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It Came from the Forest's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #1 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #1 | 4.583 | 4.583 |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #1 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #1 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Originality - Does the game innovate or try something new? | #21 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Incredible. A little world full of life and fun with something new around every corner. Also I pressed a button on a wall and a portal opened up, so that makes it GOTY. Bravo guys!
This is a good game. The UI works, the full-screen POV works well and is immersive, the music is great. I like the weird stuff the characters say. Amazing that you can complete this in a week. I ran this on linux + wine and also with the love framework. Very impressive, a massive undertaking for one week's work. Congratulations :)
Thank you so much for checking it out and I'm stoked that you like it! :)
Pretty solid, definitely has a classic feel! I like how snappy the movement is.
Thank you :) Yeah the instant step is how I like it too!
Granted I understood right and you can't use the Steel Key to open the Gate, I think I found most of what the game has to offer (I tried to bump onto every wall but I still may have missed some hidden doors, leave alone buttons and such).
Overall I greatly enjoyed my time with the game.
I mapped the full town then found the map and explored all the caves using it.
You went with a big scope, variety of combat might be slightly limited but overall many aspects are polished. The caves are just different enough that they don't feel like bloat.
I love that you use instant movement, I'm a bit sad when I'm walking on a grid while not being able to walk as fast as I click.
However for the same reason I'm not sure about the use of cooldowns instead of turns, since you don't use real time otherwise (while Dungeon Master needs real time for plenty of puzzles and such).
Nonetheless presentation and exploration are top notch, easily on par with some commercial games, good job.
Yeah, I made a typo in the end which effectively breaks the end-game. The gate expects key-2 but what you pick up is key-3 :/
I am happy you enjoyed it and that you took the time explore all :)
All real-time dungeon crawlers of yore have cool downs both for melee and spells but what I did different is that combat pauses when you are selecting spell. That's actually not an intended design decision. I just didn't have time to do it differently. I might put that in post-jam.
Thanks again for playing it and also for finding the path bug!
It's weird , the file is in the folder but I can't seem to be able to reload my save, the button is disabled in the inn, and I assume I should be able to reload from the main screen (at least after restarting, based on the previous comments) but there's no command either.
That's odd. Can you zip up the folder and drop it to me on Discord?
You could try to move the settings.cfg out of the folder and try to start with fresh settings.
or.. open settings.cfg and change lastSavegameSlot value to 1,2 or 3 depending on which savegame slot you used last.
I'm trying things related to that, I did not have a setting.cfg at all at first, only the save file (possibly related to Quit to desktop instead of passing through main menu, or maybe too long paths (I was in download at first) ).
Thanks, it was something like that, it works now.
Great :)
Do you know exactly what it was? Was there some funky characters in the path? or very long path?
It was in D:\Téléchargements\It-Came-from-the-Forest-0.9\It-Came-from-the-Forest , now it's in C:\It-Came-from-the-Forest .
I wonder if it's the é, or the . or something.
The é is likely the culprit yes. Thank you :)
Best game in the jam by far. I'm speechless and humbled. I will come back to finish this, but I've been playing an hour, doing quests, getting gear, finding secrets and thinking how was this possible in a week.
You should definitely sell this.
Much appreciated!! I'm so happy you like it. It makes the sleep deprivation worth it :D
This was possible in a week mostly because of being well prepared with a plan, great set of tools and re-useable mechanics from previous projects. This meant I could start the jam at max efficiency. I also believe a one-man-team can sometimes be more efficient. It of course depends on the nature and visual fidelity of the assets you're using. I was also fortunate to be able to allocate a lot of time to this. Huge thanks to my very understanding wife :D
Simply Fantastic !!! We want more like this one !
Thank you mate :D
All the positive response really motivates me to do full game, so perhaps I should :)
When i saw the title and the ant on the screenshot, couldn't help but thought of cinemaware (really don't know why).
The graphics are great, the music title is excellent, and the interface is good too.
Plus it's done with Löve2d so it run even on small configs with poor gpu like mine.
