The Owl Master's Kiln
The Owl Master's Kiln: By hand, by fire
Theme: Old Tech
In a cosy cabin at the edge of the wood, Master Potter Owl keeps the last kiln in the valley. His eyes have dimmed with the years, but his hands still remember every curve of the wheel. You’re his new apprentice: a young fox with a pack on its back.
The Master throws the pots. You do everything else. Dig clay from the hillside, weigh it on the scales, wedge it at the bench, and bring it to the Master with the right model. Let the pots dry, then fire them in the kiln, one careful step at a time. Chop firewood to build the fire to the right heat, dip pots in glaze, and put the finished pots out for the villagers who ordered them.
Each clay has its own temper: black wants a gentle fire, red a steady one, white a roaring one. Fire it wrong, or fire it damp, and the pot cracks. The game is seven missions long. It starts with a first firing and builds up to glazed pots filling several orders at once.
Controls
Move: arrow keys or WASD, or click or tap the ground to walk there. On phones, touch and hold to walk toward your finger.
Use whatever the fox is touching: click it, or press SPACE (tap on phones). Hold to dig, wedge or chop.
Pack: your inventory is top left. Pick a slot to select it. BACKSPACE drops the selected item (on phones, tap a slot to select it and tap again to drop).
Doors: click a door you’re standing at to go in or out.
Tech: CraftyJS, Claude, Photoshop, VSCode.... all the basic fun Web Stack tools, Chrome ✌
Patched Version
https://ludum-dare-60.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/patched/index.html
This version fixes up a few User experience issues
- Owl’s click area now fits the bird, with its right side cut by 25%.
- Fixed the owl being unclickable after that change.
- Inside door hitbox is 25% narrower on the right.
- Red and black clay dig zones are 25% smaller.
- Pots now show in front of the drying and finished tables.
- The last delivered pot stays on the finished table during the ending.
- The ending pause is 1 second longer.
- Added captions: Drying Table, Finished Pottery, Weighing Table and Wedging.
- Added a “Final Firing, 1 log” step to every level’s checklist.
- Removed the unused OrdersComplete trigger and ORDERS_TO_WIN.
Comments8
Great experience though ^^
More animation work would have been a huge plus. Not just walking animation, but also little details and transitions, maybe an idle animation or two. The wonderfully painted outdoors level would have profited from spatial cues such a being able to walk behind the stones. The resource objects clearly have collisions enabled, it would have been nice to also have that for map objects. It's good that you made so many missions, but also a little bit overkill for LD.
Nice work y'all, I can imagine coming back to this and finishing the last few missions just to chill out a bit.