Such an ambitious game for a game jam! Overall a very polished experience. My only complaint is that moving on the map is hard and once I moved too far, it became harder trying to move back to my ship again.
Play game
Lighthouse - The Storm Shepard's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Audio | #31 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
Graphics | #100 | 4.148 | 4.148 |
Innovation | #109 | 3.611 | 3.611 |
Overall | #153 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
Theme | #250 | 3.537 | 3.537 |
Game Design | #265 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
Fun | #672 | 2.815 | 2.815 |
Ranked from 54 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You are a novice lighthouse keeper in a post-apocalyptic world where the entire continental America got destroyed by a nuclear experiment gone wrong.
The shockwave of the explosion caused a massive tsunami that flooded most of Europe and Africa and Asia.
You are one of the few survivors and you have to keep the lighthouse running as another storm is looming on the horizon.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
The game was made entirely from scratch, including the code and assets and even the engine itself.
We are using just HTML/Svelte and TypeScript/JavaScript and (S)CSS.
Comments
Congrats on the submission! It's very nice overall I love the drawing mechanic for the travels :P. Here is some of my feedbacks from my playtests :
- It's sometimes tricky to select the boat, having a keybind to directly select it/zoom toward it could be interesting, if you ever lose it in the vast world hahaha.
- Prices, from what I saw in my game, there is no price tag on the resources which makes it tricky to manage the resources. It could be interesting to have a small price tag or when you hover above the item, beside the name.
Apart from that, it feels polished and very nice, do you plan on continuing it or using it for other projects?
The graphics of the game are very nice. It's impressive that you wrote your own javaScript-based engine for it.
At the beginning, the first ship is a bit too slow, but later on, managing several ships requires a lot of attention. It's a bit confusing that it's too easy to accidentally drive the ship behind a city and then you can no longer select it.
I might have broken the game by the end. I think I got all the raw materials and gold, but there was no endgame.
So I hit the lighthouse with all my ships.
Anyway, it was so much fun!
Gratz on beating the game in spirit!
Hope you enjoyed it as much as I in making it! <3 Working on a from-scratch Javascript engine is a challenge for sure, but its super rewarding in the end, and each jam the workflow improves.
There's a small 1 line variable typo that you need the 500 coins in the boat instead of the lighthouse sadly., got this mentioned in the Discord.
Never caught this in testing as I always put in my coins last thus triggering the cutscene condition when closing the UI. XD
Already fixed that in the patch that I'll post as soon as editing opens up!, Also been working on the general flow, as you mentioned the really slow start, making the first boat faster; but at a lower capacity. Stuff like Z-indexing on boats & having a button to select a stuck ship is also ready for to get posted :D
Edit: There is a small final dialog with sfx & showing ur final time for the leaderboard.
I didn't think to try this. The last resource was drinking water, and I could only carry three on one ship at a time. And I was afraid that the ship would be destroyed on the way. That's why I unload the gold at the tower.
By the way, I really like the animation of the light of the big lighthouse. I came up with a similar concept, but I didn't have time to draw it and put it in the game.
I will try the patched version as well!
> I will try the patched version as well!
Awesome, I'll ping this comment when the update hits, (if thats possible still) it'll be mentioned in the Discord for sure.
Water / Bricks can be a runtime killer if you didn't invest in boats :P
The lighthouse art, boats & villages got done by Cel. I'll forward the compliment to him :D & Fog VFX overlaying it is done by me.
Nice little management game - it’s fun to watch your little fleet sail around, and bring in all the profits! Great art, and very cool you got some story & even voice-over. And of course, as always very impressive you made it engine-less with web tech only ;)
The main issue for me is that the UX overall felt a bit clunky, especially the map controls. The movement via the arrow buttons is very slow. Instead I’d like to move the map via dragging with the mouse, plus alternatively using WASD/arrow keys. Also zooming with mouse wheel would be great.
Fun game, good job everyone! 👍
This game looks really impressive. Very good use of the tool. I can see there were pretty much effort put into developing this game.
But there are also some game-breaking bugs which are understandable.
I do see the game has progression feedbacks in this game. It is really nice, but I there is a little lacking in clarification. I was clueless and was wondering that I may be playing the game incorrectly when there were nothing new happening in the game for a long time.
I think overall, the game is pretty good looking and somewhat playable. I didn't expect the game scope would be this big. Well done.
After some days, I decided to come back again to finish the game and I did it. Cozy ending to a grim story haha, I like it, the lighthouse will protect us :)
This time I pay more attention to reading the dialogs and you actually get told what to do but not as an order, more like “you could do this” until you directly get told you need to store 25 of each item. Which maybe can escape our attention at times, like me days ago haha.
If you really want to avoid this for distracted players, maybe put in some part of the game the “Objective” button or something like “Current Objective” in the UI or pause menu, which isn’t needed but as an idea
(Also, this time I didn’t get a random radio dialog, where they say something like “it’s coming, ahhh!” or something like that while playing, I couldn’t read it last time because my boat crashed and I was tired)
About the movement, now that I read tips about how to move the boat correctly, it felt better and was easier to do stuff. I think I’m not much of multitask in this game because at maximum I could do like 3 boats at the same time, maybe because I got a bit scared of breaking them haha, it’s great to see that they don’t crash with each other and it’s fun to buy boats, seeing that they got better stats the more you buy it’s a nice touch
About the gameplay, it’s comfortable to play, to have it as a idle game can be fun, as for speedrunning, I don’t think it can be that nice, to be able to move your camera downwards the dialog can get in the way at the start and if you get a lot of items stored in the lighthouse, going to the left can be hard since you have the item table over the arrow. The RNG is ok, you can restart early which is good
Outside the speedrun things I said above, my only “problem” is that you need to do a lot of clicking to move the coins, only 10 per click in the lighthouse and when you want to move a lot of money or objects to get quick money, it can get tiring for the hand/finger, so would be nice if you could put a number and buy/pick that amount, moving all the money you need for the items takes long or as I said, it’s tiring. Which isn’t too bad, just as QoL would be nice
Well, I think it’s I have to say this time, I finished the game and it was fun to try to speedrun it to see the end. Last time I had an ok time, today was a good time now that I know how to move the boat and the kind of depth you can have when you want to optimize the game haha, good game! ^^
Thanks for the additional feedback means a lot to me!
