mmm1008fm 2024-10-07 18:42
Oh this squirrels :(
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Fairy Haven: The Search for Home
By david-york
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 759 | 3.33 | 23 | |
| Fun | 906 | 2.90 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 668 | 3.13 | 24 | |
| Theme | 617 | 3.59 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 444 | 3.81 | 23 | |
| Humor | 743 | 2.65 | 22 | |
| Mood | 203 | 3.95 | 23 |
Oh this squirrels :(
My first game I explored everything, ran out of feyberries quickly, and my colony quickly failed, score of 300. Tried again, mostly stopped reading events at this point (as it seemed like I was just getting repeats) and founded a colony quickly, but the deers apparently killed me. And I ran out of food. Tried one more time, and again settled quickly, but found a better spot, I guess =). Screenshot 2024-10-07 164442.png
This game looks great. It felt a little weird that returning to existing locations would give a new random event which sometimes felt contrary to the first one, maybe it would have been better if each location gave only 1 event (and, after that, just gave the option to colonize). I like the map, moving around it is fun and it was fun to explore. Nice job!
@jimbly Thank you for the detailed write-up. The idea behind the game is that if you explore a lot you lose resources but gain stories, and the stories upgrade the quality of all locations you find. You'll get the best ending with the highest quality location and the most resources, and locations have somewhat random qualities to begin with. So, honestly, I think the core is good but it needs a LOT of tweaking to be a better game.
As for 1 event per location I considered that but never got around to testing it.
Thanks for playing!
Heheh, yeah, I was collecting stories on my first playthrough (only found 4 though), but lost so many Feyberries I didn't survive, I guess. I didn't notice the location quality was increasing, I assumed whatever I saw the first time was what stuck, but that's cooler now that I know it works that way =).
The game is cool!
After making a game about a ninja squirrel I have realized the true might of the squirrel
Cool concept for a game! I love point and click + text adventures. I was a bit confused at how to do well in this game, as it felt like every event that came next was mediocre or harmful. Some of the events seemed to not take away resources though it seemed important that they should have (berries, trinkets, and coins). Great work!
Thank you @dinobobbo . Yeah, the mechanics are very invisible which I feel harms the game. The idea is that each location has a "quality ranking" for each of the 4 aspects of it - animals, plants, magic and beauty. As you gain stories these stories upgrade those ranks for the places. The better the ranks the better the ending. It needs several days of play testing and balancing for sure! Thank you for playing and giving me the feedback.
Love the aesthetics!
Mechanically I think it maybe leans too hard on procedural generation for something that really wants to be hand crafted.
My first run I clicked the first area, made on choice (avoid foxes) then was presented with an option to settle. I took this and it's not really clear why I should take longer routes that drain more resources etc, but then the game just ends.
I can potentially get a higher score but there's not a lot motivating the player to go for those scores.
That said I do appreciate a good story telling engine, and I think this has a lot of potential with a few tweaks. I think pushing a bit more direction into the player's earlier experiences in the run can help produce more interesting stories, like having a minimum travel distance before settlement options turn up, and having more clear decision making/risk taking that leads towards settleable areas.
Nice work!
Beautifully presented game, I love the cohesive style and focus on storytelling.
I certainly echo what has been said previously regarding balancing but that is of course beyond the scope of this length of jam. I found stories very hard to come by; and were often at the expense of resources critical for a good score.
I'm pretty sure I found a very good location on one playthrough, but hadn't been fortunate on stories, so wound up with a score of 16k.
I had a good amount of fun trying to figure it out, thank you.
I had to replay a couple times to find my first story. But I managed to create a few colonies that survived, none thrived mind :(
All in all this was a fun game.
I played a handful times, and got about 15k as my best settlement. I don't know if I got any story ever though. I know there was at least one on the table but I couldn't offer enough in the needed exchange, I think.
My first play-through, it wasn't at all obvious how randomized or not the game was. Nor how much content there was. So when my first encountered festival was an illusion that cost me resources without any gain, I kind of assumed festivals are bad and should always be avoided for the rest of that and the next 2-3 runs. Before I once again dared try a festival... and while this might be a correct life lesson :laughing:, I think it was the wrong lesson for this game.
I would also never have realized there was a benefit of revisiting an evil location unless I happened to stumble into a dead end on the map and needed to backtrack and found that the evil snake was gone. So that time, the map helped me overcome my faulty assumptions. But perhaps something indicating passage of time a bit clearer in the game could also have changed my faulty ideas about the game being kind of static.
I think though, that my favorite creature that I encountered was the menacing squirrels. I wish we could have a stare contest and then been grumpily accepting each others presence and that it would have been the best new home.
After a couple of tries, I was not so much reading the encounters anymore but rather trying out different locations and funnily one of the best ones I had was settling right next to where I started.
Cool game, very nice narration and art style. I tried settling and didn't expect the ending to be so developed. Very impressive!
I was hoping I'd come across some mystical/folklore interpretations of the theme, and I haven't been disappointed so far! The music and general game vibe also reminds me a lot of Roadwarden, although I think that hurt my experience a bit, because I came in expecting everything to be pretty much fully hand-crafted.
My strategy was to set out for a place where it had seemed nice last round, but I thought gave me bad settlement results due to spending a lot of resources exploring the rest of the world. I interacted fully with every event I could on the way, despite my past experience indicating they're generally negative outcomes, and managed to get two stories (and not as many bad events as I expected) before I reached the spot I was headed for. It looked pretty good from the description, so I settled there: Tuesday_ 8-06_00.png Rather than adding depth the fact that events were random at *every* visit just made the world feel unexplorable and chaotic. It still might be possible to pull off with more work though, and it's completely understandable if you didn't have time to implement persistence.
Other than that though this game really stands out quality-wise, nice job
Found magical stones and setled there, Fairies looks like liked it for the most part :) I am not sure how worth it would be to try and find more stories, since foxes... foxes everywhere! Also wasn't sure if encounters change (looks like they do) and I could lose good location if I would move forward. Chickened out on settling as a result! But played through different encounters... Looks like no of the outcomes are set? Its insane and so nice!
Wow, the number of texts here is quite impressive!
I've experienced numerous ways of 'game over' and ended up with various scores.
I get the impression that this 'True' wasn't supposed to be there.
Screenshot 2024-10-11 100618.png
Certainly, it’s worth mentioning that the atmosphere of the game is quite captivating. The artwork is impressive, and it keeps you at a certain level of constant tension, which cleverly contrasts with the fact that it's a story about fairies.
Great entry, really love it. Have not explored all the map, but settled at the cool green place.
Wow. Epic battle of the squirrels!! I knew I shouldn't have messed with them. :grimacing: :laughing: This brought me back to some old text adventures! So great!!
I gave it a few attempts, and my highest score was in the 15k range. I like the concept! It does get a little repetitive because of the pure randomness (or at least, that's what it feels like). Routing is consistent and I assume each location has a pool of events to pull from, but (unless I'm missing something) there's no real way to strategize on where to go for better results. Still, it's enjoyable, and I liked having to decide whether to settle here or move on for a potentially better spot. But at the same time, the finality of settling made me less eager to experiment, e.g. what happens when I settle in a foresty area without sunlight and filled with dark magic? I assume the worst! But I don't want to try and lose my colony, so I moved on
Good stuff, though! I enjoyed it :D