Nice game! I had a truly unique experience with it.
At first I was confused by the lack of any clear objective (and by the UI too, a little, especially by the default windowed mode, small fonts and lack of option to get out of credits without exiting the game). But then I quickly realized how the main systems work and started playing around with this world: trying different character skills, driving away all the rats, looking at plants grow. It was a very pleasant experience. Then I got interested at how much plants can I grow with the druid. Couple minutes later game FPS dropped to 1 and it crashed. My second playthrough with the archer wasn't much different. Both times game ended in a FPS crash for me, and this fact filled words 'Enjoy it for a time' with a completely new meaning. Then I tried maintaining balance between rats and grass, and failed at it completely for several times. Once I was forced to exterminate a whole family of rats who were feeding on grass to aggrssively, and this was a sad moment.
I very much enjoyed how almost all of my experience of this game was systems driwen: different situations happened on the intersections of various systems, and generated interesting stories. I liked interesting details like flowers growing in size and in quantity and new grass growing seemingly primarely on rats corpses. This sandbox experience is really interesting, and it really worked for me, as I immediately started setting myself different goals and experimenting with the system. I would've liked to see it balanced and polished a bit more, either by balancing how systems work on each other, or giving player even more options to interact with them (i.e. summon new rats and banishing chimeras would be rad).
Effects and music are very fitting, they really set the mood for meditative exploration and experimentation.
This is an interesting idea. The pixelart of the characters is lovely and the background sound gives it a nice vibe. Unfortunately I could not figure out too much of the interactions. I know that you can plant flowers to feed the rats, and you can place poison to kill them. You can also burn everything down, but appart from that I am not sure what else to do. I don't know if you can at all interact with the red monster. With a bit more polish and maybe some clearer instructions this could be a really fun experience.
I was very proud of the way the pixel art & sound came out as well.
I definitely under budgeted time when it came to stuff like tutorials or menus, those areas for sure needed more time in the oven.
Its largely just an ecosystem sandbox. What you do in it is up to the player, And yes, a lack of ability to affect the predator population is another glaring issue I'd fix if I had more time.
Comments
Nice game! I had a truly unique experience with it.
At first I was confused by the lack of any clear objective (and by the UI too, a little, especially by the default windowed mode, small fonts and lack of option to get out of credits without exiting the game). But then I quickly realized how the main systems work and started playing around with this world: trying different character skills, driving away all the rats, looking at plants grow. It was a very pleasant experience. Then I got interested at how much plants can I grow with the druid. Couple minutes later game FPS dropped to 1 and it crashed. My second playthrough with the archer wasn't much different. Both times game ended in a FPS crash for me, and this fact filled words 'Enjoy it for a time' with a completely new meaning. Then I tried maintaining balance between rats and grass, and failed at it completely for several times. Once I was forced to exterminate a whole family of rats who were feeding on grass to aggrssively, and this was a sad moment.
I very much enjoyed how almost all of my experience of this game was systems driwen: different situations happened on the intersections of various systems, and generated interesting stories. I liked interesting details like flowers growing in size and in quantity and new grass growing seemingly primarely on rats corpses. This sandbox experience is really interesting, and it really worked for me, as I immediately started setting myself different goals and experimenting with the system. I would've liked to see it balanced and polished a bit more, either by balancing how systems work on each other, or giving player even more options to interact with them (i.e. summon new rats and banishing chimeras would be rad).
Effects and music are very fitting, they really set the mood for meditative exploration and experimentation.
Overall, thanks for the beautiful game!
This is an interesting idea. The pixelart of the characters is lovely and the background sound gives it a nice vibe. Unfortunately I could not figure out too much of the interactions. I know that you can plant flowers to feed the rats, and you can place poison to kill them. You can also burn everything down, but appart from that I am not sure what else to do. I don't know if you can at all interact with the red monster. With a bit more polish and maybe some clearer instructions this could be a really fun experience.
Thanks chum.
I was very proud of the way the pixel art & sound came out as well.
I definitely under budgeted time when it came to stuff like tutorials or menus, those areas for sure needed more time in the oven.
Its largely just an ecosystem sandbox. What you do in it is up to the player, And yes, a lack of ability to affect the predator population is another glaring issue I'd fix if I had more time.