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Best fun I have had starving to death fighting rats to see who was going to eat the other in a long time! I really like the difficulty of the game, it definitely has that “one more time” hook after you die, you know you can make it further next time.

The only thing that through me for a loop was fully understanding which weapons did what during combat. I could see their rating on their popup/tooltip using the right click system, but it did not seem to always deal that amount in combat. Maybe provide a little more feedback to the player on the amount of damage dealt, especially if it is a range.

Otherwise, awesome game and keep up the good work!

Hello and thank you for the feedback!

The animals should appear at either end of the level, with a bunny near your camp and a fox near the skeleton log. There is a chance that they saw you and ran away before you noticed them, but the fox is a little oversized in this build, so he should be harder to miss. :)

Did the version you played not have an image of the needed keyboard key/controller button to press when you looked at the ground or other objects?

Yes, currently going to sleep triggers the end game screen. In a future version I hope to add a day/night cycle to simulate the passage of time. That way it is up to the player how much do they want to push their luck and stay out in the wild.

We call them “water skimmers”, and I’m glad you like them. I hope to make them move around the stream in a future Sprint. I’m a sucker for the small details in games. And I agree the cat tails should be pickable at some point, I will probably wait until I get a hunger/thirst system implemented. They would make a good test item for foraging for wild food.

I enjoy The Long Dark as well. :) I hope to get more styles of traps and snares in the game. That way you have to use the right type for the kind of animal that you want to trap. On the player walking, is it the lack of a headbob animation on the camera or something else that makes it feel “floaty”? I admit, I had not thought about the audio/visual feedback UI, I had been so focused on getting the new systems in I think I had a case of developer tunnel vision, but you right The Long Dark, Red Dead Redemption 2, and other games that I have been drawing inspiration from all have some kind of visual and audio cues for the player. I will definitely add that to make Backlog as a new item to work on soon.

Thank you again for the thoughtful and detailed feedback!

Thank you for the feedback!

I agree the animals need a lot more polish for the next version. I will check into the spatial audio issue, I had been testing the build with a mono-piece call center style headset, so I thought the cutoff was just coming from the lack of a left ear piece. :) I should have tried it on my computer with the normal speakers, but I just didn’t think of it. Fixing the traps to be able to pick them up is probably my most requested feature, I just ran out of time to make it work with the new item system since they are interactable after dropping them.

Are the controls intuitive enough, or do I need a tutorial? I think just having some basic information pop up in a tooltip would go a long way to helping new players understand what different structures and units do at a glance.

What do you think about the graphics? I like them! The give me an old school late 90s vibe.

Is it fun? Do you think it could become fun when extended with different units & resources? I enjoyed it, I found myself going back again a few times to try another strategy or build combo, so I think you have a good foundation. I think different units and resources could be used to add more tactical complexity, but another option could be to mix in building upgrades as well. That way I could start to specialize things from my original rail gun buggy factories, maybe upgrade one to build faster units and upgrade a second to build stronger units, etc.

Other Stuff

• It was a little hard to read the font on the UI.
• I’m sure it is on your todo list, but controls to allow adjusting the volume levels of the different audio in the game.
• I know you are still whiteboxing, but in a future version some kind of UI feedback on the buildings, that way it is easier to see their current build progress without having to click on each individual building.

I think you have a great start to your game.

Thank you for the feedback! A lot of the changes this time were small bug fixes and quality of life changes from the previous version. The biggest new feature I put in this one was full controller support and dynamically changing input prompts based on whether the player was using a keyboard + mouse or a gamepad, but if you weren’t using a gamepad that change was not that obvious. Looking back on it, I probably would have been better served animating old Benjamin and finishing out the missing animal models, rigging all of them, animating them, and placing them in the game to show where their dens were located in the test level. But I underestimated the amount of time I had to work on the game, so I ran out of time before I could do any of the art pass this time.

