As someone who really isn't a fan of text based adventures, I had fun playing this! I liked how there was more interactivity than just clicking on a line of text. I liked being able to choose my own path and the information presented to me was clear and concise. Felt like I was playing a GAME game. Really solid stuff here!! Loved the pixel art and animations !!
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You Will Not Live's itch.io pageNames and Email Addresses of Team Members
Mandy J Watson
Categories Your Team is Eligible for
Overall, hobbyist, best art, technical excellence, best narrative. Made in 72 hours.
Comments
This is amazing! I loved all the enemy artwork a lot, and all the random elements helped each of the three dungeons feel like distinct experiences
Submitted
It's Cold Down HereWoop, this was cool! Having tinkered with Twine recently, I'm kinda blow away by what you put together and managed to do it all in a weekend.
I gave this a few tries but couldn't get the third and (I assume) final item. I really liked that the place names were randomised, that felt like a pleasant surprise the second time I started a run. Also the mimic was such a nice touch!
One gripe that kept me starting more runs was feeling limited during combat. One engaged it's pretty much a fight to the death (unless you're stacked with potions, which I found unlikely). I wondered if allowing some kind of "flee" option would help this, but this only helps if you have enough $ to afford a potion and start a dungeon again.
It's funny that in the devlog you mentioned rushing the enemy art and yet those felt pretty endearing to me :)
Submitted
Welcome, ArcherI have two aims with jams: make something that someone can play to an end (offer a complete player experience, so reduce scope) and make something where I push the boundaries of my dev knowledge (skill upgrade - could be a tool, could be narrative writing, could be pixel art, ...?). So for the last few jams I've really been working on my Twine proficiency, and building on it every time, plus my not-yet-public dev build of The Mischievous Thievery Of Jessica The Cat has been teaching me new things too.
Combat is hard to program well (and quickly), partly because I've never done it before, so I wanted to ensure that I had something that at least worked and was a little bit more interesting than just hit hit hit (hence potions). If I'd had more time I would have made something that worked much better, which included having different weapons. The trick for now, really, is to flee the dungeon when not in combat, if you have nuggets to stock up on potions, and go back in. It's not ideal but it's the best tactic for the game as it is. If you have a lucky run (I have a friend who managed 231 moves in a game, which blows my mind, and something like 15 potions) you can keep going for quite a while.
If I'd had more time I also would have improved the randomisation (for everything), as I have mentioned in other comments. I made dev notes about tracking movement count (which the game does) and increasing the likelihood of finding the treasure the longer you are in a dungeon (also, decreasing the likelihood when you just start out) but it was another thing I didn't have time to implement. Even as I sit here now writing this I'm going "Oh! I could have just done xxx!", and I think I've figured out how to do it, but in the moment your brain just goes blank sometimes.
I did rush the enemy pixel art, and really wanted to make more, but I am still enamoured with my little guys, even as I see things I want to fix. Pixel art is another skill I've privately been working on, which is why I could rush it a little. (Also, jam crunch is about saying "That's good enough, let's move on."!)
Thank you so much for your kind comments and feedback.
Fun game, feels very old school in a pleasant way. Only thing that I would change is add more boxes to the different sections of gameplay to help the user scan the page up and down to find the next section that they want while deep in a dungeon delve or when about to pick which one to go into.
Submitted
Messages Into The VoidThe old school vibe was the intention!
I'm not understanding what you're describing. Can you elaborate, please? Do you mean the text section under the art? If so, I had prototyped moving some of that information into graphics surrounding the dungeon art. The art is 512x343 pixels and I had mapped out space to use 768x512 pixels - I had intended to add a few blocks of information on the right of the dungeon and a few blocks of information underneath the dungeon - but I didn't have time to code it or make or the graphics. I wanted to show which artifacts you had (or not), as well as how many potions and gold nuggets, then possibly also HP and your weapon.
It was true, I didn't live... A nostalgic game. Found it quite easy to get the artefacts in a couple of clicks each time without encountering anything ever. I agree about having more action in each setting.
Submitted
The Tree of DreamsTwine's so-called "randomisation" function seems to get stuck on favourite numbers (I've experienced this in another game I'm working on too) so you can have a run where you struggle to find the (or any) treasure, a run where one enemy dominates, or, as you experienced, a run where the treasure just pops up immediately. If I had had more time I would have written a more complicated randomisation script to try and circumvent this problem. I also had the intention to add a joke I wrote about finding an artifact early - on the chance it would happen - but I didn't have time to implement the code.
Thank you for playing!
Fun gameplay. Cool sprites and animations. I wanted to leave the dungeon though lol. Wanted to go shopping.
Submitted
Good boi, Puggo!
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