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I died quite often but I had a great time playing your entry. Definitely a unique spin on the classic Oregon trail and very fitting for the theme. Before I opted for a sailing-based exploration game I was toying with the idea of doing something in the same realm as this. Great job!

I loved this game! I found it a joy to play to the end and would have happily continued playing. I got hung up on two parts which took me a few minutes to figure out though, firstly the platform next to the queen didn't stand out right away and It took me a while to figure out why I couldn't talk to the queen while standing in front of them, then it also took me a minute to realize where the song to access the catacombs was placed. However I did get a sense of satisfaction when I realized what to do, so it definitely works great as is.  

But if you're open to suggestions, some kind of pointed such as the song glowing if not discovered by a certain time, or a queue as to why the interact button doesn't work with the queen at ground level could add a subtle direction as to what the player is expected to do.

I think your team did a great job, keep up the good work!

Thanks for the feedback, I may do a version 2 at some point with the feedback I've received to polish it up. At present the intention of the map was to produce a map along the northwest passage similar to the intent of the original expeditions that inspired the game, but I could make that more explicit within the game design itself and have it be more essential to the win condition in the future. I'm glad you enjoyed the playthrough though!

The win condition was set based on the expeditions that inspired the game, so as long as you successfully navigate through the Northwest passage (pacific to atlantic through the arctic), you get the win screen. I tried to give a bit of an in game hint on the map as well with the dotted like sketched across from the start to finish, but after playing some other titles I realize I could have made the progression direction a bit more clear.

Thanks for your feedback! I had similar concerns about the UI midway through development but then decided to lean into it after spending a while playtesting and ended up liking the way it restricted overall view a little. The delay for the polar bears is intentional, I was actually having an issue with the way my code base spawned their drop and tried to solve it through slashing their movement speed and having them die for a second while still moving towards you. Although I'm not sure that landed quite how I intended it initially.  In the future I'd probably end up creating a global audio manager instead of having the audio linked to individual instances of enemies to simplify my code honestly. The transition I handled through adding a bool data value to water and transition tiles and having character bodies check whether over_water=true before starting their loop, which helped to keep the trappers over land and trigger my animation transitions on movement.

As for the map reveal, that involved more troubleshooting that I'd like to admit haha. But I took a screenshot of my total Playable area, and had a global script track player position compared to total map size to get a percentage value of how far they had traveled, then have that update my player marker and my reveal circle. The screenshotted map was underneath a texture that I updated by creating a transparent section at the point of reveal. With that I had to dial it in for quite a while because my math was wrong initially and nothing was lining up 😅

There was absolutely a large jump in difficulty scaling, when I first saw the city maps I laughed a little but it was a very fun escalation. I love the originality of the concept, and it the way it hits the theme is excellent. Great job!

I immediately started getting Avatar the last Airbender vibes and wanted to say YIPYIP to the cow. I was immediately excited when I saw a giant ridable highland cow/bull/gender neutral magnificent beast, and found it pretty fun as well! The audio didn't work when I was playing the game and I wasn't able to figure out why (checked my volume settings and made sure I wasn't muting anything. Overall I'm very glad you got this in before the deadline because it was a joy to play. Keep up the good work!

It was a tough call to remove the in-game music, but in the end I wanted to go for a more barren feel to the environment, which ended up being just the footsteps and sailing sounds. I agree that the right 8-bit style theme music could polish the game nicely. 

I had quite a bit of fun playing this one, I died several times, but I like your take on the theme. I found the music to match the overall vibe of the game quite well too. Great job and congratulations on finishing on-time (many didn't make it this time)!

I spent a while trying to dial in the controls to make them smooth so it's good to hear it paid off. The ocean storms can be tricky to dodge if they catch you in the wrong spot, believe it or not they originally threw twice as many hail balls before I decided it would be a good idea to dial it down a notch haha

Navy seals is an idea I wish I had a week ago haha, it would have been easy to implement as well. More ice to make things more maze-like would also have rounded it out a bit more. I checked out your map and quite liked what you did with the diversions and misleads, I should have paid more attention to the discord during the jam to see what other devs were up to, glad to hear you enjoyed it though!

As soon as I started playing your game I was pretty stoked on the controls and overall vibes. Your art style looks great and was very well executed. I died a few times as soon as I realized I could speed through the map by shooting backwards but had a lot of fun doing it. As livsruss found as well, it is tricky to get out of the corners, I found I could shoot up and down enough to wiggle away and get a shot off close to the wall so  I could get out, but a simple bumper effect or just a player collision a little before the wall would remedy that. I think your team did a great job!

I like the graphics and concept, definitely a great fit for the jam's theme, but the text wouldn't load for me (I had a similar issue until I changed how I was uploading my fonts so it packaged cleaner),  and the white HUD was nearly invisible when against the snow.  All in all I love the concept and the audio was very well matched to the visuals and theme. Great job!

I had quite a bit of fun playing this game, the difficulty casting the anchor initially made it so much more satisfying when I landed a long cast and saw the ship move along. The path reveal at the end was also a nice touch. As soon as I started playing I thought of a few things I wish I had placed into my own game. 

Your art and assets were nicely stylized as well, Great job!