Thank you, I’m glad you liked it! I hope to redo the current level using a terrain system and a river shader to make the level more vibrant and immersive. The idea in a more developed version of the game is that you would have to pick what you packed to go on your hunting trip and then choose how many days you stayed out to gather your pelts. That way you have to balance the risk vs reward of staying out later, plus manage all of your gear to have a successful trip and survive to make it home.

I’m glad you found the hidden turtle, unless it was the one back at camp, he doesn’t count. ;)

Awesome and thank you! I was across the country when the jam ended, so I missed the voting period to play through most of the other games that were submitted later towards the end of the jam. But I was able to watch your VOD on my phone and I was able to see the feedback for my game and see a bunch of the other awesome games turned in during this jam.

Yeah, the core game loop is barely there right now. I hope to add some complex inventory management (like Dredge or the new Oregon Trail), hunger/sleep/thirst mechanics, and day/night + weather to make the game far more challenging and engaging. Plus it wouldn’t be a true hunting game if you didn’t have a chance to get mauled by a bear and/or cougar. :)

Thank you for the great feedback! I agree, there needs to be a better on boarding of players on how to play the game and how to improve. I had originally planned on putting the 3D models of the animals into the game with animations and have them moving around to give the player a better idea where their dens were located and which animals lived in the different parts of the test level, but I sadly ran out of time and focused on fixing a bunch of small bugs, adding controller support, and doing some quality of life improvements that I did not get to the bigger changes to improve gameplay this time. I hope in the next update to focus more on the core gameplay and do another iteration on the “how” to play the game and how to improve as a player.

Thank you for the feedback! I agree, old Benjamin needs a little more life in him. I had originally planned to rig him and give him a basic Mixamo idle so that he wasn’t such a statue, but sadly I ran out of time before I could do another pass on him or finish rigging the animal models to add into the level to give a better hint where their dens were located. I almost put them in without animations, but I didn’t like the idea of them roller skating around following a simple spline. So I held off on the idea for this time. But seeing the animals in game and moving around (along with Benjamin ) will be one of my main goals for the next update.

Thank you for reviewing the game.

I agree, it does need more work in terms of in game explanation of gameplay/controls.

Glad you liked it!

The “off camera” trapping came down to running out of time to do the more immersive/detailed trapping I had originally thought of at the start of the jam. I like the idea of adding fishing as a mechanic, every good game needs a fishing mini game, plus it would fit the time period and the more gritty survival direction I originally wanted to take the game in.

Thank you, I am glad you like it!

I agree, more visual feedback for the player would help the overall experience. I ran out of time to fully rig and animate the great 3D models that I found as a part of this jam. That is part of the reason for having all the trapping happen “off camera”, but in a more fleshed out version I would want to have the animals around their den sites to make it more apparent where they are.

Also, thank you for letting me know about the boulder. I discovered the river cave mouth shortly after the submission deadline had passed, but I did not notice that one of the boulders was missing a collision as well. I will add that to my bug tracker and go look for it in game.

Thank you for trying the game and providing some great feedback!

I agree the game could have used an in game tutorial to explain the core loop better. I was running out of time and I had to cut the gameplay down to get to a “playable” state, so you have to trigger the bedroll in your tent using the E key to cause the game over state. Once you have placed your traps around the game’s world, there are certain areas that are considered zones for different types of animals. So if you managed to place your traps in the right zone, when you go to sleep it should trigger the traps and it will report out how many of each animal you managed to collect.

I agree with what others have said, some kind of indicator to what state different orders are in. The ability to drop people directly into chairs and their orders directly onto a place setting on the table in front of them. There were several times were it seemed like I did not have the food and the dinner perfectly lined up and they did not appear to eat their meal. Maybe the ability to see which table a meal ticket was for, that way when you hit the rush, you have a small reminder of what goes where without putting the customer’s name directly on the order. Maybe a system of when you turn in the orders that they enter a queue, and then the meals are made in the order they are added to the queue in the kitchen.

