way, I followed you back because I want to see the full version later !
Awesome entry! Love the atmospheric world you created in that time with the graphics, music and interesting dialogue. Despite the few amounts of pixels the characters feel unique, but with a coherent style.
I also like the idea of the deterministic systems where the progress comes from learning more about the environment. For a full game however I could see there being too much backtracking from playing the same thing from the start. This might be completely against the spirit of the game, but how about a save mechanic? That would mean less backtracking from the start, unless you find yourself in an impossible position and someone who wants to find the optimal route could still have a big challenge. Maybe this would not be necessary with the slightly more forgiving light mechanics others have mentioned, though.
@pavelc Thank you! I'm obsessed with working on making small sprites express a lot of charisma, so it's very encouraging to hear when it works out. Yeah, I'm slowly thinking through how to make a full game retain the deterministic mapping element, but not require constant restarts (as that would just be grinding and strip away any of the novel exploration I was going for)
I'd like to architect a penalty for save scumming, but I do want there to be saving. It might be as simple as *where* you can save. It's funny you mention someone finding an optimal route. My friend is playing it right now, and he spent two hours with graph paper charting the world, which I find hilarious.
Anyway, thank you for the kind words and the thoughts, I'm going to add them to my rolling list!
@threeli Haha, yeah mapping it out on paper probably helps with optimisation. Maybe that could be made into a game mechanic :thinking:
And yeah, something like checkpoints instead of full save capability might be the better way to go
@pavelc I had not considered that (the mapping into a mechanic)... now my mind is racing with ways that might work thematically. Awesome! haha
I really liked the art style and the atmosphere. The game feels a bit confusing and difficult at first and I wasn't a big fan of the light mechanic; the light radius gets quite small very quickly and it's very difficult to explore the world at all at that point. But all in all, very impressive and well done :)
Cool game ! The art is lovely and the map fun to explore. Good job !
@assertfailure you are certainly not the only one who feels that way. As for the confusing part, I wish I had more time to have eased the player into the mechanics and the world, at least a little - but when I remake it I plan to address this concern. I also realize that the light mechanic is critical to the game, but also means a player can miss a lot of my lovingly crafted world, so I'm working on how to make the two concepts clash less.
Thank you for your feedback and encouragement!
@meta-link thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
cool game and lovely art! very fun to try to figure everything out
@muzakefron Thank you, I really wanted the exploration element to shine, so I'm happy it did for some people!
This game is really cool but it's difficult ! The light mechanic is hard at the beginning and you need few run to understand the map but it's fun to explore ! The graphics are perfect for this game, love it, even if sometime it's hard to see the green slime (enemy). Great game, clever and fun, good job !
The game is quite hard. To me at least. But. It's still great. The urge to find out about all the creatures living that place kept me going forward. And retrying.
I particularly like the colour palette and the moody forest feel it conveys while still being colourful, easy to read and pleasing to the eyes.
I really love the pixel art it's minimalistic but lovely ! The game mechanics are interesting it remember me another game I played in this this and it's pretty fun :)
If I have one thing to say is that sometimes the transition between 2 screens are a little weird fo example in the first screen there is one guy at the top of it and if you move to the next screen you can't see it anymore, it will be better to not have point of interest near the border of the screen I guess.
That said your game stay a really fun game overall, I enjoyed playing it good job :)
This is so great, if balanced a bit on the artificially difficult side for my taste. Not that that's bad - I suppose you aimed for a Minit-ish drive to explore the world iteratively, accruing knowledge and planning your path along it over several playthroughs. I truly love that - it shines through, and I think it was achieved well in this game (especially for a compo!), but I found the lack of light to be a bit too debilitating too soon, and the heat mechanic a bit too punishing; once your fire dwindles to a single tile radius, it feels less like being lost (which is a feeling and mechanic I fully support!) than simply waiting for the timer to tick down to start anew.
