Freezing Sky by Zeriver

↓ Mini tutorial ↓ (there isn't one in the game) ↓

↑ Mini tutorial ↑ (there isn't one in the game) ↑
The sun is burning out. It gets too cold to survive outside. You have to dig deep down to not to freeze to death. You are commanding the village and are responsible for their lives. Gather resources and build more production to be able to fund digging the elevator shaft. But remember to be always at least one lever lower before the next Freeze comes. Manage your workers and resources wisely to survive. Game inspired by Frostpunk.
Controls
LMB - on building to assign workers / order to dismantle them / remove rocks
RMB - hide building view / all building details
Spacebar - pause game (or click on the clock to slow /speed time)
Credits and notes
Voice at the beginning / end of the day: Nathan Ganley https://www.youtube.com/c/videogamewasteland
Game made 'almost' from scratch in 72 hours, only used assets are UI textures and music
Obligatory Plug
Soon i am releasing my game on Steam - Intern Tentacle God Behind the Desk - https://store.steampowered.com/app/799260/Godly_Corp/ Would be cool if you could check it out. Any feedback is also highly appreciated!
Ratings
| Overall | 97th | 3.95⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 170th | 3.705⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 195th | 3.641⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 250th | 3.897⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 367th | 3.769⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 59th | 4.027⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
The graphics could've used a bit more uniformity but I actually really liked the color scheme. It was a bit surreal and just kinda gave off a pretty intense mood, especially once the sun rose. SUPER ambitious game for a solo effort and some true potential for further work.
Also it would be nice if the game tells you that a building can't be completed because there are no free workers. Also when you dig down you can put in 20 workers but sometimes you don't have enough resources for 20 workers, maybe the game could limit the amount of workers based on the amount of resources you have.
Very solid entry overall, nice graphics. I had a few visual bugs with workers being freezed in the rocks and I couldn't get them to move but it didn't affect the gameplay I think.
Great job! :smiley:
It was a bit of a unique take. I initially didn't realize that I had to dig the shaft and then keep going. I was saving up enough to do it once cause I thought that was it haha. But once it went down one layer it all opened up :P.
Good job!
Have fun out there!
Thanks for the heads up! I fixed the link, sorry for the inconvenience
@peachtreeoath
Thank you for the detailed feedback! About building in the lower levels, did you clear out the rocks? After destroying them you should have space to build. And you should totally check out Frostpunk it is incredible game.
@linus
I didn't explain it in the game, but in the nighttime, workers do construction works (or dismantle buildings) if there is any. Good idea about limiting the number of workers working on the shaft, i could really indicate it better to the player. And thank you very much for the expanded feedback, glad that you liked the game.
@logicon211
Yeah, you have to keep going down to escape constant freeze waves :D I wanted to make small intro which would explain the story better and set some mood for the game but i ran out of time.
@phlip45
I didn't explain it in the game, but in the nighttime, workers do construction works (or dismantle buildings) if there is any. It is quite useful later in the game since you can dismantle buildings and get some resources from the layer that is about to be frozen. And I added 'speed up' time option which i hoped would help with idle moments in the game. And thank you for the detailed feedback, glad you enjoyed the game!
The art was really cute but I would enjoy seeing the UI style being a bit more consistent. Tutorialisation is also a difficult thing to make time for in an LD but is also quite important. The balance was surprinsingly good! It wasn't back soul crushingly difficult, but you couldn't just afk either. Thank you for being so patient on my stream and really well done!
Thanks! I hoped that the objectives list would help someone if never played this kind of game
@spacemonkey
Thanks for the detailed feedback! You are right about the building preview turning red when you don't have enough resources is not the best way to do that. Watching some streamers, it was somewhat confusing to them. You can press RMB to hide all building options, i know it is not intuitive but the deselection on any LMB click that is not on the building was kinda glitchy and i ran out of time to look at that. And thank you very much for all of that feedback, hopefully you will also like the Steam game ;)
@sokuaisushi
Thanks for playing the game on stream! It was really fun to watch the game being played live and hang out in the stream!
@gleb-shishov
Thanks, sorry for the confusing starting part of the game, still glad that you liked the game, it was fun to watch you play on Stream and later see some 3d modelling action ;)
@ventura @cristihkj
Ayyy thanks!
@ixchow
Congratz on completing the game, I am glad that you liked the game! And yeah, the game did offer a lot of *depth* ;)
@lealoo
I was going to add more mechanics and complex systems but as it is, the whole coding stuff took a lot of time. And thank you for the feedback very much!
@digital-bacon
Ha, i somehow missed the similarity to X-Com until you pointed it out :D Glad that you liked the game
@wolar
I agree, the night time was supposed to be more busy since in the 'free time' workers work on construction / dismantling the building but in the end most of the nights were pretty uneventful. I added option speed up time so the nights wouldn't take that long (20 seconds in the max speed i think). And yeah the sun was kinda desynced with the actual time, i made some last hour changes and noticed that too late to fix. And thank you for the detailed feedback and glad that you liked the game!
