Watch Out for Bears by bakpakin
Wow. I did it. I made my first Ludum dare game. WOOHOO!! I wanted to submit it for the compo, but reality had different ideas. I might have been able to submit it for the compo, but it wasn't really done and I wanted to sort of finish it. I made it using eclipse for programming (java), Pixelmator for art (a great photoshop clone for mac), and Bfxr for some simple sound effects.
Watch Out for Bears is a weird little game in which you hunt for berries while avoiding bears. It only loosely follows the theme of "you only get one", as you can only carry around one of three tools at any given time. I didn't really like the theme, but thats a poor excuse for not having goods ideas. The game came out pretty well, however, despite poor planning and time management.
Please play and critique; I'm new to this so any comments would greatly appreciated.
-NOTE
Run the downloaded jar from the same directory as the /res folder. I didn't properly manage the resources. To run, simply double click the jar file after unzipping the download. It should work on mac, windows and linux with the same file, but I haven't tested it on anything but a mac air. Windows users especially, please report obvious bugs, such as black screen, player not in window, etc.
-Requires a java runtime environment to run.
Watch Out for Bears is a weird little game in which you hunt for berries while avoiding bears. It only loosely follows the theme of "you only get one", as you can only carry around one of three tools at any given time. I didn't really like the theme, but thats a poor excuse for not having goods ideas. The game came out pretty well, however, despite poor planning and time management.
Please play and critique; I'm new to this so any comments would greatly appreciated.
-NOTE
Run the downloaded jar from the same directory as the /res folder. I didn't properly manage the resources. To run, simply double click the jar file after unzipping the download. It should work on mac, windows and linux with the same file, but I haven't tested it on anything but a mac air. Windows users especially, please report obvious bugs, such as black screen, player not in window, etc.
-Requires a java runtime environment to run.
In fact It's a very well polished game, apart from the hud text glitch and the audio assets.
Gameplay wise I find the adherence to the jam theme to be a hindrance. Having only one tool at hand meant that I exclusively used the berry bucket and dodged the bears with superior agility (a bear would catch a man in RL no doubt).
Another annoyance is the classic "Only one collectible left. Have fun trying to find it!" problem.
In short the gameplay should be more interesting in some way.
I suggest adding light and dark mechanics. Raiding the berries at night with a flash light, which attracts bears if turned on, only having to collect as many berries as you want, for a score, in a bigger forest would solve aforementioned problems. Carrying multiple tools is something to consider as well.