Play Acerola Jam
Totally Accurate Game Dev Career Simulator With Aberation's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #321 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #427 | 3.056 | 3.056 |
| Presentation | #432 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Originality | #447 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What do you like about your game?
Finished with tight time budget, me and my kid had a lot fun with it.
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Comments
dang, this really is like my game dev job... can i apply my playtime on this as work hours and clock out early? (for legal reasons this is a joke)
there is so much content here, i am shocked that this was made in 14 days, very impressive! so much items and crafting to go through and explore, i feel like i only managed to scratched the surface during my playthrough! i wish that i had a sense of direction on what to do first (the only instruction was that i was to clock in and out 9-5), felt pretty lost in the beginning dying due to unhappiness, but eventually figured it out after experimenting on my own (i really wonder if this was intentional and is supposed to be a commentary on something xd). i also like how the bugs/tasks are represented as beasts trying to gnaw on you and tear you down, its a fun representation. the part that hurt my soul the most was when work time is over and the indicator (or whoever is giving instructions) is telling you that the shift is over and to stop working, but the bugs still chase after you after work hours (like the company explicitly telling you work is over, but implying that if you don't finish your work then something BAD might happen, thus they can't be liable for any work place stress since they directly "encourage" you to stop working and that this is "your" decision to do overtime). don't know if i'm reaching here (in all seriousness, i quite enjoy my job), but this is kind of what it feels like its trying to say, which i can empathize with.
but again, hard to understand what to do in the beginning first, but after a couple of deaths, some of the priorities become clear! its fun to see what some of the items do, since some of them have hidden stats and mechanics! also due to the save system, im freely able to experiment with a lot of it while not feeling terrible for making a bad investment, so appreciate the generosity there! wish there was a small mini map though (not too detailed, just markers that show the important landmarks and where you are relative to them). sometimes i'd get lost against the green world so it was hard to navigate my way back. though speaking of the world, i like the art assets! the base building allowed me to create a nice fort right next to the lake, which looked lovely! the art assets look clean next to each other without any visual noise so it was quite easy to tell what was going on!
overall, had a ton of with this and am impressed with how much was made in such little time, great work!
Killed a giant rabbit with pebbles to gain first 1k :D
Really admire the quantity of things you can do here.
Though, the world could be a little bigger as well as amount of object on a map.
Good job!
Gave it a shot, congrats on completing your entry! I initially got confused at first because I couldn't get any wood, only water and killing wolves to loot (automatically as it's throwing stuff automatically). But then realized the whole metaphor behind the wolves being THE tasks for the "game" the player is making. That was an unexpected plot twist. Read from a past comment that the whole money first thing is intentional, but it took me a bit to figure it out. Maybe it could be made more clear since it's the intention to require the player have to buy stuff instead of looting it.
I managed to buy an axe, cut down the single tree, then was attacked by day 2 bears with zero sleep and died. Did not manage to build a single foundation or a shelter.
Very relatable feeling as a dev... 5 bugs to fix, 1 down, 23 bugs to fix XvX
Congrats again! Well done.
(EDIT: I forgot to mention, the UI was broken on my 32:9 monitor, had to switch it back to 16:9 for the UI to display properly. Maybe something to check when testing UIs with different aspect ratios)
The fact that there's only one tree... And so many things to create! Lovely I did enjoy myself playing this, I'm a massive fan of survival games. I found quite nice the twisted plot of the bugs and the entire work ordeal that feels like a massive chore, intentionally I guess, it's nice that every day passed gets more complicated with more complicated "bugs". quite a nice analogy. I would have gone a little further with that idea and made intentional animation bugs texture errors or anything like that to the animals that come after you so it feels more hilarious.
I have been able to build a cabin, the bow, and many other items, Although the cabin didn't last longer due to the massive amounts of bugs later that night! I as well found a way to exploit wood, by saving and loading And a sweet spot to keep food by crafting one item that takes meat+2 coins. and water going easy. by staying near the ponds. when attacked many "bugs" bug out and start running in circles which can help you get past the first nights while drinking and eating..;) Nice one!
Thank you for playing. Good idea about texture glitch, maybe some chromatic aberration effect can help it more fit to the theme. I am impressed for your insistence on gathering resources and craft items. The methods intended to maintain stable money income is showed in gallery of this page. Eating raw ham would slightly damage health but increase player's running speed, and you can sell/buy stuff while running. After first day's grinding with running circle, you should have about 1000 money units, you can buy two towers and some wood fence, use wood fence to round up building areas, then there will be tight money so that you have to choose if build a cabin or not, for ervery night from 3 to 6 player status drops much faster, sleep can speed up time and increase health and happiness, but decrease food and water.
So my stratergy is to run to pond and drink water to 100, then go back build the cabin, even if I had to build fewer towers. And I will choose to build near the dead tree, for max grinding efficiency. And after doing all that the game will go into routine the second night, that you will always have about 1000-2000 money units on your hand to build, eat and buy branded bottle water. Thus about 7-10 days in game ( 10 minutes or so in real life) it will get boring so player can just quit the game.
