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Veltino Grove's itch.io pageGame Title
Veltino Grove
Developer Name
Let Us Cook
Short Promo Blurb
Save the forest from Veltino Grove with cooking and exploration!
Full Description
Description:
Reinstate destroyed forests by cooking and collecting ingredients at Veltino Grove, a 3D adventure cooking game. Play with racoon called Redd to collect ingredients and create dishes to serve guests coming to restaurant called 'Herb Garden.' Bring back the devastated forest to life and restore it to the forest that used to be a beautiful forest. With a combination of unique synergistic elements of cooking and adventure, Veltino Grove offers the preciousness and beauty of nature, and a forest-saving experience.
Mechanics:
There are following systems in the game: Karma System, Exploration, Collecting Ingredients, Interacting with NPCs, and Cooking. All of these systems can be influenced by each other so it is very important to keeping balance on using them.
Story:
Redd starts cooking to save the forest. He learns the importance of balance between cooking and collecting ingredients.
Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZMjgja_xyPvX-DdkLdffjTsfnYfTe9U0?usp=sharing
Promo Video
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pJ94TCEBIEMcGhHDcxQ3-JadG0DR27EG?usp=sharing
Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
This game is a game where people cook using ingredients from the forest. If the rate of consumption is higher than the rate of production, the forest becomes more damaged and eventually gets destroyed. In other words, the game reflected that humanity is in crisis if the rate of resource consumption is higher than the rate of production in reality. We hope people will learn more about the environmental protection through this game.
Development Summary
After making the design document, we talked about if we can actually make everything written in the design document. Meanwhile, we got a feedback saying lower the scope. We eventually decided to lower the scope and start making more design documents about the main mechanics, such as Karma and Cooking.
We were surprised that people with different skills and from different time zones can make such a great game like this.
The total of 12 people were involved making the game.
Release Plan
We plan to continue working on it. We are planning to polish the game even more. Design documents will also be polished.
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Comments
My PC could barely handle this game unfortunately :-( the framerate was so low I couldn't play very much. One suggestion for an optimization pass from me, I guess.
I also wish that the unconventional controls (F to interact) were explained within the game itself, rather than having to hunt for them on the itch page.
Character designs are fun though!
A couple more side notes of feedback, I recommend making better use of the mini map, such as showing icons for the collectible plants on the map so there's more function for it. Adding some diversity to the house designs will give the NPCs a bit more diversity too. And I noticed a bit of a bug as well, hitting the interact button repeats the dialogue of the last NPC you spoke to even if you aren't nearby that NPC. Again overall, really impressive work with huge potential for exploration of the theme of changing the story!
Icons are next. I got it in as a quick feature so players would have one. Right now I removed static meshes from the map. (it is a camera above player, but I left render shadows on). And yea our artist only provided us with one model, so I have to go in and make some new textures. I already did it for npcs but it didnt make it to release. (its in my dev build)
Overall I love the fun and whimsical nature of your game with the fun characters and environment. The idea of karma as a resource is fun, clever, and unique! The collecting and cooking mechanics you have in place have great potential and I can't wait to see how this develops in the future!
This game has a very wonderful premise and presentation. The world is vibrant and colorful and the animation of the main character is lively, and I enjoy the interactions with the other characters. However, it did feel like the goal of the game was unclear/unfinished. I knew I was supposed to be making food but if the mechanic was implemented I didn't figure out how to do so. It also took a minute to figure out how the collectables worked, and some of them were really small and easy to miss, like the strawberries. Overall though I think this submission is really nice and I think your team put a lot of wonderful work into it, I would love to see this continued and polished more in the future!
I love the overarching idea and purpose of the game, I think it fits the overall game jam theme well! I also love the arts in terms of style and assets that you created! I do sense that there would be more polishing to be done in the future and I am looking forward to seeing that! And I do see that you posted a quick instruction in the comments section but I'm not sure if you considered putting that in the game as its own page/setup in the game. For example, you can have a "Tutorial" button and include the instructions there as a separate page, or even having a quick walk-through of the initial/basic game play in the beginning for users to get familiar with the game! I did have a issue where the game was a little too laggy to play, but not sure if that is just my laptop. Overall really nicely done :)
appreciate the comment. Didn't have time. I was making sure to get some ui in and functioning and also made it so that if your bar got to 50% some trees would disappear (to showcase main feature of climate portion)
This game has a lot of potential! I really enjoyed the aesthetics, especially with the grain effect, and I think the sound was designed especially well. The ambient noise made the world feel much more alive and made up for the characters not being animated. There were a few bugs that hindered the gameplay (no bridges, inventory didn't update when I collected blue goo mushrooms, trees disappearing but their colliders remaining on), and I would definitely suggest updating the text to something with better contrast because it was very difficult to read at some points. Maybe make it white with a black stroke? I liked the exploration, and the deforestation aspect will definitely hit a little harder when you're able to give the player more feedback for it. I look forward to seeing this game when it's fully complete!
