Post by wolfheat in Fern Island jam comments

Dungeon Crawler Jam 2024 » Entries » Fern Island

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I really like survival games, and there is always nice with crafting and cooking systems. The core settings of the game is nice and has great potential. That said I were not able to complete the game, but I tried several times and think I completed most of the content. Below are some of my remarks from playing which I hope will help in improving the game and gameplay.

After dying and restarting the game your inventory is kept from before as well as your stats, which makes you instantly die.

Controls - A bit annoying to have to use WASD to move around Enter to exit menus and mouse to click buttons with only two hands.

Store -Couldn't get the Store to work.

UI - Ba, Pi, Co and Fi is a bit hard to interpret maybe have them as icons instead?

Cooking - Seems like all ingredients give 5% to hunger and combined recipes don't give any additional hunger. So player can as well just cock them one by one. Its hard to figure out what recipes you can cook from the inventory. Maybe have food contribute more to the health to make it playable. Finding a food and cooking it takes more energy than you get back from it.

Combat - Each action in combat takes like 5% of the players hunger bar, that's like one food item. Which drains you out of energy since combat usually needs more than one action to complete. Maybe not have player reset the island and placed at start position after each encounter. I t makes exploring hard. The food heals a bit but it feels impossible to keep up with the hunger no matter how much you eat. I am normally not a fan of random encounters but if you use them please have them only appear on movement and changing position. These random encounters seems to happen on a random timer.

Fishing - Spamming Space while fishing makes you gain fish repeatable

Work - After completing all Sail, Rudder and Steering wheel, the options to create the again is available. I did not find a way to leave the island with these three items.

Spirit - The spirit in the ground did nothing from what I can see. Not sure if he is supposed to be fought or help you escape.

View - Maybe the tiles could be a bit bigger.

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SeeFerns238 days ago

Hey wolfheat! Thanks for your comments! They are really constructive and so I greatly appreciate it. I am sorry to hear you weren't able to complete the game. I was aware of some of these issue but just due to time couldn't get to them. I plan on fixing them soon though and I hope you come back after that to try it out again.

The inventory being kept after death is actually something I wasn't aware of, so thank you so much for making that known to me.

I agree, the controls need work. They took a bit of a back seat to other things that, in retrospect, weren't as important.

The store was an eleventh hour idea that I should've scrapped for this prototype. It doesn't actually work yet, I just left it in to convey the idea that there will be one in the future. I should've indicated that somehow.

Yes! The UI is actually something I am planning on getting to asap. My wife mentioned early on that the Ba, Pi, Co, and Fi were hard to interpret. It is among 1 of the many issues I have with my UI.

The cooking does in fact need balancing. The fish are the only thing that give 10% health while all fruit give 5%. I thought that cooking fruit together gave 10% and and fruit + fish combo gave 15% but I might have over looked that so I'll give it another look. Either way, there needs to be a lot of balancing work done.

Now the combat, I actually don't want my final product to have any combat at all. It was only added for the game jam rules! It seems like the cooking and combat system just need balancing overall, and I appreciate you pointing that out. My final product is going to ditch combat all together and make a much larger world where the focus is on navigation and survival.

I wasn't aware of the fishing spam thing, I'll fix that too. Again, I'm so glad you pointed that out.

After completing the 3 ship parts, did you try clicking on the anvil in the ship? That should end the game for you, but maybe it is also bugged. Being unable to remake the parts in the work menu does not convey that at all though, so it is no fault of your own. It was my poor design there.

The spirit does nothing currently, again due to time constraints. If you hit him enough, he send you back to the menu screen after a short text box. That's about it for now unfortunately. I don't know if I plan on keeping him or the underground section at all in the main game. I might even remove the ruins. Thanks for mentioning it, if you have any suggestions here, I'm all ears!

Lastly, the view. I'm not sure how I feel about the tile size. This is my first dungeon crawler and I've never really played many so I don't have a ton of opinion here. Either way, thanks for mentioning it.

Overall, thanks again for your time and for playing. This was a great comment!

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wolfheat238 days ago(+1)

I am glad you took my comment as constructive since that is sincerely what it was. I think these jams are a great way for us developers to evolve and having fellow game devs give feedback is invaluable in out pursuit of making our games better!
I didn't click the anvil. I just did a replay of the game now and yes that do complete the game thank you.

So if I get you correctly, you basically wanted to make a island survival game, but these jams restrictions made you enforce combat and ruins. :) I find that funny somehow.

As a first dungeon crawler I would say it is still decent. It is a bit of a tricky genre but it does have it's charm. According to the tile size it mostly applies to narrow hallways, but it makes it easier to navigate. I don't think you have to change that since you got other stuff thats more important to focus on.

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SeeFerns238 days ago(+1)

Agreed, feedback from other devs is like gold. That is why I truly appreciate the time you took to play it.

I'm glad the anvil worked! I just need to communicate that better to the player next time.

Yeah, I actually hopped on this jam last minute because I got a week off from work and my wife went on vacation so I was home alone for a week and wanted to use it for a jam. This one was just right on time.

Thanks for the compliment, as someone who has only played a small handful of crawlers, I was nervous I would totally miss the mark. The genre has a table top/old school feel to me that is the most charming in my opinion.

Lastly, I see what you mean about the tile size now. I'll certainly look into it after some of my larger changes.

Anyway, thanks again! I'm planning on trying our your submission sometime this week!

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