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The Rite to Bear Farms's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #17 | 3.681 | 3.681 |
| Accessibility | #18 | 3.433 | 3.433 |
| Audio | #23 | 3.733 | 3.733 |
| Graphics | #23 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Originality | #24 | 3.867 | 3.867 |
| Controls | #31 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Fun | #32 | 3.467 | 3.467 |
| Theme | #49 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.2.2 Stable
Wildcards Used
Transfer Takeover, Actions Have Consequences
Game Description
A strategy farm simulator where you appease nature spirits
How does your game tie into the theme?
Multiple playthroughs occur over time, showing the evolution of the folk story surrounding the farm and its origin
Source(s)
Yes; https://github.com/mattthewaz/FolkloreFarmers
Discord Username(s)
MattTheWaz, Annikat, Partheas
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
0
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Comments
Played your game on stream. If you wanted to watch me go through it ive got the vod below timestamped to your game. Overall a nice game. I love how you incorporated the recursion into it with the descendants and then shrines persisting through generations (and then land fertility shenanigans as well). There was some issues with the text bleeding into nearby pixels due to setting the font to sizes that arent multiples of the size it was made for. Mechanics work well and the art is great
That was fun to watch! We had last minute font issues and had to swap to this one, so the pixel bleeding issues were a result of that.
Still, I was quite pleased for the game to be compared to Rogue Legacy, and to hear that you thought the game mechanics were good. Thank you for sharing this :-)
I liked it! It felt cozy and stuff. The one action per season felt restrictive, but then again, you only had two or three actions to choose from. I wish it had a pause menu where I could adjust the music.
I thought accomplishing the different objectives throughout the seasons was really fun, nice job on this!
fun little cozy game! played through it twice trying to maximize my effiency.
Thank you! Yeah, the gameplay turned out satisfying enough to hold interest for a playthrough or two. I definitely had a good time coming up with a strategy for it
Nice, I really like the narrative breaks between loops, each one felt really unique. The actual mechanics are simple but offer a lot of depth! It took me a second to realize that the fertility levels of tiles in future loops could be increased based on where you place things, that's a really cool touch. Also love the music! Very peaceful
This is _exactly_ what I was going for. I really wanted the player to find out on their own that the decisions they made in a past generation impacted the fertility levels of the soil, and I was hoping the player would experience a 'eureka' moment.
This is why some of the suggestions about making the game a little harder to reach explosive scores resonate so much with me. It's currently already possible to figure out the rules of the game, restart on generation 1, then go for an extremely long run. If it were a bit harder, then cross-generational planning would actually be important for getting a good score.
Your comment made my day. Thank you!
Nice game that catched me really! It took several generations clicking around until I started to understand the purpose of my doing.
The narrative and texts are very polished.
That seems to be the typical experience. Thank you for sticking with it long enough to understand it!
The music is very good, liked the text box with the character portrait, its interesting to have a limited amount of actions to do stuff. Maybe being able to see how much the things that you cant buy cost could be usefull as in the first playthough I was wondering how much the veggetables cost and couldnt see it as I didnt have money. Nice art aswell !
Yes, your action menu feedback is pretty consistent with what I've been hearing from other people, but no less appreciated! If we work on this at all after the jam, I would probably make this a priority.
This is a very neat farming simulator! The buttons broke for me part way through unfortunately (or maybe I just didn't have any options on the tiles I was clicking?)
In any case, still had a good time!
The start of the game is heavily tutorialized, and I made it force the player to do exactly what we wanted by removing other options. I think I went overboard, since most people seem to be confused by the lack of options early on. This is something that would have benefitted from having some people test it out before we released it, but we just didn't have time.
I am glad you enjoyed it though!
Cool Art, and Chill Audio, it plays nice, no bugs. The gameplay I think though needs more fleshing out, usually happens when you have lots of mechanics around, very cool.
I am very relieved that there were no game breaking bugs discovered during the jam. There certainly were some just mere hours before we released it >.< .
Yes, the scope is pretty limited. It was hard just to make something that felt complete at all. Good thing Annikat is good at picking up any job and handling it.
We have a lot of ideas for how to rebalance and expand the game. We'll have to see if we time around real life obligations to come back and explore its potential.
I gotta call this a "gateway farming sim". This isn't the type of game I'd normally go far but the title drew me in then several generations later I get 3105 and force myself to do other things IRL, like eat. My only "real complaint" is not confirm on demolishing. Though the next generation dealt with it just fine so not really a big issue. Great work!
3105 is a pretty big score! My best was 6882, and it took quite a while to complete; it felt pretty awesome to score so high. While I was bragging about my score Partheas crushed it and discovered the score counter didn't handle 5 digit numbers very well.
Yeah, a confirmation would have been a good idea, at least for things besides rocks. I think everyone I've shown the game has at least demolished 1 thing by accident, and it is really punishing.