@belowparallel-ian
Thanks for the feedback! Sorry about the resolution 'bug', i forgot to add resolution restrictions to the game which as you pointed out can be pretty game breaking. I agree, the night time was supposed to be more busy since in the 'free time' workers work on construction / dismantling the building but in the end most of the nights were pretty uneventful. I added option speed up time so the nights wouldn't take that long (20 seconds in the max speed i think)
@ryanjavanshir
Heh thanks, in the second day of the game jam i realized that i spent A LOT of time on coding and yet there was still ton of stuff to do, i had to cut a lot of planned stuff :D Glad that you enjoyed the game and please check out the voiceactor's YT channel, he is pretty chill and actually wants to do some more voiceacting stuff if you are interested
@pickens-inc
Thanks for the very detailed and thanks for playing the game on stream! You are right about the tutorial, i realize how important it is for LD games yet i really couldn't find time to make one in the game (hence the objectives list to guide the player at the beginning of the game), I already cut a lot of stuff, like different areas have different resource income potential (underground roots give bonus to sawmill, underground lakes give bonus to farm etc). Thanks again for playing the game and long feedback and good luck with expanding your game!
Thanks! You are right, the game kind throws you in the middle of it without any tutorial, hopefully objectives list was helpful enough ;) And you are right about the button feedback, it feels kinda 'blank' to use the UI, adding some effects to it def would improve how the 'experience' is received. Thanks for the detailed feedback, glad you liked the game
@kapiteinkoekwous
Thanks for playing the game on stream! Watching the VOD was really entertaining and you gave a lot of interesting feedback, glad you enjoyed the game!
@drauthius
Thanks, and yeah game definitely could use some serious polishing ;)
@firesplash-entertainment @honigkuchenpups
Thanks for playing the game on stream, it was entertaining to watch the game being played, glad you liked it. And good luck with expanding your game!
I managed a win, and I felt like the game ended at just the right time. I had experimented a bit and figured out the rules, and was just about to start just repeating my plan each level to get down one more, and I was just starting to feel like maybe I was done when the game congratulated me.
I did have a few graphical issues. Some of the game graphics would appear above UI elements, I grabbed a screenshot of an example: https://imgur.com/3gs53gz
I also felt like I was supposed to be able to use some of the slots at the edge, here is a whole-screen shot: https://imgur.com/1DZkEqX
I don't know if that black zone to the right was intended, but there seemed to be a slot there I could almost build on (I built a farm there on the top layer) and then on the left I cannot select that pile of rocks to clear it.
Nevertheless I was able to make a working system with just the available slots, although it helped that after my initial farming I didn't need to do any more. I had 2 houses, and 3 more slots. I'd do a sawmill + quarry, and then the third would switch depending on what resource became the bottleneck. It was usually wood but sometimes I would demolish the second saw to put a second quarry in.
It was interesting to navigate the tradeoffs between assigning crews to resource creation vs drilling (which consumes). I usually tried to do as much drilling as I could in order to get down to the lower level early, so I could have the rocks cleared out in advance.
It was cool that I felt like I was ahead, but then suddenly the freeze would come and it seemed like I'd just barely made it in time to rebuild without being homeless for a night!
I really got drawn into this one, very nice job!
Oh, and I've checked out Godly Corp steam page as well. It seems like a hilarious game, haha. Something like Octodad but first-person. I don't have much feedback, just a small piece of advice - I'd re-order the screenshots a bit so that each of the first few screens was with a new level/background in it; with how over-saturated the market is, you have to go all-in on the first impression your page gives, so more variety early on/less variety later on is better than average variety all the way through. If it makes the second half of the list look too similar, you could always just remove some of the screenshots altogether. But yeah, it's just an opinion, of course.
Well done! Both with the LD submission and the steam game - I see a lot of soul poured into your works, keep at it, I hope to see you making it big someday!
> Mate, we are underground. I can't see anything!
Neato management simulation. Having to abandon the surface and push further down the depths is a thematic idea and could be expanded with hazards (cave-ins, monsters, etc.) and additional mechanics (light, heat & water management once entering the mines)
For me the biggest issue is the visuals. While alone fine, put together I don't find the colors, models, GUI and lighting very appealing. Elaborating:
- The GUI textures clash with the flat shaded 3D models. They also lack cohesion among themselves.
- The lighting over saturates the colors. Using linear color space and reducing the intensity would do.
- All of the GUI elements at the bottom are bigger than they need to be, taking space and cluttering the view.
- Workers without animations look like ghosts gliding around (they sometimes bug out too, flying through floors!). In the end they aren't really needed, so maybe dropping them altogether would have been a good idea due to the tight jam deadline.
Good design, interesting to play, oozes potential, visuals lack polish.