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A pack of wolves eating poor rabbits! lol

(Please don't take anything I say here as mean, this is all meant to be constructive guidance)

Fun:

I would recommend checking out lots of game design tutorials and what makes a game fun and engaging. The youtube channel extra credits discusses this a lot and so does game makers tool kit. Try starting out prototyping. Make this prototype as fun as possible. If you can't get your prototype to be fun. Then the game is almost guaranteed not to be fun. With this being said though, don't think that your game can't be fun.  I think changing up the gameplay would have helped you out here. I'll discuss that further under the game design category.

Innovation/Theme:

You did a good job here. You took the theme stronger together and combined it with the wolf pack stereotype.  It you made it so the wolves are able to take on bigger and stronger targets when the pack grew. Nice work here.

Graphics:

The graphics you did use were nice, although sadly they weren't made during the jam. Typically, it is more impressive to see your own efforts (or your teams) during a jam, rather than pre-made work. With this said though, what you used was very nice art work. And the use of it was clean and cohesive. The menu was very strong here except for the slightly skewed button collisions. If you are using unity, I would suggest under your canvas settings, change render settings to "screen space - camera", and for the canvas scaler, change UI scale Mode to Scale with Screen Size. You also were getting sprite lines (typically called sprite tearing) which could have been resolved a few different ways. Turning off antialiasing under player settings helps, you could even try this material fix found in the youtube video below. Also each level became too confusing in the later levels due to no obvious landmarks to dictate location.


Audio:

You mentioned that all your audio was pre-made assets as well. Again this takes away some of the wow factor of the audio. I must say that you did make good choices with what you had though. The menu sounded clean and was charming. The ambient forest sounds during gameplay was a nice touch as well, but I will discuss this choice a little further in game design. But overall, solid effort here!

Game Design:

So this is where I think staying in the prototype phase a little longer would have helped out the most for you. The type of gameplay this delivered was honestly a little slow and repetitive. This type of gameplay were you grow a herd and hunt down objects is typically more suited for faster pace gameplay. This doesn't necessarily mean just making the player move faster, it could mean make the map smaller, add more animals to eat, and possibly change up the pack mechanic. Maybe start off with a large herd but lose a wolf if you get injured, that way the player is encouraged to play fast, but now there is  risk of losing out on score if they can't eat the larger animals from losing a wolf.  The level design was a little brutal on this as well. The areas were very large but there was no real indication to where you were at. If the player used effort, they could remember general locations, but not precisely how to maneuver around. Prototyping and sharing it with others could have helped with figuring out if this was too tough/boring/slow, ect.. I added an extra credits video below that discusses this topic further.  I don't want any of what I said here to discourage you.  You seem to have an eye for putting together a game that looks complete, but figuring out if that gameplay loop is actually going to be engaging and have a hook is an entirely different skill trait. And it is possible to learn this. Keep joining jams and sharing your work. This wall of text may feel brutal, but I am trying to be as honest and helpful as I can, because I think you can keep coming back to jams and improve each and every time. And if you are willing to keep growing your skills, I think you'll end up as a great dev!

Thank you for sharing your game, and I sincerely hope a bright future of growth and learning!


I streamed it here for first impressions feedback:

(+1)

Wow, thank you! Really appreciate the feedback here! I don't take any of it offensively, it's great constructive feedback! The fact that you provided detailed ways to improve & video tutorials is honestly more than I could ask for, so I truly appreciate you taking the time to write all this out! Your comments are actually very encouraging, so thank you again!

Keep up the good work and try to maintain that positive attitude!