The graphics have a vintage video game feel. I like the idea of not knowing what's in the shed. Good game overall. I'd be interested to see how this could be expanded, maybe you find some notes about what's in the shed? Overall, great game for only having worked on it for 7 days!
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Gestate's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #141 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Innovation | #143 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
| Graphics | #227 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Overall | #262 | 3.135 | 3.135 |
| Audio | #302 | 2.905 | 2.905 |
| Game Design | #351 | 2.857 | 2.857 |
| Fun | #370 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
the monster is behind a door which you feed it through, the game begs the question "what's behind the door"
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
We made all the models and code, we just used these two shaders:
https://github.com/keijiro/ColorSuite
dsoft20's psx_retroshader
Sounds from Zapsplat and Freesound, textures public domain.
Comments
This was an interesting concept, feeding some thing day after day not knowing what it is. The graphics really worked for the creepy feel. Had to restart once since I didnt realize I had to select foods to feed it, I was just clicking Feed. Not sure if the end goal was to feed it enough poison to weaken it all the way or what.
Great work!
Submitted
Block 'N KeyThanks for playing !
yep, the feeding menu is far from intuitive in this build, we've had a lot of players confused by it's design, so we're making sure to address this in our next patch
the objective is to fully weaken the creature, though we've also recognised a need to rebalance the items so this won't take as much time to do.
Thank you for your kind words about the graphics :)
Cool retro graphics, I liked how interactable items look :) Also fun gameplay loop
Submitted
Escape the HallwayWonderful creepy graphics and music. Definitely nicely crafted horror environment. Also interesting idea. Simple and yet adequately complicated gameplay. I wanted to know what is behind the door or I was scared what is behind them more. I had very good and spooky experience.
Submitted
Doors Defend DoorThis is a good scary game! feeding a simething dont know behind the door is good idea.but I think you should add pause mechanic to make this game better.Overall it is really nice game.Good Job <3
if you have time,come and play my game,this is really good game ;)
Submitted
Behind the portal :DThe atmosphere is great, and I really like the core loop of having to gather food for some mysterious thing behind a door. I am not sure if there is a purpose to gather more than one item a day, and given more time to work on it would be great to have a jump scare when you get eaten. Really great little horror experience and would be interested to see you take it further after the jam!
Submitted
As you WishI'm glad you liked it :D
well you can feed the monster multiple items at the end of the day, so this could be useful if you want to gain a lot of trust in one day, or perhaps slip in a little poison with the food >:)
we were actually planning on doing a jumpscare 😅 we were going to have the day start like normal, and then some time into the day a monster would fly out from the shed towards you screaming 😂 we were just going to use a jpeg for the monster, kind of like a nextbot, unfortunately we got a little caught on getting it to billboard towards the player correctly and it didn't get done in time. We will try to get something like this in the game in an update :)
Thanks so much for the feedback, I played your game earlier today and it was so awesome, it's amazing how many systems you put in your game all in the space of a week
Nice game! I really like the graphics and the audio, they really contribute to the creepy atmosphere of the game! Great work!
Submitted
IngressionLoved it! Creepy atmosphere and I love the graphics/style you went for! Fits the theme too!
Submitted
Forgotten DepthsReally cool idea! I had a bit of trouble telling whether or not an item was selected at the start as it wasn't clear what the different colours meant, you could maybe try using symbols like a tick or a cross but even better would be moving things to a separate 'feed' panel to make it very obvious what you are giving. It would also be nice to have the things you don't feed stay in your inventory the next day as it's a bit annoying to pass up on poisoning to win trust then no poison spawning when you have it. You could even go further and have held corpses rot over time so there are more ways to harm the creature!
Submitted
AppeasementThanks for the feedback Wayne, these are all great ideas :D
we had a similar idea at one point that maybe the fish could rot during the day, so depending on when you gather them they can add or remove strength, but didn't have time to explore the idea before the deadline :/
we have also considered maybe a crate or cooler that you could put items in to save them for the next day or something, I guess I was concerned that this would make the game too easy, but I'm sure there's a way to balance it into the game.
I think that it would be a good move to incorporate more features that have an effect between days like that in general.
we also thought about maybe being able to lay a trap on one day and then a dead animal would spawn there the next, and I think this would still be cool to pursue, like depending on where you place them it will spawn different animals or something.
I've locally changed up the feeding menu so it should be easier to use, I'll update the game in the itch.io page once the rating period is over.
it's a shame that there are ideas didn't make it into the submission, but feedback like this helps to direct us forwards with the game :)
Great game idea! (wink) I like the tutorial notes sprinkled throughout, though there was no note explaining the actual goal. It controlled nicely and the PSX look is always a plus. I felt there was a bit too much randomness with item spawns, I went through 5 days and didn't see much rat poison or hedgehogs, that paired with the large map made it hard to persevere. Tightening up the map I think would fix most of your issues! Solid entry.
Submitted
Night ShiftThanks for your feedback DelightfulDev, I really appreciate it!
I think there's a note by the fence near spawn which kind of explains the objective, but it's definitely easy for the player to miss it, which it shouldn't be because it's pretty vital information.
