Goblin Trail

by tukisboolukis

co-authored: @thesmellofoxygen

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.77

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.39

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.50

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.08

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.94

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.41

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.21

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.57

Goblin Trail

*Welcome to Goblin Trail!*

The prince's gold mine has been beset by goblins for weeks. The miners' only hope is the safe delivery of a shipment of defenses from the city. Watch out, the road to the mines is poorly maintained and crawling with greedy, green goblins!

PLAY: https://tukisboolukis.itch.io/goblin-trail

Load the wagon and set out for the mines. The prince's gold supply depends on you! If you can feed the miners, they'll grant you some of the gold they've dug up. The city merchants will trade gold for upgrades to your cart. You'll need them and some strong oxen, if you're going to haul the defensive supplies out to the mines in time to protect the workers.

Controls:

W & S: Move up and down to avoid obstacles

A & D: Pan the camera to look ahead or behind

Spacebar: Charge / Exit Settlement

Left Click: Shoot arrows

Right Click: Pick up objects

Tab: Toggle UI in cities

Drag objects into the cart to load it. It's critical to reload cargo into the moving wagon if it's knocked out on the journey! Only an empty wagon will take damage from impacts. The ox will always pull the cart forward, but can be steered. Many things can slow the wagon down. Be careful that you don't let the goblins catch up with you.

GOAL

Deliver cargo worth at least 10 food, 10 defenses, and 10 arms to ensure the mine's self sufficiency in the face of the goblin menace.

Haul the ore back from the mine to get gold you can spend on upgrades. More weight capacity is always good!

CREDITS

*Tukis Boolukis*: Code, Game Design

*The Smell of Oxygen*: Art, Sound, Game Design

RESOURCES

Godot 3.5.2

Aseprite

Bitdragon

BFXR

Audacity

Tools: Aseprite, Audacity, Bfxr, Godot

Comments31

amarokczukay2 May 2023, 10:26

i really like the art style and the carriage management. i think sometimes i got pranked by the hitboxes and/or perspective because i was sure i wasn't driving on that boulder. but besides from that, il like the simplicity of the idea and how you implemented it with nice art and animation, upgrades are a nice addition that makes you want to play more. good work!

Nozomu572 May 2023, 11:00

A very solid game for a gamejam! It looks like a lot of passion was poured into the game, especially in graphics department. The game lacked some visual clues (like maybe an outline for pickable objects in villages), but still very solid visuals.
Also it was a bit frustrating to try and return fallen boxes and shoot arrows at the same time, but I understand that that is a core mechanic that makes this game unique and makes it engaging to play!

Would love to see what a final product could look like.

LDJam user 2379452 May 2023, 19:54

Noice! Very fun and visually appealing.

Sarenei2 May 2023, 20:13

Awesome gamejam game. My only real criticism is that I think more of the difficulty should be from defending against goblins rather than dodging rocks.

chompdev2 May 2023, 20:51

Very cool game! The art and sound is great, and balancing your cart's cargo space is really fun. I love finding the balance between archers and loading enough cargo to make the trip worthwhile. It's also really cool that the goldmine area lets you rest and rebalance, but doesn't have as many things to collect. Alternating between shooting and dodging keeps you engaged through the whole trip. After playing a decent number of jam entries today, this is easily one of my top three!

LDJam user 06 May 2023, 05:02

really fun to play

SlySeville6 May 2023, 05:04

Amazing work, the art and sound are so good! I almost felt bad shooting the goblins because they're kinda cute. This is a project I'd love to see developed further!

Francis7 May 2023, 18:09

Pretty fun gameplay! I think there's quite a bit of potential here :)

Things that I liked:
- Needing to balance your inventory and decide between delivery vs defense.
- Earning upgrades for the wagon. Although I wasn't sure what "Oxen" did.
- Delivering gold on the way back

Things that could've been better:
- I was stuck in the beginning for a bit not knowing what to do. I tried to click on everything, press tab, and nothing was happening. Took me a bit to realize I needed to right click to pick up stuff. I would suggest displaying more of the controls in the game, especially since there are quite a few of them. Maybe draw an outline around the interactable objects to differentiate between static art vs interactable, and show the interact button when hovered.
- I didn't like that I needed to pick up the coins after killing the goblins. The cart is going so fast that it feels like I don't have time to at all unless I drive onto the grass. Maybe add a slowdown button, or just make coin pickup automatic.
- Unsure how I feel about the delay in the shooting. It just felt a little clunky, especially with multiple archers. I wonder if maybe a hold down to charge up arrow control scheme would work better. Also I didn't really like the press A/D to pan the camera, I think it's too much cognitive load and doesn't really need to be in the game. Worrying about dodging rocks, fighting off goblins, picking up dropped loads, is already enough.

Overall, nice job! Liked the art style and aesthetic too :)

jacobingalls7 May 2023, 21:24

Neat game! I found it really hard for some reason. I think it was because I had to keep catching the stuff that fell of the cart, then kill the goblins because I could never seem to get them before attacking the cart. It felt like this was due to a deliberate delay in how the passengers shoot. I would have expected to shoot nearly instantly, but then have to wait. Or I thought maybe it was that I need to hold and then shoot, but that wasn't it either.

