Fire Already!!

Awesome art!

Wow, the hand-drawn pencil art style is absolutely phenomenal! The animations of the hands and the wife checking in on the progress add so much character and humor to the game. It perfectly captures that "frustrating AEKI assembly instructions" vibe!
The core mechanic fits the "Old Tech" theme beautifully — rubbing a stick to make fire is as old school as it gets! I encountered some trouble actually getting the fire to start (maybe my Cro-Magnon friction skills need some work, or the balancing is a bit too hardcore!), but the overall presentation, animations, and aesthetic are top-notch for a Compo entry.
Awesome work, thanks for the experience! If you have a minute, please check out my ASMR retro-tech cleaning game too!

fire good!!!! The drawings are nice and I like the drawings and the crayon drawings are good. :)

awesome game idea. I couldn't get fire started, but I wouldn't be able to it in real life either.

haha, so great!
Also the woman was on the point!
Love the games like this, short and with humor!

I had to try something new with the art as my GIMP installation was giving me trouble, so I turned to Krita for the art. It was new to me, but it has some nice default brushes. I ended up with this slightly childish style and just went with it.

@ynukym-academy, @tero-pulkkinen
I think the balancing, again, comes down to me having played it hundreds of times during development. I could do it without even listening to the guidance, but I didn’t add any written instructions. So you have to listen: if you’re moving too fast, it tells you to slow down. Once you find the right speed, it also tells you how wide your movements need to be.
There are four sublevels, which start small fires beside the main fire-making spot so you can see that you’re actually making progress.

I’m really glad you all enjoyed the drawings! They took way too long, and you can probably tell where I started running out of time. I spent far too long on the main menu, a little less time on the main game, and even less on the winning scene. So the quality went downhill very quickly.

@rafa-fiedo/@walk, sounds like you succeded in making fire! 🔥

Thanks, everyone, for playing!

@rekk1d

Lol thats funny! Hand drawing art is so charming and the wife is so annoying :D For some time I thought she is just trolling me and I have no chance to make a fire :D

@jiri-hysek Thanks for playing, and the very nice words 🙇

Some really old tech here! Love this interpretation of old tech theme. Specially like the hand draw art! Great job!

Can't get more old tech than fire! The two little eyes mocking you are just what I needed lol. Well done!

WIDDERRRR

Interesting style of art, literally the oldest form of technology!

I hate this woman, but was laughing all the time! Main menu options are a nice touch!

The art style is so lively, and the wife constantly rushing you is hilarious hahaha. I love the idea of starting a fire by rubbing sticks together!

The hand-drawn art gives the game such a charming, throwback feel. It's a really fun take on the Old Tech theme, especially the comedic struggle of trying to get a simple fire going.

@yanruyi @eugenik Thanks for playing, I'm glad that the humor wasn't lost. And thanks for the kind words about my childish drawings :D (Thank Krita for nice default brushes)

Funny, but I could not figure if it's possible to win. I drag the mouse fast left-right, and see sparkles, but I suppose it's not enough?

@baturinsky Thanks for playing. 😄
No speed isn't everything, the game is to listen to what is being said, "Slowerrr", "Fasterrr", "Widerrr", "Too Wide" and adjust the stroke from side to side accordingly. Hope you at least enjoyed the other parts of the game.

@incd021 ah, that will teach me to listen to women more:)

Love the games like this, short and with humor!

This was a fun idea! I thought about fire as an old tech choice but I had no idea how to make a game about starting a fire, so it was cool to see how you approached it. I had lots of trouble making the fire, especially because I found the v/o hard to understand. Nice work!

Love the drawings!

nice drawings!

@baturinsky 😆 Yep.. Always a good lesson.

So glad you all like the drawings, thanks. 🙂

@acartlidge Yeah, I get that completely. The voiceovers kind of got to a point where they were overlapping because I needed to give instructions and as I made that first; and the idea was always to have this kind of nagging partner. So when I added that, they kind of talked over each other and it was hard to actually understand what was joke/nagging and what was actually instructions. But I didn't know how to make visual indicators to indicate going faster, separate from going wider or narrower. Thanks for the feedback.

Seriously... if you don't win humor ... the rating system is cooked 👍
It's the first entry ever to make me laugh at the computer.
And I suppose it has been relatively simple to make.... such a good job.
I love how the artstyle in some weird way plays in to the whole theme of this.
The one thing I would change... the annoying one... every so often speaks on top of her own voice... but then again for a jam... that's minor details.

@purpledartfrog Thanks for playing, and for your very kind words 🙇
Yes, I did notice the instructions and the nagging v/o was overlapping, I just ran out of time.. It should be a simple fix, I just ran out of time. 😫

a caveman trying to assemble a flat pack fire starter from aeki is such a funny idea, and the pencil drawn art gives it a storybook charm that makes the whole joke land. the wife checking in on the progress is a great touch too, it adds so much character to a tiny game. how long did the hand drawn animations take you? really charming work.

@perrarancino Thanks for playing 😃 The drawings took way to long! As mentioned before, the menu screen took way too long to draw, so I had to do the main game drawings faster, and ended up doing the end screen in an hour or so as I was running out of time. The hands animation also too soooo long, just had to trust that the frames I grabbed with my web cam would work.
Glad you liked the humor 🙂 I had planned so much more. An IKEA.... I mean an AEKI truck would pull up outside the cave and drop off a box with the set shown on the outside, and having to place the stick correctly before getting to the actually fire starting. And so on, and so on.. But time and skill are hard limits. So it is what it is.

Thanks for the nice comment 🙏