Exhaustlands by Sand-Gardeners

It is a time of war.
The RESISTANCE is dwindling, and the last remaining members take refuge in an abandoned power station in the heart of the EXHAUSTLANDS.
The FASCIST army moves closer everyday - unstoppable and hungry.
Under the cold BROWNIE COVE sun, members of the Resistance journey out into the lands to explore the area, and prepare to do battle with the approaching DARKNESS.
Space is running out, time is running out, faith is running out. But they can do this.

Click and hold to drive. Find locations.
Fill up at gas stations or services, change character selection at motels or services.
Return to HQ when you believe you have enough faith to win.

It's a driving exploration game... kinda metroidvania-y. Might need to get a pen and paper out ;)
We had a lot of fun making this and will definitely be working on a post-jam version with more content!
If you like you can check out our other games set in the same universe as well!
https://sandgardeners.itch.io
:heart:
Ratings
| Overall | 236th | 3.732⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 491th | 3.329⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 271th | 3.524⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1165th | 2.512⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 539th | 3.524⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 79th | 3.927⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 41th | 4.11⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 35🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
The atmosphere you achieved to set up here with few things is really impressing me.
A little bug: when you click on the radio to cycle between stations, the click still drives the car around :stuck_out_tongue:
I like how the characters feel real in their own way, you can understand their mindset quite well. What about a small-radius minimap while the cartographer is on your team? I felt a bit lost navigating around the world, but maybe that's kind of the point anyway...
Raindrop FM forever! I didn't give it full score on theme since for me the connection isn't there imo, but every other aspect rates quite high for me. The mood it gets you into is really nice, great job! I don't know if you are considering keep working on it, but I think you should :)
Loved it!
Good job and good luck if you continue developing this game!
Here's my playthrough: https://youtu.be/OJAgySGGTBI
The graphics and audio fit the general mood very well.
Unfortunately with only 7 faith it was not enough to fight the darkness ;)
I don't really know what the cartographer serves for (maybe you could have acces to a map when he is in your team?)
Also I just played your Between Stations and it's so damn cool, wish I saw it before making my game.
The world-building and story-telling was just wonderful. Your inspirations are so clear to me and it's awesome to see such a fantastic world built from them. This is a great addition to the Brownie Cove series.
P.S. The whole time playing, I kept thinking back to Gregory Weir's 'Looming' or 'Ossuary'. https://twitter.com/GregoryWeir
reminded me of Looming too! How can we grow in such conditions?
I liked how you used a minimalist approach to the overall design of the game, while being very consistent on the signs and what they meant (how you represented coast, forest, different type of roads..!). The sound design is very good, but I just kept on playing the Raindrops song because that felt like a nostalgic Fallout.
What really hooked me up is how you designed the narrative in the game. Mecanics are simple, but launching the player in this vast open space with so little clues about where to go, and actually what to do, is a great way to design a game that proposes something quite philosophical ("learning comes with journeying" or smthing like that), and also a risky bet that asks the player to just play by himself and try to understand the game. Each character is unique and defined by few words, but enough for us to actually link him to something in our mind (the druid just grows weed, don't lie :P).
Few things I could be critique about would be that your game isn't really focused on the theme (Felt like I had enough space to be lost !), and that you could probably add a sort of map by pressing a button. I know this is a risky feature, because a map could totally remove the fact that your game is about discovery and journey and not "just go there", but it can get quite frustrating or confusing to just be lost.
Thanks you for making a game that resolves around deep narrative and texts, and thanks you for this very unique game ! Cheers.
our initial plan was to enter an endgame sequence after a certain amount of time where the world started shrinking, which would play into the theme. but yes you're right atm we are totally separate from the theme haha, just the way ideas develop sometimes. and yes! we will be adding a minimalistic map that will help show you the location of discovered named roads... hopefully still be mysterious enough to allow for discovery but also help people stop getting so lost. thanks for leaving such a detailed response <3
Great idea and realistaion, very addictive gameplay.
Loved FM stations also
Here is a link to your segment from my stream:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299088812?t=00h25m17s
Even though I wasn't able to figure out how to open up the map that Cartographer supposed to have, or how to use teleportation that Wizard provides, investigating this world was very interesting and engaging. I'm quite amazed by the size of the world you've created. And the audio work sets up game's atmosphere just perfectly. Really helps to emerge into the game. I wish there were more stations like RAINDROPS or HAUNTED, because I don't think INDUSTRIAL and DARK CLUB were very fitting for this driving through desolate world experience, but that's really subjective.
As final words, I would just say that you've done great work on the story and world-building, and I really admire you for that.
The different radio stations really nail it and I had to turn off Industrial because is was so stressful xD
The graphics are really simple but you did a great job with it !
I drove aimlessly for like 10 days without finding anything forth interest so you kinda lost me here, haha.
But it's a very unique and interesting game even though I didn't see where you used the theme...
Anyway, keep up the good work guys !
Great job guyzzz
I haven't managed to finish the game, I got three faith increases (burning bush, mould, blacksmith), but I guess that wasn't enough, I assume I was missing something with the static mountains … But at that point after checking in the HQ that my faith wasn't enough (which doesn't actually end the game), I wasn't interested enough to keep playing anymore. I feel this game would be much much better if you limited your world size and instead of making it so expansive focus on making it "deeper", i.e. tell a more interesting story at the existing locations, add new ones, incentivise re-visiting the same locations, etc. More complex puzzles! (I visited the Mine before I got to the Miner's house, and there was no way to leave until I got the correct path by trial and error!)
The character selection in motels is a little bit annoying, it takes too long for the next character to show up when you click the arrow, and there is no indication of how many there are until you have all 4 of them. Also, some of the "abilities" in the character descriptions seemed untrue? Maybe I needed to place the characters in the driver's seat, but e.g. the Druid says no fuel is used and yet my fuel was going down as usual. Same for the Wizard's Service Station warping. It made me think that the game is incomplete in many ways – same goes for the "darkness" which never seemed to actually approach and time progression did not matter.
I did not see a very clear connection between the theme and the game. I understand that the story vaguely references the theme, but this is not really reflected in the game. If anything, as long as you are driving with the cartographer you are exploring more and more of the map, thereby gaining space rather than running out of it. There should be a more concrete connection with the theme in the actual mechanics of the game as well.
The graphical style is simple and minimalistic, but perhaps fitting. The ASCII stuff is not bad, but I wonder why mix ASCII characters with hand-drawn art? As for the music, I spent most of the game listening to Raindrop FM, and I feel that this kind of "music" is the most fitting for the game. The other radio stations perhaps not so much? But I suppose it is good to give the player a choice.
But overall this is a very decent entry.