Keep it Fire by Mykola
Winter is coming and there is nobody left in the forest to keep the bonfire alive. That's why you have to figure it out yourself.
Start as a tiny flame and consume logs to get bigger. Avoid cold and water, otherwise you're going to have to start over while your fire source gets weaker. Share the gathered flame with the bonfire to keep it burning.
What are you waiting for? Go ahead and prove that you're on fire!
Rules & Controls
Don't let your bonfire die out.
Feed your bonfire to keep it burning and win the game.
Jump and sprint are your best friends.
Credits
The font was developed by Fuego Fatuo at http://www.woodcutter.es and used under the free license.
All the rest of the contents were developed from scratch during the game jam by Mykola Herasymovych.
Soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/mykola-herasymovych/keepitfire-soundtrack
Tools used: - Unity3D - Krita - FL Studio - Audacity
Notes
In case the web version doesn’t work in Chrome, try using Mozilla Firefox.
!Please note that the webGL version on itch is the post-jam version of the game. If you want to rate the original game please download an original game archive for your platform.!
Bug fixes:
The original jam version of the game was updated with the following bug fixes: - Fixed instructions in the Pause screen to be correct. - Fixed the issue of being able to run through tiles. - Fixed the issue of spawning inside the tilemap.
Post-Jam version:
Thanks a lot for playing and for all the feedback shared about the game! You motivated me to work more on the game and improve it. Archives with a post-jam version of the game are available on itch.io. The following things were changed: - Log respawn rates were adjusted to avoid player collecting only logs near the bonfire. - The level design and game parameters were adjusted to make the game more interesting. - Chill difficulty mode was added for those who don't like to die and just want to go through the experience in a calm way. - Challenging difficulty more was added for those who want to use their agility and ingenuity to complete the game while still not sweating too much. I recommend to start with this one. - Die a Lot mode was added for those who would like to test their platformer skills. It's hard but it's doable.
| Youtube | https://kolebas.itch.io/keep-it-fire |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-it-fire |
Ratings
| Overall | 636th | 3.322⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 661th | 3.122⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 682th | 3.1⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 269th | 3.943⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 420th | 3.589⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 299th | 3.391⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 797th | 2.079⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 504th | 3.227⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 58🗳️ | 67🗨️ |
I really liked the music, and the concept it quite well executed.
Thanks for the good game!
One thing I would mention is changing "Sprint" to "Dash" in the instructions to make it a bit more clear
Well Done!
Yeah, I was thinking that it might be a problem but forgot to adjust the balance before submission. Good point, I'll fix it in the next version. Also will highlight the controls better.
Thank you for the kind words!
Thank you for the kind words, will definitely check your game.
Yeah, I saw this problem but unfortunately didn't have time to fix before the submission. Thank you for the hint, I will check discrete/continuous collisions out. It was the first time I used tilemaps in Unity so wasn't so confident in the collisions part. I'll try to fix it in the next version though.
The music is great I loved it.
Enjoy the experience
You're right, I need to decrease the respawn time so that it barely makes up for the normal fire decay, then the player would be forced to take more risk. Yeah, I tried to make it rather challenging but still achievable, also giving more points if logs are hard to get. High risk high reward kind of thing.
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
1) It's too easy. There's no incentive to venture far from the bonfire and risk danger, because you can wait near the bonfire for logs to respawn. And there's no reason to take fire from the bonfire when you can just wait for those two logs a mere jump away to respawn.
2) This is more an opinion about the whole idea: I think you did yourself a disservice making it a platformer. The ability to take and give fire makes it more innovative, but when I saw the title screen, I was expecting a Gods Will Be Watching sort of game. If you're inexperienced in making games, then that's okay, you've got to learn by making the easy genres. But in the future, don't be afraid to try making something out of your comfort zone. If this had been a cozy, warming, atmospheric experience, I would've given it 5 stars on Mood.
all in all, a decent entry that still needs some touching up to be a really good! Hope you can work with the feedback (even if I'm sounding a bit harsh). I think honest feedback is worth a lot. Also, I immediately clicked on your game when I saw the Cover art :) We developed a fire/wood-related game as well. Gotta stick to the stuff you know and love!
Cheers
Like others have already said, it was a bit too easy to just loop around the area near the bonfire and win.
That said, I found the other stuff too difficult and frustrating, which is why it's so "tempting" to cheese the game and win with the nearby respawning logs.
Perhaps some kind of ledge grab mechanic, or, improving the controls somehow, would make it more fun to explore the map and get new logs?
Thanks for making this! :D
Thanks a lot for playing and for all the feedback shared about the game, it's really invaluable! You motivated me to invest more time and effort in the game and improve it. I fixed the mentioned bugs and did some small improvements to the game difficulty. Archives with a post-jam version of the game are available on itch.io. The following things were changed:
- Fixed instructions in the Pause screen to be correct.
- Fixed the issue of being able to run through tiles.