It looks like a real game, i will play again.
I am sorry to have give up of submitting my own entry before the end (i wanted something complete, but that would have been a tech-demo). If i had submitted something, i could have rated high your entry :) My only regret.
I will have a look to atlas maker.
Thank you for providing sources.
The title and ant is a direct reference to the It Came from the Desert game by Cinemaware :) I even use a modified logo in the main menu :D
I am really glad you liked it and thank you for checking it out and took time to comment it!
You'll have a chance in 6 months time again in the next jam :D
A very nice entry - probably the most traditional of the bunch.
I got caught for a while in a short street until I found the 'hidden' puzzle button.
the only negative thing is the lack of enemies - I know they are around cause I heard them in the really nice looking forest :)
Thank you :)
Hehe yeah there has to be some trickery. That's mandatory in these games :D
Yeah, there aren't a lot of fighting until you manage to open the east gate through solving some quest. There are some enemies in the city but a little bit hidden away. Thanks for playing :)
only entry ive seen so far that actually seems like a complete game. always happy to see source code too. id like to be able to move with the map open though- im constantly referencing it when navigating explored areas and just spamming WASD to move around without rotating, based on what i remember from flashing the map open.
How am I supposed to rate other games if I keep playing this one? Great game.
Haha thank you! :D Best review ever!
This is... motivational. You were able to do this in a week!?!? Wow. I loved the look and feel of the graphics. You even had voice overs! It's a great game and it's very complete. Exploration is rewarded and you even included a save mechanic so that dying didn't sting as bad as it could of. Combat was enjoyable. I'm absolutely impressed! I had a blast playing the game!
Considering that you built something to help you do this specifically shows me the power of creating your own framework to work from. I think that once I clean up my entry, I'll strip it down to the bare bones and make something that I can use to build more games in the future. Thanks again for hosting, and showing us what you can really get done in a week!
Thank you! I'm happy you enjoyed playing it! I enjoyed making it :D
Yes, one should never underestimate the importance of having good support tools when making a game. The AtlasMaker I wrote has been invaluable for this project and I simply couldn't have done it with out it. Also I used Tiled for creating and editing the areas. I wrote a custom area exporter for Tiled so that I could load the areas straight into the game. It's things like that which really allowed me to focus on implementing the game mechanics. Each of the mechanics are fairly simple to implement but together they add a lot of value.
I also have decades of both dungeon crawler programming and gaming experience to tap into, which is always a plus :)
My take away from this jam is that I learnt how to implement pathfinding using A* and that I learnt to make a game in love2d/LUA for the first time.
That was great fun and made me revisit my childhood spent playing Dungeon Master on my Atari ST. There was an amazing amount of content in the game. The teleport mechanism was annoyingly enjoyable too! Damn rats. It really checks the completeness box and it's amazing you guys managed to finish this in a week. A full inventory system with items is just very impressive. Music is spot on. atmospheric and fitting with the game perfectly. Voice overs a nice touch too. The maps and compass were nice mechanics too. Old school goodness. Thanks for making it!
Thanks for playing it and thanks for the very kind words! I'm so happy you like it and that I managed to trigger some nostalgic feelings! That's what it's all about :)
This game looks and sounds gorgeous. oh man the music. Amazing. It's hard to believe this level of quality can come out of jam game. I just died to a fire ant I found in a secret area in the town, time to reload and try again :)
Thank you for playing and I'm stoked that you like it :) The music is indeed amazing. Like last year's jam it's the very talented Travis Sullivan who composed the music. Stellar stuff!
Yeah, that ant is nasty early on :D
Wow! This was a real treat to play! I even busted out the graph paper and started making meticulous maps :) The art is excellent and you really hit that nostalgia vibe really hard! You were even kind enough to add a sound to my hated enemy, the teleporter :D. All in all, rock solid and an excellent showcase for AtlasCreator. Honestly, this game look like legit ready to be put on Steam.