> “Current Objective” in the UI or pause menu,
This is something we haven't thought about yet, but it looks like a great idea we can add to the game!
> be able to move your camera downwards the dialog can get in the way
In earlier builds we had the dialog be forced so it was not an issue, but that felt horrible gameplay wise so we disabled it. We will see if there's a way to make the buttons not clip behind it.
> it’s comfortable to play
That's the goal! I'm not much of a "pro gamer" myself and usually do reviews /& lots of Discord chat, I know it's not meta for jams, but.. This is a type of game I really like playing.
> going to the left can be hard since you have the item table over the arrow.
I'm looking into redoing that entire top-left overlay to be more accessible & less overflow-y.
> it can get tiring for the hand/finger, so would be nice if you could put a number and buy/pick that amount,
Here I was thinking of adding a Terraria-like "hold to keep buying / selling", that should work nicely I think :D
As of writing you hold the #2 leaderboard spot gratz on that!
Great art and sound effects. The game feels high quality and is good to get started. But with my attention span I couldn't play it for too long. Also I would have loved some more information about what I was supposed to do. I know this will be a great gam post jam. So will be awaiting your updates!!
Kudos!! ;D
A great entry, but it's way to long and I'm speaking from exprience, also I would love a fast forward button as you can wait for a ship to sail for only so long befor you fall asleep, you are told early to supply the lighthouse, but you are not really told what supplying will acompish which seams fishy. But I can't be too hard on something made in typescript :V.
Thanks for playing!
> but you are not really told what supplying will acompish which seams fishy
You supply the lighthouse with 25 of each material & 500 coins in preperation for the storm, this is the "win condition" of the game, It'll list your completion time when you do. Had bigger plans for it but scope creep & time got the better of us.
> I would love a fast forward button
We were thinking of making the first ship way faster & hold way less cargo so you can get a 2nd faster boat more easily. As soon as you hit 4-5 ships there is almost no waiting time / downtime anymore.
The team and I will continue making cool engine-less Svelte/HTML Typescript/Javascript (S)CSS web games :D
Great entry and amazing this was built without engine. My main issue would definitely be the speed of the game, but apart from that, it was a great entry. Beautiful art and atmosphere with a very intriguing start. Fantastic job!
Cool game with great aesthetics and feel.
- Amazing that this was built without an engine.
- Sometimes when a ship would dock, it was difficult to click on the ship to navigate it, as the click would register on the dock instead.
- The ship docking sound is great. Allows me to go to another tab, and come back when I need to do something.
- Gives the feeling of an idle management game.
Well done overall!
This sure is impressive!
First off, great story, the most intense one I've seen in a game jam game
Second, the art is absolutely beautiful, truly stunning what you have done here
My suggestion ffr is to increase the speed of the game in general, i get its a boat simulator, but its also a game, and i don't have all day!
All in all, fantastic work!
Keep making games!
Thanks for the feedback <3
This jam we tried to focus a lot on story & interactive tutorial as this was lacking in my previous 2 jam games.
I also agree the artists Cel, Ducky & Tibs did a wonderfull job with the artwork!
The game speed goes up exponentially with more boats, but to balance it out we think a future update should make the first boat a lot faster but significantly lower it's capacity so you can get a 2nd proper boat faster.
We are continuously looking to improve our engine-less gamedev craft :D
Really impressive game. I would have liked it more if I could move faster on boat
An impressive amount of depth and attention to detail! Great concept to build on, just recommend focusing on the pacing!
the game looks and sounds amazing. it's really impressive doing this with javascript and html.
i also loved the map, an amazing concept
my only problems is that the game feels to slow and could give some more information for the player as to what to do - what items should i store in the lighthouse etc
The map design is made by doing flood simulations on Europe ( 700m to be exact xd )
Developing games without an engine just using webtech has a lot of challenges but also a lot of perks, it's a great time :D
As of now story hints you need 25 of everything & 500 coins to complete the game, but I agree this should be displayed in some other way too.
Thanks for the feedback :D
This is really good. However, boats are way too slow. I think it would help if there was a way for the player to change the game speed at any time kinda like how it is in Rimworld.
Thanks for playing!
Our current idea is to lower the first boats capacity and double its speed so you can get to a multi-boat stage of the game way faster.
I have never played Rimworld would have to look into its speed mechanic, but a speedup mechanic might be possible. Would just need a way to properly integrate it without the game being "1 boat-able".
not my style of game but it is really apparent that a lot of work and attention to detail was put in this one!
I have just one point of feedback, the camera felt really slow, also I wish I could just move it around with wasd.
good job!
Took me like an hour to "survive the storm", but that's fine, I just played it like an idle game while watching youtube. I honestly really like these sorts of management games, especially when they feature any sort of economy systems. Don't know why, just think they're neat. Also certainly didn't expect to see a game with the 'Sid Meiers Pirates' gameplay loop of running a shipping company.
The fact that I did play an hour should tell you all you need to know. I really enjoyed it. Audio design was minimal, but good, same with the visuals, and the gameplay loop was relaxing and very nice.
Well done!
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.