sylviachord 2025-10-07 10:08
At first, I realized I could roll this snowball around, but things quickly got out of hand. The enemies attacking the snowman were probably too strong—my snowman got taken down in less than a minute
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → SNoWay
By skale
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 376 | 3.53 | 47 | |
| Fun | 331 | 3.44 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 163 | 3.65 | 45 | |
| Theme | 543 | 3.40 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 383 | 3.68 | 46 | |
| Audio | 400 | 3.10 | 44 | |
| Humor | 443 | 2.86 | 42 | |
| Mood | 458 | 3.45 | 44 |
At first, I realized I could roll this snowball around, but things quickly got out of hand. The enemies attacking the snowman were probably too strong—my snowman got taken down in less than a minute
This is an interesting one. I really like the mechanic, and it's implemented well. There's a little bit of an issue when playing with track pad. Keyboard alternatives for the mouse buttons would help there. The snow effect is good and the graphics in general are great. The enemies needed a bit more detail though. I liked the crunchy snow sound and the thumping snowball hits. All-in-all a solid entry. Good stuff :8ball:
Could be easily expanded into a larger game with upgrades and different enemies. Personally felt a bit on the easy side having healing, blocking, and only the "basic" enemy. Would've liked if you were big enough you could roll over the enemies.
@6knowledge Thank you! I tried to balance the game at the last minute before submitting. Mechanic for rolling over the enemies was in my original plan and you would lose more snow by doing that, but in return you kill the enemy instantly. Unfortunately there was no time for this, I didn't even add VFX and SFX for the enemies and their projectiles.
@oddballdave Thanks so much for your feedback! I appreciate your note about the controls and will definitely take it into account next time.
I liked the style
A very creative concept and execution. I liked the smooth controls and the multiple tactics available thanks to the mechanics: trade-off with shooting. To shoot, you have to sacrifice the snowball's volume. You can block projectiles with your hitbox. And finally, you can heal the snowman with a shot and/or kill enemies. This whole package creates an excellent tactical game. I'd also like to praise the cool visuals. Personally, I missed the ability to move with the WASD and shoot with the mouse simultaneously. Overall, great work!
@korzhik Thanks!
скрина.jpg it's a cool game, but I would increase the ball's size and make it so that throwing snowballs reduces its mass more effectively. Ideally, I would also add the ability to crush enemies
Aw yeah, snow physics! Nicely implemented too! I liked the strategic component between building your volume and keeping the enemies off, though I was very bad at it and kept dying. Also agreed that the controls would have been better had I been able to shoot with the mouse, it felt a bit awkward.
Nice proof of concept, I can see this being iterated on with upgrades and maybe different levels & enemy types. Great effort for the jam!
Nice art and phisics! And cool interpretation of the idea!
I love the idea, and I can even imagine a festive vertion of it in Christmas, cause the melting of the snowman is somehow funny^^ Oh and the gameplay is super intuitive which is NICE!
Using rolling to collect snow for attacks and healing is a very clever design! I love the sound of the snowball rolling on the snow; it's so relaxing. (A small suggestion: maybe consider adding an upgrade option that consumes the big snowman's health, which could give more meaning to shooting snowmen to restore health. Of course, I understand time was tight...) Love your game!
It reminded me of a game about a boy and a dog that was made in Blender! It's a really cool idea, and I like the visual design and gameplay.
@klausklapper @lizardinblizzard @alva-peng Thank you!
@yuriscat I'm glad you liked it! Your idea is interesting, I’ll definitely consider it.
Very 'cool' (heh)! Love seeing snow physics in a jam game. Having the mouse control and aim added a nice challenge. And I love that I could heal and attack with the same ability. Was I getting smaller when firing snowballs, or no? I think that would be a really cool challenge - where my 'size' is my 'ammo'. Would be interesting to see the shots more impactful in that way - make enemies die in 2 shots, but you shrink dramatically with every snowball launched. That way, you have to aim well and collect snow often.
Excellent work with this, very smooth playing experience.
Good work! The snow deformation + chromatic abberation were very nice effects. Ambient audio was very nice too. Got a little samey, wondering if you need a steeper difficulty curve.
@ugly-robot I appreciate it! Actually you have "snow amount" stored in your snowball, and it is used for ammo every time you shoot. It's just hard to notice, but you actually get smaller, but growing rate from rolling is probably much higher than rate of losing snow from shooting if you don't spam. It needs a bit of tweaking of values for snowball and camera to feel the impact.
One of my ideas for expanding the game is to add upgrades that increase projectile size
@nnnnneeeedddd So glad you enjoyed the snow and audio! Your note about the difficulty hits the mark — it actually doesn’t increase at all 😄. If only I’d had 30 extra minutes…
@skale awesome! Teah, I mean, the game was already super fun and quite polished, but with a bit of tweaking, it could be something really special. Great work!