This was very chill and cute! I was initially a little confused since I didn't notice the Action: 0 and that I needed to end the season, but once I realized that the rest was smooth sailing. I liked that even though you could presumably play for infinite generations (or perhaps there is an end I didn't reach), there's little checkpoints with the end of each generation, which is nice. The art + music are very peaceful + cozy!
Yeah hypothetically you could keep playing forever, and if you wanted you could raise the fertility of a patch infinitely. We didn't put an upper limit on fertility. I suppose you could get it high enough that you only need a single field that you alternate using for wheat and vegetables, and then use the rest of the space for shrines and bears. I wonder how high a score is possible.
This game is lovely, immediately during the 1st season, I was amazed at the game mechanics, the artwork of the game, the level design and the characters too all while trying to build as much soil and wheat as possible. I can also destroy or repair the shrine which is definitely an amazing feature. This game is very solid all-around, very solid entry indeed!
Thank you! It was fun to make, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out for the jam. For a while we weren't sure it was going to be a good game, but it really came together on Friday when we finalized most of the rules and I realized I was having fun testing it.
I've seen a couple game jam games do what you did here by putting the volume slider right on the main menu, and I gotta say: I'm convinced. I think I'll start doing similar going forward, its great! The lil' bear becoming the credits had me CONVINCED there were easter eggs on the main menu and I spent a good bit just clicking around :)
It would be nice if I could see what buildings cost before I can place them, they were grayed out when I didn't have the option, the hover to say 'requires blah blah blah' should probably still happen even if you don't meet the requirements yet.
Great way to implement the Actions Have Consequences. All those farm games tend to start with the same trope of inheriting your farm from some family member, why not make YOU be that family member? Great choice.
Yeah the volume slider is a huge quality of life option. It would have been nice to allow the player to change volume while in game though. Partheas handled both the volume slider and the credits bear enlargening. He was absolutely delighted by it. Maybe we should include more easter eggs in the future.
I regret making the unaffordable options disabled in the menu. It is unfortunate that you can't see what things cost until you can already afford them. In general I'd probably want to rework the menu entirely.
I really liked the mix between farming simulator and folklore theme, as well as the idea of continuity from generation to generation. A well made game and nice graphics.
Thank you! We all put a lot of effort into this one. Annikat made the art, and it's always fantastic
The general idea for a farming sim / generational continuity came together pretty early on; it allowed us to get working on the project not too long after the jam started. Nature served well as the basis for folklore, I think because it is always doing its thing whether people are looking or not, which presents the opportunity for uncertainty and legend.
We had talked about having more interaction with other people, and allowing dialog to help drive the narrative forward, but there wasn't enough time to focus on the writing, the programming, the art and music all together. Big dreams.
Nice game! Great character portraits and I really liked the chill music.
Thank you!
Annikat really did a great job making all the portraits. I was really impressed; one night we didn't have any, the next night we had like 15. I think she really enjoyed making them. She also did the music, and she composed it really fast too. I'm very impressed by her speed and skill.
As a note anyone who puts a pun in the title of their game get extra points. I also really enjoyed it, the quick and simple style made it fun and compelling to play. After a few generations though there didn't seem to be any real reward/punishment for having a lot of spiritual currency, I wasn't sure what I was achieving, but I enjoyed planting wheat and making large sums of money. Some feedback on the controls, it would be good if the planting mechanic were even smoother, by having a quickbar for swapping between wheat/vegetables then only needing to click once on tilled soil to plant. Otherwise I really liked it, would definitely play it for fun when developed further.
The reward for spiritual currency is longer lifespan. I would like to do more to make it clear that is happening. I think most people I've chatted with about this have had something to say about the controls, so you are definitely not alone there.
Also, the pun was Annikat's idea. As soon as she proposed it we all pretty much instantly agreed it was the 'rite' name. It still makes me giggle when I think about it.
I was going to write what zed_studios wrote below. Its a chill farming simulator. I was curious if there was going to be some jumpscare and everything would change when I was reading about the shrine; that would had been a cool twist. Or at least I was not able to trigger it…
What an entertaining idea. No, there was no jumpscare moment in the game, so you didn't miss anything there. The dialog does make a point to tell a story about bears and nightmares; maybe it could have shown some visuals for that (though I wouldn't want to make the game any less chill!)
I found myself playing a lot longer than other game jam games :D The art style is perfect, and the idea of bears and farming was intriguing enough that I found myself sucked in.
I was a little confused on what to do at first (didn't see the "actions" and "end season" buttons) but figured things out easily enough.
Overall it seems like a lot of work went into this - awesome job!!
Thank you for your feedback. It is really nice to hear words of encouragment.
I agree that it is a little unclear what the player is supposed to be accomplishing, and I would have liked to address it had there been time.
Yes, a good amount of time went into this, but it was fun working with my friends on it.