*Keep the fire burning, craft tools and fend off enemies for as long as possible.* Play it here.
Tools used: - Framework: Custom, Java (code is somewhat based on libGDX) - Dungeon generation: SquidLib - Art: Aseprite (pixel), GIMP (general purpose), Krita (logo) - Sounds: sfxia - Music: LMMS (slapped together in less than half an hour, I apologize) - IDE: IntelliJ
Changelog: - Added Java version download to itch.io; identical to web version in terms of content. - Critical issue: Fixed keyboard focus (WASD) randomly not working on web. - Removed the startup dialog mentioning keyboard focus *(as it was only there to warn users of the bug above)* - Fixed a crash in the web version caused by breaking crates
Great graphics and mood! Overall, I really enjoyed the experience, but I just have some suggestions if you were to develop this further. I generally felt more stressed than I would have liked in my playthroughs. I think a more clear indicator about the level of the fire would have helped. Alternatively, maybe there could be some kind of pause in the gameplay for the player to learn more about the mechanics. I saw at least three different kinds of enemies, a bunch of locked blocks, and interesting ore, but I just felt constantly stressed out about wood and I felt like i didn't have enough time to experiment with crafting beyond the initial tools.
👍Great pixel art graphics + hair effects are nice 👍Randomly generated map gives replay value and gives a sense of exploration 👎Could include a map/minimap since the world is quite mazelike
A lot of visual flair here, really helps sell the mood. Good color and audio design helps convey what to do. It was straight forward and simple concept and you executed it well. I would say the pacing is a bit quick and I'm not convinced I understood everything that was going on. As a concept it's well done. It will need some work and hand crafting to beef up the introduction for players and a little more depth or varied mechanics to give it a lasting impression.
Plenty of game with this idea (keep the fire burning), but this one has the best execution I've seen so far. Really well done. I'm not sure if it has an ending though? I played for 15mins but I think I still had many places left unexplored.
I did end up simply exploring and seeing what I can find. Feeding the fire just wasn't fun at all. The concept of having only one item that you can hold and use while exploring a world was neat and I think there's something to it!
I'm amazed that you made this during ludum dare. This is an insanely well polished game good job. I love that you explained the basic crafting recipes. But as soon as I saw that purple ore I knew what was up and I made my self a crystal axe. Amazing arts, great sound effects.
Wonderfully in depth game! Also too polish to be believed! I love it a lot! The game is free of bugs and easy to pick up! I hope I can make something like this in 48 hours! very inspiring!
Great art, and overall mood. The crafting system is well designed as well as intuitive. I think it only lacks a clear goal and a note about what I'm doing in this freezing world
I was honestly a bit disappointed with this game - the art is amazing, the music is also great and fitting, the premise is good, but... There was no endgame to be had, no goal. I was very bummed out about that, because it made the entire experience feel kinda hollow. It's a good survival sandbox though!
Really beautiful game! Nice graphics and music. For some reason screen becomes white when I break a box in HTML version. There is no goal or more crafting recipes to keep the player invested for a long time. However, I really liked the mood of this game, I can see myself playing it with more recipes / things to discover. Keep up the good work!
It's runs in the browser and it's really pretty and it sounds nice and the movement's snappy and the gameplay is reasonably involved and good JOB x 10. Whew. Seriously!
Overall the game looks nice, plays well, has great music, but the thing that was lacking was a reason to keep playing. At first I thought there might be an end goal given all the locked doors, but after 5-10 minutes I realized they are just blocking off content but not any real progression. If there was some end-goal this would have been a 5/5 for me.
Really cool result, especially for 48 hours! The art style was really cool (reminded me a bit of Celeste) and I appreciated the crafting system in place. A great job overall!
I got to the point where there were a lot of stone snowmen spawning but all their stones kept causing me to accidentally craft my axe into a pickaxe that does less damage.
Great entry! Really creative idea & use of the theme. The artstyle looks amazing and the sfx are great. And roguelike maps are always intresting to explore. Perfect execution with a lot of polish that makes it so fun to play. Congrats! :D
Went into the game blind and was totally screwed over by not knowing what to craft. Ironically enough, I made a game like this a long time ago and make the same mistake. XD
The game is fantastic, literally the only negative thing I have to say about it is that I think the player movement speed is far too high. I would have preffered if it was around 50 - 75% of the speed it is now. Fantastic job
Whoa, this is one of the best game I've played so far! The graphics somehow reminded me of celeste, and I really like how you mix exploration, crafting, and deffense at the same time, this game keeps giving me new things every moment, keep it up!
