itch.io

Good entry,

I don’t like the acceleration based controls, it feels a bit hard/slow to control.

Nice touch at the end though animating the escape, got a little scared at first :D for a new enemy.

Funny idea, sometimes the flowers burnt although i had put the fire out already.

Mechanic wise probably it is still missing a mechanic or two to make it interesting for longer plays. I would definitely say you should have charges on the bucket though as i would not always hit all things at once and then the one item that is still burning set the rest back on fire. And getting back to the next lake takes too long.

Also maybe consider not droping the water while on water i was constantly leaving the pond with an empty bucket, because i hit the key twice. Or mabye use another key.

Yes, to be honest, this was kind of a test to get a feeling of how people think about it. Depending on the result i might or might not return to this concept next year hopefully with finished gameplay and story.

I realized i would not have much time this week (basically both weekends occupied and normal work week). The framework i had already build a while ago, though there are still issues with it and missing features.

I wanted to include the information on how i worked on this and what prompts were used more prominently, but time … If you download the zip file manually there is a ‘assets.csv’ where you can find the links to the suno and midjourney prompts. Though you might need to have accounts there to actually see them.

As for the voices (that you do not hear in the uploaded version)

In short the process went something like this. I asked chatGPT to get me a description of some area for music and image. And what the ‘reason’ for the specific scene is (like: the player learns here about the spirit that is following him). The i would send those prompts to midjourney and suno selecting the results i liked most. Sometimes this resulted in me giving feedback to ChatGPT, because midjourney made something a little different and it was easier to convince chatGPT to change the scene, than fixing the image in midjourney to have specific elements in it.

If you want to have a closer look look i just uploaded it to git, though i am currently still refactoring so latest state might not work if you pull it. https://github.com/tobidot/html-adventure

Even after deadline you should still be able to update the itch-page. So maybe you want to make a screenshot and add it as a thumbnail.

As for the game, You could improve on the background match the actual “race track” more intuitivly, it is kind of hard to tell when the character is in air and when it is not.

Ah, sorry. Yeah i was unable to connect all areas in time. So you would need to use the map (reachable in the bottom right) to jump to other areas.

For some reason, this reminds me of one of the first “game” i wrote in C++, at least the one i remember as the first. It was just about collection wheat and planting it again, also with a similar art-style.

Neat idea, and obvious fit for the theme.

Is it correct that one can move a feet only in the area where both circles intersect? That’s what i understood from the UI, but i feel like it got stuck before that sometimes making it a bit intransparent of how i actually should move.

I don’t think i quite understood the game-idea here. Is there any reason not to put the mous at the very edge of the board and wait for the percentage bar to reach 0%?

I could not figure out any advantage of first adding some liquid somewhere else, even challenging mode would just mean you need to find the single spot that just so happens to create the fastest way to the edge, i did not look to me like there was a way to figure that out by logic, just trying what looks est.

Did you maybe intend to introduce a mechanic, where you first have to use some water to activate a lever for example, and only after you did so you can start pouring your water to the edge? I think something along those lines is missing.

From the concept and setup i really like this.

With a bit of polish more events, balancing and maybe some storry elements, this could be fun for a while.

I wonder though why you added a character designer :D, since it does not really add to the game loop and the time constraints on a game jam are usually quite limmiting in terms of adding entire features as a gimmick. Maybe you should have postponed that one to later.

Besides that, i do not quite see the connection to the theme here. Did you think of the “scavange” as a “run” ?

Score: 342

The idea is simple definitly well explained.

For me 4 “running vectors” were a bit too much, sometimes i felt like i could just pick whatever and there was still a card to play, because there were just so many options to be a possible “next”. Maybe removing the color as that is the most unintuitive one would be beneficial.

As for the “special events”, i think they were a bit ill-placed. Especially “time” and “no tacking back”, i felt like were bracking with the core game-feeling, which i think is “puzzle”.

The idea and story is nice.

Sadly i am not into getting finger cramps, so i only do play it once :D. I had to use both hands to catch up to it.

Out of curiosity “Left mouse button - Interact/progress” only refers to the intro, or can you interact with something ingame?

Its cute graphics, I think though the same animation is used for getting a live vs loosing a live, which is quite confusing.

I thought at first you should dodge the ravens, i think that would make things a bit more interesting.

Good entry, I like that you have generated/randomized levels makes it more replayable.

For me the game crashed every time i slid uphill though.

It’s simple, it looks nice, it’s running. Nice entry.