Overall, I do think this has loads of potential to become a full game, and one I'd happily pay to play. The sense of exploration is fantastic; I have a real soft spot for games that incentivize you to observe your surroundings and take them in, and where quests and errands require you to inhabit the world instead of follow a marker. Good luck continuing development!
e3525a0304417f015a66db59dc188d4c.png Very awesome game! It really felt like I was exploring a new world. Honestly the difficulty felt perfect. Any easier and it wouldn't have had so much charm. I think the people commenting on the difficulty being too much aren't trying that hard. This isn't a game you beat in 1 or 2 goes. You have to venture out and explore basically knowing you will die. Once you have learned the world and figured out the fastest routes only then are you ready to complete it. A true adventure game!
@shin0nome thank you! Yeah I did design a few of the enemies to blend in maybe a little too much. It's awesome that you had a good time exploring. That was my major goal with it.
@damagefilter I've had mixed comments on the readability of certain items, but the atmosphere was very important so I'm pleased it translated for you. I'm working through how I will modify (not tame!) the difficulty for the expanded/full version, so if you have any ideas I'm all ears!
@lorwon yes! It's an error in my deign process. Due to time constraints I designed the world without having an overlay for the screen size. I actually spent a last minute hour moving important guys around to try and fix it, but clearly I didn't get them all. I think your point about having important elements (and pathways) be more central on the screen is very valuable feedback. Thank you!
@eden-shazar I find it interesting that you're not along in thinking I was going for a Minit design style, but I was actually going for the opposite. In my mind the player would think about each step, as there is no timer nor does anything happen with the player standing still. I wanted the world to feel very contemplative, but I've noticed a few people felt the experience was meant to be fast and trails based. I wanted the game to be very flexible so I don't feel like this is a failure on my part per se, but def. something I need to think about for an expanded/full version. Thank you for the wise words and feedback, and I'll absolutely keep you in mind when I need someone to muck about in the real game.
@mikekan13 Wow, based on the comments here I didn't expect anyone to complete a run, but you've gone and done it. As I've said a few times in these comments, it really makes me overjoyed to know that the adventure/exploration element read so clearly to some people. It's something I find missing from many games, and I feel like it's going to be a central design element for any game I make moving forward. Thank you!
Pretty interesting and unique game. I thought the light system was a bit annoying when combined with the cold system, since you needed to explore to find wormplants and as time went on you could see less and less. It was hard to focus on the deliveries. Maybe your light should last a bit longer, I'm not sure. The art and sound were good, I am a sucker for pixel art and I enjoyed the bizarre-ness of the world and exploring it with all the goofy characters. Seems like the project has a lot of heart, and it shows. Nice work!
Really great work. Love the crafted-adventure/roguelike combination. Everything is cohesive, would definitely play a full version
It was hard for me to figure out what to do.
@wheffle I appreciate your candor, yeah I've heard a lot about the difficulty and in the expanded/full version I plan on making a lot of adjustments to the difficulty. Light will end up being a lot more dynamic and it will have more granular stages and, as you've suggested, certainly last longer. I hope you'll be up to giving it a shot then. I'm really glad you picked up on the bizarre-ness of the worldbuilding, it was very important to me!
@zzox thank you! I'll keep you in mind for an update when I get closer to reworking it into a full game!
@turtle-games I'm sorry to hear that! Did the manual not work for you in the menu, or was it just too condensed to make sense? I do know the core mechanics need a lot more clarification in the explanation department but I don't want to veer into hand holding territory. Any additional feedback would be awesome. Did you ever end up figuring out what to do? If so, what was it that worked for you? Thank you!
The game seemed decent and the graphics were good. The music is a bit simple but I guess it was part of the atmosphere ^^. I don't see the relationship with the theme though :/.
One important part for me : I didn't finished the game. Yeah, it was difficult, but it generally doesn't stops me. However, after a couple of tries, my wrist started to hurt. Maybe I'm getting old, I don't know, but having to spam the directions to move was hurtful, at least for me (just so you know : I'm not *that* old, ~30 y.o, and daily gamer, generally on the "competitive" side). I think it would have been better to hold a key to move in that direction (like one square per 0.33 s, for example).