The snowball physics and snow graphics are really good, well done on those.
I like the concept of your snowball being your ammo although I think it needs a little tweaking because right now I could just spam snowballs with no noticeable decrease in snowball size.
The sound effects are good however they got a bit tiring after a while due to hearing them continuously, I think it would help to randomize the pitch a little bit each time to have a bit of variation.
The "target lock on" felt like it was going against me because if the enemies were on the move and I shot were the lock on suggests, I would miss the target 100% of the time, I think it would help to either have it predict the movement and shoot accordingly or not have it at all.
Overall: Great work with good graphics, physics and mechanics and with a bit of polish it could be really great.
@kazuren Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! Really glad you liked the snow and physics. You’re absolutely right about the shooting and sound — both need some fine-tuning. I agree that target lock on feels frustrating when it moves, but actually you gave me an idea to make enemy movement prediction as an upgrade that player can buy. Still you can manually shoot ahead of enemy, but it is not that straightforward.
Nice job on the graphics and snow shader! Nitpicky comment is that it looks like you are clearing the candle's path from the render texture immediately when they die, but it might be nice to have it animate back up to full size over a few seconds like you do with the main snowball's trail. Either way the gameplay was fun and it handled well. Well done :D
interesting, loved how the snowman melted when under attack, even better if there is a more obvious change in the snowball
I love the snow!! I've never seen real snow in person... so getting to experience it here is amazing! The game mechanics are really fun too!
Very cool game! I had a blast playing :D.
Maybe we can try to make snow ball bigger.
You did your best with the graphics and well done for making the finished game alone.
Nice! The game is simple and sticky.
You created an amazing game, I like the theme, it's well done mechanically and concept also, and I want to ask what did you use for showball path?
Good work! The poor snowman didn't last long under my protection:D
@derek-glennon @thalia0206 @nno1 @eugenik @paulsams @denissobolev @ian-marius-postica @kykypy3o8 Thank you guys!
@ian-marius-postica It’s a tessellation shader that uses a render texture with a path. The render texture is generated by rendering particles emitted from a particle system attached to the snowball. You can check the source code on GitHub for more details.
Awesome snow physics! Love how your snowball size is both health and ammo. Great sounds and visuals. Super fun to play!
Great game, I like how minimalistic it is, and how few variables are used in many ways. I didn't survive for more than a couple minutes though, but that's a skill issue.
The camera felt a little bit too zoomed in, I didn't see the full picture of enemies coming towards the snowman. Also, it would be very cool if colliding with an enemy at high speed had some cool effect: dealing damage, or pushing them away. Still, a very enjoyable game!
The art of this game is amzing for a three days project.ANd it attracts me a lot
Cool tech, but game design feels not for this idea. I'd expect to not shoot at enemies with snowballs, but roll over them losing part of my own volume, which I'd need to recover. Naturally, bigger ball would mean higher damage, but also higher inertia on turns and lower acceleration. But current game loop is completely detached from the theme. Also snapping cursor to enemy works fine with static enemies, but guaranties missed shots on moving enemies (you can't shoot ahead of enemies to land shots in time). But overall fun concept that needs more polish. Good job!
Cool idea, I would had like if the collecting snow had more impact, getting bigger to be able to crush ennemies for exemple or allowing to increase damage by throwing bigger snowballs
Pretty clever implementation of the snow gathering mechanic. The snow disappearing was relatively convincing, visually. Good stuff!
Little cute game, would be great for Christmas. Like how one mechanic can leads to 2 actions! Well done!
Interesting concept of a wave defender! I liked that you could decide between killing the sticks and rebuilding of your own snowman. Also it was nice that you could block the enemy projetiles with your own body. I would have liked that you had implemented a status of your own size so that you can see the impact of the enemy projetiles on your own size. I couldn't also figure out if my own projetiles had an impact of my size if I shoot them. So I was not sure if my own size is just capped or if I should have been more careful with the shooting and blocking. Another feature I would have liked is, that you were able to move regardless of the direction you are shooting to. Overall a nice litte game with cool mechanics!
Fun idea! I really like the concept of using your own mass to deal damage or heal, and it's oddly addicting trying to survive for as long as possible! A cool example of one function leading to more depth gameplay-wise. It'd be fun to see more enemy mechanics added in as well in a future version! Nice work!
I really like your game! It's very calming and has a rather interesting take on the theme of collecting. But I would make the controls more responsive and the ball's movement faster. Overall, I had trouble loading the game on PortProton, which might be why the ball moved so slowly. Overall, I really liked the game! Good luck with its future development :)
By the way, if you're looking for a slightly more quirky atmosphere, you can check out our game too 🤪
Very pretty game! Poor snowman.
Not sure if anyone else had this issue, but I had some pretty bad stuttering. I think it had to do with the snowball growing / eating snow mechanic.
Great work!
Good work!