Another good old cooking game to draw some inspiration from is Diner Dash, also on Crazy Games.

Overall, a good prototype, and I think if you keep working on it you could have a very fun game on your hands!

I agree with with the love studios, an old school trick like a blob shadow would go along way into giving the player a basic understand to where they were going to roughly land. It is not a gamebreaker with the current respawn system, but it would shave a few unnecessary deaths off of a player’s run through the game.

As far as the sword, I agree, leaving it in makes it confusing to the player. Maybe remove it from the player at the start of the game. That way it conveys to the player that they are going to have to make it through with the rolling/jumping options instead (until the grenade :) shows up). Plus, it buys you time to tweak the controls, and you may be able to add the sword back in later down the line. Kind of the classic show the player the cool thing they have, then take it away from them and make them earn it back through gameplay.

Another option might be to give the player the option to press a button/key to re-center the camera back behind them. Kind of like some of the old N64 games used to. I noticed I kept turning 90 degrees to the left/right to force the camera to snap back behind me when I was trying to line up a difficult jump (especially one at an angle).

Sorry, I missed that part when I was rereading the submission rules. That’s what I get for pulling an all nighter. :D I have updated my submission page with the assets used from Open Game Art.

Thank you!

It just serves as a way to aggregate all the posts of a particular topic together.

It looks like #OpenGameArt has had some use in the past.

But I think #OpenGameArtJam is probably more useful for the jam, so I ran with it.

Thank you.

Is there a specific social media hashtag we need to use when posting updates about our work? Might help bring more people into the jam. :D

Awesome, the organizer for Open Game Art Spring Jam said it was good on their end too. Now to plan out a “Green Man” that “Gathers” things!

Awesome, the organizer for Game Develop Month said it was good on their end too. Now to plan out a “Green Man” that “Gathers” things!

Hello, I was curious if we could submit a game for this jam and another simultaneously? This Jam and the Game Develop Month Jam (https://itch.io/jam/game-develop-month) line up almost perfectly and I would like to work on a single game for both if it is allowed.

Hello, I was curious if we could submit a game for this jam and another simultaneously? This Jam and the OpenGameArt.org Spring Game Jam 2023 (https://itch.io/jam/opengameart-spring-game-jam-2023) line up almost perfectly and I would like to work on a single game for both if it is allowed.

I am remaking my first Flash game from almost 15 years ago in Godot, it both amazes (and slightly sickens) me how quickly it has been coming together. My friend and I have been dredging through the depths of our hard drives trying to see if we still have some of the original source files for the backgrounds in the game so we can convert them to a standard 16:9 1080 experience instead of the old wonky resolution the original was in.

The game was nothing amazing, but I will be glad to have a modern version of it living again that people can actually play. If nothing else, it has been a fun nostalgia trip at looking at how we did things when we didn’t know any better. :)

Thank you for the welcome. :) picoCAD is an interesting program, I am going to have to poke at it more though to get more comfortable with it.

I’ve seen several post on here were people mention a tool or an engine that they are using for this jam, so I thought it would be fun to do a little impromptu survey/discussion on what we are all using to make our games. You never know when someone might show you a new tool or program that you did not know about.

I’ll kick us off.

Game Engine/Programming Language
Godot v3.2.3 (Mono) / C#

Art
Piskel

Sounds
Chiptone

Music
Beepbox

Other
Bitbucket.org and GIT for version control

I was reading up on the default NES resolution to get ready for the jam and I ran across an interesting fact that I did not know. While the resolution of the NES is indeed 256x240, it seams that most TVs at the time did not show the entire output to the screen due to overscan. So for an NTSC TV the actual viewable screen resolution or “safe area” would have been 256x224 pixels.

So, I am curious how others have planed to account for this? Do you plan on using black letterboxing on the top and bottom of your game to match the feel of the original NES games, or are you just going to use the full 240 height and just enjoy the extra two tiles that it affords?