Love this gameplay, especially craft mechanics. I guessed to make an axe after 10 minutes of play, lol. My record 22 minutes. Special thanks for the settings.
Great art and music, but I couldn't figure out how to make an axe. There are small rocks and big rocks. I guess that only the small ones can be used for an axe, so why not only have small rocks? (to make it more clear) I now see that there is a gif on the ld page about the axe (I found the game through itch); maybe you can add that to the itch page as well.
Absolutely amazing graphics! The gameplay was really fun, and the fact that stuff was randomly generated is great! Overall, this is an amazing submission!
Great game! I love the graphics and the mood of the game. The crafting mechanism is simple and works really well. The game is pretty difficult, but the more you play the better it gets. Well done!
Crafting system encourages discovery, experimenting putting items together and making new useful things. A lot of great design choices here. Art is beautiful, a thing to improve is the level design imo as i assume it is randomly generated and it would be better with a hand made level. That being said, considering the time constraint, this is an enormous achievement and a great game!!!
I am hooked to this game. Survived for 23 mins and died while exploring. Some things I should say is the purple ore is super rare. And it's really hard to explore because of the fire. Biggest problem was carrying wood to the base, first trees ran out super quick and the other ones were too far away. I upgraded my tools to the purple color, I don't know If there are levels beyond that but a picaxe that can mine stone walls would be amazing.
Snowmans nearly always drop keys. I lost the screenshot but my base was filled with keys. And chances of the dropping wood was soo rare. I only encountered like 3 probably. They dropped a lot of stones tho.
Pathfinding needs some tweaking, maybe game slowly shifting to a idle game like forager where you set your torches, and enemies will come and die automatically, giving you resources etc. Most of the snowmans got stuck and never reached the base.
Anyways, I probably exceeded the games's regular play time haha. One of my favorites. Keep making games!
Nice looking game. Like the style. I forgot the controls after I started the game and couldn't access them anywhere. It would be helpful to have a reminder somewhere in-game.
I loved everything about this game. The blending for the shadows, the art style, the music, the gameplay, everything. I especially loved the fire particles coming off from her hair, just a really nice touch.
this was pretty awesome game, I really enjoyed it but I had some difficulty getting things to craft. Overall great game, randomly generated levels give great replay ability
Awesome job. Beautiful graphics and well designed sound. the fire effects are very nice. Like others have said, a map would indeed be very useful. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next with this game!
Okay, you made all of this stuff in 48 hours ? Awesome :) Great entry because you create simple but nice looking pixel art, with audio and soundtrack which is not bad, I dont understand how you manage it do everything all this under 48 hours :) Awesome job :)
Gosh, this art style is the cutest! I've played a lot of entries this jam and I have to say, this is one of the few truly polished entries. Just curious - how did you get started using Asesprite and sprite design / animation? I've always been interested in creating this art style but wasn't sure how.
Very nice and pretty game! I don't have anything negative to say about it. I think the only bad thing is that the world is big but I don't think there's anything far outside, at least not that I could find. Also I didn't understand why keys were necessary. Probably had plans that you didn't have time to implement. Overall a really nice experience, great job!
Art, music, concept, gameplay, everything is amazing! But when I chopped pick snow upon a tree, screen was white out... is it end? or bug? Anyway it's awesome stuff!
The art in this is great, liked the player design and how the hair moved. The player feedback of picking up objects was also really nicely done and satisfying.
I really liked it, I eventually got to the point where I don't think I could lose the game anymore though. Really nice having the simple crafting system in there, it was fun trying out different things and finding all the recipes. Liked the presentation as well and that the world was different each time. Well done: smile:
Very satisfying and fun to play, I played it for at least 20 minutes and probably did not learn everything that had to be learn about the game. Would REALLY like to see an expanded version of this for steam
super fun! spent over 30 minutes playing and got hundreds of keys and put them all in a big pile! then ran really far east and died! but yes-- wonderful job, love your art, everything comes together super nicely! couldn't expect better from a compo!
Nice execution. Clean and polished. A couple ideas: Have an arrow pointing the way back to the fire when it's off screen. Let me pick up multiple branches (maybe the player runs slower when more heavy laden).
Well done! Some really great art polish and I actually really enjoyed the music and sound. The atmosphere was excellent for this sort of game too. However, I didn't feel like I had anything to work towards. I could see a progression system (better tools, different enemies, etc), but it didn't feel like it was leading anywhere. This feels like a great game for a Subnautica style narrative-survival game. Hope you continue to develop this, I certainly had fun!
