ansjofaye 2026-10-20 00:15 ♥ 1
Cute game! turns out im not as good at mammoth hunting as i expected but i got there in the end! awesome job, cute sprites, movement was smooth, visuals were fun
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Mammoth Slayer
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 21 | |||||
| Fun | 21 | |||||
| Innovation | 20 | |||||
| Theme | 21 | |||||
| Graphics | 21 | |||||
| Audio | 21 | |||||
| Humor | 19 | |||||
| Mood | 19 | |||||
Cute game! turns out im not as good at mammoth hunting as i expected but i got there in the end! awesome job, cute sprites, movement was smooth, visuals were fun
just like the other guy, I severely overestimated my mammoth hunting capabilities. I really love the artstyle and graphics. The progression system was nice too
Some feedback: I think if the artstyle was applied to the UI elements the game would be much better. The basic font seems a bit off. Another thing, having a tutorial would be nice where we learn to make our first tools. My first attempt the village ran out of food while I was trying to chuck rocks at a mammoth lol.
Awesome, your game is magnificent! I had a blast playing it, really cool stuff!
The start felt unclear. I had to spend a long time near the tents getting upgrades, and my starting rocks seemed ineffective against mammoths. Food ran out before I could bring one down. Faster early upgrades or a smaller, weaker mammoth to hunt first would help players get into the game. The berry bushes also looked like something I could gather from; a small food supply from them could give beginners more breathing room. I'd prefer mouse aiming and left-click throwing, with weapons flying toward the cursor. Dodging mammoths, retrieving weapons and aiming another throw could make the hunting more engaging.
Ah! The mammoths caught me! This game looks like it was made of cardboard and paper, which evokes very warm feelings... Wonderful work! :3
Thanks for all your feedback and kind words.
@ao-85 , glad you enjoyed!
@wewrutuwertrer / @thanatosisanoob / @ansjofaye , about the art, I really love my daughter's work. I'm hoping to find some good workflows to take her real world drawings into games. I remember seeing the TV show Jane and the Dragon and really liked their "crayon rendered" world. About the font - thanks, I bet my kids could make a great caveman font for us.
@welovegames , we didn't get much balancing time... I'm interested to think more about it - want to write some scripts to try and figure out balance.
I will say this, **there are 6 additional frivolous upgrades for your amusement only after the Sling -> Spear -> Bow techs which actually do something.** The other tent helps improve accuracy. I was thinking we should have added a special 'win screen' if you managed to research the other frivolous techs and call that another game end state. - Upon repeated playthroughs, I do think we should have increased the time it takes to research the "tech" as you progress. - Spears can be very effective, although you have a limited amount that drop near your tents after researching them. And when you miss, you have to go re-collect them.
- I did wonder about doing something for mouse aiming... or even improving our miss system. I think our projectiles go too far after throwing if you miss. Mouse aiming + clicking would give it a bit more of a traditional incremental game feel I think?
So one of my other misadventures for this game was creating the 'brain' for the mammoths. I thought to myself and said, I have hunger, anger, and health. I will create a 3D environment, stick some collision objects for "forage", "attack", and "run-away" -- then I will have a ball that represents the 'state of mind' of the mammoth. As the mammoth takes damage anger goes up, health down, and they are always getting more hungry. Anger has a cooldown. (I was thinking to add an anger/rage increase due to blood lust if it got to attack you). Finally, if at any time that ball isn't in one of those specific collision states, the mammoth is in a "bored" state. This sort of worked, one cool thing was if I turned on the collision shape debugging - I could sort of see the state of mind of the mammoth. But in practice I had trouble creating the collision shapes well - not to mention the balance of the brain. One of my thoughts was I could perturb each of this collision shapes/adjust size to give each mammoth some randomize individual behavior. - Since I didn't get things working quite as I wanted, I ended up just leaving things as-is as I felt it sort of worked. Probably should have gone for a much simpler state machine for the mammoth logic where they don't just keep trying to attack you... - The bushes were actually for the mammoths. You'll notice if a mammoth goes over a bush, it will eat the fruit. (your villagers are on a strict carnivore diet) --> **But I think that may have be a good way to make it easier at the beginning especially,** allow your player to also gather fruit. I could increase the fruit re-populate time as time goes on to make mammoth hunting more important.
