FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD58 → The Tooth Fae

The Tooth Fae

By nondev

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall134.3543
Fun843.9143
Innovation64.3243
Theme34.6544
Graphics204.6044
Audio74.4342
Humor1
Mood14.7244

Comments

ulziton 2025-10-06 21:47

amazing game, like it a lot, gj!

b0guslaw 2025-10-06 21:51

Wow! What a great take on the theme. I loved the vibes and the sound design. I felt like the transitions between houses and finally opening the mouth took a bit too long and got a little repetitive, but that does not detract from the otherwise unique visuals. Well done!

maxiney 2025-10-06 22:02

The art and music are truly beautiful!! And the atmosphere creation is very impressive. I only have one small question: how do I use the pliers to extract a tooth? It seems quite random under my operation. Even after using anesthesia and the drill, I still can't interact with the tooth using the pliers. Maybe an additional tutorial could be added.

cardsnapper 2025-10-06 22:08

Oh my god what an incredible game. So simple and yet so incredibly fun, I got to about 50% collection completion before I decided to hop off and glaze this game. Loved it loved it loved. I hope you're going to continue working on this after the jam to add more to the game.

towercrane 2025-10-06 22:11

i love the mood and artstyle. Theme is dark, i love it

nondev 2025-10-06 22:11

Thank you for the kind words already!

@b0guslaw: I meant to add the ability to skip that transition but forgot in time!

@maxiney: You need to loosen teeth enough that they bleed before pulling. Might not be obvious if your first donors don't have any loose teeth already, for sure.

theredhat 2025-10-06 22:31

This game actually made my teeth hurt. It is incredibly creepy but I absolutely love it. The pixel art style looks great. I just wish you could skip the small cutscene when you enter someone's home. But over all I think this game is great.

geckmen-arts 2025-10-06 22:36

The cutscene right before pulling teeth is so funny. The audio does a great job supporting the feel/atmosphere. Great work, very cool and well done.

lean 2025-10-07 10:04

Incredible idea, art & artstyle; music & sfx also supports it well. Very nice animation for when pulling a tooth (the gory flesh etc.).

On my system the game felt a bit laggy so that could maybe be improved. I also have to agree with other commenters that the cutscene should be skippable, but you already acknowledged this.

I also initially didn't read the description so I was confused why my "patients" woke up. It would be nice if there was a tool-tip describing each of the tools and their effects (like there is for the status bars at the top), or a short in-game tutorial text basically repeating the text you already have in the description.

After playing to (I think it was) 62.5% completion I got a bit lost and was wondering if there was any further goal for me to obtain, or whether something would happen once I collected all different kinds of teeth. There doesn't seem to be any difficulty ramp (you could e.g. collect a certain minimum number of teeth each night, otherwise the queen obliterates you) or new stuff to unlock (e.g. new pain management tools, or sleeping meds - (why doesn't fairy dust make you less afraid too? could also be an upgrade)).

Some of the modifiers on the victims seem to be contradictory - e.g. I got one that had Cowardly and Brave on the same person.

When pulling a tooth and only having one side of the mouth open it is a bit more cumbersome (you have to click & drag twice) - this wasn't immediately obvious to me.

When pulling a tooth and exiting out _before_ it shows that the tooth has been collected (to prevent that you get discovered from the victim/"patient" waking up) - does it still count as collected?

All in all amazing game, very nice and unique experience!

nondev 2025-10-07 11:21

Thank you again!

@lean: All great points! Adding tooltips for the tools would've probably helped a lot. There's no difficulty ramp besides rarer teeth being rarer or requiring specific houses. No, teeth don't count as collected until you see the message appear (mildly intentional so as to add some more time pressure). I'm surprised when you mention performance, I try my best to make sure my games are lightweight (the Windows build for me is <2% CPU and <5% GPU), were you playing in a browser? I know MacOS has some settings that can cap the web build to 30 FPS, maybe it was something like that?

Looking forward to rating other people's games, feeling spoiled from getting so many so soon!

lean 2025-10-07 19:50

@nondev I tested it again (I was using the web version) and I think I was just attributing the slow dithering animation to lag (but it's not actually lagging - the mouse cursor is smooth).

Anyway - very impressive work - especially for a solo project!

nivbeth 2025-10-08 14:19

This game is so well made and left me feeling very uneasy during playing :sweat_smile: The mood is perfect & art is so amazing. Incredible job!

pigeonescu 2025-10-08 17:54

Damn this was impressive. The atmosphere sent chills down my spine. I might have a teeth phobia now. Amazing job!

dazylude 2025-10-08 18:37

I love this submission! The sound design, graphics and the concept all fit together really well. I really love the "dark Fae" vibes, and this game conveys them very well using the lovelies' descriptions and everything else. The transitions are absolutely amazing! And vampires SURELY don't need their fangs, nor any of their other teeth :D

Also, one thing, but child labor laws, and he's sick as well, what a combination to get xD (a very fae thing is to take all his lovelies, that's for sure)

fae.png

nondev 2025-10-08 18:58

@nivbeth @pigeonescu: Thank you!

