The Little House That Had Been Very Good This Year

weefairyfabi 2023-10-02 23:24

This is so cute, I like the idea of stacking gifts as your interpretation of the theme and I also loved that after a certain number of stacked gifts the house appeared, I didn't expect that at all Great game :)

elmoeinstein 2023-10-03 01:22

Really love the concept of the game and how the mechanics work, I also love the cozy house. I think overall a great game.

robean 2023-10-04 13:57

Good game! I like the general aesthetic and core gameplay loop a lot. Though I did find that spamming the stack button as fast as I could was much more effective at getting a higher score than carefully placing the presents down, which made it feel more like a button masher than a precision stacking game.

Also, the camera shift when placing the presents did make me start to feel quite motion sick very quickly (even when I wasn't frantically mashing the button to grow my tower as quickly as possible) so I was unfortunately not able to play for as long as I would have liked, but overall I think it's really good.

wfmg 2023-10-05 00:38

@robean skill issue

nah jk I appreciate it. I considered randomly moving or lerping the aim a little after every placement, but I just never ended up doing it. I hear ya, and I would've remedied these things if this were a bigger project. Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

takhomasac 2023-10-05 00:59

cute concept and game! loved the crackling fire 😌

asilvers 2023-10-05 01:09

Interesting concept though I think it would have been better suited to be a tetris-like stacking game. With only being a single stack there doesn't seem to be much of a strategy to stacking the presents besides just spamming.

The aiming seemed kind of arbitrary, it felt like the mouse was being used like a joystick. I would suggest either aiming where your mouse is pointing or just using the arrow keys instead.

purplexy 2023-10-05 10:47

Interesting concept overall! The first camera feels a bit weird though, if you click too fast the camera just keeps going higher and higher. Also I feel like the second one could be a bit closer to the house, or it could auto-adjust its position based on the number of gifts. Nice work though, I enjoyed making a stack of 20 gifts and watching it fall down :D

wfmg 2023-10-05 19:57

@asilvers But that'd optimise all the fun out of it. The aiming is done with the mouse movement. Imagine the scene from the top. Your mouse position is your reticle position. Thanks, anyway!

@illia-kryvolapov In the code, the height of the preview present/present emitter is meant to be the second most recent present plus an offset of, I believe, 1.5 meters (5 feet). I'm glad you enjoyed the stacking. That really is the main appeal of this little game. It's fun to stack them and watch them fall down.

danial-jumagaliyev 2023-10-08 20:34

Pretty simple and cute game. There's something interesting to watching a stack of gift boxes fall down. On one hand, its miserable, but on the other hand, its kinda satisfying to see them tumble down.

fupi 2023-10-14 18:03

I think the idea of a house whose kids are SO good that Santa has to pile up presents is a pretty funny spin on this "building blocks" style of gameplay. Unfortunately the execution here is very barebones... The mouse gives you full control of where you drop the next block and, as others have said, this means you can get a better score just by spam-clicking, I think I got to 53 that way kdskj. Also, there is a weird bug (?) where, when my stack of presents got tall enough so that the scene switched to the house scene, my presents would all pop out of nowhere and ruin my stack on its own. For this kind of game you need to take some control away from the player, usually that is done by making the block swing from side to side, so that the player just has to click to drop at the right time. That makes the game a lot more skill-based. Not that clicking super fast isn't a skill, but I don't think it's how you intended the game to be played. x) One thing I really liked were the graphics. The graphics and the title were what made me want to play this, you managed to capture the claustrophobic cozyness of Christmas as a child very well.

Captura de tela 2023-10-14 150320.png

wfmg 2023-10-15 03:56

@fupi Yes, I talked about that with others in the LD voice chat while I was making the game, but I never ended up making any such challenge. With more time, I definitely would've. My ratings are probably gonna reflect that. Oh well. I'm glad you enjoyed all the things that you did. :)

flaterectomy 2023-10-15 11:08

A cozy little game! The aiming seemed to not be very necessary, the best bet was to just hang in place and drop presents where you dropped the last one, so keeping the mouse still seemed to be the trick. I got to 14 before reading @Robean's remark and then spam-dropped a stack of 42 presents.

The art looks pretty good, I kinda wish you had some more ambient lighting though, once you get out the house all you really see is the top of the box you're dropping.

The fireplace crackle is cozy, some additional sound effects for the boxes dropping would've been welcome.

kanity 2023-10-17 21:57

Really cute and cozy, I love the atmosphere and how the room looks, especially that cute figurine in the right corner. I found it a bit funny I could drop a present through the tree:

elka.jpg

At first I didn't realize I have to stack the presents ^^'' So I was wondering why I am failing puttin presents on a seemingly free space on the floor:

tryagain.jpg

Then I went to itch.io to play and had a much easier experience: realized I have to stack and made a bit of a tower. Here is my result:

results!.jpg

Very cozy game overall, so christmas-y and cute, love the athmosphere <3

sean-atterbury 2023-10-18 01:42

I really dig the graphics and I think the concept of the game is creative. I like the small and cozy atmosphere you made for this game. Good job!