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Hidden Claws's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #196 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Playability | #804 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artistic Style | #893 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Good job, the game plays well. The only thing that felt odd was my height, it seemed like the eye level of the main character was lower than I'd expect. Brewing was a bit unclear. I think I saw a message on screen that indicated I had to brew based on the eye colour of the wolf, but this wasn't immediately obvious. Also, it felt like I couldn't always brew the colour I wanted while standing next to the table. Do you only brew one at a time? And if you then brew a different colour, does it replace the one you're holding or do you have them both? This was also unclear. All of these things are to be expected with a game jam. You have limited time and can't make everything as polished as you may like. But there's the beginning of a great game here. When conversing with people it felt odd to have the option to choose an answer, but only be presented with one. But I could see that with the scared woman that moved in recently, you gave a branching pathway and 2 options, so you're clearly thinking about this. Having branching options with most (if not all) of the characters would be a good place to go next. I liked that the hunter had their own distinct personality. Probably all of them did, but his personality and that of the scared new villager woman stood out to me the most. 2D characters in a 3D world seems like an artistic decision. I think it's fine and if that's something you plan to stick with, it would work well even in a final published game. The game felt quite dark during the daytime, especially once you enter the house. It also wasn't immediately clear which house was mine :) I was trying to open doors until I finally spotted one with the door open. Overall, I like what you've done. Good job!
- The game has a decent atmosphere, but there was far too much dialog before the gameplay loop started. For first person games, it would also be nice to have an option to invert the y-axis for those of us who learned on inverted y-axis. Otherwise, I think you all know the game is quite good. Congrats!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
The forest is known for its danger.
Every year, piligrims passing through end up disappearing.
To fight against that, the church decides to build a small village in the middle of it.
However, the threat has been revealed to be a werewolf.
Is it one of the villagers?
Fight & hide against the werewolf during the night, and use your best detective skills to find who the werewolf could be during the day!
Controls :
WASD to move
Mouse to look around, click on interactables and click on UI
Mouse wheel / Q / E to change potion (at night)
Right click to throw potion
Shift to sprint
R to open crafting inventory
Y to invert mouse axis
Some Debug Shortcuts have been added in case you are stuck, or just want to see more than you could normally see.
CTRL+SHIFT+1 : Give deterring potion
CTRL+SHIFT+2 : Give invisibility potion
CTRL+SHIFT+3 : Give red damage potion
CTRL+SHIFT+4 : Give yellow damage potion
CTRL+SHIFT+5 : Give stinkhorn
CTRL+SHIFT+6 : Give chameleon
CTRL+SHIFT+7 : Give calendula
CTRL+SHIFT+8 : Give honey
CTRL+SHIFT+9 : Give 1 conversation point
CTRL+SHIFT+U : Skip night
Extra Notes
It was fun!
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Comments
I had fun with this game! I loved the art, the characters look so good! The music was fitting too, and I really liked the 'voice' sounds for the characters. It's pretty fun that there was two layers of the game--the mystery and defending from the wolf. I enjoyed both!
Here's some feedback if y'all continue to work on this:
Overall, great job! It's awesome how much y'all got done for the game jam :)
Thanks!!
And you're bringing a lot of good points!
1. Yeah, gotta "explain" the "wolf gaze mechanic" a bit more in the game
2. Very good point, gotta fix
3. You keep ingredients in your inventory between days ; but every day, in the village, new ingredients spawn and the previous ones disappea
4. This UI was added "last minute" because before we didn't have anything; totally needs to be redone
5. And noted! Thanks!
First of all, thank you for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it
Second, I really appreciate the lengthy feedback, I think you made some very good points. The limited jam time can be tough to get some of the kinks out but feedback like this helps us figure out what to look out for in future projects (and what to fix for this one)
Fun game, you put a lot of work into the dialog! I enjoyed the ambiance and music. The daily goals helped a huge amount having that up, definitely something I want to add to my game!
The first night was very hard as I never realised I could hide from the gaze of the werewolf. I just fluked it through once and then made sure to get all the craftable items each daytime which let me survive the following nights (I think the chameleons were a bit too hard to see). Enjoyed the crafting though, it felt very rewarding as the nights were so hard.
Good work :)
Thanks!
