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A Short Walk In The Snow's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #62 | 4.472 | 4.472 |
| Originality | #251 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
| Overall | #264 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Gameplay | #607 | 2.278 | 2.278 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Very poignant and atmospheric small experience, I enjoyed my time. Would have liked the area to be a big bigger so I didnt hit invisible walls prior to the experience resolving. Being able to jump whilst still dead was a bit of a funny moment. Great job :)
What do you like about your game?
I loved experimenting with the snow deformation shader, and the particle effects for the snowflakes. Also modeling, rigging, and animating a full character was a fun challenge.
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Comments
Congratulations on getting highlighted by Acerola!
I'm still reeling honestly.
Now that reviews and feedback on stuff has mostly settled, I shifted focus away from the jam to do some refactoring on a different project - so I was beyond surprised to see my entry was highlighted.
Having participated in a couple jams now, my expectations were very, very low. But by golly, this jam especially has just been a real treat. ❤️
Hi, just finished playing your game. It was quite emotional in a way, it was really intriguing to realize that the player was slowly freezing, and I found the overall atmosphere really touching. I agree with another comment saying that the invisible bounds lower a little bit the immersion, but it's understandable for a jam game. Overall vvery original and well executed idea.
Amazing work and good luck with it! <333333
Thank you so much for the feedback, and for giving it a try!
I like the vibes a lot, the character design, music, footsteps, wind sound, snow, walking animation - made it have a really cool ambience fr. The game did freeze my computer a bit when running it tho, and locked my mouse in the game so much that I had to close the browser to exit the game. I would appreciate it if you could check my game too, I do not have a lot of rates so far :)
Hey! Glad you enjoyed your playthrough.
Regarding performance / loadtime, I'm sorry to say that this game is essentially totally unoptimized. So I'm guessing that's why your browser froze when trying to play. Apologies for that. There is a Windows build available on the repo, which perhaps may have better performance. I do have some small post-jam patches planned, but any performance improvements will likely take a while for me to hammer out.
Regarding the mouse lock, not sure on that one. Itch will generally release the mouse if you hit the escape key, or the Windows button. I could just be misunderstanding the issue though.
I generally try to review anyone who's taken the time to comment on my game, so I'll definitely do that right now.
I'll keep an eye on those post-jam patches, the feeling of the game is really nice. I tried again to play the web version and check if the mouse lock thing happen again and yes it did, I wasn't able to quit the game with the esc key, I have no idea what may be happening tho 😅
interesting little walking simulator with cute, cohesive visuals. the footsteps, ambient sounds and music work really well together to set the mood. while there isn’t much going on, it was intriguing to realize that something is actually going on.
I walked into an invisible wall pretty early on, which took me out of the experience a bit. I think the hopelessness of the situation would be emphasized if there were no borders at all. (I assume you put in invisible walls because of technical limitations with the snow trail, that’s probably tricky to solve in the limited time of a jam.)
regardless of the limited playing area, I really enjoyed the somber experience!
I initially struggled to think of something thematically that could be considered unexpected, and ultimately unwelcome - especially when considering the sort of technical challenges I wanted to explore. Thankfully, I feel like I ended up with something that does fit, but I do worry about the subtlety of it still.
Regarding your guesswork - you're exactly right. The approach I took to deforming the snow mesh depends on a static piece of geometry to modify vertices of. I couldn't use a higher resolution mesh because my computer was chugging loading it as it was. I couldn't come up with a sensible strategy for dynamically dealing with the snow deformation for procedural terrain. And ultimately, I ran out of time to try alternatives. So, in the end, I just boxed it in to keep players from falling off the mesh.
So glad you enjoyed this little game. And thanks for the feedback!
The snow effect looks awesome. I was enjoying searching around until I realized my guy was slowly dying... definitely fits the theme with the idea of things slowly changing. Made me think of "To Build a Fire."
I'm really happy with how the particle turbulence turned out - it makes me happy to hear you enjoyed it too!
I actually hadn't read any of Jack London's work before you pointing out this comparison. I'm glad you did! That was a lovely read. Tragic, but lovely.
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for playing!
what a haunting and chilling experience, honestly thought it was gonna be a cute stroll until I gradually noticed what was happening, well done! the art is beautiful, really nice low poly aesthetic with nice shapes for the models. love how the material on the player is unlit while the dead trees are lit. it makes the trees stand out in a very unsettling way, where its the only thing thats being affected by light in the scene so the surface color has both dark shadows and a shine to it that isn't present in lets say the character or the snow. that visual dissonance made it feel more disturbing for me personally, nicely done! also the music is so nice and chill, i'd love if you posted it somewhere so i can add it to my "songs to work to" playlist xd.
the character animation blending is also so well done! they are animated beautifully, it was fun to just move the camera around to see the motion of the character while adjusting for these changes. also the gradual blend to the ending animation is also really sick, awesome job here!
but yeah, this was such an incredible experience, really was expecting something like a nice stroll (wasn't paying attention to the thumbnail xd). the confusion of just getting dropped into the world to walk around slowly turning to concern as you see the character animations and expression shift from indifference to pain is horrifying. they're stuck there and nobody is around them for miles. seeing the relatively warm colors on the character get drained into clean whites, becoming indistinguishable from the snow you lay upon, and it holds you uncomfortably there at the end for so long to allow you to soak the tragedy of it all until finally fading to black. this was such an engrossing experience, thanks for sharing, great work!
It's an honor to have been the subject of such an in depth, and thoughtful review! You managed to pick out a lot of intentional detail that I thought might have been lost due to the short nature of the game.