Otherwise, good little game, I might give it another shot once I feel better :)
Calming/Cute little game. Really enjoy the mood
I really like the cute little art style and the music is great. Exploring around the world was fun. The only other feedback I would give (especially with smaller pixel art) is to make the enemies a separate color than the grass and walls, I think it would make it less difficult and slightly more balanced. Overall, wonderful job! :)
@metalfox-dioxymore I wanted to show case the theme of heading deeper and deeper into the wilderness of the north - maybe it didn't translate as well as I hopped. Yes, I kept the music simple intentionally, as I felt anything bombastic would get repetitious more quickly. I'm sorry about your wrists, it's the first time anyone has mentioned such an issue but I'm all about accessibility. Sadly I didn't have any time to add in accessibility options, but this is very important to me and I'll absolutely be taking your comment into account. This is a simple add that will open up the game for a lot of people, thank you!
@preda Thank you for the kind words!
@clemonades I did design some of the enemies to blend in, but I think I may have gone way overboard. Thank you for the note. One of the things I want to incorporate into the full experience is more generalized feedback for enemies and their locations, so it's less about tricking the player and more about the player making informed decisions. Thank you for the praise!
Will be coming back for this one - added to the personal library ;)
The main thing that got me on my initial plays was not really knowing _where_ I was meant to deliver, other than a direction. Maybe just knowing if I'd gone past it might be enough?
Solid entry nonetheless - great atmosphere and sounds!
That's a simple but hard game. It will make you happy if you like exploration, which is my case. Great atmosphere too with the music and sound effects. Nice work ! :)
@silkypantsdan that's an understandable frustration. Your suggestion is very plausible, so to make it happen thematically I think maybe I'll make it so you can show the package to some people and they might be able to tell you a rough direction from where you are. I'll definitely add this into the full/final game! If you do play it again let me know, I'm all about more perspectives and ideas. Thank you for the feedback and the praise!
@youhou thank you for the kind words! I really wanted to design something that favored exploration, so I'm glad it delivered for you.
It was fun however extremely difficult, the heart of this game is the exploration of a super neat little world, but all your systems punish the user for doing so, I wanted to explore the north but felt like I couldn't since resources were so scarce, I love the idea of losing your ability to see, it really nails in the the feeling of going into the woods that you were going for, however it happens super quickly and made the game really frustrating at times.
@zuwu you're not alone in thinking this, and I know one of the first things to think about is how to reward exploration rather than punish. As I've noted in the comments somewhere, one of my original ideas was to make the larger towns places of warmth and light, and I think I'll pick that back up. I also feel like after playing for a while you discover the south is chock full of helpful secrets, but as you've noted it means nothing if the player becomes too frustrated to figure it out. I'll try hard to make the final game lest frustrating so people will want to explore it's world.
Thank you for your feedback!
I like the art and the sounds. I find it quite hard as it's so easy to just misstep into an enemy. I like the idea of exploring and bringing stuff around, you can actually tell a story with this game. Nice one!
Such a unique gameplay experience! Well done :clap:
- The highlights for me are the world that you've built and the music. It is such a lush, vibrant place that is well fleshed out by the visuals and music. Really reminds me of Caves of Qud.
- The characters are all lovingly crafted and well written and kept me wanting to explore more.
- I didn't really understand the overall gameplay and my character's motivation, and I think you could flesh this out in the future version.
- Moving around in these large spaces made me wish that the movement was more continuous like in Undertale or something so that I didn't have to spam the arrow keys.
This was a really cool game, the mood was perfect and the world building was great.
The biggest problem for me was the light. Without light it becomes very frustrating, and I found almost no coldfire plants in my multiple tries.
Very original tho, it was a nice experience. Congrats!
@tanis I completely understand! I've already started on the full version and this is one of the big design challenges I've started to try and think my way through. One of the other suggestions I've been given was to show outlines in the dark. Aside from that I'll have to think about how to handle the edge of the screen. Thank you for the kind words!