Is there any difference between the different animals? It does not seem like it.

Really nice game, works well, easy to understand and has predictable, rising difficulties throughout the different levels

Looks interesting and nice to have Tutorial.

I am not sure, but i think i could not turn off the autoattacks, or leftclick without a spell did not do anything at least.

I think i dislike the concept of you having to “balance” on the map though, it probably leaves to little space to manouver to “outplay” later hords of enemies.

I think the controls are nice, except for the sprint, i feel like that could be improved or replaced, so far there also does not seem to be any real need for it.

Balancing is currently an issue, as you wrote yourself, there is no reason not to use the holy water and just spam it.

oh, i just realized, that holding shift while writing does actually change the command and therefor makes commands invalid although looking exactly the same.

Could not quite figure out what to do. The instruction at the beginning to “edit /Home/Log” did not do much (just opened an editor with the /Log file not /Home/log it seems).

Had to look into the repo to get some of the commands available. I think a help command listing all available commands would help. Seems to contain some sort of language parser - interpreter. I don’t do Rust, so it was too much for me to figure out the rules or how to run the language from source code alone.

I am a little confused, is there anything to do beside moving around? I could not interact with anything in the level.

The look of the display is nicely capture. As mentioned below though, clicking the buttons on screen would probably work a little better, especially considering that my keyboard is QWERTZ and you seem to use QWERTY. Making the layout very hard to use, even for the secret game.

Mh, got kicked out of the game after a minute or so by windows-defender. Claiming some “Bearfoos.A!ml” to be a Trojan.

Thanks for the feedback.

Sorry for the late answer, i was still making improvements, which are now finished and live. The sword mechanic is and was in the game, but they are left behind when you die, so you have to die to see a sword lying around.

Now the game contains tutorial levels which should explain most mechanics.

Difficulty is also improved, i hope.

Ah, i see. You the ‘new game’ gets loaded in the background, you have to close the ‘Main Menu’ (with Escape or the X in the top right) to get to the actual game. Maybe, i should not have started in that view or switch view automatically.

Nice atmosphere, almost feels like it could be a nice screensaver as well.

Really nice, i think adding hotkeys to the abilities should make the game less fiddly and more strategic.

Nice game.

Was it only me, or is quick heal way more efficient than the big heals?

Hm, i actually think i am going to try that out.
I was going to explore it a little more before moving on anyway.

sorry, :D
negative points certainly is not a nice feedback for any player who does not know what the game is about. 
Maybe i should have kept it out for now.

Yes, lack of ingame explantaion is indeed a problem, sadly i really had to rush it in the end because i couldn't get myself to continue working on it earlier.

Thanks for trying though.

Thank you,
Initially i thought about animating the rotations and yes maybe having a range indicator certainly does sound like a useful tool for the player to get a better feeling of what will happen.

No, you have to create the constelations shown at the bottom.
Doing so will earn you points, and you get a new Constelation you need to create next.

There is no final state in this game where you, decide that you have made it or not.

Instead, the idea is that you carefully plan your rotations so that you can possibly get a constelation multiple times in the same turn, much like you would do in tetris with trying to stack multiple rows.

"My arms hurt", i wonder why :D .
I like the art style and general look. 

Was there a particular reason to control the character via rotation and forward/backward?
I would assume direct movement would make more sense in a top down/isometric view.

I was able to talk to the old lady, but other than that i was unable to interact with anything, did i miss something?

Something makes this looke quite special in a good way.
Though i don't think i like the sliding/accelrating controls.

The jump feels hard to control.
A double jump that is not as high would probably better.
You couldn't realy do anything when you are falling and the entire floor was attacked. 

Nice effects, for sure.
And a well polished pacing.
Although the music is nice, it gets a little wild, when it splits melodies for a while.
After 4th wave i think i got used to the controls.

Ah sorry, i think that was not quite obvious.
The "Board cleared" message always appears whenever you cannot score any more points
aka there is no more 3x3 rectangle that could be of the same symbols.

Its just that you get less points (counted at the bottom), if you dont get all the symbols on the board.

The only sad thing is, that you can't use die on yourself to loose the game.I think that would have been funny just for the joke :D.

As far as i could tell there is only a cooldown on mining. Every other action seemed to even overlap.
You could 'buffer' the shield command by just typing "shiel" and then make some "gun"s in between to activate the shield with just a "d",
wich was a realy big plus for me conceptualy.

Really great entry, although simple in Design it gets you going somehow.
One question though: Is there a "good" ending possible?