DEEP FROST

by kalbshack

co-authored: @eric-shaun, @r0bin

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.05

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.92

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.77

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.18

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.35

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.85

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.77

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.23

You wake up because you are freezing cold.
"Where am I?"
Looking around and find yourself standing in a seeming endless Snow and Ice Tundra...
A note in your left hand says "Find the Nine Anomalous Artifacts to Escape"
The Handwriting looks like yours..but you don't remember writing it...

In your Right hand you have what seems to be a high-tech Metal or Mineral Detector.
"okay...so the Artifacts are probably made out of some sort of high grade Mineral...I have to find them to get away from here"

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

GOAL
In DEEP FROST your Goal is to find 9 Anomalous Artifact in vastness of a Snow Tundra with the help of your Mineral Detector.

WITH WHAT AND WHY?
An old Soviet Expedition Vehicle is your only Shelter. Equipped with some professional Mineral Analyzers & Scientific Lab with Equipment & Tools to upgrade your Detector to fine tune it on finding the Artifacts efficiently.
Your only Enemy is the Cold and an upcoming devastating Blizzard in 5 Days. You have to Act fast & not die freezing to death.
Return to your Shelter to warm up, rest and tool on your Detector.
To not get Lost in this white cold desert, you can place flags to orientate yourself and find back before your freeze to death.

UPGRADING YOUR DETECTOR
With Finding Minerals, ranging from Copper (C), Gold (G) and Platinum (P) and 3 different Sizes, you can upgrade and fine tune your Detector to be more efficient.
upgrade your detection range, mute the mineral types you don't want to detect and even a nifty mineral size indicator can help you in succeeding your task and Escape this Cold Hell.

----

TUTORIAL:

Movement with W,A,S,D on your Keyboard

Check your HUD (Detector Display) on the Bottom Left.
If you find a Signal follow it until it blinks in full signal
-> Press "F" to start locating it precisely to dig it out.

Diggin Minigame:
Keep the Crosshair within the Blue "ice" circle to retrieve the Mineral.

Press "R" to place a Flag for Orientation or Marking certain Areas to your liking.

Get Minerals to upgrade your detector and Find all 9 artifacts before the Blizzard arrives!

If you freeze to death, you loose only your Minerals found, not your artifacts, but it ends your day immediately!

Comments50

squashi7 Oct 2025, 01:32

well done! looks good, sounds good, and plays well! it's a bit rough around the edges though, like way to home, gameplay being too unvarying.

FlyByBrucia7 Oct 2025, 09:06

had fun trying to get the purple pieces and kinda lost myself into the game. Sick art love it

alexcl7 Oct 2025, 09:42

That's very well done, beautiful artwork, I actually quite enjoyed playing it!

DmitriyCI7 Oct 2025, 09:43

A game with a good concept, and with very good graphics. The game also has good sounds.

Lyshaka7 Oct 2025, 10:19

It's a really well made game I did enjoy it, but it's a bit sad that you have a limited number of run, the map is big and it's hard to find every artefact with that limited time, also I'm not sure how much time left I have, it would be nice to have some kind of indicator. Other than that I really liked the mechanic of digging where you have to keep your cursor in a certain area, that's a really cool one :)

Kalbshackauthor7 Oct 2025, 10:47

@lyshaka Thanks for the feedback, you at least have some indicator in terms of the screen starting to freeze, but thanks for playing.

Ulziton7 Oct 2025, 19:35

beatiful visual and gameplay

mackain7 Oct 2025, 19:41

my favorite game so far this jam :) wish there was a fullscreen button because those graphics look great!

Hydratini7 Oct 2025, 19:42

I got very immersed in the game, great idea and very well executed.

Pierre-Marie7 Oct 2025, 20:27

Nice game! I don't know if it's normal but, first day of my second game, I can't buy any upgrades :/

I need to rerun it to finish it :D

danicoredj7 Oct 2025, 20:39

very beautiful artwork

Kalbshackauthor7 Oct 2025, 21:33

@mackain Thanks for the praise, actually there is, in the main menu settings or if you hit ESC ingame 😄

Kalbshackauthor7 Oct 2025, 21:34

@pierre-marie Sorry to hear that, did you play the web version? And did you had enough resources?