@quite-good Thank you so much for the praise. A few people have asked for hold to move, so that'll be an option for sure. As for the characters motivation I'm working on adding some depth to the character and its motivations for the full game. You're one of the first people to mention this so I'm going to spend a little bit thinking about it further.
@asdehielo You are certainly not alone in feeling frustration with the light system as it stands. It's a definite area of focus for improvement. I'm working on a few different simple fixes for it and also thinking about it generally. Thank you for the feedback and the kind thoughts.
I really liked the game. The art and music are really good and the gameplay mechanics are unique. I found the cold damage very unforgiving and it really forced me to rush through.
Good work. The art and music are well fitting. Thanks.
I really enjoyed this, very evocative! It feels like a bigger world is being hinted at, and I do enjoy the survival mechanics combined with rogue-like stuff. Congrats!
Really neat concept. Took me a few tries to get the hang of it, but it was enjoyable once I figured it out. It was fun trying to optimize my routes for the deliveries while keeping my meters topped up. I didn't wind up doing all the deliveries, since the amount of meters you have to attend to and the speed at which they decrease while charting out this completely unknown map with low visibility got a bit overwhelming. Overall, a game with some interesting ideas. Nice work!
I would like to mention just how good the color palette you chose is, it really pulls the weight with such low-dimensions pixelart (8x8 is difficult!) and gives so much charm to your game!
Outside of that any criticism I have has already been covered by others: Hold to move, the light system (which sometimes is really well used in your level design). I also have difficulties interpreting the theme in there.
A little gem I'd love to see more of, congrats!
@michaelyount @pat-cleaver thank you for playing, and thank you for the kind words!
@escortti @talops @superpokeunicorn I appreciate the feedback, I am hard at work on a full version (a total rewrite) and the consistent feedback is helping me make design decisions to allow for flexible gameplay. I'm working to focus in on exploration and mitigate some of the difficulty in the form of more options for the player. Thank you!
The atmosphere is well built with the correct music and sound effects. I also like this pixel art style. The thing I had some trouble with was actually the gameplay, because even reading the tutorial before the game, to play it was not very simple and straight forward as I thought it would be, but the exploration factor is very good. Other than that I'd have to say only congratulations for the great job!
@villanelle I'm surprised you're the first to talk about it being confusing, as I figured my "manual" was subpar at best. It's something I'm tackling pretty seriously for the full version. I don't want to hand hold the player, but I do think some explanation of the world and it's mechanics is necessary, esp. with the full version being much bigger than this one.
Thank you for your feedback and kind words!
Nice game!
The visuals are really really great. The game idea (mix of survival with exploration missions) is great and sets an interesting mood. The music and sounds are simple and work well. The menu looks good and very nice job on doing a tutorial in a compo game.
I was a bit confused at first because I thought everything was advancing regarding time and not steps, so I stressed and mashed movement and everything went even faster haha! The west and east edges of the map were not very clear to me also.
Thanks for the game and incredible job for a compo!
@doot Thank you, I'm working hard to expand the visuals in the full version but not take away from the overall look. As for the basics of the game not really being explained very well: that was partly by design, but I leaned into it too far. I'll be making it all much more clear in the expanded/full version.
Honestly? I hadn't considered that it might be confusing that there was no demarcation for the sides of the world! Thank you for saying this, I'll have to think through how to indicate it now.
Big thanks for the praise!
Very cool game, great attempt at the theme. I think I would have liked more places to reheat, and maybe prompts on what's near me, maybe there could be some UI that tells me where key items are near. I think the game was phenomenal for what you were able to pull off in a few days.
@prof-suarez I'm so excited to show off what I've been working on for the full version of the game. There are definitely more ways, and places to heat up (even with the world being more than 4 or 5 times as large. I've got a fairly clever way to help mitigate the enemies sneaking up on you as well.
I'll have a think about how the player might be able to identify key items. I recognize that saying "Special looking NPCs" doesn't mean much if you you're not the guy who did all the world building, haha.
Thank you for your feedback and kind words!
Very nice atmosphere! It was a little frustrating to play though, and difficulty/confusion is a bit overwhelming. Really nice music and sounds! Dialogues and overall mood was really cool.
