Rucksack

by karln
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.52
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.62
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.05
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.15
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.69
Face dangers and search for the, not one, but TWO super valuable rubies. Your rucksack will help!

For best results try to learn the controls as they're told to you in game. However, if you're stuck and/or think you've missed one of the on-screen instructions, here they are:

* WASD to move
* Left Ctrl to open rucksack/pick up/drop items
* (Use the mouse to move items around on the inventory screen)
* Left Shift to attack if you have a weapon equipped

If one of the gates appears to be open but you can't walk through it, sorry, that's a bug. Keep trying for a few seconds and they generally open properly :/

Pretty map tiles by Buch at OpenGameArt.org, http://blog-buch.rhcloud.com and Jeffrey Kern (committer and creative consultant). Retrieved from https://opengameart.org/content/overworld-tiles-0

(Crappy map tiles and other graphics by me.)

screenshot

Comments25

Beege15 Dec 2017, 20:46
Great entry, love the bag system - reminded me of the bag system in "The Trail". Did get a tad confused on whether the player can actually die and if not how does one lose the game, but the game was fun and felt very classic zelda-esque.
feips5 Dec 2017, 20:47
Great Idea, a few things: I really like your inventory system and how different items have a different weight. I think it would be quite nice for a survival game. The blue blobs can block your arrows but you can't block their 'blobs' which is kinda frustrating. Movement feels good. A few tiles are just one color(the water in the top right. Also, I think it only counts the with which you finished, not the amount of rupees(I finished with one rupee and one stone and still got the 2/2 rupee end).
Kegnarok5 Dec 2017, 20:50
Nice! That's a nice mechanic, it gives a feel of how many things you usually carry in a Zelda-like game, and how it is a pain to get the object at the bottom of the bag ;)
iamtalin5 Dec 2017, 20:55
This is probably the best core mechanic I've encountered in LD40 so far, well done!
mateusculpo
mateusculpo5 Dec 2017, 20:57
I really liked the mechanics of the game, but the 2 times I tried to play, he buga, and I can not control the character anymore, it's frustrating.
karlnauthor5 Dec 2017, 21:10
@mateusculpo sorry to hear it bugged out on you, I've heard that from a friend who played it too and it's a shame :( Sounds like the player got stuck in the walls or something? In future I don't think I'll use the Unity physics/collision system for 2d Zelda-like games, seems safer to handle collision myself.

Thanks for trying anyway :)
karlnauthor5 Dec 2017, 21:14
@Beege1 @turbulentwinds Just checked out The Trail on YouTube, looks interesting. I was sure somebody must have done something like this but I don't know of any games like that myself :)
jelch8 Dec 2017, 02:08
Great inventory system. Liked the player model too!
AllesKapaul9 Dec 2017, 20:23
Nice inventory mechanic, I really liked it, very innovative! I didn't really like the graphics though.
Le Slo
Le Slo11 Dec 2017, 20:20
Really cool idea! I enjoyed the game, sometimes it's a bit frustrating but the originality was superb. I couldn't read the final sentence "you finished with one ruby (there was one...". Very well introduced the mechanic of switches. A lot of potential! Congrats!
Triastase
Triastase11 Dec 2017, 20:27
This is a really good game! Interestingly made inventory. I had one little glitch, where the bow did not want to stay still in my inventory, and when I closed it (or it was closed because I was shot), it was shown as if it were on the ground, but then it followed me anyway.
Other than that, great playing experience! :)
kleinzach11 Dec 2017, 20:51
I really liked the mechanic of the inventory, I haven't really seen anything like that before. My main complaint was that I got to a point where the frame rate tanked so hard that I couldn't accurately step on the switches at what I assume was the end.
karlnauthor11 Dec 2017, 21:48
@le-slo why couldn't you read it? Was it too big for the text box? It just said "there was one more somewhere".

@kleinzach yeah sorry about the frame rate thing, it never happened in testing but seems to happen consistently in the compiled WebGL version and I don't know what causes it :( Yes that was the end, once you step through the door it just says "that's the end" and counts how many rubies you're carrying (there are 2).

Thanks for playing!
Plasmonic
Plasmonic11 Dec 2017, 21:55
I liked the bag mechanic, nice game in general!
CG_Fred
CG_Fred11 Dec 2017, 22:10
Nice game, would have loved some SFX and music.
icxon
icxon11 Dec 2017, 22:29
Very clever game, do love the puzzle part and level design. Also got fps issue when backpack got full.

Here is my first playthrough:


Got the both rubies on the second one :smiley:
Le Slo
Le Slo11 Dec 2017, 23:14
@karln I don't know. Maybe. It's also weird cause I got both rubies during my game. I expected different endings depending on what you are carrying on the last room. You have six objects (two rubies, a rock, the shield, the bow and the sword)
karlnauthor12 Dec 2017, 17:13
@icxon wow thanks for recording that, it's cool to see how someone actually plays the game without having seen it before. When I saw you turned back from the tunnel (after the three slimes on the lake) I was surprised and then I realised that actually makes sense, because it's leading far away from where you came into the area so you want to explore the nearer route first. I maybe should have put those the other way around (as well as putting the bow in the side-cave route to lure players there first).
niterich
niterich13 Dec 2017, 01:55
Great job! Gameplay was solid, though my frames started dropping near the end (could be my Internet though...). Nice take on the game theme, but I wish there was more that I could use. That would certainly make the whole "filling up my bag with useless stuff and digging for the good bits when I need them" more prominent.

I encountered a few bugs, but nothing that really ruined the game for me. Near the end, I wanted to see if I could drag something from out of the bottom of the bag. Long story short, I couldn't, and I somehow got a rock clipped into the side of the bag trying it. I had to use a ruby as one of the final weights, which I though the game would scold me for. But I enter the final room and it still says I collected both rubies, even the one I left behind.
Raven14 Dec 2017, 19:46
A very good puzzle RPG game! The idea of sorting out items is interesting! I like the design of dragging items into backpack and onto hand very much~
Raogs
Raogs15 Dec 2017, 14:52
The lack of sound made it a bit... well... quiet. Also I didn'z feel like the limited space for items was a problem for me as I could always fit them. But other than that a nice little game.
falak
falak18 Dec 2017, 13:13
Very good game but I have a few question:

> Why do we have to hold the button to open the rucksack, not just click it?
> Why does the character and environment style not match?

I love the idea and concept! Good luck! ;)
karlnauthor18 Dec 2017, 21:13
@falak Thanks for commenting! To answer your questions:

I don't know why you sometimes have to push the button more than once to open the rucksack. Maybe something to do with the poor performance of the inventory physics system causing the input system to miss frames? I never used Unity before so I don't really know.

I was planning to make my own map tiles which would have hopefully matched the character model better, but I ran out of time so I just re-used the tiles from my last LD game (which are free ones I found on the internet).

Other games by @karln

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