Pierre-Marie7 Oct 2025, 21:52

@kalbshack Yes, the version on this page.

But I cleared the cache and was able to finish the game without any problems!

Jin93108 Oct 2025, 15:09

THis is really cool, there are few downsides, but I understand it is very hard to cover everything during the jam. I was trying to freeze and it actually takes quite long :) I havent finished collection of all, just hit that blizzard. But overall I really enjoyed this one, as it instantly reminded me my favourite The Thing and I think that you really do a great job on the atmosphere of the station somewhere on very icy and isolated place. Great job!

Kalbshackauthor8 Oct 2025, 20:10

@jin9310 Thanks for the kind words. Like you said, time is limited and sadly enough we didn't manage to testplay it enough to tweak the settings. But yeah that's the beauty and curse of those jams. You create a game in 3 days, but only have time 3 days as well.

Patatje8 Oct 2025, 20:59

Amazing game! great tutorial, lovely pixelart and setting. And the gameplay kept me engaged all the way. well done! :)

DeepD2eam8 Oct 2025, 21:03

THATS A SICK ART, really love the style, and gameplay is fun too, very good job!

pepnou8 Oct 2025, 21:29

Awesome game! i did not expect the ending. The art was great.
I would have like to be told sooner that there was a flag to help you find the base, especially at the start of the first day. More ambient sound might have set a bit more the mood.

Overall great game, good job 👍

Dannyk19948 Oct 2025, 21:49

Great game. Enjoyed the atomosphere and the sound. Potential for a great game in the future! Would love to see more of this

skiddings8 Oct 2025, 22:03

Great art and a fun game, with even a mini game instead it. Music and sound are great too.
I'm running into a bug though at the of the first day, I don't know how to leave the store/go back to the game!

Kalbshackauthor8 Oct 2025, 22:13

@skiddings It's been told in the tutorial screen that you can enter/leave the store with "e", but your right we could have made it more prominent or even place a button.

NiceKot9 Oct 2025, 01:27

Wow, easy 5*. Great idea, cool style, crisp animations, even the sounds are very ok! Kudos to how you implemented tutorial. Very nice!

T90.9 Oct 2025, 01:28

Amazing game! And amazingly implemented tutorial. Very atmospheric, very cozy, incredible work!

Kinda wish I could remove flags where I no longer needed them to avoid confusion.

Eugenik9 Oct 2025, 01:46

Really cool artworks and great humor! Love it!.

swaiky9 Oct 2025, 02:59

Totally my thing—pixel art is my fave!

Accardo9 Oct 2025, 05:15

Great art style and concept, and the mini game is very well implemented, being able to remove existing flags and have flags with different colors would be helpful though.

Kalbshackauthor9 Oct 2025, 07:34

@t90 @accardo Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. Those ideas where considered but as you probably know yourself, you have to cut out some stuff to finish in time. We barely managed to get some complete testruns in 🙈

cartmouse9 Oct 2025, 13:12

Art and music are fantastic! I had a great time with the gameplay too, really got me hooking into the search, upgrade, search more loop! Only comment is that you can walk off the edge of the map, other than that I had a great time :D

Kupnu49 Oct 2025, 14:19

absolutely wonderful game! It tries to help the player in so many ways! I was too slow to understand it so I failed. 5 artifacts found though! And it was a lot of fun. Great mechanics, pacing, graphics and audio. Love it!

Eric.Shaun9 Oct 2025, 16:44

Thanks everyone so far for the nice feedback, we appreciate it extremly!
And kudos for @kalbshack for the fantastic tutorial, couldnt agree more, he really did an awesome job with that one 😁

Regarding Lack of Flag removal and limited time to get it done and Map border being "crossable"
Yeah it really was tough the last 6-8hours to focus on what really needs to be done and sadyl those all fell off the 2-do list.
We definitely learned again for the next gamejam where and specifically WHEN to shift focus or have all features implemented to start polishing 😅
Like Kalbshack already stated, we barely got enough testing time in 🙈

Faust_Mi10 Oct 2025, 01:37

Great hidden object mechanics and flash cards for returning to base! The on-screen effect is awesome!

