Secrets of the Forest

by devemil

co-authored: @zmoa

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.50

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.26

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.10

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.86

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.18

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.59

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.12

Welcome to 'Secrets of the Forest'

"In the dark depths of the nightly forest of secrets you, the bravest explorer of them all, are looking for the mysterious treasure hidden somewhere, where nobody has been before..."

'Secrets of the Forest' is a combination of Text-Adventure and Platformer. You type in your commands and move through the map, exploring the seemingly infinite forest of secrets.

This is our first Ludum Dare entry, the first time we use Game Maker and the first time we made a game at all! It's been two long days, but actually @zmoa and me did by far better than we expected. There are still some occasional bugs about the 'slide' feature, but other than that the game seems to be bugfree. We are very happy of what we made within 48 hours (actually, as this is a jam entry, we could have almost another 24 hours of development, but don't have time for developing on monday).

Controls:

Keyboard - input

Enter - execute command

Space - skip Text

Tools used:

Game Maker Studio 2, Marmoset Hexels 3 and Discord

Screenshots:

Tools: GameMaker, Marmoset Hexels

Comments22

Mazzletov23 Apr 2018, 12:12

That is some nice art right there. I would like to join him in the forest instead of being at work!! Great work for your first game jam.

Also check out my game, it's a combination of Flappy Bird & Tetris: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/flaptris-flappy-bird-tetris

Alen Loeb23 Apr 2018, 12:29

Nice game! I like the idea of using text to move and do stuff. Maybe next time you should upgrade this game, so it reads every word and runs a sequence of functions like: move left and attack or a very long sentence, that does lots of things. Jump and crouch is another example. Anyways, realy good game and keep on going ;)

DevEmilauthor23 Apr 2018, 21:14

@Alen Loeb great idea, but that would take more time I think...

Fleoh23 Apr 2018, 23:58

Waow ! Nice game, pretty fun, and graphics are really cool, loved it !

Blinkenlights24 Apr 2018, 00:16

I'd love to leave a comment, the game looks great, but unfortunately I can't run .exe files on Linux :(

Listonos24 Apr 2018, 00:34

I have done a few terminal games in the past and it definitely helps a lot if you have last command shortcut, like say up arrow puts the last command on the screen again.
Anyway found the treasure, cute graphics, nice idea for combining genres.

DevEmilauthor24 Apr 2018, 00:54

@Listonos Thank you for your feedback, yeah, a 'last command shortcut' would really be a great feature, thank you!

nebbishhacker24 Apr 2018, 03:34

Shortforms for the commands would also save typing, eg "go r" for "go right".

Also, I would love to see more advanced platforming with a timing aspect, such as jumping when a moving platform is near, just to see how far the concept can go.

DevEmilauthor24 Apr 2018, 03:38

@nebbishhacker nice idea, thanks! Yeah, the current unavailability of shortcuts, or a key for putting the last command, are really one of the things I would add immediately, if I were to expand the project :D
Also nice idea about the advanced platforming!

Tmvant24 Apr 2018, 09:39

That was fun to play :). The graphics are well done and the sliding movement in particular is very satisfying. The long commands can be a bit tedious and errorprone at times, which slows down the game a bit, so I'd agree that shortforms or reusing commands like in a terminal is a great way to go to make it easier to play. I'd love to see what you'd make of extra levels and challenges :).

DevEmilauthor24 Apr 2018, 10:02

@Tmvant Thank you very much for your feedback! Yes, the long commands and the lack of shortcuts are one of the biggest flaws of the game, we would definetely update that, were we to continue the game.

Yirggzmb26 Apr 2018, 00:33

Enjoyed the combo of text commands and platforming. Would be cool to see the idea expanded on. I think others have covered that shortcuts would be nice. The one unique comment I have is that occasionally it would look like I could start typing, but it wouldn't recognize my first couple letters. Might just have been me jumping the gun though.

Pipe1 May 2018, 02:01

the worst game of all my life

Paula3 May 2018, 16:50

A great demo game!!! How the tutorial teaches you is really well designed. The music is fantastic and good art. The only think missing is more levels, this is really good as a demo and i want to continue with more challenging levels.

DevEmilauthor5 May 2018, 00:52

@Paula Wow, thanks, that's nice and motivating feedback!

Tim Ruswick5 May 2018, 02:34

I really like the mood and atmosphere, great job!

hiki9115 May 2018, 18:47

wow, but it will be really nice to have option to execute previous command once again by clicking some short cut, but in general - GJ

blackoptics85 May 2018, 21:41

Saw it in Tim's stream ;D great looking game! As he pointed out in the stream there's the bug when you slide on the edge of a platform you can end up getting stuck. The sloths were a great touch!

DerLasseHenrich5 May 2018, 22:41

I really like it, well done for your first game.

Zombie Virals6 May 2018, 19:39

That was very fun, tedious with typing though and some times my J key doesn't register right with it at first so I was retyping a lot, I type very fast. Them sloths were definitely great! Your first game too? Really!!? That's amazing!!