You're right that the trees stand out of when compared to the rest of the scenery - that unsurprisingly wasn't totally intentional. It was the result of me trying to build a shader that puts snow "on top" of stuff, if that makes sense. In short, it checks upwards facing normals and adds a noisy white texture to those faces depending on exactly how "up" they're facing, to simulate snow laying on those surfaces. It had the unintended effect of giving the trees a lot of depth and texture, and less like they were covered in snow - but I liked it, so I left it in.
Regarding the music I made - all of the game assets (including the music and sfx) are in the repo (https://github.com/hey-tack/a-short-walk-in-the-snow). I left the repo unlicensed, so technically I haven't given express permission to rip audio from the game - but because it's public, I couldn't necessarily stop you, if you catch my drift.
If it's easier, I went ahead and uploaded the music on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/hey-tack/a-short-walk-in-the-snow). You can download it from there if you like. The music felt very empty without the windy ambiance, so I composited that into the track. If you're interested in a totally raw version of the music (which is in the repo), let me know and I can upload that too.
Thanks again for the glowing review - It really makes me happy to hear it resonated with you!
Very cool! The seamless way in which the animation on the character is blending from normal walking to "wounded-cold" is done very well and adds a lot to the general atmosphere of the game. Just the way everything went from relaxing to unsettling, how you slowly realize that the only thing you can see are dead trees and your own trail. And then at the end how you're just watching snow fall on the poor guy while everything turns completely dark.... really awesome work there!
Hey! Thanks for playing - glad you enjoyed it :)
Great game man! The music was such a vibe too i could listen to that on repeat fr.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it ❤️
Is there a chance to link a windows build in the game page or comments? I wanna try playing this
You can find a desktop release on the repo. Let me know if you have any issues getting to it. https://github.com/hey-tack/a-short-walk-in-the-snow/releases/tag/v1.0.0.0-acero...
Thanks!
What a great sense of atmosphere, it really captures the bitter sweet feeling of being in the last ropes and giving it your last efforts, until it's over.
It's incredible what pacing and time can do in a story and how effective it can be.
Great entry! I learned a lot from this game and also enjoyed the experience!
Thank you so much for playing!
I initially intended to add more gameplay elements, but had to cut a lot of it due to time constraints. It's reassuring to hear that you found it to be a worthwhile experience, despite being rather barebones compared to my initial concept of what it could have been.
It’s neat how you can tell where you’ve been with the snow deformation.
It was one of my favorite parts to work on! So glad you liked it.
Really nice experience! The slow buildup of blending the regular idle and the hurt animation is really effective, I only realized that the character was getting cold when it was almost over. The snow trail effect is also really nice!
One thing that I feel could have made this better is if there was no invisible wall as it kinda pulled me out of the wandering expereice when I hit it first time. Either way, good job!
I was considering a way to make the terrain procedural, rather than static (so you could walk indefinitely) - but the way that the snow deformation works today would need an overhaul. I also considered making the terrain "bigger" if that makes sense, but after experimenting with it (and trying to shoehorn my horribly unoptimized mesh) I had to cut it due to time constraints.
I would ultimately love to re-explore a way to give the player more room to explore. I.E, pick a direction and walk unobstructed - post jam, I may even get around to this.
Thank you for the awesome feedback!
Wonderful atmosphere, really captures the loneliness, quiet and bodily heft of walking through thick snow. I wish the tech demo had gameplay elements, but more specifically, my personal wish envisions a game with some kind of distant horror elements, watching you helplessly trudge from a far. or like... a moose or something, those are scary.
Anyways I digress, lovely game, congrats on the release.
Funnily enough, I had initially planned on having "something" follow the player, which would occasionally make the character (the protagonist) turn their head around to look, giving the player a moment to go "What is he looking at?".
I won't spoil much more, because I do genuinely want to explore this idea a bit further.
Great atmosphere and nice game!
Thank you!
I love winter and snow, this game will be my pastime on hot summer days
I'm thinking of making an endless mode - for this very reason! I just love watching the snow particles flurry about.
Beautiful! Love the vibe. I died. But I love it anyway.
Nice music. And are the tree procedurally generated? Very cool regardless.
My entry has a similar meditative quality. I enjoyed seeing playing yours!
The trees are a single model I made, and placed all around the map by hand. Was able to tweak sizes, rotations, and such to try and give a bit more visual variety, to varying degrees of success.
So glad you enjoyed the experience. It means a lot!
Very pretty animation, the industry needs more experiences like this :)
(imo remove the jump button)
Hey! you guessed what my first post-jam patch is going to include! :)
Thanks for playing, and thanks for the feedback.
it would be much more touching for me if it was from first person 💯. but still amazing game. i am happy i played this one
Thanks so much for playing! Now you've got me curious about what a first person mode would look like...
Very high standard of presentation. Music and ambient wind sets the mood of the game well. Changes in the walk animation as he gets colder and the snow trail behind the character are nice touches.
I found an amusing bug where you can jump when your character has fallen over ;)
An interesting and artsy submission. Good job!
Yeah. I was a bit worried that it leaned to hard into "artsy" and started to tread into "pretentious" territory. Maybe it does in some ways. But it is what it is.
Also, yeah - it's a shame I missed that, because it can quickly take you out of the moment realizing you can jump at any point in the game. Planning to patch that eventually.
Thanks for playing!
game froze my whole freaking browser. quite a feat.
very zen game though
Yeah, there's a rather large, unoptimized mesh that's used for snow deformation. At some point I need to better optimize that.
Glad you liked it though!