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Bertrum's Hollow's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Cleverness | #282 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Playability | #804 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Love the art style. Can see the Moonlighter inspiration. The idea of having to explore for ingredients is clever. Needs more of a tutorial at the beginning, accidentally slept in the bed and skipped a day. The brewing UI needs some work too, had trouble figuring out how to give the potions to customers. Overall good idea though!
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!
Game Summary Pitch
Bertrum’s Hollow is a town shop-keeper style game with a dark twist where the player must experiment with ingredients on townspeople and themselves in order to determine their effects while trying to cure as many townspeople as possible.
Inspiration
Moonlighter
Moonlighter has the player explore, gather items, and serve customers in a shop.
Minecraft - brewing mechanic
One of the best mechanics in minecraft, is its in-depth potion brewing system. We wanted to pay homage to that, if only in a very surface level way.
Don’t Starve
A dark, pixel art-look. Gothic. Greyscale with a bluish hue. Much of the visual aesthetic of this game, while not blatantly copying the visual style, takes influence from this game.
Player Experience
The player experience revolves around the Day mechanic in which during the day, when you enter your shop you will be greeted by a sick customer. You must then brew them a potion that will cure them of their ailment, but you may not always know what ingredient will accomplish this feat, so some experimentation will be in order. The townsfolk are a trusting lot and will drink whatever potion you give them, but be warned. Some ingredients have terrible side effects that can further ail the townsfolk. Alternatively, you can drink the potion yourself, however, drinking something that will make you ill will force you to rest a day to recover.
The goal is to cure as many villagers as possible within the 10 days you are given.
Platform
The game is developed to be released on Web, Windows PC, Linux, and Mac
Development Software
Godot Game Engine
Aseprite for Graphics
Logic Pro for SFX
Genre
Singleplayer, puzzle, pixel-art, adventure.
Target Audience
Casual gamers who are interested in dark themes, and puzzles.
Concept
Gameplay Overview
The player, an ad-hoc quack with an insatiable curiosity named Bertrum, runs a small medicinal shop in the Town of Bertrum’s Hollow. They will scour the town to find ingredients that will cure the ails of the town's inhabitants while furthering their research and uncovering some of the mysteries the town has to offer.
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Comments
The color palette is intresting and the art style is nice. Game in complex works well. I managed to crashit in my first play by going back in the room while a patient entered the door to talk to me.
A suggestion : you should put a timer of some sort for interacting with the bed, I mistekenly pressed E and skipped a day :[
For the rest, Music is nice and relaxing and I think that the gameloops works fine ! GG
Thank you! There were definitely a ton of bugs and unintended mechanics in the submission. Once the results are in we will submit a post-jam build which highlights some of the more game breaking bugs we've been sent.
I love the art and the vibe. The game looks so good. Not sure on the shadow theme connection. But I kept drinking random stuff until I ran out of time. I never did learn how to cure a rash, even with a sootheberry potion it didn't seem to have an effect. The time limit is way too restrictive given how many days will be wasted just learning what the ingredients do.
We really appreciate that! We learned a ton about how to give feedback through the UI. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after the jam that we were able to implement much of what we learned. Once judging is over we will be pushing a post-jam version which will hopefully give a much better understanding of the intention in the brewing and experimentation mechanics.
I drunk a potion and fell asleep!
Super pretty game and lovely chill ambient soundtrack :)
Some of the writing can be hard to read but collecting all the ingredients is just too fun!
Thank you for playing! We definitely learned a ton about UI this go around. The writing is indeed a pain to read. There will be a post-jam version that cleans that up, but it wasn't something we could get to for the jam version, unfortunately.