I think that many of the game's flaws in this state come down to our lack of perspective whilst developing it, and assuming the player would have our context/understanding of the game, we neglected to provide context effectively enough in-game, a lot of people also didn't know to select items before clicking 'feed', as our UI doesn't explain the process at all.
one of the things I liked about your game Night Shift is how much UI is present to help the player with controls and contextual info.
I haven't heard as much feedback about the map size, but you make a really good point, there's quite a lot of empty area of the map that serves no purpose at the moment, which is unhelpful to the player trying to explore it.
This was our first game jam, and I kind of got the team together quite spontaneously like a day into the jam 😅 it was such a blast though, I look forward to doing another one, or just doing more game development as a team.
Just completed your game "Roastmaster Rumble" btw, awesome game, some of the insults cracked me up
I'm inspired by what you are able to accomplish as a solo dev
getting feedback from someone so prolific and experienced with game jams as yourself, it really means a lot :)
Great idea, the game hust felt a bit repetitive after a while.
If you have time check out my game.
Submitted
Whispering LocksCommenting again cause thankfully I could start feeding the creature. It's a great idea of the game, but I won't go over what I already said in last comment. The only thing that I might add is that the gameplay loop gets a little repetitive. It's fun to juggle giving the creature food with hedgehogs to not let its strength rise, and then hit it with poison until you kill it, but doing it for about half an hour takes out some of the fun. Adding some other mechanics which could happen if there is low/high trust, low/high strength could maybe spice things up!
Submitted
What's behind the door?Your game is a bit buggy but hey that‘s overall it‘s a very good game ,the audios are also very clear and good and the visuals have unique style
Submitted
THE DOORS OF ALCORUSNot entirely sure what pressing e on the door does. It just seems to load the next day, with the creature being hungrier.
The audio was well done, the screaming sounded spooking close up and also off in the distance when you're out gathering food. The visuals were nice, although the proportions being so out of whack kinda took away from the look for me.
Definitely, a unique game-loop. I haven't seen many "feed a monster" game's around.
Submitted
Naked Man in a ForestHi there!
sorry about this issue, unfortunately our game doesn't communicate some systems well enough at the moment, but you first have to click on the items you wish to feed to the monster in that menu, and then click feed. this is probably our most prevalent oversight from user feedback.
thanks for your comment :)
just played your game and it is awesome, i'll give it a rating in a moment
Unfortunately, I don't thing the game is working right for me. No matter what I do, I don't seem to be able to give anything to the creature. No matter how much food or poison I bring, when I end the day and click "Feed", the hunger bar goes down and the rest stay the same.
Still, I'll say what I can about the rest. The idea of the game I think is really good. You don't know what's growing there, but you know you have to feed it if you don't want to be next, so you frantically search for food around. But, you also have the option to poison it and try to kill it (I'm guessing, couldn't try it.). All of this before nightfall. The premise is good.
The artwork fits the game really well. The pixelated little area looks cozy, which makes it contrast a lot with the creature shrieks. It has that uncanny feel to it, and I think it's really well achieved. I also like how as daylight goes down, it actually gets darker, though for some reason a lot of things are not affected by the light so they just look incredibly illuminated around the dark soil. One thing I would change is making the ambience sound effects a little louder. The wind, tree leaves rustling, the ocean, maybe some animals, etc. All this so that if you're away from the shed, it feels relaxed, but of course you have the creature in the shed. The false sense of calmness can be really spooky.
I'll keep trying to feed the creature for a while, or maybe you have some hints if I'm doing it wrong!
Submitted
What's behind the door?I worked on this game for the jam, thanks for playing it and thanks for saying all the nice things. Unfortunately due to a mistake/unforseen act of god, the UI doesn't actually communicate anything about the game, which we realize now after watching other people play it. The "feed" screen UI for some reason has a white background to the inventory, which indicates that the food is selected (and thus, pressing the big "feed" button in the screen will do something).
It actually doesn't- the idea is that you select which items to feed the monster by clicking on them one-by-one (you might have only found loads of poison and not want to use all of it, for instance). The "Feed" button just ends the day and feeds whatever you have selected (in your case, nothing). We, the three who made it, all "knew" how to feed it, so this in hindsight glaring player feedback issue never game up as we were making it.
Other issues we probably should have noticed but didn't, and I'm not sure if you encountered:
- unclear what the goal even is if you didn't read the itch.io page
- "hunger", "trust", "strength". We don't actually tell you what any of these bars do, nor do we animate them moving. We hint at their functions with notes, but nobody figured out that the effect of food scales with how much the monster trusts you, for example. Or that you run faster at higher trust.
- Also unclear what effect food has, even moreso with trust scaling their effect. The descriptions give you a hint--hedgehogs reduce its strength similar to poison, for instance--but only one person who wasn't us ever figured out their effects enough to make a meaningful gameplay choice about feeding strategies. And that involved us having to tell him the effect of trust on the bars.
- Forest is kind of barren- it has 3 spawners close together, but many players explored every corner as it's quite large.
Hope this helps you wring some enjoyment out of it.
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