Flickerlight
Windows Download (Post Jam)
Every firefly hoards a mote of light within itself. But the light outside is fading, and the world is growing smaller. The universe is dying.
Soon, you will die too.
But until then, you will fight to persist. You will fight to live on. Because while there may not be much left, at least you still have this. Live it out, flickerlight. Don't let your light go out. Fight until the end.
Do it for the others, if you don't want to do it for yourself.
~~~
You play as one of the last fireflies clinging to a dying world. Everything may be dark, and dying, but you have a job to do.
You have to keep the fire running. You have to keep it running by scavenging and burning wood, trees, coal, buildings...anything you can find.
For if the fire goes out...well, you don't want to think about that.
CONTROLS:
- WASD or click to move your firefly to where you have clicked.
- Click to interact with items in the overworld.
- Click and drag items from your inventory to use, move and drop them.
- Mouseover for infotips.
- ESC to pause.
- Ctrl+R to reset the game.
Post-Jam fixes are as follows:
- Reduced download size by about 25%.
- Fixed Excavator not unlocking.
- Fixed Excavator crash on deconstruction.
- Fixed Excavator sprite offset.
- Fixed Workshop task not unlocking.
- Fixed two accidental unlimited resource loops.
Comments21
Taaada5 Apr 2022, 14:16
I love it. It felt like the dialogs should have been maybe skippable and I would like to use keyboard more instead of my mouse.
The music, sound effects, lightning, NPCs with different dialogues and ways to do stuff, crafting all of that is just amazing. Very nice thing you have done there!
The story is also very very nice with a gentle touch!
The music, sound effects, lightning, NPCs with different dialogues and ways to do stuff, crafting all of that is just amazing. Very nice thing you have done there!
The story is also very very nice with a gentle touch!
vgel5 Apr 2022, 14:21
Download link for Linux seems to be broken, I found it at https://github.com/NeptunianAxolotl/LD50/releases/tag/LD-Jam-Fixes -- also had to download Love2D, but then it worked! Ran a bit slow, not sure if there's a release mode I should have ran it in or something.
Was pretty cool -- I like the take on the theme, and the art was great, especially the conversation-profile art. Would have been cool to have more stuff to build that would affect things since it started to feel a litle samey cutting down trees and recruiting people. I accidentally threw the only piece of coal I found into the fire, and couldn't find a pick, so I couldn't make a coal bin.
Was pretty cool -- I like the take on the theme, and the art was great, especially the conversation-profile art. Would have been cool to have more stuff to build that would affect things since it started to feel a litle samey cutting down trees and recruiting people. I accidentally threw the only piece of coal I found into the fire, and couldn't find a pick, so I couldn't make a coal bin.
truebach5 Apr 2022, 14:35
Excellent! Thank you very much!! Unexceptable atmosphere of pre-apocalypse, according to music of course.
Really love your game, spent about 30 minutes and going to spent more.
A little problem with optimisation, when bonfire starts to burn really wide.
Really love your game, spent about 30 minutes and going to spent more.
A little problem with optimisation, when bonfire starts to burn really wide.
Alurian5 Apr 2022, 14:44
Love the game, I was a bit slow as to finding the axe. But great dialogue, graphics and design!
LeoLFerraz5 Apr 2022, 14:47
Played over 20 games in LDJam 50 so far and this is honestly my favorite by a stretch.
Everything about the game was great. Did you make the background music yourself? I was indifferent about it at first but as the 'lore' revealed itself I realized how somber the music is with its distortions and all. After about 10 minutes in I was really tense and couldn't even tell why.
I played the WebGL version and it started lagging after about 20 minutes, so I downloaded the Windows version to try later tonight. GREAT JOB!
Everything about the game was great. Did you make the background music yourself? I was indifferent about it at first but as the 'lore' revealed itself I realized how somber the music is with its distortions and all. After about 10 minutes in I was really tense and couldn't even tell why.
I played the WebGL version and it started lagging after about 20 minutes, so I downloaded the Windows version to try later tonight. GREAT JOB!
OtterFaeLure5 Apr 2022, 14:52
This has some really nice atmosphere, though the sense of inevitability feels kinda slow, but maybe that's the point.
This isn't rushed, by any means, and the slow pacing of the dialogue forces that, often frustratingly for me.
Overall though, I like the idea!
This isn't rushed, by any means, and the slow pacing of the dialogue forces that, often frustratingly for me.
Overall though, I like the idea!
baka5 Apr 2022, 15:23
Very interesting game! Great atmosphere and addictive gameplay. Perhaps it would be more convenient if it showed what the fireflies are doing and where they are.
avareii6 Apr 2022, 00:19
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! There's always that moment of tension before the first comment - but now I know exactly what's wrong with our game and I can relax! ;)
@hansj @taaada @otterfaelure that's a fair point about the dialogue - I got so caught up in balancing tension vs. readability that I completely neglected usability. Also, every line is manually timed - which is great for attention to detail, but bad when sleep-deprived people (like me) forget to update timings during dialogue edits and one line ends up hanging around for 5+ seconds.
Next time we do dialogue, we'll put in a 'next line' or 'skip interaction' button. Some of the interactions are kind of verbose, but I think a lot of them could be condensed into a summary paragraph for people who aren't into dialogue.
Certainly we also didn't expect the game to be as long as it ended up being. I thought to myself - 20 minutes, max. Instead, if you use up all your resources as intended, I suspect it could last about an hour plus (edit: I had a good run that went for 43:42; I think 50 minutes might be possible, but I don't think 60 is). Regrettably, we didn't have time to properly test all the interactions between fuel harvest/consumption rates etc. But this means I can play the game myself (semi-) blind later, so ngl I'm pretty stoked about that :)
@vgel the game is designed to scale - once you find tools for things, you can hand them to people to do treecutting/mining jobs - or task them with wandering around and finding these tools themselves, provided they are close enough. Unfortunately, we lacked time to polish this progression so as a result there's a bit of a barrier between early game and late game that requires either luck or concerted wandering around.