I love the idea of the game and I can definitely see what you guys were trying to go for. The world-building and the area itself were really nice and I was already immersed when I loaded into the game. The main criticism for this game I have is to provide more instructions for the player. I had trouble knowing where I needed to go and which ingredients I should collect. I also ran into this bug where my camera sensitivity became really high after I interacted with the first NPC. Overall, I think the visuals of this game were really nice and with more time I know that this game would be more polished. I'm looking forward to what you guys will create in the future!
I really like the game overall, but I fear the scope worked against the game's design. The map and systems are vast and well thought out from what I can see in the game design document, but I didn't have enough direction on what exactly to do. I was only able to collect 2 ingredients (the flowers and the sunburnt mushrooms), as I was unable to get past the river and clipped through the map when I reached the area with the goo mushrooms. I'm really excited to see this polished though, the artstyle is charming and reminds me of older Playstation games! I'd say this game would be able to do a lot more if you shrunk the map and put a lot of thought into the remaining areas, especially with how complex this game's progression system is. Overall, there's a lot of potential here, so looking forward to what you do with more time.
I love the style and models in this game! I like the shader you used to make the outline effect on some of the nature assets such as bushes and trees. It makes the forest fun to look at lol! I think the town and overall map step design is great and it's a type of game I'd love to see more of (I love cute cooking adventure-type games!). There is definitely more to be polished, such as the NPCs not having poses, implementing the cooking system, and a more in-depth narrative. However, you now have a great foundation to continue building off of with a minimap, save data, and a nice-looking world environment! The bridge also disappeared on mine, but I saw others had pointed that out as well. The game was also very laggy on my PC, it may just be because it's a bit older, but it could be something to look into. Great job and I hope you keep working on this game!
Yea looks like there's a bug that's only happening in the build and not the in editor version of the game where the bridges disappear so we didn't catch it or have time to deal with it. Glad you still enjoyed it though. We can work on trying to make it less laggy.
This game was a lot of fun to play. It's clear that there are some things to be worked on but within the time of the Climate Jam I would say this is amazing. I'm not completely positive if the cooking system is quite implemented yet, but I couldn't find anything about how it works in game. Apart from the key features that I'm sure you guys are continuing to work on. I can only really recommend a tutorial as it is a pretty large world with seemingly even more in store after watching the trailer. Crossing the river was a pain, I saw a bridge in the video but I tried jumping across without it as I wasn't sure how to get a bridge. It eventually worked after spam jumping and then having my character get sent flying horizontally until hitting land on the other side, which was pretty entertaining. All in all I would say this is a solid submission and you all have shown that you can create a promising and eventually polished game :)
Thanks for the feedback. The cooking system is not implemented yet we didn't have time, but we may try to add it later. Same with a tutorial. There are three bridges across the river which you can find by just walking along its edge for long enough but if they area pain to find, then we could maybe implement swimming or some other way to cross. Originally you could just walk across the water and that felt weird so we banned the player from moving there. Thanks again for the feedback and ratings.
Okay it appears like there was a bug I was unaware of that made the Bridges disappear. I apologize for the inconvenience.
I appreciate the comment. Cooking I didn't get to code yet. I was focused on the climate part and all the other subsystems. If you get to 50% karma bar (under minimap) from collecting, then you get a preview of what can happen to environment. (near main area). In the release an area of nice trees disappear and sickly trees are supposed to appear, but they are invisible. (Bug for some reason). Works in editor. I have a final tomorrow, but I do plan on looking at some of these bugs after, as well as getting some of the main features in: Cinematic I had started and cooking system.
I like the visual style of the game . But i noticed tiling issues with the ground texture . This could be fixed with distance blend on your landscape material .
I noticed your main character has walk animation so I presume there is skeletal asset and a skeltal mesh if so you can use unreal retargeting feature https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-retargetin... and a animation pack to make the main character have the same animation as the animation pack. Another way ( this is one my time used ) is to use adobe mixamo auto rigger feature and have it generate animations for your charactersI retargetted/made new rig with goals and ik limb. It uses ue5 mannequins animations with a little bit of adjustment. I'm a programmer, so animation wasn't high on the list when I did it. I'm going to eventually add more stuff. I do have multiple static animation poses I did for npc cinematic but cinematic didn't make it in.
I was wondering why the character was still stuck in the t pose why the character had the t pose when walking .The arms should move and not be stuck in a t pose if you retargted . Have you tried use mixamo auto rigger https://www.mixamo.com Just upload the fbx file there and a rig should be generated then you can use that for retargeting
I didnt switch to latest player model. Just realized. I had new models made by artist with all 3 having same skeleton
Would you like to check out our game ?
yup! Love to
Quick tutorial:
Movement - WASD
Mouse - Camera Control
Interfact- F
Sprint - Shift
Map - M