I agree with @francis that picking up the gold didn't feel right. Maybe this was more of a problem since I was playing fullscreen?

The inventory system was cool, but took a second to understand. I liked how different things had different stats and you got to decide what to take.

Refry8 May 2023, 09:35

Great, great entry. The visuals are so polished and consistent! The gameplay is working too even if maybe I would have made the difficulty level less hard...at least at the beginning.
I'm sure that if u'll add some music/sounds the game will be even better!

TheSmellofOxygen8 May 2023, 12:41

@Refry I'm actually pretty happy with the sounds and music- though I intend to fill out some of the interactions with more sound cues during our post-jam update. If you weren't getting sound at all, music included, you may have had some audio issues with your browser settings/device.

There is a notable visual bug as well right now where if you try Hardmode and die, the box appears unchecked, but remains in effect on future runs until you toggle it again. That mode IS very hard.

Lex 4kraba8 May 2023, 13:33

Nice style. But dangerous places on the road are not obvious. Possibly because of the large hitbox. And I also managed to leave the village without a cab x)

peterfiftyfour9 May 2023, 10:56

Cute art and sound! it was pretty tricky but got the hang of it in the end. When I saw the title I first thought it was going to be like oregon trail lol

frosty10 May 2023, 04:02

This is pretty cool, and a great take on the theme!

I like the pixel art and the sound effects.

It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do, and I still didn't totally understand how it worked. I think I wanted more challenge in deciding what to put on the cart. There seems to be a tradeoff of having more people to defend it vs cargo, which is nice.

The overall idea has a lot of potential if you wanted to expand it even further (routes to different cities, etc.)

Nicely done!

vizitas10 May 2023, 16:33

I really enjoyed this game. It was fun unlocking upgrades for the wagon. Would be cool to have some upgrades for the bowmen.

GordienkoGames12 May 2023, 23:09

so hard) thanks for game

SinusQuell13 May 2023, 07:11

This one is pretty cool!

Veralos13 May 2023, 08:58

Really nice game! I was a bit overwhelmed with everything going on at first, but after some time learning how the game worked it was very enjoyable. I like the idea of being able to choose whether to use slots on the cart for either resources or extra archers to help defend yourself. Though I think the ore at the mine could be increased in quantity and/or variety to have more decisions about what to take on your return trip.

Having to avoid obstacles on the road while also aiming at and retrieving coins from goblins created a hectic but fun experience during each trip. It's cool how you can recover dropped resources if you're quick enough to grab them and plop them back in the cart before they get left behind. Not a fan of the camera controls though. It feels unintuitive having W/S for moving the cart but A/S for the camera. perhaps the camera could be moved based on the mouse cursor's position?

Finally, the presentation is also really good. The pixel art is great and has some nice detailed animations. Having the cart be dragged slightly between the movement of the bison was a nice touch. The music and sound effects are great and are used well.

SleepyStudios13 May 2023, 15:25

A nice little oregon trail-like with goblins. Great pixel art and simple gameplay that works well.

MalcolmDjgr14 May 2023, 07:36

I like the graphics and sound overall it was a good game.

Pouyan ShekariKiani14 May 2023, 21:41

One of the best entries I have played so far, great game. congratulations to your team.

Stevie25715 May 2023, 19:57

The graphics in this game may be modest, but they have a certain charm that invites players to immerse themselves in the game world

Brovovar15 May 2023, 21:29

The whole game is awesome. Especially those sound effects made by mouth.

Alex McGrath18 May 2023, 19:49

This is fun! I love the delivery theme, and the upgrades are sensible! Some more feedback and info on what each cargo is would help make things clearer. Great work!

Jezzamon18 May 2023, 19:54

Nicely done! I think it would be nice with simplified controls (trying to manage the camera was a little tricky), but overall I really liked it.

I died once when I realized I accidentally overloaded the cart and couldn't bring enough archers, and then the second time I got through it :)

Jezzamon18 May 2023, 19:56

BTW, the sound and music were turned off by default - I think people might miss that those are options they need to turn on.

interpixel18 May 2023, 19:57

brilliant work, great assets, concept and execution. very unique flavour that could be expanded upon

TheSmellofOxygen18 May 2023, 21:40

@jezzamon I noticed another player had that issue, but I haven't encountered that in any of our testing. Can you tell me what browser you're using perhaps? The music won't start until you interact with the game panel, but even pressing "start" is supposed to do it. I've run it on Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, as well as the game files directly from Godot and had the same performance. I'm glad you at least found the option and turned it on! Sound adds a lot to a game and we tried to get good coverage here, though some actions lack a sound still.

Jezzamon19 May 2023, 00:44

Ah. Maybe they were on by default too, but seeing as that was my first click, it's what made the sound start

osullivp19 May 2023, 11:03

A charming and visually appealing game with a great art style and engaging management mechanics. While the hitboxes and perspective occasionally led to frustrating moments, the simplicity of the concept, coupled with nice art, animation, and upgrade system, make it a game worth playing.

Spicyshiba19 May 2023, 23:30

Great idea that was executed well! The sound and art are also nice