Play game
Last Refuge's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #30 | 4.292 | 4.292 |
| Aesthetics | #61 | 4.271 | 4.271 |
| Story | #73 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Overall | #92 | 3.792 | 3.792 |
| Sound | #104 | 3.479 | 3.479 |
| Mechanics | #126 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Music | #144 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Fun | #244 | 3.438 | 3.438 |
Ranked from 48 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
6
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
N/A
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This has got to be the thirstiest guy who ever lived.
Hahaha! Indeed! We ran out of time to balance the stats sorry!
I really like this game. The art is really nice, the gameplay is fantastic and makes you think, and the music makes me panic. Overall I felt like a post-apocalyptic Bonanza Bro. Great work!
Thank you! Shoutout to our artist and sound designer!
You guys created an engaging 2D survival game that masterfully blends stealth, action, and puzzle-solving. In this world-infested world, I had to sneak through levels, collect food, and use TVs to distract the monsters. The game's atmospheric graphics and immersive sound design enhance the tension and excitement. I enjoyed the well-designed puzzles and strategic resource management that add ed depth, and made every decision critical for my survival. With its simple mechanics and gripping gameplay, "Last Refuge" is a must-play. FIVE STARS!
Thank you so much for the review. We are deciding whether to work on this game after jam. Polish and maybe add more mechanism and content, your review gave a huge boost.
In unrelated note - I might frame this and hang it in my room 😁
Hey Joseph! Thank you so much for your heartwarming and positive review of Last Refuge! I'm the Community Manager for Null Jam Games, the studio that is currently transforming Last Refuge into a full release game. Could we have your permission to feature your review of Last Refuge on our social media platforms? We would love to showcase your review and in-turn, give a shoutout for the submission of your project for the Gamedev.TV Jam as part of your credit!
Hi Pauline,
Thank you so much for reaching out! You have my full permission to use my review of Last Refuge on your social media platforms. There's no need for a shoutout—I'm just excited to see the game come to life. I'll be among the first to purchase it when it's released. Best of luck with the full launch!
Joseph,
That means the world to me and the team at Null Jam Games to hear! Thank you so much!
This was genuinely creepy. Good job on the atmosphere
I really like the concept and it gets across the feeling of being a lone survivor in a hostile world quite well.
Although the game description says there's an easy way to do each raid, some of them are beyond my ability to figure out. Particularly the basement, if the intention is to hold onto the ladders between floors to make the proper timing then I was unable to get that to work. There's also a section in the penthouse with a stair entrance next to a door, I wasn't able to open the door instead of using the stairs no matter how many times I tried, leading to getting chomped on. There's also another area where, instead of a door or a closet, there's simply a green bar which the player can 'hide' in but is not visually obvious.
I like the truck's design and the need for resources. I also like the idea of needing to scour through various areas to get enough supplies to escape, but I found I could get enough in two or three to simply drive past the others to victory. Most of the time that the truck drives somewhere, the moving background continues to move even after it's stopped.
Thank you for your detailed feedback. Appreciate you spending time.
The entrance in the Basement Level is distraction, you need to go on the opposite side of the truck to enter the house through basement.
Is this the stairs you're struck at penthouse?
Solution is to turn on the tv an hide in the closet to lure the monster and lock it in the room.
Another level you're talking about is a mistake, it was placeholder we didn't have time to fix it.
Like I mentioned in another comment, we didn't have time to properly onboard the player. We started this jam immediately after we finished a previous one (Check out our previous game jam Conchsequences. We are very Proud of it!!!)
Hopefully we have time to correct this. Thanks again for playing.
Those are the stairs, yes! The problem I had was that I couldn't open the door due to the prompt to use the stairs overriding it. I held left and tried mashing E but it was always switching floors which took precedence over opening the door. Because of that I couldn't get to the TV and closet.
I appreciate the detailed response! :)
Oh its clear. Its a mistaken in our side. I should have designed interaction element with decent space between them. There is another similar bug in Shopping Market level also needs to be corrected.