I was constantly dying because of unhappiness. I think I couldn't even survive one day.
I like the idea of this game, I love survival games like Minecraft, Ark, Path of Titans, etc, and I understand why the Developer made the game, I liked it for about 5-10min it was very slow and a grind.
Drinking water would decrease your food/hunger so you had to be on top of everything no matter what, it was kinder annoying, like no matter what the game just didn't want you to have fun/win. now I know this was intentional but man was it annoying to drink and eat and then fight, you had to manage your money for everything (JUST LIKE IRL). other than it being a grind of a game it was pretty fun wish it had music and maybe the camera could have been better I couldn't see anything xD
Had fun and I'm sorry that you lost your job glad you guys enjoyed making the game and it was fun to play for a bit :D
Thank you for playing this game. I think drinking water is the most basic need for one to survive, however it cost money in modern society, which is funny, ther funnier part is that in working place companies always supply free branded bottle water. For the grinding part it is surely annoying, thus I put a secret rabbit on the north-west corner of the map, kill it will give you 1000 meat, and every time you start the game it will refresh in the same area. It's quite easy to kill but do not get too close for it can kill you with two melee strikes. Once you know the secret the game will turn to a tower defence game with not much strategy thinking needed.
Losing job is bad but not so bad, I have more time with family and chance to charge up, I think while looking for next job, I will put some time to try to make this jam project a full game with more positive feed back game play.
Thanks and good on ya bro!
Why are you leaving home honey? Because I have work to do. The work I do: . Anyways I like the game, good job on creating it!
Hi, I read the idea behind this game and its hidden meaning. Really original and deep in my opinion, a direct critique. I think the only problem is that you needed to make it more clear to the player. Some explanation in-game or something similar. Apart from that, really cool idea to take a normal survival game and turn it around in order to make it fit the theme of the jam, brilliant.
Indeed one of the most peculiar ones I played so far, good luck and keep it up! <33333
Looks nice! I had a hard time figuring out how to play the game, maybe think about adding a tutorial to start the game
Forgot to put how to play in the game, a basic error indeed. I showed every one how to play before summit, so did not realize that.
Reasonable, I would at least have a how to play on your game page though (at least the basics to play)
As a fellow game dev, this spoke to me on a deep level.
Thanks
It looks really good, nice art style. I found that I got lost very easily though, if you walk a bit away from something, the background green colour is all I can see of the world and it's hard to see there's anything else around you, or how far you've gone.
I could see the game had a lot of crafting etc... and I gathered some resources by killing a bear and some wolves - however, I wasn't sure where to get the money from.
Looked great though - nice job!
Right click on item icon in the inventory will show sell button, then you can sell your stuff and get money. The map contains only two pool and a hidden rabbit in three oblique directions, and literally nothing in south-east. I put a dead tree in the center in case player can not find where to go back work, thought to put an arrow indicator towards the tree but did not have enough time. I could change the kill-drop items to gold coins, or just increase money value after each kill, but animal remains can enhance the concept of killing, thus make more negtive emotion feed back. Also you can eat raw ham to run faster, with no particular reason.
This Game is what I pieced togther what Survival Engine offers, using the sample asset and basic framework, with a lot modification. The idea is to make something not follows rules of Survival games that the original framework intend to implement, but rather like tower deffence. And the core concept is to roast about my losing job as a game developer recently, and make fun of consumerism which both are aberation of life, so some part of this game is tweaked not so enjoyable intentionally. However there still at least 10 minutes of fun if you kindly play it out, but not guaranteed ;)
Install instructions
Unzip the file and double click the exe to run.
How to play
Move：A/S/W/D Rotate: Q/E
Use/Sell: Right Click on icon
Remember work from 9 to 17, then do whatever you want.
two things: I couldnt get any wood to get tools and stuff, as you need an axe to get wood, which requires wood, and I couldnt quit without alt-f4. other than that, a survival game with time management is pretty cool.
Thank you for playing this game. Acctually It's designed player can not get any resource directly from enviroment, to demonstrate a world that anything need money to buy in first place. After first day's work you can sell all the stuff you picked up and anything in the craft area can be bought with money. When you found ways to get money stably, you can stop working and go fishing or do whatever you want. I think this money driven cycle is aberation of life. People work from 9-17 just to sell labor to get money, to buy stuff that they need to survive, or they don't really need most time. To end the cycle you need to manually do a hard quit.
There are only a few things I think really matters for surviving in this game.
Tower. It's like game skill sets that help you finish daily work more efficiently.
Shed. Every one need eat and sleep to survive. And should afford a place to live.
Food. Not very expensive. However when working as a developer I hardly have chance to cook own food, always buy food and eat.
Water. Everyday we drink bottle water to survive, otherwise could get sick, that's funny. In game it's relatively expensive to buy bottle water directly. You can just buy a pod (should rename it to bottle) and go to pool and fill it, that makes exactly same thing and save some money.
All the other things you can buy are not necessary for game play. The discription of bottle water is directly copied from web site of evian.
There is a way to get wood and other resource though, for example, you can buy a tower and wait until animals destory it, then there will remain some wood on the ground.