This was a fun little game! It took me a moment to understand my objective but once it clicked (didn't take long really) I had a blast trying out different strategies.
My favourite strategy was stocking up the fire, and just having fun going cryptid hunting.
I wrote a small newsletter on it.
Lastly, fantastic work on the character model and animations. They're pretty good for 5 days of work! Hope you try your hand at more game jams in the future! :)
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Thanks! I'm glad you had fun playing it!
Honestly it's kind of a miracle I even managed to get a working gameplay loop on the last day.
On the fourth day, I didn't even have the campfire system implemented, or even the level geometry. Just the basic controls, an enemy, and a pickup system. I almost gave up on it.
So the last day was just me scrambling to put something together. A lot of it held together with spaghetti code.
Some mechanics even ended up being fun by accident. For instance, I only gave my character a bolt-action rifle for aesthetic reasons, at first. But it worked out, because the long time between shots and low mag capacity made combat more risky and engaging.
Same with the upgrade system. That was tacked on during the final day, since my original idea for the theme tie-in had to be cut. But it worked out, because I can imagine having to start over every time you die would be frustrating. And the campfire running out still works as a fail state.