Thank you for outlining our shortcomings, for most of these problems we simply ran out of time to try fix all of them, however we appreciate greatly that you took the time to try our game out to its fullest to discover these bugs. The green bar issue was due to our "test level" being introduced as part of the actual game, and the green bar was simply a placeholder for a hiding spot which accidentally made it to the final build of our game. The overlapping interaction prompts were quite annoying too I will admit, however I wish I could explain in words how much of a rush it was to make this game actually playable lol! The hell hole was an incredibly interesting concept where I got quite good at juggling the aggro of the monsters by weaving up and down the ladder and jumping off the ladder early to fly to the top of the closet hitbox to enter a hiding state from where I could fly over the enemy too. However due to balancing issues with the water consumption it was very hard to practice this level to that depth.
I'm very glad the atmosphere managed to come together and I'm really glad you took the time to report these bugs. Good luck on your entry!
Thank you for the response and explanation! :)
I know there's a lot of rushing to get things working in the strict time constraints, so it's perfectly understandable to have these sorts of issues get put into the 'final' build.
I feel there's a lot of potential for this post-apocalyptic survivor game if it was developed further. If there was more of a progression system, for example ways to upgrade the truck and/or reduce water/food consumption and/or increase the amount of time the player can spend in the radiation; things like that would make for a very compelling experience. Naturally fitting any of that in the time frame of ten days is asking for trouble. :)
Really liked this game ! The pixel art is very good and the gameplay loop is simple to understand.
Avoiding the monsters might be a bit hard to avoid though (or I'm just really bad lol)
Also pausing water and food consumption while reading notes could be a great QOL improvement :p
The game does have quite a steep learning curve initially, which was due to having very little stat balancing time due to scheduling issues, and because of those issues we also ran out of time to add a pause mechanic which would have used the time stop feature to pause the game while the player was reading notes. Thank you for the review and good luck on your entry!
Cool game. I really like the graphics and the moody background. Settings like this remind me of STALKER. I did die quite easily a few times, always from dying of thirst. I did find a hole in the ground to raid that goes quite deep and I just perished.
Those teeth on legs are scary, especially the Nosie they make.
Haha the Hell Hole is a favourite of many people who played, that was definitely a very fun idea to add (shoutout game designer!), as for the enemies our artist and sound designer created such a cohesive atmosphere that blew the rest of the team away. Thank you for playing our game!
Hey Splendid Fox Games! Thank you so much for your review of Last Refuge! I'm the Community Manager for Null Jam Games, the studio that is currently transforming Last Refuge into a full release game. Could we have your permission to feature your review of Last Refuge on our social media platforms? We would love to showcase your review and in-turn, give a shoutout for the submission of your project for the Gamedev.TV Jam as part of your credit!
I had a lot of fun with this one. Here are some of the things I liked the most:
From the layout of the vehicle, it looked like you considered other survival metrics like sleep or training at the gym? Or maybe they were just there to set the scene. Either way, that was cool, too.
Nice work!
Shout out to our game designer, artist and sound designer for such a creepy atmosphere!
We did not have mechanics like sleep or training in mind, however that could be a good idea if we were to flesh it out!! Thank you for the idea :)
Great submission! I like the concept and the art. Well done!
Thank you!!
It's super super impressive if you managed to crank this out in a week - outstanding job. It reminded me very much of a game thats on my Steam Wishlist called 'The Final Station' - check it out if you haven't already been inspired by it because its very much in the same vain as what you seem to be going for here. I loved the train mechanic and the need to collect and spend fuel to get to destinations to raid (outstanding). I enjoyed the mechanic of only being able to be outside of the train for a certain time. I think I would have appreciated some kind of gun or weapon to kill those big ugly things as in some building it was really hard to move around without taking damage. Overall I loved it and thought the ambiance was outstanding. Just a great great job -well done.
Edit: One thing I did notice was that my water and food requirements continued to decrease while I tried to read the notes, so I basically instaclosed that and didnt really pay any attention to it. I reckon it would be good to pause the gameplay while that note is up and then just resume time when you click out of it.
Thank you for detailed review!!
We found final station when we are trying to find something similar visually.
Initially we brainstormed combat also but finally decided to go non combat route. Levels are designed like puzzle you can try to find a easy way but some levels like a hell hole tempts you to be greedy. But I should have done player onboarding better. Was able to do only this with the time available.
PS: If you don't mind I'll DM you when we add more levels and better onboarding. Thanks again.
of course. I love the look and feel of the game and like I said its incredible impressive for a 7 day effort. Definitely keep me posted on how you progress - I'm keen!