This is definitely one of my favorite games of Ludum Dare 46! It just keeps me wanting to keep playing. The pixel graphics are amazing, the avatar is adorable, and the ability to craft items, although not many of them, is so much fun. My only wish is that it had a better offline version. I tried the .jar file, but it was really glitchy. The avatar was fizzing around in tons of different particles all over the screen. I would also have possible liked for a way to clean up all of the items left from dead enemies...after a while it really trashes the place. Oh, but the place - just remembered how much I also loved how the map was randomly generated!
I forgot to rate the game, so I had to play it again. This time I managed to make the axe. I found the issue; I was trying to combine a stick (in my hands) with a rock on the ground, while you can only combine a rock (in my hands) with a stick on the ground. See how that doesn't make any sense.
I spent more time wandering around, searching, rafting stuff, and stoking the fire (basically playing the game) than I thought I would. It was quite enjoyable. I did wanted more recipes, but I'm sure you were limited by the short time frame of the compo. Great game.
Wow, crazy to see such scope in an LD game, but you pulled off so much of it. Awesome to see. I had some challenges with working out crafting, but overall it was really impressive.
This is definitely one of the better "keep the fire burning" games. The mechanics worked really well (enjoyed being able to toss things at the fire), and the gameplay was really engaging. The randomised elements and slowly ramping difficulty/number of enemies also helped immeasurably with keeping one's interest, and boost the reployability considerably. Very nicely done!
The art is really good, the visual and audio feedbacks are great, the gameplay is simple enough with a bit of cryptic discoveries with the crafting and purple rocks. I had trouble understanding the difference between Amber's life and the fire life at first.
The game is BEAUTIFUL and pretty fun. I didn't play enough to discover what the purple gems do, though. I'd REALLY love an inventory system, since it's a bit bothersome to go exploring further and be able to only take one item with you back to the base.
Interesting and super moody. Wasn't clear how some of the more complex mechanics work, also would have been nice to have a separate health bar for the fire. Mine went out while I was away and I still had half a health bar. Just generally wanted more clarity on the mechanics. Well done!
Very beautiful but too grim. I feel sorry for the little girl. I just she could get to the spring and build a fortress for the next winter. That would make it a nice story her getting alone into the wild winter and so on.
I can imagine that it can get made with good management. She need torches around the fire and also an axe to chop trees.
Art, controls, and atmosphere were top-notch, but I found the gameplay to be quite lackluster.
-It felt counterproductive that the game has a huge focus on exploring, but you force the player to keep backtracking to the fire. This made it feel very tedious since about half the game becomes backtracking. A clear goal other than to survive might have made this more interesting.
-The "combat" was strange. I felt like since you were literally a character made of fire, you should have just made her throw fire at them instead of throwing rocks and stuff. Seems like a huge missed opportunity to throw some cool fireballs.
-While the controls and art were quite fluid, the atmosphere and gameplay felt slow.
-Maps were unnecessarily big. Considering how much backtracking is encouraged, there is basically no reason to go far from the campfire and it would only make it more difficult.
Overall, cool experience, but would need some reconsidering of the overall design.
I can only agree with @dummydojo's points here. I would have welcomed one or more of the following: a way to create campfires or a way to move my campfire around; a larger inventory; a non-procedural map (I assume the level was generated right?) that has a better progression in terms of rising difficulty, required items, etc. The first key I got was nice, but then I just got too many, and not enough time to go to the relatively distant places where I saw locks. And unlocking areas also didn't really feel rewarding, since it was just more of the same stuff. Also I think sometimes cutting a tree down does not result in any wood?
I'd also like to echo @dummydojo and @aurel300's points. I enjoyed the experience, but found the mechanics a bit contradictory: - Keys, diminishing resources and finding new resources pushes you outwards to explore, - having to regularely return to the fire to replenish it and yourself keeps you from exploring far, and - only being able to carry one thing at a time makes all of that a chore, more so the further away it is.
Don't get me wrong though, the current experience is still enjoyable and *extremely* impressive for one person in a 48h jam. The art is impeccable, the music is great (half an hour? Get out of here...), the sfx work super well, and the atmosphere created by all these combined is one of the best I've seen in this LD. And on top of that, well-working procedural map generation, different enemies and crafting? Fantastic job!
Great mood in this one! The audio and graphics are great - a very nice cosy winter atmosphere. It plays well but the gameplay gets a bit repetitive and samey after a bit - maybe I just like more action in games but it'd be cool if enemies could shoot at you and there were more explosions in general.
Great job! We had a similar idea for our game. I like how you integrated the snowmen enemies - added some difficulty that we lacked. The music really added to the mood. It was sometimes hard to find my way back to the fire which discouraged you from wandering too far.
