The Lost Rifleman

anastasia-pitomets 2026-10-19 16:42 ♥ 1

Really cool entry! I played through it and had a great time. Here is a quick breakdown of my thoughts: • Gameplay & Design: The core mechanics feel solid and intuitive right from the start. The gameplay loop is engaging, and the controls feel responsive and fair. • Visuals & Art Style: The visual direction fits the overall mood really well. Everything looks cohesive, and the presentation makes it very clean to follow what's happening on screen. • Audio: The sound effects and audio design add a lot of punch to the experience and help build the atmosphere. • Theme Interpretation: You did a fantastic job incorporating the jam's theme into the core loop in a creative and clever way! Constructive Polish Idea: If you decide to update or expand this after the jam, adding a few extra feedback cues (like juice/particles or subtle screen shake) or expanding on a few mechanics could make it feel even more polished! Overall, awesome job for a jam project! Left you a high score/rating. Keep up the great work! 🚀

tatawanda 2026-10-20 11:32 ♥ 1

There was a nice vibe. The sfx of the ghoul is funny at first, with the accumulation you just want to shoot them so they never speak again. I like the soundtrack, it sets the tone with the wood. It's cool

freamdev 2026-10-20 12:37 ♥ 0

@tatawanda Thank you for playing, hope they wasn't too annoying 😄

thevasandr 2026-10-20 12:58 ♥ 1

Not sure how good its fits game jams theme. but atmosphere is great, with sound and low poly. The only thing that's i didn't understand was that were we suppose to stay in one place or move around map.

yupaz 2026-10-20 13:10 ♥ 1

Really fun atmosphere ! The ghoul’s sound effects are hilarious at first, although after hearing them over and over, you just want to take them all out ! The soundtrack also fits the wooden environment really well and helps create a cool vibe. Great job !

remy-lopez 2026-10-20 13:39 ♥ 1

The atmospehe is great with you game, a lot of tensions ! It miss an audio feedback when you hit the ghost, and maybe a spacialization of the ghost laught to be able to aim in the right direction ! The rigid camera is a cool idea !

brimstone 2026-10-20 14:56 ♥ 1

I really liked this game! I was also reading your dev progress blog posts throughout the two days, and it was great to see the final result! I like how the flashlight range reduces with your sanity. The guns felt juicy to use, and I bypassed the slow mouse speed by increasing my mouse's actual tracking speed >:) These cheeky ghosts kept frustrating me, but I soon figured out the pattern of the sounds they made, and it helped me survive morning with 1% sanity left O_o

neeko69 2026-10-20 16:48 ♥ 1

Pretty cool game, I really like the overall mechanic, maybe wished there were more types of enemies. I also think a sensitivity slider would be nice, as I felt like I'm playing cs with the current sens. Overall I really like the game.

tanjou 2026-10-20 17:05 ♥ 1

Solid entry! The SFX are fun lmao the mouse felt a little too slow to control, but I really enjoyed the mood

sevansevan 2026-10-20 17:06 ♥ 1

Finished it on the verge of insanity :-) The clunky controls and aiming eventually made it even more frightening :-)

eugenik 2026-10-20 19:00 ♥ 1

The concept of sanity being tied into the gameplay is a brilliant way to ramp up the tension. It makes surviving the creepy forest feel much more difficult than just shooting things. Really enjoyed this intense jam experience!

ltyrosine 2026-10-20 19:12 ♥ 1

The sanity marker gives the game a lovecraft tone. I try hard to figure out what the "ghosts" are but I can't (and thats really cool). Yeah the cursor bug is spoiling some of the fun for now, as the shots are almost random in direction.

Overall, solid entry, this is the kind of game that I really like to find and play in ludumdares.

freamdev 2026-10-20 19:20 ♥ 2

That is so many comments!

@thevasandr Depending on the run length you cannot stand still after a while, you run out of sanity before the morning. @remy-lopez Real 3D audio is a great idea, would make them more spooky too @brimstone @neeko69 @tanjou I realized I should of added a sensitivity slider way too late into the second night, I have my mouse on like 3200 dpi... should of made people playtest it earlier 🙁 @eugenik @yupaz Thank you for playing, glad you had a good time 🙂

@ltyrosine I'm not sure what cursor bug you mean, if you don't use the right mouse button to aim, the shots are random on purpose, but you reload faster thats by design.

noble-goose 2026-10-21 05:44 ♥ 1

The atmosphere kept me on edge! The mouse sensitivity felt a little low to me; an option to adjust it would be nice.

freamdev 2026-10-21 07:00 ♥ 0

@noble-goose Thank you for playing! I have to agree with the mouse sensitivity, should of just yeeted a slider under the audio and get it done, maybe in a future version.

milq 2026-10-21 08:27 ♥ 1

Congratulations! The dark foggy woods and that eerie green lantern in the distance look great, and the Sanity counter adds real tension. Great job!

liquid 2026-10-21 13:27 ♥ 1

The atmosphere is great! Lovely game with some really cool sound effects. I agree with the others that the mouse sensitivity was a bit too low for me. I wonder if a closer camera perspective, or even a first-person view, might suit the game even better.

