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A jam submission

Cold of NightView game page

Stay warm to survive the night!
Submitted by FiveToolDev (@FiveToolBum) — 12 hours, 52 minutes before the deadline
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Cold of Night's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme/Limitation#343.6253.625
Overall#593.2253.225
Technical Implementation#603.1883.188
Graphics/Animation#743.3133.313
Fun/Design#783.1883.188
Music/Sound#962.8132.813

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game implement the focus, Multi-Use?
Sticks are used for crafting several items and as fuel for the fire while the axe is used for both chopping up logs/trees and attacking enemies.

Team Size

Solo (1)

Completeness

Demo / Vertical Slice

What tools did your team use to construct the game?
Unreal Engine 5

Which art and audio did you / your team NOT create?
Character, fire, trees

Which art & audio did you / your team create BEFORE the jam started?
None

Which diversifiers did you use, if any?
Quick Run

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Nice game!

You asked for feedback, here we go :)

I like the general direction of the art style, the player and the enemies look nice. The trees are a bit simple and there could be more going on on the ground like bushes or rocks, stuff like that. The lighting is nice and that the fire is the brightness when it's almost out or when you refuel it is a nice touch.

The controls feel very limited. You can't move the rotate without rotating the player and you can't look up and down. With a static camera like this maybe an isometric top down view would work better. When attacking, the camera could also not be rotated anymore. This made the camera not feel really smooth and it was hard to see what is directly in front of you.

The music is good but not really fitting. It feels too epic for the game. I think your game could work really well with less music and more ambience that would elevate the danger much better.

The combat was a bit boring because you could not move when striking and there was no blocking or dodging. 

I know there was not much time and I think you did a good job, but I also think there is potential for a much better game if you can manage to make everything feel smoother and polished. I could also totally see this with more things to build like towers that could help you defend the fire.

Overall not bad. Well done!

Developer

Thank you so much! This is great feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to play and write a thoughtful comment. All of your feedback is entirely valid. This was my first game jam and I tried to keep it as simple as possible to prevent over scope. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out for a game jam game and I will certainly take your feedback into consideration should I decide to build on this game. Thanks again!

Submitted

You're welcome! In the end it's all about learning I think. Every game will be a bit better than the last. For your first game jam this is totally fine. It worked, it didn't crash, I didn't see bugs (weird behaviour is not a bug it's by design :D), that pretty good.

Submitted(+1)

the art is literally incredible omg. Some animations could help and it was a little too hard for me (that might just be a me problem though) but I absolutely loved everything else about the game and I hope you continue working on it after the jam ends

Developer

Thanks! That is so nice of you! I don't have any official decisions made, but I am considering expanding the game further :). I definitely agree that I needed more animations. If I do decide to work on it further, I may reach out to see what made it difficult for you because I am always looking for good feedback on how to make things more enjoyable. Thanks so much for playing and good luck in the final voting! I hope you do well!

Submitted(+1)

Nice game. Very well done!

Feedback:

Consistent art and design

Player animation was a bit lacking

First wave was very difficult for a first wave. Maybe difficulty can be gradual. But can totally understand if it was meant to be.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I completely agree with both critiques. I ran out of time for animations and I definitely need to keep working enemy balance.

Submitted(+1)

Nice game! I liked the soundtrack and its buildup, maybe adding some animation to the character movement would improve immersion too.

Developer

Thanks for playing! I agree, player definitely needs more animations.

Submitted

Very Nice Submission!

Submitted (1 edit)

The concept works well and there's a nice tension build-up. As with most of these jam games there's always room for improvement so here are my two cents, if you plan on building on this prototype:

- Was it a personal choice not to show how much "health" you got left once in the cold ? Maybe have the character trembling, or just a small visual cue to tell you the player that he's almost dead.

- First enemy wave can be brutal, maybe work on the difficulty increment.

- I found that I was longing for the ability to build other bonfires to progress through the night.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback and for playing! I really appreciate your thoughts.

Unfortunately due to time constraints, I was not able to add everything I would have liked to add. I agree, it would be much better to have some indication when you are close to death. I intentionally left the timer short (10 seconds) to encourage the player to craft more torches to stay warm while venturing away from the fire. But some kind of shiver effect or visual queue would certainly be a great thing to add. The idea of the character trembling would fantastic!


I definitely need to work on enemy balance, I agree. Since this was a game jam and I felt like I needed to add tension to the game, it was on purpose to have the enemies quickly dwindle the fire to < 10 fuel and force the user to a small panic to quickly rekindle the fire. But if this were a larger, more complete game your feedback is 100% valid and it would be wise to spread the enemies out more and maybe have one or two appear at random times throughout.

The idea for building more fires hadn't crossed my mind, to be honest. The thinking was that you were tethered to this fire and it's too cold beyond the fire to take the time to build another. So in order to explore further, you would have to keep building torches to keep warm. If I decide to expand on this game (undecided at the moment) I will certainly take your idea into consideration and see how it works :).

Thanks again for taking the time to play and give feedback! This has been my favorite part of the jam and I have had a ton of fun learning how to better my game development. I will be playing your game later today and let you know my thoughts.

Submitted(+1)

The game is alright, if a little simple. I tried making a second backpack hoping it would give me even more inventory, but apparently that wasn't the case. It's a little simple since just getting more sticks and bringing them back is easy, but it did get more difficult as I needed to go further and further for sticks as I used the closer ones.

Developer

Thanks for playing! It was my first game jam so simple is what I was going for to avoid overscope. I'm glad I was able to achieve that :). Thanks for the feedback! Definitely something to build on with my next time around.

Submitted(+1)

It's a really good prototype. The game would be a bit more engaging if you had more resource types to collect, and more things to craft. But considering the focus and theme it made sense to only have wood.

The waves of enemies should be a bit easier to deal with in the early game. The very first wave of enemies I encountered was large enough to overwhelm me.

Solid game, over all, though.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I can definitely see what you are saying. I really appreciate you taking the time to check out my game. That is some great feedback :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Pretty good game!

the graphics are nice, although the player looks goofy with only an attack animation, also I didn't encounter any enemies, is it because I was on fire level 20?


also the player tends to fling himself into the sky sometimes, and the performance is nowhere near stable on low end laptops.

but other than that, its pretty solid!

Developer

Thanks for playing! The enemies spawn at fire level 30. I will definitely take a look at those bugs and make updates in future iterations :). I really appreciate the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Good demo with the potential to become something more. 

I read about the enemies but couldn't figure out how to get them to spawn for a few runs.  

Developer

Thanks for the comment! The enemies spawn at Fire level 30. I definitely need to work out a better balance of when to spawn enemies and to keep the fire dwindling at a proper speed.

Submitted(+1)

Its a good solid demo.  The upgrades are worthwhile. It can get really tense dealing with enemies whilst trying to keep the fire burning.

I didn't quite get that torches help you survive outside the fire at first so I died a few times to that. I had a bit of difficulty judging exactly how close I needed to be to pick up items. I kinda cheesed it once I realised that enemies don't spawn over 30 fire, so I kept the fire around 15-25 and had a relaxing time. 

Good job!

Developer

Thanks for the review! Finding the balance between when enemies appear to keep things exciting, but also not making them appear so soon that it's impossible to win was probably the toughest part of building this game. Given more time I would probably add some other mechanic to help keep things interesting when enemies weren't trying to put out your fire. Glad you enjoyed it!