- Fixed the issue of spawning inside the tilemap.
- Log respawn rates were adjusted to avoid player collecting only logs near the bonfire.
- The level design and game parameters were adjusted to make the game more interesting.
- Chill difficulty mode was added for those who don’t like to die and just want to go through the experience in a calm way.
- Challenging difficulty more was added for those who want to use their agility and ingenuity to complete the game while still not sweating too much. I recommend to start with this one.
- Die a Lot mode was added for those who would like to test their platformer skills. It’s hard but it’s doable.
Thank you once again and I hope you will enjoy the updated version!
I fully agree that it would be a lot more fun to try something new. But it was my first Compo jam and I didn't want to take too much but rather make sure that I end up with a complete game. Now that this milestone has been successfully completed, I will definitely experiment more in my next jam!
Thank you so much for sharing!
Regarding some of your comments:
"collision quirks" has been resolved.
"Looks like you needed a double jump or other special powers" - actually, Jump and Sprint are all you need to get to all the logs around the level.
"Respawning was bugged sometimes" - but not anymore - fixed!
"it wasn’t really clear, what the goal of the game or the motivation of the player was" - really sorry for that. I tried to describe the backstory and the goals in the game description. You can also find the winning condition in the tutorial screen. But I agree that this information doesn't come naturally. I really like how you approached it in your game though. I had a lot to learn from it in terms of story-telling and pretty much all of the game aspects.
And for sure, harsh is the kind of feedback I really value. That's how I learn. So thanks a lot for all those points, they really motivated me to improve!
the jumping can be a bit wonky at times but overall i had a pretty good time
Wow, I'm really surprised and flattered regarding the music! To be honest, I didn't spend as much time on it as I would want to. But I'm really glad that you liked it. You motivated me to upload it to https://soundcloud.com/mykola-herasymovych/keepitfire-soundtrack in case you want to add it to your playlist or check my other tracks. As before, harsh feedback is highly appreciated :)
It is really hard to get grasp of the controls. The insta-death holes are unforgiving.
The graphics are very nice!
For the namings - I would choose something different than "Fire" for the character. Maybe add it some eyes and call it "Fire imp" or something.
Also the instructions screen is very dense :) Some tutorial with checkpoints would be nice.
I liked the option to choose lower difficulty! I guess I am getting old because I find all the games very hard :D
Thanks for uploading!
Thanks a lot for the feedback. I would definitely consider the controls and tutorial more critically next time. Regarding "Fire", I agree, it would definitely give the game more persona. I did want to make the character more cute with eyes and everything, but after spending about an hour for the sole fire animation I had to prioritize to finish the game in time.
Thank you so much for playing and sharing your thoughts!
While the jumping felt fine in terms of gravity and speed and whatnot, I had some gripes with the movement and physics in other areas. Some of the collision seemed glitchy and inconsistent - sometimes I'd get stuck partway on the edge of a platform; sometimes if I pressed against a wall when falling, but other times I'd slide off.
The dash/sprint move was confusing to me at first. I initially thought it was a sort of air-dash move, but then I realized it was more of a sprint/speed boost with a cost the longer you hold it for. I think I was probably confused because of how fast it is and how it's mostly useful when used mid-air, which is kinda contrary to the idea of a "sprint".
Nice game overall, keep it up.
Graphics are very cool, the music too !
The concept is nice, you get a good idea. The only thing is about collisions : When we move on a wall direction while we are aside it, we clip into it.
Very nice !
- Interestingly, fire only drains when you first press run - if you keep holding, fire doesn't drain any faster than normal! This, of course, makes the fire really fast and hard to control. It's still fun to zip around, though!
- My typical strategy was to get the player up to 100, dump about 90 into the bonfire, then collect the three nearest the fire and win
- I sure did Die A Lot! Ended up making a route for that difficulty, which goes like this: rush over to the bottom left, picking up a triple and a single along the way and ending up with 40. Get the two triples down there, make the impossible corner jump, exiting with about 70, then rush along the top for the floating platform triple, for about 90. Get the top right triple, and then rush back to the fire, dumping in 90 and picking up the nearest three logs for the final 10!
- Did I mention the impossible corner jump? It sure was impossible!
- Never noticed that the single logs respawn - it isn't in the tutorial menu! My route never required respawning logs.
- Completion time: 35:08 (I took 9:15 to beat Challenging, and the rest of the time to beat Die A Lot)
To be honest I only beat the game on the easiest difficulty - damn is this hard :sweat_smile:
The only issue I have with it is that it lacks any tutorial to slowly teach you everything. Instead, it just throws the instruction screen at you with a ton of text to read and remember. It's not a big issue, since the mechanics are not that difficult to learn on your own in a few short minutes, but I feel like a slower introduction of everything would make it better.
Also, the instruction screenshot here in the LD game description is wrong - the "take from bonfire" and "give to bonfire" buttons are switched.