artonix 2026-10-21 16:02 ♥ 1

A neat little game made by one person. The gameplay loop is really simple: you move from campfire to campfire, dodging or fighting off ghosts and keeping an eye on the sanity bar. It's quite fun, dynamic, and refreshingly straightforward: light the fires, dodge, shoot. The audio is perfectly fine, with background music and decent sounds for shots and enemies. Overall, with more time and resources this could become a great game!!

freamdev 2026-10-21 20:50 ♥ 1

@milq @liquid Thanks for playing! @artonix Thank you! Maybe this will be the one I actually find the time to work on!

cogcomp 2026-10-21 21:06 ♥ 0

Wow you really nailed the mood. I definitely think the controls need some adjustment but other than that this is the start of a really cool little halloween game.

the3rdhunter 2026-10-21 21:26 ♥ 0

Cool vibe. I found the controls a little frustrating. At first I didn't realize you could aim, and it just felt like the rifleman was a really crappy shot. With aiming it was a bit better, but aiming felt really slow. It also felt like reloading was slower while aiming. Also some feedback about which direction the ghosts are coming from would have helped. I felt like a lot of the time I was aiming at one ghost, and I'd get hit by one coming at me from behind, which was a little frustrating. But your time spent working on the atmosphere paid off as it has a good "lost in the woods" feel. A little more iteration on the controls and this game would be tight.

3lstmsinatrenchcoat 2026-10-22 06:18 ♥ 1

Very atmospheric but also kinda cute? It definitely has a lot of character. Unfortunately I wasn't able to beat it; I found the camera controls pretty finicky, and I don't understand the aiming. I feel like maybe it would work better in 1st person? Regardless, if you were aiming for atmosphere I think you succeeded, so congrats on that!

rekk1d 2026-10-22 11:15 ♥ 1

Alone in a dark forest with just a musket, that kept me tense from start to finish. Really atmospheric, great job!

freamdev 2026-10-22 19:54 ♥ 0

@cogcomp @the3rdhunter @3lstmsinatrenchcoat Thank you! Hope I'll get to a post compo version I can improve on the controlls.

@rekk1d Thanks for playing!

willops 2026-10-22 20:09 ♥ 0

Spooky! You did a good job with the atmosphere :)

nyla-j 2026-10-23 04:40 ♥ 1

Great ambience and loved the sanity mechanics!

smdrr11037 2026-10-23 20:13 ♥ 1

This pumpkin-headed monster’s appearance and the sounds it makes are just too adorable—it doesn’t feel like a sanity-draining experience at all, haha!

sanechekz 2026-10-23 20:36 ♥ 2

That was terrifying! It’s super immersive, and the sound design makes it even scarier. Aiming feels a little tricky, and getting hit by enemies from behind feels a bit unfair at times. But overall, it’s a really great game. Awesome work!

ynukym-academy 2026-10-23 22:17 ♥ 1

This is a really solid and atmospheric 3D entry for a solo Compo project! I played it directly in the web browser, and the combination of the dark environment, spooky background music, and excellent sound effects created an awesome, tense horror experience. The heavy linear black fog was a brilliant design trick to fake the darkness — it builds a fantastic "lost in the woods" vibe that keeps you on edge. The 3D low-poly assets and the sanity-draining mechanic look great. My only real critique is that the camera controls felt a bit too rigid; it would have been nice to have a wider field of view to look up and scan the surroundings more comfortably, especially since those ghosts love to sneak up on you! A sensitivity slider under the menu would completely solve this. However, the core loop is very polished and engaging for a 48-hour deadline. Fantastic work putting this together! Good luck with the voting stage and the ratings! 🌲 musket shots loaded 📡💥🕹️✨

freamdev 2026-10-24 08:14 ♥ 1

@willops @nyla-j Thank you for playing and your kind words!

@smdrr11037 @sanechekz The duality of man 😆 thanks for trying out the game!

@ynukym-academy Thank you for the detailed feedback! The mouse/camera sensitivity came up a lot and I feel pretty dumb for not including it since its like an extra 10 minutes... but something else to learn from this jam!

ne-aquilon 2026-10-25 13:34 ♥ 0

Was the design inspired by the Flatwood monster?

ld60_lostrifleman.png

freamdev 2026-10-25 14:00 ♥ 0

@ne-aquilon Good job surviving! ❤️ First time I heard about Flatwood so no, the design is inspired by my inability to make a human form so its a squised cylidner bean combined with a dash of I ran out of time so i duplicated the human, deleted his hair and gave it red eyes and fangs 😄

pan-pan 2026-10-25 15:49 ♥ 1

Such a cool game! 👻 I really enjoyed the mix of horror and shooting. The idea of being lost in a dark forest with only a musket to defend yourself makes for a really fun and spooky experience. The atmosphere adds so much to the game, and I love that even the cute-looking ghosts can be such a menace 😂. Great job! 🔥