Go on an expedition, cooperate with up to four friends and fight your way through the woods · By
Hi. This game is very cute and fun. I play with my gf we both use joypad. The 'KB' also work great but I prefer joypad. Looking forward to more content! I hope you guys put this one on steam and received more support. Thank you for this awesome game!
P.S. as soon as you guys update more and put on steam I will totally get it.
Hey! Checked out your game at https://www.twitch.tv/naturalpowergames. The visuals are impressive and the idea is good. Keep it up. I want to see what the final product is like. I played with controllers, had no issue understanding it, I played solo though. I think an Internet connection will be 100% your selling point.
I cannot tell you how much I loved this demo. I'm not sure how I didn't find out about it sooner, but you guys have made something incredible and uniquely special. It almost makes me sick to my stomach to realize it's just a demo, and that I have no idea when I can expect a full release.
Played with my wife, via Steam Remote Play Together, using two Nintendo Switch Pro controllers mapped to a standard Xbox layout via Steam. Worked almost flawlessly. Beat it on normal, wiped on hard maybe like 7 minutes in.
Art, sound, controls, mechanics, are all almost a perfect 10/10 right now. The combat is responsive and smooth, the enemy telegraph's are effective and fun to master, boss fight was really fun, well designed and appropriately challenging. Gathering and clearing grass for coins combined my favorite elements of Zelda and Overcooked. Upgrading the cart was interesting, and I can't wait to find out how you'll flush it out. The player characters are ADORABLE and badass. Just pure joy. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun with a game right off the bat.
- Would love to have more path choices, with different risks and rewards.
- The basic combat feels really good, but I would love a power move, like a big circle swing for clearing grass. Maybe upgrades for characters too.
- when I first arrived at the shops, I felt joy at the sense of 'ohh what should we focus on? What are we struggling with?', but the next shops all sort of seemed the same-y. I'm not sure how to articulate it. The upgrades at that point were less interesting, and seemed almost just 'buy anything you can'. I'm sure you'll flush it out more 😉
That's all I can think of for now! Please feel free to ask me directed questions to solicit more feedback. I've been a unity dev for nearly 8 years now, so I know how important it is, and I want to do whatever I can to help you guys out.
Please keep posting updates! Stay motivated!
Hey pixeldinosaur,
thanks for your heartwarming feedback.
It is always very motivating to read such comments.
You have very well recognized the weaknesses of the current design :)
A small view into a hopefully happy future:
The upgrading will move out of the forest and into a safe camp. We are aware that the upgrade does not have enough depth at the moment. Therefore we have planned completely new upgrades. These will bring completely new mechanics into the game. For example a companion that helps with collecting or fighting or a small turret at the top of the wagon.
Furthermore the cats will get different weapons to allow different play styles. The weapons should also offer three attack patterns. "fast hit", "strong hit", "combo (3 hits in a row or something)".
At each crossroads the group can decide which way they want to go, but also a "modifier" will be chosen, which will increase the difficulty from then on. For example: "The night is twice as long", "From now on enemy X can spawn". We are not yet sure if we also want a positive modifier. Like "the night is twice as long, but you do 20% more damage". Thats something we have to test.
The forest will also be provided with shrines, which give direct improvements. "More damage", "Run faster", "Throw more".
But to keep the game from becoming too much of a brawler, the coop mechanics should be in focus too. That's why there should be more events on the way, which have to be solved as a group. "Repair a bridge", "Fill mud holes", "Carry the log away". And the very best. "You can catch resources from others" ^^
Last but not least, we want to give players optional mini quest they can complete to get rewards. "Cut X gras to get double gold for the next passage" (That would be a really unbalanced reward ^^)
We still have some ideas on our board :)
I would really like to invite you to join our discord.wildwoodsgame.com. There we are very active and we will be happy to discuss any feedback that comes up.
To make sure that all this is not just a dream we are currently looking for a publisher because we want to work on Wild Woods full-time.
This is one of the most well-made games I’ve played on itch. Art is nice, control is good, mechanic feels novel (kinda like HL’s VIP or other “push the cart” modes in FPS games).
I played with a gamepad. Unfortunately, I only played solo and found the rush of enemies a bit much and it felt like a grind getting resources and getting through the night. I never made it out of the green forest area. But I’d like to try multiplayer and see how well we do.
Nice work!
My biggest complaint with the game is that you have to press A to cycle resolutions but there’s no way to go back, so if you overshoot, you have to cycle through all of them again. (I wasn’t sure if there’d be a 60 Hz mode after the 59 Hz one.)
Thank you for your feedback :)
Currently the demo ist just the first "green" forest, so you haven't missed so much :P Maybe next time you can beat the boss together in multiplayer mode ;)
What do you think was the thing that was to hard for you?
