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It's interesting to see a terminal text-based adventure today, but it's rough to play without a lot of quality of life elements modern games have. I know not having a map is part of the experience but when the feedback of my location is limited to a terrain type and direction options it makes navigation a very difficult task.

Speaking of navigation, it seemed to be the only real gameplay element. Attacking bandits seemed like it should be a risk but early on I figured out just trying to attack them makes them flee and ignoring them caused them to steal something I was carrying - which didn't feel like a price at all because having anything didn't feel like an asset.

It all came down to my goal - I didn't know it. Foraging for items didn't feel worthwhile because I didn't know how owning anything would contribute to my goal - and thus losing anything didn't get me further away from it - and even navigating the world, which was difficult, didn't feel like making progress because I didn't know where I could go that would get me closer to my goal.

This feels like a barebones combination of a walking simulator and a sandbox game. Regardless of what my options are, none of them feel worth doing because they don't contribute to a goal (player-defined or otherwise) and while walking around I didn't discover anything that could have made the experience 'worth it'.

Maybe there is something further down the line, but unfortunately these elements combined into an experience I didn't want to stick out as I wasn't getting any impression that there was something I was struggling for.

I will note that these critiques are what the game was missing, not what it had. I'm sure with the right additions the base you've developed can evolve into something more.

Yer absolutely correct. 

(also, it is SUPPOSED to be rough to play, but you picked up on that)

There is nothing really at stake in this game.

There could be. 

Here's the main take away for me for this jam, and other jams in general: my sweet spot for jam lengths is 7-14 days. Four days it too few. Longer than two weeks is way too much to give the urgency of a focus.

For the type of game I make (which is this type of game... they are all similar), what you see before you is what I can accomplish in roughly 8 hours of development time, which is about how much time I can dedicate to a 4 day jam. I get about 2 hours a day early in the morning to do this, and really no other time.

I had enough time to build in a "lose" condition. If you kill a bandit... you lose.

And I was heading towards an inventory/craft/merchant/eating/blah system(s) with the foraging mechanic, and my time to dedicate to it was over.

Now I know: pick a jam between 7 and 14 days long. The short ones will lack critical features, the longer ones I will lose interest in adding features.

Thanks for giving it a try.

that makes perfect sense! i understand the time constraint issue, and that the rough-ness making it not my kind of game skewing my impression of it.