All in all, it's a really good game. I had fun playing it. ;)
The screen that explains the controls is too complicated, it confuse the player, but after all, the game is easy to learn.
I really enjoyed playing it. Good job !
I really liked the idea that you have to keep yourself and something else alive and have to share the same HP, so to say :) The graphics were very cute, however I wouldn't mix different styles so much if I were you, either make everything in a pixel art style or cartooney (the trees) either way, keep the same pixel density, or if you wan't it to do it on purpose then go extreme, like in the Amazing World of gumball ^^
the controls worked very smooth, didn't realize any bugs, however, this is one of the games were controller support would make the whole expirience even better :) (I comment that under so much games lol, but it's the truth!!! ^^)
I really really really liked that you made a pause menu and put an explanation of all the controls here, I wish more gamejam entries would do this. There's nothing worse than a LD game hat has hundreds of controls to memorize and you having to minimize the game to read about them which ofc makes you die in return.. gaaahh.. that really makes games feel like a chore, instead of.. you know, a game ^^
Gameplay and "story" wise I thought it's sad that you're gonna die no matter what, felt kind of hopeless :P
also, I sometimes felt that some logs simply weren't worth it (to go there, I'm going to lose more health than what the log will give me because of time+jump penality+ice, so maybe balance that a bit more :)
All in all a good job, congratz on finishing your game :))
I really liked the idea that you have to keep yourself and something else alive and have to share the same HP, so to say :) The graphics were very cute, however I wouldn't mix different styles so much if I were you, either make everything in a pixel art style or cartooney (the trees) either way, keep the same pixel density, or if you wan't it to do it on purpose then go extreme, like in the Amazing World of gumball ^^
the controls worked very smooth, didn't realize any bugs, however, this is one of the games were controller support would make the whole expirience even better :) (I comment that under so much games lol, but it's the truth!!! ^^)
I really really really liked that you made a pause menu and put an explanation of all the controls here, I wish more gamejam entries would do this. There's nothing worse than a LD game hat has hundreds of controls to memorize and you having to minimize the game and read about them, that really makes games feel like a chore.
Gameplay and "story" wise I thought it's sad that you're gonna die no matter what, felt kind of hopeless :P
also, I sometimes felt that some logs simply weren't worth it (to go there, I'm going to lose more health than what the log will give me because of time+jump penality+ice, so maybe balance that a bit more :)
All in all a good job, congratz on finishing your game :))
I agree about pixel resolution inconsistency. It's my first pixel art, so I wanted to try it out so badly that I didn't plan that the background image had to be in pixel art with the same resolution. Just didn't have to make it pixel-perfect. And yeah, I guess I need more polishing of Unity tilemap collisions.
Thanks a lot for your comments, I will definitely consider them for my next game!
Actually, the fire should drain about two times faster when sprinting. I'll double-check!
Thank you for documenting your walk through in detail. It's really great to know that all that game balancing didn't go in vain and someone could finish the game apart from me!
Die a Lot - yes, that's almost exactly how I planned it! Took me some time to get it working and finish myself. And you totally have my respect for figuring out the impossible corner jump! That was one thing I was afraid noone would be able to complete. You also need to be of a smaller size to do it, that's why I usually started with that one. I got to a point where I managed to do the jump from about third try, so I understand how frustrating it was =D
I agree, respawn might be redundant for experienced players but I left it in case you can't complete the fire from the first round and so that you can repeat without dying.
Thank you so for putting your time and effort into playing the game! I hope you enjoyed it and I definitely got very good feedback to work with.
I totally agree that the tutorial is a bit overwhelming and have put it to my to-do list for the next game jam to make it more interactive and step by step.
Thank you for mentioning the art style issue, I will definitely keep it in mind next time. I haven't heard of the Amazing World of Gumball before but now that I checked some gameplay videos I understand what you mean. And I actually really like the idea of extreme mixing of different styles but I would need to be really careful with that so that it doesn't become just a mess.
Yes, I had an idea to add a gamepad support but it went to background when I had to prioritize the game critical features. I agree that it would feel a lot more natural to play a platformer using a controller.
Good point about the story! I haven't thought that calling a difficulty level "Die a Lot" would make a player hopeless. Should've considered that.
And regarding logs, most of them are required to pass the hardest difficulty. But you're right that they are not needed when playing on a simpler level when you're not trained to get them yet. So definitely more work needed on the game and level design.
Thank you so much for the kind words and for all the relevant points. I'll definitely consider them and improve!
You're totally right about the tutorial overwhelming, it's on my to do list to improve it. Thank you pointing out the mistake in the screenshot, will fix!
I think it's hard to win in the post jam version, I had a lot of difficulties to reach few platforms ^^
If you find it hard to reach some platforms, try using jump and sprint at the same time. It will let you jump further.
Скролинг мира - не замечал такого эффекта. Возможно что-то не так с CameraFollow логикой. Спасибо за фидбэк!