Neolithica

anastasia-pitomets 2026-10-19 16:37 ♥ 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! 🚀

neeko69 2026-10-20 03:55 ♥ 1

It's a very cool concept, and overall it is pretty fun, but it needs a little more polish, the dagger felt weird and inconsistent, like it didn't do damage to the pigs, the bow and arrow also felt a bit weird, when the cow was chasing me it didn't shoot.

I also think the camera is a bit too close, like, I felt that there were no animals near me, and i've spent most of my time walking aimless, hopping for footprints of the animals. But it is a pretty cool concept.

nathmate 2026-10-20 04:12 ♥ 1

@neeko69 yeah there's a couple of "hidden mechanics" that ought to have been tutorialised; the knife and spear do more damage the faster you move them, and the bow can't be shot backwards (mostly because it looked so wrong to have the backhand in front of the forehand, pulling the string the wrong way). I did plan a "look ahead" feature, but it got cut. The knife was supposed to suck, though I guess it ought to suck in a way that's still kinda fun.

Thanks for playing!

maxxxmax 2026-10-20 05:05 ♥ 1

Butchering animals with that dagger—which, essentially, just requires you to aim at them—is a time-consuming task. I was constantly dying of hunger, and I couldn't find anything other than animals and rocks. The opening sequence is very good, complete with a musical score. It’s a solid concept.

woona 2026-10-20 08:57 ♥ 1

I've survived 3 nights. I liked that every day new game mechanics are introduced.

I found some issues with the gameplay.

1. There is no indication where the food is which may be realistic but can lead you searching for the entire day and not finding anything. Some way to track the prey would be cool. I found footprints on the ground, but didn't find any correlation between footprints and prey.

2. On day 1 to score kills with a dagger you need to move your mouse very rapidly which may hurt some people's wrists.

3. On day 3 you can only shoot forward with the bow but during the battle sometimes it's not obvious if you can shoot or not.

Screenshot 2026-10-20 115253.png

nathmate 2026-10-20 09:34 ♥ 1

@woona all good points! I was just making things up with the weapons (and with most of the game) tbh, I agree they're a bit clunky. Accessibility is one I would normally try to keep in mind.

For 1) the game just picks a random direction every ten seconds and spawns footprints offscreen, then a group of animals a bit further along. However if and when you find them you may be coming from a totally different direction, plus the animals may have wandered away from the direction the tracks point.

ralex-x 2026-10-20 11:47 ♥ 1

I'm really impressed by the mood and design! Honestly speaking it is a little bit difficult and I staved a lot. But the mood and mechanism is ... actually a little bit scary, in a good way of course. It really put enough stress and immersion

nursultan 2026-10-20 15:23 ♥ 0

I loved the music Really impressive work for a 72-hour jam! The core idea is super creative, and you managed to bring a lot of polish to it in such a short time. Thoroughly enjoyed playing through this! Left my ratings. If you have a minute, our team would love to hear your feedback on Meow Bomb! 🐱💣 (I’ve also put together an updated alternative build with bugfixes and a working PC here: https://naiper.itch.io/meow-bomb-by-naiper ) Best of luck with the jam!

mailsbert 2026-10-20 15:34 ♥ 1

i liked how simple art can be full-fledged. gameplay is cool, im always hungry, but its good

lllarso 2026-10-20 15:38 ♥ 1

What a nice surprise this game was! :) I really like the response for hitting enemies. It felt very "juicy" to hit the animals. I really had fun with that. I also like the transition to night and that you get new gear to play with (for example the spear).

Going with a simplistic graphic is a fine choice. But for me the more "realistic" background does not fit to the style of the other things. Giving the trees and stones a little bit of details (like you did with the animals) wouldn't take much time, but would lift the visuals.

The gameplay was easy to understand and it's nice that you have a counter at the end. I also like the introduction UGAH UGAH. :D

leandre00 2026-10-20 16:52 ♥ 1

Cool little game, I would've liked to see a bit more progression, and had an issue with visuals, as the game was rendering weirdly, but great game anyway.

joeshanahan 2026-10-20 20:34 ♥ 1

I played your game and put it on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/zqpO8QUX4lo

Nice simple game, I struggled with finding enough animals in my first attempt, but got the hang of it by the third time. I figured the ending was once you start dreaming of figs, but I can see a screenshot from someone else where they got further than me. I think it could help to let the player know that they will progress if they get to the end of the day, otherwise it's not clear when they're supposed to stop playing, and they might stop playing early.

nathmate 2026-10-21 04:36 ♥ 0

@ralex-x I'm glad you found it somewhat oppressive, that was what I was going for.

@mailsbert yeah, I was trying to emulate cave paintings, as I'm not much of an artist. Cave people 🤝 me @lllarso that's why the rocks and trees are undetailed, but I agree they're a bit too undetailed.

@joeshanahan thanks so much! Yeah I struggled to determine how much to directly tell the player, usually I'd err on the side of tutorialising everything, but it didn't feel right for this game. I can see the "endgame" in the corner in your video at 33:33. Looks like you also got kinda unlucky in dreaming of figs twice, that just picks from a random list of early crops and was intended as a hint. My bad for not dropping already-dreamt-of crops from the list. The walkable area is actually infinite which I agree leads to some player-direction issues.

kedikat 2026-10-21 11:57 ♥ 0

Awesome concept! I had issues with the game frame size not matching the window size, but everything still worked!

nesmon 2026-10-21 14:32 ♥ 1

Dude, if it’s your first project, it’s really good, man! If you want to upgrade your graphics, the first step would be adding shadows.

3lstmsinatrenchcoat 2026-10-22 05:53 ♥ 0

The art direction is pretty consistent & well-considered. The sound design is nice, too. I was generally kinda in terms of what I was supposed to be doing, until I read the comments here. Had some trouble with the game not really fitting properly on my screen, too. But there's a solid base here.

rocktavious 2026-10-22 13:04 ♥ 1

I had a hard time at first understanding you had to wiggle the mouse to "attack" - a sort of unconventional attack method but was able to adapt to it. I didn't really throw the spear much when I got it because being able to chase down the prey and just wiggle at them was better in my experience. That changed with the bow and unlimited ammo though so thats a nice balance touch.

Good job on the bull it got a good jump scare on me. Also the intro music was good and fun and got me into the theme of the game.

Overall the game needs what's called a "look ahead" camera - that is you move the camera ahead of the player in the direction they are intending to move so that they can see more whats infront of them (in the direction they are moving) instead of having 3/4 of the screen behind them.

Overall nice entry and thanks for playing mine.

adrian8 2026-10-22 21:21 ♥ 0

nice work brother

g-miaz 2026-10-22 21:37 ♥ 0

I really liked your game and how you progress with different and new tech each day. The art is also very cool, playing as if we were on cave walls. Great entry !

coderaurus 2026-10-23 14:24 ♥ 1

Unable to look ahead, I died on the bow day. After clearing wildlife around me on the first day, I was on the hunt. The nature felt vast and barren but luckily I was able to find more game.

I liked the aesthetics, fits quite nicely to the theme.

Good job!

darkwing00duck 2026-10-23 16:32 ♥ 1

I like the mouse-based weapon controls, they feel like a fresh take.

annie-owl 2026-10-24 08:09 ♥ 0

Love the art-style of this game and the original interpretation of the theme! 🙂

The game was fun, but I felt bad killing all the little hedgehogs, they are such cuties 🙁

Encountered a small bug on the third day: I accidentally dropped my bow and wasn't able to pick it up. But I've managed to complete the game with just the spear, so it's not a big problem! 😄

Here are my final stats

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