Thanks so much again for your feedback!
A fun little survival simulation with a satisfying gameplay loop!
Cool game. But I still haven't figured out how to properly fight the mammoths(( On the other hand, I conquered the skies—and then fell off the edge of the map.
It’s a really fun game, it’s interesting to run around and throw stones at the mammoth, definitely. And there’s even a web version — I’m glad there are sensible people out there.
Oh god they are so aggressive after killing my vihlager they rushed the village itself, it was a massacre 😆 Pretty simple but pretty fun game, would hunt mammoths again, the one gripe I had the audio sounded really odd, I dont know if thats intended or a bug but had to mute the site because of it.
Just read the entire post and I'm impressed you even set up CI/CD for the jam, very high quality devops work 🙂
It’s so wonderful that you spend time with your children, and in such a great, developmental way, to! The game turned out really well—I especially liked how the drawings become animated.
@david0k, @intich - thanks for the kind words.
@mailsbert - So you have two hands and can pickup two things. When you pickup a rock, it may be hard to see. We made the rocks bigger, I had thought to make a UI overlay with two hands showing a rock/spear/meat in them if you picked something up but didn't get to it. Pressing space will though the rock at the nearest mammoth... although you may miss by a calculated probability which reduces with "training."
@viktoria - thanks! I'm going to see if there are some better workflows to take my kids drawings to game in this same 2d in 3d style. I think I'm going to try blender to create the polygons and then texture map their work to it or I found this today... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSoW3AQFsSo - looks like there may be other options too with images as planes.
@freamdev - No - the music and sound should be good. I seem to remember an issue in a previous LD jam were I had funky audio... I think I was able to correct it with some setting changes. Searching again, looks like I could increase my Output Latency.web from 50 to a higher number like 100 or 200. Maybe that would help. Thanks for the heads up. CI/CD took a lot of stress off.
hard but fun. good idea for the theme. i love the character toss by the mammoths.
Thanks @roroto-sic. I do struggle with making things too easy as I like a good challenge - I guess I'm not a story mode player :). My thought is, if the player fails the first time, the passes the second or third, that's pretty good. But maybe I shouldn't count on that subsequent play. - I guess a good solution could be to provide difficulty levels. Especially with little time to playtest in a jam, this would allow me to cast a wider net to allow people to have the experience they like. I'll try that next time.
I enjoyed making the mammoth toss. I wanted to calculate angles and do a 120 degree randomization of where you go, but I went for the quick and simple 360 degree. While in the air, I scale back the control of your character, but you do have some ability to move.
Thanks for playing.
I like the use of a 2.5D art style - it's arguably an under-utilized option for jam games, considering that it adds a lot of depth (literally) without really increasing the burden wrt drawing. Unfortunately, it does make the hitboxes on the Mammoths a bit less clear (should I be throwing from the side to maximize my chances of hitting? The aiming is kinda unclear). Like other commenters, I found it pretty difficult; after three attempts I still did not succeed at killing a single mammoth (though I came close once). The animation for getting thrown around by the mammoths is sort of a fun consolation prize, though, I guess.
@3lstmsinatrenchcoat - Thanks for playing. Missing is flat % chance. Aiming is automatic. As I think about this and look at the code. 40% miss chance is pretty high. I just played 3 games. 1st game I died as I missed a lot. 2nd game I trained with rock throwing before attacking mammoth and did decent - made killing mammoths easier. 3rd game I again just went at it, and was able to kill the mammoth, but at 40% miss, it seems your mileage may vary. That seems way to high for me looking at it now. To your point of how to improve accuracy. Perhaps I should update - the longer you stay standing still, the better your odds should be to a limit (50% improve?).