@dazylude: Glad you enjoyed it! On the bright side, he'll be able to buy dentures from his job income right?

doa 2025-10-08 20:40

What a concept! Our team also played around with "morally grey tooth fairy" idea but ended up doing something completely different. Great to see the idea executed, and executed very well!

crygos 2025-10-08 21:14

The sound of pulling the lips appart gave me chills. Great concept and nicely executed.

bumble 2025-10-08 21:29

The mood, the art, the gameplay, everything just fits so well together! When I got the tooth I wasn't supposed to have I realized that there even is unexpected depth in this game of collecting teeth! Really just a great experience throughout!

eugenik 2025-10-09 11:23

Great Art!.

nondev 2025-10-09 11:25

@doa @crygos @bumble @eugenik: Thank you, glad you liked it!

ira-baciu 2025-10-09 11:49

Audio work is 5/5

ranejeb 2025-10-09 13:22

This is a piece of art. From idea to execution. Not a game I would come back to but a game I'll remember for sure!

nondev 2025-10-09 13:31

@ira-baciu: Thank you! It's the first game I've done my own music for so that's really nice to hear.

@ranejeb: Very understandable and hopefully has spurred everyone to look after their teeth!

pikario 2025-10-09 14:03

Mood, audio and visuals: 5/5, incredible work!

I was aiming at collecting all types of tooth but after a long time I didn't saw new ones, I think you need some balance in the spawn of rare teeth and characters. For example I only saw a vampire once in my entire play.

Also out of despair I clicked on the left up arrow to see if I was missing something, and I lost my progress 😢 Maybe you should have a confirmation telling that it will reset progress.

But overall, it's my favorite entry in term of mood 🦷

nondev 2025-10-09 15:18

@pikario: Yeah, vampires (and the other rare spawns) are pretty rare and the back button on the town was thrown in at the last moment without truly realizing it was going to nuke progress, sorry! But I'm glad you enjoyed the mood.

tomtomgome 2025-10-09 18:06

I love hand made games, very brave and cool that you were able to do it. The mood is amazing, the game is a bit confusing at first, but well, you learn doing the job. Truly impressed by your work.

cahard 2025-10-09 21:34

I'm simultaneously terrified of dentists and absolutely adore games like this. I really love the atmosphere and the graphics. Major respect for the sound and music, too!

The game looks incredibly polished. Excellent work!

gonutz 2025-10-10 04:12

Really awesome disgusting game you have there! I have played it on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/schmonutz

It is the first game I play in this VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2587813989

Let me say, this is highly digusting and very awesome :-)

One thing: I was not able to get 100%. Is it correct that teeth are totally random, so I am not guaranteed to get ALL the teeth in a single game?

nondev 2025-10-10 09:08

@tomtomgome @cahard: Thank you for the kind words!

@gonutz: That's awesome! Three of the rarest teeth come from specific traits that you can spot because they'll have unique houses, while the other one is random in normal mouths. If you keep refreshing the town you should eventually see the unique houses.

captaincorgistan 2025-10-10 15:09

Thanks for rating our game :) That's how I get here and played yours! And I'm glad I did) Man the vibe and atmosphere are soo good! It Feels like I want more lore on this universe! Would like to see full release on steam, can see potential in the game, and many ways to create meta for like 6-10h easy!

nondev 2025-10-10 18:19

@captaincorgistan: Great to hear you liked it! I've been jotting down ideas for additional mechanics to flesh things out (especially the town), but who knows! I'll have to see how I feel once the jam is over.

enurias 2025-10-11 13:02

A really fun gameplay, with all the variations for each character. I really liked it. The ambiant sound is immersive too

roroto-sic 2025-10-11 23:38

first : everything is so polished , that incredible the amount of work done ! the idea is great ! The mood is so well made ! it was a really fun to discovered how to play.

i achieved 50% with fun but as i can't find new teeth i stopped

Capture d’écran 2025-10-12 013436.png

nondev 2025-10-12 08:41

@enurias @roroto-sic: Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!

lulu-hihi 2025-10-13 13:59

very polished game, I love the littles hands above when you get in a room, and the mecanics are really fun! Hope to have more

sheepolution 2025-10-13 17:31

One of my favorite games from this LD! Great concept, perfect creepy vibes. I love it. I wish there was a better explanation as to what to do. Sure, figuring out such things can be fun, but because these "levels" are so fragile, I lose too quickly to properly learn how it all works. Also the sequence of going into a level is a bit too slow for my taste. The transitions especially are really slow. I get that that is adding to the mood, but as a player I don´t have all day. Anyway, really good game. Checking in that they are not in pain and not waking up, taking the risk of getting that one tooth as the person is about to wake up. Good stuff, amazing job!

kazuren 2025-10-14 19:33

Oh my, this was an amazing experience, such a great cursed game haha. Unfortunately like another commenter I lost my progress when I pressed the top left arrow. Would also like to see a skip on the cinematic that plays because it becomes a bit too slow when you see it for the 100th time but other than that this was an amazing experience, great work!

vhalenn 2025-10-15 14:47

The mood and idea is really incredible, 10/10! I just felt it was quite hard to understand what each tool was doing, it needed a lot of trial and error to finally get it!

nondev 2025-10-15 21:11

@lulu-hihi: Thank you!

@sheepolution @vhalenn @kazuren: I'm glad you enjoyed it! Definitely intend on giving some more information on tools, speeding up (and allow skipping) of transitions, and other improvements in the post jam version.

l6ria 2025-10-18 13:19

Incredible atmosphere and art style! Super fun and creepy in the best way. Loved the sound design and unique gameplay.