Osage by tvle83
After years of dust storms and extreme drought conditions, the Great Mus Plains that once fed all mice in the kingdom of Muridae are now a barren wasteland with one final hope… Osage, the last harvest mouse in the plains, is tasked with finding the restorative Cybele's Tears that will save the Great Mus Plains. Find all of the Cybele's Tears and collect seeds along the way to save the mice of Muridae!
THE INSOMNIACS: We are a group of young professionals in Oklahoma City with diverse skill sets, including Computer Engineering, Software Development, Graphic Design, and Digital Marketing. While this is the Insomniacs third Ludum Dare, this is our first one since adding two new members to the team and our best game yet!
We used aspects of Oklahoma and its history throughout the game with references to the Dust Bowl, native wildlife, and state counties. As a state that has persevered through natural disasters and economic downturns, we thought it was only right to pay tribute to the Okie spirit through Osage.
| Youtube | https://insomniacs.itch.io/osage |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/osage |
Ratings
| Overall | 838th | 3.145⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1072th | 2.411⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1058th | 2.375⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 985th | 2.645⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 302th | 3.921⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 438th | 3.222⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 766th | 2.244⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 481th | 3.425⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 57🗳️ | 59🗨️ |
Nice entry though! good work
Ignoring the above issue, the art is very cute and clean looking. There's also a nice mood/vibe going on. The mouse running animation seems slow, though the absurd upward jumping angle is funny. The parallaxing effect is neat, but to me seems like it's moving the background/foreground a bit too fast. As others have mentioned, the beginning is very word heavy. I'm also not sure that's the easiest background to read yellow text off of. Might depend on monitor. Simple visuals to break up the text could help, but I'm sure time was an issue.
The platformer mechanics are unfortunately kind of dry. I didn't feel inclined to finish the forest level, as that meant I'd need to climb all the way back up the trees. Maybe the character is a bit slow relative to the size of the map? Maybe there needs to be moving or more unique obstacles? Some platformers also tend to guide players through levels with rather deliberate and consistent trails of things to collect.
I think your group was very ambitious with the storytelling and mood of this game, just fell a bit short on tweaking some of the mechanics. It could be a good start to making a bigger game.
We have been able to isolate the issue and it is in fact where to assets meet. We think there is some interpolation that could help this is a great suggestion, some forums have also described similar issues due to OpenGL rendering so were doing some more research to find the right fix.
As mentioned in previous replies we will be addressing the slowness, we were hoping that the slower speed would add to "feeling small" but in hindsight that doesn't seem to be the case.
We played with various parallaxing speeds and ultimate shipped the ones we had, with some reluctance. We'll definitely be revising this as well.
The text color and presentation was also something we couldn't quite nail down. We agree the text can be hard to read but ultimately went with a cohesive color. We'll be revising the presentation and color as well.
Lastly, due to the 72 hour timeline we did not get to implement all of our visions. We had other characters in mind, other platforming mechanics, and enemies. Think of this as a great launching point, but we were focused on releasing a full miniature game. We're aware it may not be everyone's cup of tea but we're glad we made the decision to release something that has a clear beginning middle and end, albeit some mechanics were sacrificed.
This is only our third ludum dare and were making great strides in picking manageable ideas so stay tuned next time we're sure well have an even better grip on what we can accomplish in 72 hours.
We will be readdressing and rebuilding the game after the Jam so we don't violate any rules, so if you have any interest in the updates be sure to check back on the page!
Thanks again for your play-through!
We're glad you enjoyed the game and art. We really wanted to highlight those skills this Jam.
We were constantly reworking and toying with the physics and we agree its not 100%.
Check back for updates after the compo for our answer to these recurring items!
I would increase the run speed and I also allow the player to continue without collecting all acorns and droplets. Had to look for a missing item for ages. The level design could be made a bit more interesting, with a clearer path where to go next and maybe some sections which are more difficult or dangerous.

However it was a bit confusing what the purpose of the gameplay was, i as collecting acorns and droplets but that was about it, the platformer wasn't that fun neither was the collecting.
Good job overall though! I am sure you will do even better next time.
Pretty solid though, and the screenshots show that there's a lot more pretty landscapes to see.
I feel that it could be very big and doesn't exactly fit the short time of production of a gamejam. With a little bit more time to it I believe it will become a very interesting game :)
Good job overall