Yeah, a lot of people couldn't find the chameleons, probably have to make them more visible
And for hiding from the gaze, I think it really needs to be explained more properly haha
Thanks for playing!
yea in hindsight we could've explained things a bit further but I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Cool style and loved the mystery! Ended up running into a game-breaking bug unfortunately where I was constantly running in certain directions. It did let me sneak a peak inside everyone's houses though, so that was neat!
Hahahaha, what?
Did you do anything specific before having that bug?
First time I hear of it haha
The only thing I can think of is that it happened immediately loading into the fourth day. Maybe I was holding down a movement key or something? I couldn't seem to unstick it no matter what I tried though the direction did seem to change somewhat randomly.
sorry you had to run into that bug! thanks for giving it a shot
Nice investigation/horror, the creepiest part is not the werewolf but the villager staring at you and watching every single move you make eheheh, but using 2d characters in a 3D world, I really like it, and the art is really really nice.
I had some problems with the cursor not locking to the windowed game so I had to play fullscreen but nothing bad. GG!
Thanks!!
Glad you enjoyed!
big bad werewolf
🐺
You did a great job on this one. For only having two weeks, you made a very strong project!
Some concerns: I wasn't ever able to find any materials other than mushrooms and flowers. After reading comments, I now realize I could have hid from the gaze, but didn't realize that during play.
Some high notes: The werewolf biting animation for the end screen was great! I loved the art of the villagers. Finding a balance between using green potions and saving them was neat. I think there was an interesting dynamic of whether you just accept the damage of a full gaze to save a potion or use one for the stop + heal.
I managed to get into a good rhythm of making one of each potion I used, and just letting the werewolf keep staring when I couldn't. It turned out pretty fun, if challenging! The villagers had interesting personalities. I rather liked the way the priest talked, and when he spoke up the first time, I doubted him, but then I started to trust him rather a lot with the way he spoke. Very solid!!
Thanks!!
Chameleons are always on walls, but are partly transparent, so I guess it can be a bit hard to find if you're not being careful haha
The honey I'd the only other material, and it's given by the merchant on day 3 (but it may have been removed after that if you picked other ingredients)
Glad you liked the narration!
Yeah we could've maybe communicated some of the mechanics a bit better, but thank you for playing!
Trust me, I know how difficult it is to find ways to communicate things. Gamedev is a massive endeavor with an endless amount of things to learn and get better at. Legitimately: I am impressed by what you all did, and I hope everyone who worked on this keeps at it!
wow very kind words, thank you so much!
finaly finished it,took me an embressing amount of time to do so but i felt like a genius when i accused the merchant first try,i love the idea!and the detective part kinda reminds me of a party game called le loup garou
Aaah spoilers! haha
Glad you liked it!!
How long did it take approximately? What did you have a hard time with?
i guess it took me like 20 ish minutes,what i found difficult is that sometimes the werewolf attacks multiple times in a row with the same eye color so i find my self out of potions and all i can do is watch as he attacks while waiting for my potion to brew,what i would do is give the player some invisible help like when he is out of potions make werewolf take longer between attacks or if he uses the same eye color 3 times in a row force the next one to be different,but thats just a suggestion,ofc you will need more tweaking and playtesting, still there is nothing such as a perfect difficulty so i would say you did very well with the time limitations!
Hmm, when the wolf is watching you, you can basically go "out of sight" by heading towards a wall for example, so even if you don't have any potion, you can escape the gaze (and the damages) by doing that, is it something you understood?
I think the fact we give the ability to make red / yellow potions from the beginning is kind heading the player towards that without understand that first mechanic sadly
We probably lack some visual feedbacks about that too
ohh i didn't notice that,but in that case the game is actualy quite fair just maybe try to communicate that mechanic earlier on if you decide to improve on the game
Yeah!! Was thinking exactly that haha
I realized that by watching another stream actually play the game haha
I really enjoy the overall vibe of the game. The use of the billboarded sprites in 3D felt fresh and comfortable to look at. The night time really is scary lol. The wolf is so startling, and it really gives the feeling of being stuck in your house, so great atmosphere there. There were a couple moment i wish I had some kind of indicator telling me where to go (into my house, where the table is, etc).
Overall super interesting and frightening to play!
Thanks!
Yeah, definitely need better explanations at first
I'm glad you enjoyed though!
thank you for the feedback! I'm glad the night time was effective
I like the day phase and i would like to try playthrough with other dialog options, but i am extremely scared of night phase. But overall it si good game.
Thanks!!
Glad the you like it, and glad night phase is "working" haha