@nyxkn Thank you, I think I focused on the world-building a bit more than making the game generally intuitive. I'm working on that problem with the expanded version. Thank you for the praise!
I love the visual style, and I like the idea of the game but there was just a liittle bit too much friction for me to have beaten it -- no keyrepeat, and the fire and warmth were quite difficult to manage. I want to make exploratory runs into the darkness, but the fire goes out so quickly and it's so hard to see anything that it doesn't feel like I'm getting enough useful information in exchange for how many times I had to mash the buttons to move. (IMO the fire/warmth stuff might be balanced fine as it is currently, if only the controls were less taxing)
I ended up making an autohotkey script to help (somewhat) with the keyrepeat, and I think I figured out the source+destination of 3 different parcels? I love the feeling of unknown as I explored the edges of the map and realized just how tall the map is... I didn't make it to the top. Hmm, the game reminded me a bit of Sunless Sea, now that I'm thinking about that feeling specifically...
I do think I want to come back and work at beating this later; it seems like it would be rewarding to beat! I'll await the expanded version, although if I get the urge I may beat the jam version in the meantime!
Good pixel art and music! I did find a bug where the "manual" couldn't be exited (web) - had to reload the page.
Gameplay has promise, but as-is I found it more on the "annoying" side of challenging than the "fun" side. Trying to juggle 3 depleting meters (life, heat, and light) is a bit much. the shrinking visibility from you lamp depleting exacerbates that as well.
Overall, impressive work for the 48 hour compo! While I think the gameplay needs work (and who's jam game doesn't?), there's definitely a shiny gem in there to be polished!
Great work overall ! The management of the 3 ressources is a bit tough as they deplete fast and the light is almost necessary to know where are the tiles that fill the other ups, but it works well overall. Some frustration on the level design side for me being with some screen being cropped in a way that create a lot of offscreen walls that just frustrate because you can't know in advance if going to the edge means you will be able to progress or not Still impressive for a compo :)
@pancelor I can appreciate the desire to hold down a key to move. It is fully implemented in the forthcoming full version of the game and it's made it much easier to test. But wow, you implemented a macro/script to play my game?! That's maybe the coolest thing I've ever experienced. Check out my latest post on the main page or on my twitter for more info about the full version. I sure hope you'll play it, and thank you so much for the thoughtful comment!
@saintchristopher777 Thank you for the feedback, I don't think you were alone at all in your feelings about the game. I think if you ever feel like trying again, the full version of the game will alleviate all your concerns, but I agree with your take on it as presented. Thanks for the praise as well!
@kavehes the screen cropping issue was one I tried to mitigate but time got away from me, and I recognize it's a major flaw. The full version scrolls around with the player at center so that shouldn't be an issue at all there. I'm still working on a way to show the world edge without stripping away inworld immersion. Thank you for your perspective and for the kind words!
Super cool atmosphere! Love the art and the lighting effect is really cool. Great work for such a short time limit.
@snowinfinity thank you for the praise, trying hard to expand the atmosphere further in the full version!
I found the movement a little rough, if only 'cos of my RSI so maybe a mouse simple point/click would be nice if you continued it. It lantern ran our a little quickly too , but the depth of the game was decent considering the time constraints, and bonus points for doing it in unity!
@johnnysix I wanted to comment here that I'm taking into account all the feedback for the release version. Hold to move is an option, as well as game-pad. I'm not sure I'll have time for it, but a simple A* MIGHT work to solve the mouse movement option. The difficulty is adjusted over all, and there are difficulty options as well. Hopefully you'll give it a shot.
Thank you for the kind words and feedback!
I especially liked the the music and graphics! Also you managed to build a cool small world in such little time. The game machanics are cool but together they seem a bit too difficult :smile: But you already said this game is not meant to be easy. Great work!
@oadt thank you! It wasn't meant to be easy, but I think I went a little too far haha. As I've mentioned, I'm working on incorporating all sorts of options to tune the difficulty for the full version! Thank you for playing, and for the praise!