```
const AccuracyRock_Level1 : float = 0.2 const AccuracyRock_Level2 : float = 0.1 const AccuracySling_Level1 : float = 0.2 # Throws rock for more damage/faster const AccuracySling_Level2 : float = 0.1 const AccuracySpear_Level1 : float = 0.15 const AccuracySpear_Level2 : float = 0.1 const AccuracyBow_Level1 : float = 0.2 # Fires spear for more damage/faster const AccuracyBow_Level2 : float = 0.1 ```
--
I think my solution to the crunch at the beginning is to allow gathering fruit from trees for a smaller food value.
Since the mammoths follow you around, you can combo attacking them with training/upgrading. The training is relatively quick. Of course, you do get a bit burned for accuracy when you research that second new tech. Particularly for the sling. Not sure why I decided AccuracySling_Level1 = 0.15.
When you start having multiple mammoths follow you, often damage hits multiple mammoths at the same time (wasn't our intention). But this does help a lot.
Doing "well" seems to be finding a strategy to maximize kills while also advancing training/tech.
Thanks for the feedback on the difficulty. This does bring up questions I'll have to think about on how balance. I imagine it's good for there to be multiple paths to doing well so players don't have to find the a single "magic path."
Probably the worst part of the whole game was not being able to direct your throws. I get that standing around and waiting for your accuracy update is worth it but it felt at odds with the ability not direct your throws.
Overall my kids and I had some fun with the game though we just wish it was easier to hit the mammoths it seemed like we were also missing or if we got to far away the weapon just dropped.
A very good game, but difficult to finish.
I managed to kill a few mammoths, but the accuracy is too unpredictable; on several occasions, I accidentally hit a different mammoth, which ended my run.
I also encountered a few bugs (for example, if you die while holding a stone, your corpse still throws it; I also experienced bugs where my character would multiply).
A very nice concept that fits the theme well.
A little bug/ mecanics detetcted : You can have mutiple player controled at once, the game is actually a lot of fun we the nb of people increase, I don't know if it's intential, but it should be!
The game actually has some really unique details that I enjoyed a lot! For example, the throwing visual effect when the player takes damage is surprisingly satisfying, and I'd love to know what inspired it!
Personally, I'm not a big fan of accuracy mechanics, because missing your shots can get frustrating. Since we can't really aim with the mouse in this game, I feel like we might as well have an auto-aim system with 100% accuracy, so players can focus more on the actual battles with the mammals! (change it to critics rate instead of accuracy rate)
I also really hope the food system can be explained more clearly. The tutorial doesn't really tell us what we're supposed to do with the meat, and I ended up feeling a bit lost afterward...
But in general, good job for making this, there are fun ideas that I enjoyed!
@rocktavious, @alexis-brochec, @bentootoo - yeah, accuracy is one of the big things from the feedback we need to address. I'm torn on the correct solution. One thing I thing for sure is 40% chance for a miss at get go is too close to flipping a coin to be encouraging. @bentootoo - you're idea for crits is good I think, gives something to still upgrade, but less frustrating - that seems empowering. Then there is allowing player to aim with mouse. We'll have to try and experiment. Thanks for the feedback.
@alexis-brochec, @bentootoo we have another "bug" in that you can hit multiple mammoths at once when they get close... so hitting multiple mammoths can lead to a long term advantage. As for the multiple players, yeah - that's a bug that will be need to be fixed. Perhaps that's another upgrade path to help increase your potential firepower / make it easier to pickup more rocks (balanced of course with needing to avoid mammoths).
@bentootoo - As for food system, yeah - we just explained the keys, thanks for the feedback - we should have added a bit more instruction in our starting help text.
As for the mammoth throwing the player. I felt I needed something to be a small surprise and thought it would be fun to try throwing the player from the mammoth tusks. I had planned to be a bit more directional with say 120 degree randomization for the throw... but as goes the jam... didn't get back to improving that code from the 360 degree throw that is technically implemented.
Thank you all for your feedback and thoughts.