And yeah the resolution option was more quick and dirty so that people with a lower spec pc can play the game as well. In the future there should be a much more intuitive solution.
I played with my son (age 5) and we made it to the boss (on easy)! Although I thought we were going to the shop, haha. I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to the sign I picked. We didn’t win. He did great at night before, but got really panicked at dying so many times. It was very hard to revive him and get him to go refill his health. Especially when he’d die next to the cart and so I’d be kiting a huge mob to him that don’t follow me away after I rez and run. Maybe we’ll get it next time…
For solo, refilling my wood supply was a big drag. Maybe it’s partly because upgrades cost wood and I was always buying all the ones I had the gold for – but that drained my wood supply. I found I was ignoring enemies at night because I was trying to get all the wood I could see. And I don’t think I had enough logs during the day to fill my need for wood.
I tend to wait at crossroads and get all the wood on that screen. Maybe that’s hurting me in the long run because I should be moving forward to more fruitful areas instead of letting the day progress, but it’s hard to fight the hoarder’s urge.
This game is EXCELLENT and great for families. We played with all the kids from agents 5-13 and we all had fun. Great graphics and gameplay. Love that co-op is a fully shared model with teamwork and shared upgrades and not the style where the first to the loot gets it. All for the greater good and teaches good values about community.
Really looking forward to a full release!
Hey Anon_me,
thank you for your kind feedback!
To support families playing together is something we wanted by design, its nice that it work :)
In the future we want to expand the game this way. It should be fun for 'hardcore' gamer but also for the whole family as well.
To work together was also always a Design Pillar in our design papers :)
Hopefully the full release is not to far away, if you want more regular updates or want to share your ideas with us. Feel free to join or discord.
We played it with a friend this morning and I really liked the artistic direction and the gameplay !
The alternating cycles, the combination of resource gathering and fighting mechanics, the interesting boss fights... Really fun ! Good job !
I think I'd just love some more storytelling around the characters...
Do you plan to greenlight it on Steam ?
I'm not a Discord user, but I'd like to be notified when the full game is out :)
Hey Lucas-C,
Thank you really much for your kind words.
We got some money from a local funding application so hopefully we can extend Wild Woods and bring some storytelling in.
For the release we have steam and switch in mind, but currently can't say when. Our plan is to rebuild some systems in the background and after that we want to create a steam wishlist or early access page.
And when you follow us here you should get all news too. Don't be afraid we don't spam :P
Hey Fuzz Force, thank you for reaching out to us.
You are absolutely right, currently the game is kind of hard solo.
Wild Woods was designed to play with friends but in the future we will try to concentrate more on getting everyone satisfied.
The reason why you have to be behind the wagon to get wood into it is that this creates more coop situations, because if you play with others you can throw stuff to other players and they can throw it into the wagon. One player could stay behind the wagon and another one throws wood to him.
Greetings
Played through this co-op with myself on keyboard and a friend on game-pad. The game feels so so smooth, its surprising its made by a small team! We were so disappointed when itt ended and we realised there were no more levels.
The only feedback I would have is to make "Medium" difficulty easier as there is currently a MASSIVE jump between easy and medium. Also maybe more variety in the upgrades for the shop.
We eagerly await your next update!!
Fun demo, huge props on visual clarity and making the concept understandable from the get-go!
Two accessibility suggestions:
- the game reliance on spamming attack is very tiresome on hands. I'd love to see a "hold to continue attacking" option down the line
- add an arrow indicator for the color highlight under the character, so it's clear which way you're pointing
Can't wait to play more!
Hi Ewegoggo,
thank you for your feedback.
Every opinion counts and we have exactly the same kind of attacking in mind like you.
Attack Button for a fast attack
Hold for a strong attack
And 3 times attack for a combo.
Depending on which weapon you have equipped, other effects happen.
For the indicator we also thought about that and that could be the solution for some things, but before we add something like that we are going to test other ways to clearify the view direction of the character. (But maybe in the end the easiest solution is the best^^)
Best regards and stay safe.
We played as 3 friends, an easy run and a hard run. It's really good, characters feel really good to play. It looks nice also. We would definitely play this much more once it gets out!
Some small things that could be improved imo :
This game reminded me of spiral knights, in case you don't know this game. It's quite similar and did a lot of this well imo, so there are probably some nice ideas to steal from it !
Wow, thank you for playing and the good feedback here!
We always appreciate such detailed suggestions for improvement.
Last things first :) We know spiral knight and was looking into it at the begin of Wild Woods, but that is long ago and we should take a look again. Back then we just analyzed the astetics and the controls. But we definitely should take a closer look at their mechanics too.
Anyway thank you for your feedback. And if you have more cool ideas feel free to join our discord.wildwoodsgame.com
