Deep in Wraithwood Forest

co-authored: @naali
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.60
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.43
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.69
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.63
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.48
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.21
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.33
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.76
You traveled much too deep into Wraitwood Forest, and now you are cursed. Explore the deepest depths of the forest to find a way to keep the darkness at bay.

To succeed you will need to...

Light Torches


Battle Enemies


Push Runestones


Find Mysterious Structures


All in a Hexagon World!


Deep into the forest is not deep enough, you will need to travel not just deep, but deeper and deeper.

-------------------------------

Controls

- Hexagon Movement - Mouse or WASD + QE or Gamepad

Pro-Tips

- Most items will reset when you pass out in the deep, deeper, or deepest woods.
- Wraiths will suck in air where they are going to attack.

Known Bugs

- The game may run slowly when loading in the sound files. This eventually goes away (if it's too bad on your computer, you can leave the game open -- but don't play -- for ~5 minutes, after that it shouldn't stutter).
- If a wraith starts an attack and dies at the same time it's about to attack sound will play until the next time the player passes out.

Version History

Apr. 26, 2021 :: *v1.0*
- Jam release

Walkthrough

If you got stuck, or maybe just hate playing games ^_^

Comments30

HCS_Hades
HCS_Hades28 Apr 2021, 02:54
It is super hard lol! Atmosphere is cool :)
lb01
lb0128 Apr 2021, 02:55
It's a really cool concept. I was struggling to push some of the boxes though so I wasn't able to make much progress. But the graphics and sounds and mood are great.
Daveroony28 Apr 2021, 02:57
Really lovely design, wish that it ran smoother
nyanpierre
nyanpierre28 Apr 2021, 02:57
the art is simple but its work pretty well with the game
Matt Swieboda
Matt Swieboda28 Apr 2021, 02:58
wow, like the graphics and concept. Very hard to move all the runes without having the torch go out. I'm sure I could get it after a few tries. I couldn't find any campfires to light, or if I did, wasn't sure how. overall awesome job!
Singrid
Singrid28 Apr 2021, 03:06
Really nice graphics! Nice concept, I liked the box mechanics but it was really hard to move. It would be interesting if you can find another torch in other map areas.
Congratulations, you did a really nice job!
LDJam user 23538828 Apr 2021, 03:11
Neat concept had a great time figuring out the game and learning.
And I had an idea had while playing to make moving around the map faster would be the wraiths extending the life of your torch as well. Stops the needs to travel back to safe areas.
Mika314
Mika31428 Apr 2021, 03:12
This game is hard. Would be nice to be able to hold the button, it is a little annoying to spam them.
sockpuppetcow28 Apr 2021, 03:12
Great design, love the hexagon layout, good puzzles even though it's pretty hard.
phil_lesnar
phil_lesnar28 Apr 2021, 03:36
That slight elevation on different green titles looks so good, and the red-eye transition is super slick.
Whysguy5228 Apr 2021, 03:54
I know you probably didn't have time but, implementing the use of mouse to select the tile would be much easier to control but the overall game mechanics are awesome!
Lumous
Lumous28 Apr 2021, 04:35
Great game! That last puzzle took me way too long to figure out! Really well designed. Little bit laggy though, u'd prolly unload the hexagons you can't see =)
Arthur Porto28 Apr 2021, 04:43
Nice game, the gameplay works so well and the puzzle using the runestones mechanic is so creative/intuitive, one thing that a thing is key to the gameplay works so well is the obelisk to teleport after dying or to restore the torch another thing that i liked is the way the light changes based in the deeper you are in the forest, would be nice if had someway to rotate the camera maybe this could help find some sticks in the ground, well done guys!
Evannex28 Apr 2021, 05:41
Woah this was so much fun! I did have a little trouble knowing which direction I was going to head in with the mouse controls, I think that was just me not being too familiar with hex controls on mouse. Fantastic entry that was VERY fun to play!
rhoff95
rhoff9528 Apr 2021, 17:16
Cool game, would have liked controls that were easier to understand on keyboard.
HitchH1k3r
HitchH1k3rauthor29 Apr 2021, 17:48

Thanks for the feedback everyone!


@dzefris

Hexagons are pretty great, this is our second game using them, and first that actually has the player moving around. I don't think I could have pulled it off if it hadn't been for this advent of code problem , and this hexagonal tile math primer.

---

@mika314 @whysguy52 @evannex @rhoff95

We didn't know how to do controls for a hexagonal game with tile quantized movement. All the examples I can think of let the player click any tile and then move there (with path finding) over a number of turns. The standard control scheme of up/down and left/right breaks, and using the 6 key layout we ended up with takes some getting used to since it's not at all typical. For most of the development I used a gamepad, but it has it's own problems (6 directions instead of 4 make incorrect input much more likely). Ultimately we ran out of time, so features like hold a key to repeatedly move got cut... I also really wanted the mouse movement to change the cursor into an arrow indicating the current direction it would move the player, but ended up just rotating the player to face the mouse cursor (mouse input isn't tile based, but instead based on the angle of the cursor around the center of the screen).