@truebach thanks for playing! I'm not the guy to help with optimisation, but I'll boop one of our other devs and he might have suggestions. LOVE can be a bit temperamental and chuggy sometimes depending on how it's run. In the meantime, all I can recommend is to try the Windows version, if that's not what you've been trying already.
@leolferraz that was meeeee
@hansj @taaada @otterfaelure that's a fair point about the dialogue - I got so caught up in balancing tension vs. readability that I completely neglected usability. Also, every line is manually timed - which is great for attention to detail, but bad when sleep-deprived people (like me) forget to update timings during dialogue edits and one line ends up hanging around for 5+ seconds.
Next time we do dialogue, we'll put in a 'next line' or 'skip interaction' button. Some of the interactions are kind of verbose, but I think a lot of them could be condensed into a summary paragraph for people who aren't into dialogue.
Certainly we also didn't expect the game to be as long as it ended up being. I thought to myself - 20 minutes, max. Instead, if you use up all your resources as intended, I suspect it could last about an hour plus (edit: I had a good run that went for 43:42; I think 50 minutes might be possible, but I don't think 60 is). Regrettably, we didn't have time to properly test all the interactions between fuel harvest/consumption rates etc. But this means I can play the game myself (semi-) blind later, so ngl I'm pretty stoked about that :)
@vgel the game is designed to scale - once you find tools for things, you can hand them to people to do treecutting/mining jobs - or task them with wandering around and finding these tools themselves, provided they are close enough. Unfortunately, we lacked time to polish this progression so as a result there's a bit of a barrier between early game and late game that requires either luck or concerted wandering around.
@truebach thanks for playing! I'm not the guy to help with optimisation, but I'll boop one of our other devs and he might have suggestions. LOVE can be a bit temperamental and chuggy sometimes depending on how it's run. In the meantime, all I can recommend is to try the Windows version, if that's not what you've been trying already.
@leolferraz that was meeeee
blobo8 Apr 2022, 01:01
Ah man, the dialogue artwork is super adorable! The pixel graphics are nice too, especially the trees! I love the little interactions among the bees, and how some are cooperative, and others tell you to get lost. It's fantastic. Great work!
truebach8 Apr 2022, 09:26
Guys! I'm back again. Think, your game impress me more than anything else. Today I sat to my keyboard and just start to playing some piano improvisation. After few minutes I have cycled on one strange little solitude theme. And how was my astonishment, when I realised, that was the theme from that forest!! My wife has confirmed, that was it. Wanna play it more and more. Honor to your composer. Great, Great!
MaruMari11 Apr 2022, 12:57
Played it for like 20 min? Really fun to play :)
RealTanHen11 Apr 2022, 13:50
Really addictive... before I knew it I was on a 30 minute run! Such a beautiful game and gorgeous audio, too. It's so expansive, plenty of resources to consider at all times, such good balance! I'd love to see some "mining/chopping" animations if this was made full scale, (obviously- I'm not expecting this in a jam!), it's such a beautiful game as is though!
Kitkii11 Apr 2022, 19:01
Very charming game with amazing 2D artwork. I was constantly talking to one of them who wouldn't be my friend. Exploring the area trying to find new things to build and make. I'm sure I didn't discover something with the emeralds but I survived over 30 minutes so im not complaining, I think I did well enough. very well made for a game jam and I wish I could see some more polish if you had more time with animations of something perhaps this could be a full game easily.
tigerchris200011 Apr 2022, 20:15
This game looks and sound breath taking. But the light kinda was that big of a deal for me. I would loved to see it burning a bit faster. And maybe I found a bug.. If you close the build tab by pressing on build rather then the x it froze or maybe I was just stupid. But overall an awesome game and the AI really suprised my much respect.
Valintone11 Apr 2022, 23:19
@tigerchris2000 Thank you for your feedback! I tried to re-create your bug and it's allowing me to close the window by pressing the build button without issue, is there any chance ESC may have been bumped or pressed? As this does pause the game.
avareii12 Apr 2022, 00:18
Blog post!
@kitkii thanks for playing! As much as a character falling into depression and refusing to talk further fits the mood, I'd love to add more complexity to these guys in future. Maybe they mutter to themselves about something, and open up if you bring them a specific item?
@realtanhen did you know, I threw together a list of 50+ things to polish and add in post-jam, and job animations weren't even on it? Thanks for the reminder XD this would do a lot to help immersion!
@kitkii thanks for playing! As much as a character falling into depression and refusing to talk further fits the mood, I'd love to add more complexity to these guys in future. Maybe they mutter to themselves about something, and open up if you bring them a specific item?
@realtanhen did you know, I threw together a list of 50+ things to polish and add in post-jam, and job animations weren't even on it? Thanks for the reminder XD this would do a lot to help immersion!
epeachyband12 Apr 2022, 17:29
A like this game a lot. So many features. I wanna see the full post-LD release.
K4M114 Apr 2022, 14:05
A nice game. I love the gameplay and the mechanics are surprisingly complicated, in a good way I mean. Though the mac version does not play very smoothly, I dunno if it's about the optimization.
GoogleFrog15 Apr 2022, 03:03
Thanks @k4m1, I wouldn't expect the mac version to work well since we just take it on faith that the mac build works well. Nobody tests on mac.
Would love the dialogues to move a little faster!
Something to be proud of, great contribution!