Thank you for such a detailed review,
We were actually inspired by the final station, as our game designer pitched this idea at our first meeting, I'm glad you were able to draw the parallel between the two! We wanted to opt out of having combat because we thought that many entries would be using combat as their main source of the "Last Stand" feeling, so to stand out we decided to completely omit combat. However early on in prototyping we had the idea of a gun with limited bullets however that was quickly overriden.
We didn't have time to introduce a pause mechanic (which we would have used to stop time while the player read notes) and we wanted to throw little notes around levels further teaching the player about the world and game mechanics, however due to scheduling issues we had to only focus on the core gameplay loop and make it playable!
Thank you for taking the time to play our game.
This might be a contender for the best game. It feels more fully fleshed out than almost any other entry! Very good job guys (and/or girls)! SFX for nearly everything. I like the resource/limitation systems you have in the game as well. You constantly have to be worried about something. Solid game over all. Thanks for your submission!
Thanks for the playing the game!!!
You have made my day ☺️. Please check out our other games. Love to know what you think
Thank you so much!
Super atmospheric with very nice visuals!
The monsters wrought fear with their mysterious appearance and sounds, and were quite SPC like as another commenter mentioned.
I'm not quite sure what the scrap was for, I'm assuming it's something you ran out of time for.
And I also died a few times to dehydration lol
Neat job :D
Shhh! We don't talk about the scrap! :), yeah we did run out of time for the scrap, it was meant to be for repairing the truck so you could use the services inside it (cooker, water etc.) but because of scheduling issues within our team we had very little programming time in the end, so we wanted to focus on completing the absolute necessities first! Glad you still enjoyed :)
Very nicely done! I especially love the graphics on the truck all the little details. This is solid work.
Very creative concept also.
A little tricky will have to give another lot of tries later.
Off my head some possible nice features to add would be a weapon maybe to take on enemies also maybe some enemy variety however what you have made within the time is fantatic.
Good job.
We did actually have a weapon idea early on in prototyping, however it kind of got lost as we built our prototype, we were very adamant on keeping combat as minimal as possible to preserve uniqueness so we ended up never introducing it. I'm glad you enjoyed our game! :))
This is a really impressive game! The art and sounds are fantastic; I particularly like how detailed the truck is and all the little sounds when you move inside it. The enemies are really creepy, both in how they look and the awful noises they make. They made me want to spend as little time as possible at each location, which fits with the survival theme. All in all, well done!
Im so happy that the atmosphere transferred! Shoutout to our artist and sound designer for making the atmosphere so creepy! :)
Hey StarlightLacuna! Thank you so much for your positive review of Last Refuge! I'm the Community Manager for Null Jam Games, the studio that is currently transforming Last Refuge into a full release game. Could we have your permission to feature your review of Last Refuge on our social media platforms? We would love to showcase your review and in-turn, give a shoutout for the submission of your project for the Gamedev.TV Jam as part of your credit!
Hi Pauline! Yes, you have my permission.
Awesome, thank you so much!
Great game, everything looked amazing, and had a good vibe to it. very fun!
Thank you!
Lot going on here, good job! The mechanics are very clean, it looks good, and love the concept and gameplay a lot - very nice work on this one!
Thank you!! Was very tight on time glad we managed to push it out in time
Love the art and idea in general! The moving base is so cool, it makes progress and exploring very fun and interesting. The enemies sometimes felt a bit unfair, or it took much time to avoid, but still felt good overall. Maybe the water drains a bit too quckly but it makes sense and works as a mechanic to keep track of everyting your character needs! Good job, awesome entry
Thank you!! We didn't have much time to balance the stats but we can just call that a hardcore feature ;)
A solid entry to the jam! I really love the fact that you have created your very own assets! Good job!
Thank you!! Our artist was amazing!
I like this! Took me a cpl dies to get going. Then I found the base moved! It's my fav part. Game has a cool concept. Good art, visuals, atmosphere and mechs. Had me scrambling to figure out the ways to stay alive, died and started again a lot. The traveling base and picking locations to explore for survival items kept me entertained.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed our concept, we are rolling out bug fixes so let us know if you find any!
Really unusual game concept which works well. The simple colour pallet was well-thought-out and helps the character stand out. The atmosphere is great.
Thank you! Shoutout to our artist and sound designer :)