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@singrid @crychair

You can pickup sticks to extend your torches life, and light camp fires in the wood to create a permanent source of light.

---

@hcs-hades @sockpuppetcow

What parts of the game were the most challenging for you? We set out to make more of a survival game and it slowly turned more "puzzley", so there is some questionable design (it basically turned into solve this puzzle in limited moves, with limited visibility, and also you don't know where your objective is). In hindsight it probably would have been better to stick to puzzle _OR_ survival centered mechanics. PS. rune stones cannot be pushed on to stone path tiles, I also put up a 12 minute walkthrough video that I believe covers everything in the game (including secrets) if you are interested in what's deeper in the forest.


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@lumous

The games a bit non-linear (12 obelisks and the can be gotten in several different orders), so I wonder which one did you do last? There are a few fairly fiendish ones I can imagine people struggling with.

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@daveroony

Lag is a big issue with this game, but I think it can be partially mitigated on many computers by giving the game a bit of time to stabilize (and probably download the large sound files). Some assets are unloaded when off screen, and the game should be making use of frustum culling to draw only what is visible. WebGL is so performance critical it would have been nice to have some time to optimize the game.

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@arthur-porto

There was a planned feature to pitch the camera down more when the player was obscured by tall objects (trees, obelisks, ...) this sadly was cut due to time constraints. The sticks' graphics were also randomize with only minutes left for changes, and that sadly had a negative impact on the ease of finding them (they do look a bit better now though ^_^).

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@nyanpierre @matt-swieboda @lb01 @phil-lesnar

Thanks for the kind words, with no dedicated artist we did the best we could graphically, and some things really suffered (the player character doesn't fit in at all, and I wish I could have made more decorative elements).

---

PS.


I accidentally (*read: sleep deprived*) opted out of some of the rating categories, it would be awesome if some of you could go back and add the missing ratings, I'm interested to see what the community thinks of our sound and art (it was a real crunch to get it all made).
Lumous
Lumous29 Apr 2021, 21:54
@hitchh1k3r - The last one for me was the ones to the east. With the water puzzles :)
LDJam user 23538830 Apr 2021, 00:43
@hitchh1k3r I knew about the sticks I figured that one out. I was just suggesting a different mechanic because i felt like I was going back to the fire often so i had enough time. Also the sticks are one time use. which means if I use it back up and use a fire its just gone.
TigerMouse2 May 2021, 20:01
Lovely concept and overall a nice little game. I really liked the tranquil birdsong and other audio, and the fun puzzles. Great work!
OldDog
OldDog3 May 2021, 08:02
nice game !! but there are some simple tips from me:
1 when I die , I want to restart in 1 seconds ,not a long change scene animation
2 I click a ground box , I want to move character to where I click rather than step by step
any way , that is a nice game ,glad you made this :smile:
Magna
Magna4 May 2021, 05:49
I really like the visuals of this game!
PxlDev
PxlDev4 May 2021, 07:18
Very well made game. At first I didnt know what to do, so maybe you should have added someking of in game tutorial.
ardorugus
ardorugus6 May 2021, 23:37
Futhark - that's deep. The game is heavy, aye. And it needs some time to understand, what's there. However, there's no fun in purposeless wandering and aiming for bonfires. Some quest system or log would be nice, just to get what's that all about. Still, Futhark is there. Nice.
Osel137 May 2021, 23:41
Nicely done, I've enjoyed it, good job! :D
xiyou9 May 2021, 12:06
Great design. I like this kind of game that gradually unfolds as you explore
AndrewDavidJ
AndrewDavidJ10 May 2021, 15:01
Pretty cool concept and theme implementation! Nice work! :)
zimny11
zimny1113 May 2021, 20:46
What a unique game! I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect. Great job on both game idea and the execution!
Wheffle
Wheffle15 May 2021, 01:21
It's rough around the edges, but the core is really solid and it was a really cool experience.

Sometimes, particularly in the western portion, I found myself stuck in a "the way to win is not to move" situation with the wraiths. I wish there was a "pass" button. It also took me a long time to figure out that I could kill wraiths, and without that knowledge the western forest seemed apparently impossible. The movement seemed a bit sticky too, and using the mouse felt unresponsive. On the web version at least.

Besides all of that, it was a *lot* of fun. I loved exploring around in the darkness and finding campfires. The block pushing mechanic was basic but highly effective here. The only part that I felt the block puzzles got a little out of control were in the eastern water areas, if you died in the middle of some of those or messed up block placement then it was sometimes a pain to set everything back up. The audio seriously enhanced the experience, so really nice job on that! I'm just a sucker for hex tile games as well, so definitely bonus points there (hexagons are bestagons).

Although there were some hitches and issues, some x-factor about the concept and execution hooked me and had me happily playing through the whole thing. You guys made something really cool, I think this is one of the top games I've played this LD.

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