Thanks for the game experience! Great job!

gonutz10 Oct 2025, 07:08

Wow, the graphics on this one are strong! This is some really good pixel art! I did not manage to beat the game yet. Do the arrows point to the direction of the next arrow?

Kalbshackauthor10 Oct 2025, 08:54

@gonutz Thanks for the comment. The arrows point to the next artifact. Doesn't have to be the nearest one, but it's pointing into the direction of one, where you would get the hint for the next one...... as long as you don't freeze 😄

Eric.Shaun10 Oct 2025, 17:56

@gonutz Thanks for the flowers for the pixel art 😊
Appreciate the comment

zelew11 Oct 2025, 10:53

great animations!

Linky43911 Oct 2025, 15:29

Great game! I lost myself in the wilderness a few times, managed to get back home sometimes, and froze some other times ^^
I manage to collect 6 artifact, not too bad. Deep Frost is quite impressive for a jam game, congratulations! The art is great (lovely freezing effect) and the game just works very well.

WilloXs12 Oct 2025, 17:14

Really nice idea for an upgrade system. Would be nice if there would even be a bit more to buy (like boots for faster movement, jacket for slower freezing etc.). Right now i have unlocked everything after the second trip already and then i'm only searching for the artifacts alone, which is a bit less fun than upgrading stuff.

X2SHADOW13 Oct 2025, 13:58

I really liked it, did 3 tries, froze in two of them without finding the last artifact :( Nice pixel art, interesting and simple mechanics, great game!

Pandaray13 Oct 2025, 20:12

I had so much fun! Loved the guy he reminded me of the We were here series and that one I really loved. Good job!

Roroto Sic13 Oct 2025, 21:44

me before on my last day left , preparing to leave in search of the last purple fragment. which I didn't find.
there's an ice statue of me now.
great game ! unusual staging idea ! :)

Kalbshackauthor14 Oct 2025, 08:33

@pandaray Happy you liked it. Yes the series is phenomenal. Still have one open to finish.

@roroto-sic but since you found the other artifacts you should at least had a hint in which direction the last one was. Still, glad you liked it.

deadjolly16 Oct 2025, 04:14

Really dig the noisy pixel art aesthetic. The sound effects for finding minerals and the purple fragments were satisfying. Felt like the purple ore was too hard to find? Maybe that's just me being bad at the game. Explore and dig mechanics are always fun though! Solid character animations, the rangefinder felt fleshed out! Overall atmosphere truly felt cold. Frosty!

Mibi8820 Oct 2025, 14:17

Nice idea! It was very fun to play, the sound effects were good. The graphics were also nice and fit the concept very well.

A very nice game overall!

JuanRod70722 Oct 2025, 13:31

Great entry! I loved how you organically included the dig minigame. Had a lot of fun playing this one :)

evil2322 Oct 2025, 17:37

Great game! The gameloop is fun, I played for 20+ minutes. After buying all the upgrades though, there's no point really to continue. Graphics are good the audio is also fitting. The freezing part was also well done!

mushlord23 Oct 2025, 15:08

Great work with the graphics, this pixel art is just mind-blowing. I really enjoyed walking through the Arctic and collecting things. Thanks for the great work!

ophiene23 Oct 2025, 19:25

Amazing work! It’s super interesting and has a vert unique way to paraphrase the theme, good job! And welcome to give our game a try! :)

Elmos Minion23 Oct 2025, 19:26

The pixel art is awesome, would love to see future development. (maybe you could have some kind of mystery that unravels over time as the player gains upgrades)

VPro24 Oct 2025, 06:46

Hey! I'm really glad you commented on my game otherwise I wouldn't have played your entry and I find it just awesome. You nailed the art, the interface and the overall mood. Having built a digging mini game is a cool idea, it gives more rhythm to each run. I also liked how you didn't hold the player's hand to find the alien(?) pieces, I had to guess that it wasn't made of any of the 3 metals. I wish the runs weren't limited in number, or that maybe you could buy some more with your resources. I really enjoyed it overall, and I think it's a solid basis to keep on building upon, great work!

Other games by @kalbshack

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★3.15