Thank you so much for this message, I really appreciate it. You're not the only one that had trouble figuring out you could move the camera, there really was nothing to indicate you could other than the game page.
I had the same feeling about more strict placement, it originally was more like Islanders where you had bonuses and penalties depending on what was adjacent to what you were placing, but it felt off. In the end I went with the super chill just placing things, and I'm very happy with the result. I'm now sketching out what a full release would look like, as I really enjoyed making it and feel like there's potential for more.
Thanks! The water is not actually too complicated. First you draw whatever you want reflected into a canvas, in my case it's the ground, trees and birds. Then you flip that upside down and pass it through a water distortion shader. Then there's a bit of tint to make it blue-ish. I followed this post from the Kingdom developer https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40539.msg1104986#msg1104986
I got hooked, completed year one in 22 days with 1306 leaves and all research done! I got a bit frustrated as sometimes the controls would "catch" after jumping and I needed to move around to get them unstuck. Other than that I had a real good time. Good job!
Really charming little game! Loved the vibe and the visuals pulled me in right away. The core loop is super satisfying, and I ended up playing longer than I meant to lol. A couple things felt a bit finicky here and there, but nothing that took away from the fun. Great work, thanks for sharing!
Oh man I love me some procedural generation. Really nice way of hooking it up to a gameplay loop too! I also want to call out the beautiful vines on the UI elements. Nice work!!
I love the intro, how determined she is at making tea so people are happy! I missed a bit more feedback when catching the ingredients as I wasn't sure if I was doing it correctly at first. Good job!
Really cozy, the sound of the train in the background was really nice. I'd see myself having this on the background while working (instead of rain sounds lol).
I truly cannot express how much this means to me. Thank you for enjoying the game, but even more so for taking the time to write such a beautiful message. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
I've had the idea of making a bird game using boids for a while, but didn't know what to actually make with it. Once the jam started the Autumn theme made me think of forests, and through some trial and error (it originally was more about gaining points through adjacency bonuses, like the game Islanders) and some outside help I landed on discovering bird habitats.
Each bird you discover through the journal is based on a real bird: the bird call that sounds when it first unlocks (and every time it spawns thereafter) is from a real bird, and the sprite is drawn from pictures of those birds (with some creative licenses). Unfortunately once you advance the background bird sounds kind of drown the newly spawned birds, so you can only really tell on the first few. Late in development I thought of being able to track which bird is which with the journal, to have a bit more context, but it went way our of scope.
Thank you so much for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Lately I've been a bit too emotional (it's what having kids gets ya) but both the intro and the first time I returned to the burrow almost made me cry. Very short, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Awesome game! Loved the visuals, I particularly want to call out the journal, I thought it looked really good! I would've loved a bit more agency on carving the pumpkins, it felt a bit too random. Other than that I had a blast!
That's really funny, I had keyboard controls until the last minute to change your build selection, but I took them out because I never used them, so I instead did camera movement. I should've probably kept them on a set of dedicated keys just in case! Regarding performance, I only ever saw a decrease on my crappy laptop when spamming a lot of trees, so I didn't really pay too much attention to it. If you played the browser version you can probably get better performance on the desktop versions.Thanks a lot for playing, and for your kind words :)
So cool! I found the tool management a bit confusing, took me until reading the "how to play" seciton to figure out that I also had the axe available from the start. But once I figured it out I had a blast!
Papers Please was definitely an inspiration! Initially the game was going to have more storytelling through the pictures, as well as customer interactions where you needed to learn things from their pictures, but I had to reduce the scope multiple times to be able to finish in time haha