Haha, graph paper! I personally love manual mapping. It (and still is) a big part of the full traditional dungeon crawler experience.
Hehe yeah I know a lot of people hate the invisible teleporter so I thought I'd make it a little bit less irritating - perhaps :D
I'm really happy you enjoyed playing and your kind words are much appreciated :)
The AtlasCreator has been an amazing tool for this project and I will keep improving on it and definitely make more games with it.
This is incredibly well polished and feels like an actual old-school (D)RPG.
The UI is great, there's a variety of items that do stuff and the game is well written.
Sadly, I personally can't enjoy instant move games. I get lost and confused extremely quickly and it is physically straining for me to play.
So now I'm not sure how I'm supposed to rate the game...
The audio, graphics, and completeness are superb, no questions asked BUT how am I supposed to rate the fun factor? For me personally, it's not that high solely based on the navigation alone (which is a big factor in DRPGs), but it is by no means a bad game! (everything besides the movement is great). So I think I'll go with a "middle of the road" approach for now, but I might change my mind later.
Thank you for playing and I'm happy you got a bit of nostalgic feeling out of it. It means I did something right! :)
Shame about not liking the instant moves. I understand that it's not for everyone. That's how they all were in the beginning and me being a purist prefer the instant moves :)
Rate it how you perceived it. If it wasn't fun to play then it wasn't :)
Is it just me, or is there no loading a save from the start screen?
edit: strange, now it suddenly works
There is a bug in the jam version. If you save and return to main menu the "Continue game" button isn't visible. Restart the game and it is.
Okaaaay! Took me a bit more than 3 hours and a "bug-fix" ;) but it was worth all the time!
This is such an homage to the classics. I just love it!
When I first saw the many fields in the inventory i though: hmm, well, someone had planned for a lot of items there... And then they came ^^. And they came not only with different stats, getting better and better, no. They also came with decisions! Shall I rather skill my mana? Or is attack and defense more valuable? Or rather my Health? Even super rare items can be found. Great job here!
But not enough. A certain guy suddenly offers you magic spells! And to cast them you need to find things and there are side quests and hidden rooms and multiple different dungeons and objects can be clicked to find items and hidden buttons, and and and
Considering the effort we took in making our game: Simply Wow!
Thinking about all the images and system in place I have soo many questions ^^, starting with: Who draw those trees and stones and why is that palette looking so great, and how many hours did that take in sum? I fear it took less than I think :). Fighting is "straight forward". I mean it! Enemy in front of you: click button, hope you don't miss. A known mechanic done well.
Oh! And not to forget the sound! The music is super fitting and I love the muffled voice acting sounding like I'm back in the days of Might and Magic.
So, now let me look really deep to find something to criticize! ^^
Okay, there was this last "bug" of course, concerning a certain gate ;)
But honestly, I cannot come up with something bad. I would have said, there are a few types of enemies, but that never felt odd or to few. Plus it fits the story.
Well, I wouldn't have invested 3+ hours if I wouldn't really love this.
I even recommend putting it more in public somewhere.
Fantastic Job!
I'm super happy that you liked the game so much that you played it to the end, and that you in doing that discovered a couple bugs for me to fix!
Yeah the scope for this ended up being quite big and I lost a lot of sleep. I thought more than once that I had overreached but it all came together half a day before the deadline even :) I crunched hard the first 4 days because originally I was going on a family trip for two days but that was cancelled which means I practically got two extra jam days that I hadn't budgeted with.
The music is indeed awesome and once again (like last year's jam) the songs are composed by Travis Sullivan (@travsul)
Thanks again for the kind words and for playing it all the way through! :)
Greetings,
I really liked this game, the thrilling atmosphere, the old school graphics and especially the NPCs (the first time founding a NPC really scared me, but when I realized, all the dialogs were funny )
Thank you! I'm happy you liked it :)
I've played this one a bit. Quite complex world, I'll definitely need some time to wrap my head around before rating.
I got stuck on the town area a bit though... I got to keep looking.
Found the map item yet? That'll be a big help :)