A really great game, it took me some tries to understand the crafting mechanism. It still has a few corners and edges where you can get some more out with a little more time.
For me it is in many ways the best I have tried so far.
Neat graphics. I think I random generated a world without many little rocks, so I spent a lot of time trying to throw my sticks into the big ones. Didn't figure out crafting. Impressive game for LD.
What others have said, it'd be cool if she had some kind of natural fire-throwing ( if maybe at the cost of keeping the fire alive ) , and with the returning to the fire, maybe a way to keep it going longer, so there's less running back to the fire to keep it alight / provide HP.
Absolutely gorgeous, great game, just a few suggestions. - Tone down on the button mashing for rock breaking. - I was confused if the top bar was my heat or the fire's - Maybe add a final goal, sort of a win condition.
Again, loved the idea, expanding this to add some sort of automation to keep the fire alive while you dump logs into a chest, the torch being sort of an automatic defense, absolutely perfect.
Comments105
👍Randomly generated map gives replay value and gives a sense of exploration
👎Could include a map/minimap since the world is quite mazelike
This is the game I wish I made. I'm archiving this page to play more later.
Good job. I love it.
(Loading time can't be helped but WASD needs some work though. It didn't work on my first try.)
I'm not sure if it has an ending though? I played for 15mins but I think I still had many places left unexplored.
I did end up simply exploring and seeing what I can find. Feeding the fire just wasn't fun at all. The concept of having only one item that you can hold and use while exploring a world was neat and I think there's something to it!
Special thanks for the settings.
Snowmans nearly always drop keys. I lost the screenshot but my base was filled with keys. And chances of the dropping wood was soo rare. I only encountered like 3 probably. They dropped a lot of stones tho.
Pathfinding needs some tweaking, maybe game slowly shifting to a idle game like forager where you set your torches, and enemies will come and die automatically, giving you resources etc. Most of the snowmans got stuck and never reached the base.
Anyways, I probably exceeded the games's regular play time haha. One of my favorites. Keep making games!
Amazing job!
In short i bloody loved this little game.
I love the art, the atmosphere, the mechanics, it's really well made - good job!
Would REALLY like to see an expanded version of this for steam
but yes-- wonderful job, love your art, everything comes together super nicely! couldn't expect better from a compo!
Great job!!!
Again just ... wow. Awesome game!
The art is really good, the visual and audio feedbacks are great, the gameplay is simple enough with a bit of cryptic discoveries with the crafting and purple rocks.
I had trouble understanding the difference between Amber's life and the fire life at first.
Thank you for the game, I liked it a lot!
I'd REALLY love an inventory system, since it's a bit bothersome to go exploring further and be able to only take one item with you back to the base.
I can imagine that it can get made with good management. She need torches around the fire and also an axe to chop trees.
-It felt counterproductive that the game has a huge focus on exploring, but you force the player to keep backtracking to the fire. This made it feel very tedious since about half the game becomes backtracking. A clear goal other than to survive might have made this more interesting.
-The "combat" was strange. I felt like since you were literally a character made of fire, you should have just made her throw fire at them instead of throwing rocks and stuff. Seems like a huge missed opportunity to throw some cool fireballs.
-While the controls and art were quite fluid, the atmosphere and gameplay felt slow.
-Maps were unnecessarily big. Considering how much backtracking is encouraged, there is basically no reason to go far from the campfire and it would only make it more difficult.
Overall, cool experience, but would need some reconsidering of the overall design.
- Keys, diminishing resources and finding new resources pushes you outwards to explore,
- having to regularely return to the fire to replenish it and yourself keeps you from exploring far, and
- only being able to carry one thing at a time makes all of that a chore, more so the further away it is.
Don't get me wrong though, the current experience is still enjoyable and *extremely* impressive for one person in a 48h jam. The art is impeccable, the music is great (half an hour? Get out of here...), the sfx work super well, and the atmosphere created by all these combined is one of the best I've seen in this LD. And on top of that, well-working procedural map generation, different enemies and crafting? Fantastic job!
It still has a few corners and edges where you can get some more out with a little more time.
For me it is in many ways the best I have tried so far.
Bonus points for keeping it simple on controls!
- Tone down on the button mashing for rock breaking.
- I was confused if the top bar was my heat or the fire's
- Maybe add a final goal, sort of a win condition.
Again, loved the idea, expanding this to add some sort of automation to keep the fire alive while you dump logs into a chest, the torch being sort of an automatic defense, absolutely perfect.