Lost Caravan by spacecadet
You are stuck in a dangerous desert. Follow the trails of your caravan and remember to stay hydrated.
Controls: up/down arrows OR W and S
Background music and font are downloaded copyright free, everything else is self made. First time ever participating in a game jam :)

| Youtube | https://jerrre.itch.io/lost-caravan |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/lost-caravan |
Ratings
| Overall | 1358th | 3.068⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1154th | 3.041⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1567th | 2.405⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1545th | 2.608⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 513th | 3.878⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 933th | 2.857⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 910th | 2.544⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1118th | 3.086⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 53🗨️ |
The player collider seemed a little bigger than I'd expect it to be which contributed to a lot of my deaths, but overall I had a fun time with this one!
Ah and now I understood the idea with the skulls.
Nice hint.
The track mechanic is very nice and adds alot to the game.
I had a lot of fun, thank you!
I liked the art style, the characters and backgrounds are drawn really well!
I agree with the others, in how the collider is a little too big for the character, but its a minor bug.
The UI is great! Loved how well it fitted in with the rest of the game.
To conclude, a great game! Congrats and thanks!
@eldelhas The loop was intended to be when you choose wrong path and are forced to restart the current level. So in a way you are stuck in a desert until you find your way out. On the other hand when you die the level and the correct path might be different.
As others have mentioned, it is a little unclear when you will or will not be hitting something. Sometimes I saw my health drop to my surprise. The audio is also turned down a bit low.
Yeah I agree that the hitboxes are a bit too big. However, @bredera and @fc85057, if you took hit clearly away from the enemies, could it be that your hydration level had dropped to 0? In that case you will start taking damage also until you find another water skin. If not then the hitboxes are completely broken on some enemies :D
I didn't realise at first that there were wheels and skulls to indicate which path I should take, but after I figured that out i managed to get to the caravan. Maybe some tracks or other more obvious clues would help with that, unless the point was that you had to figure that out.
What I expected was that the game plays in kind of lanes, and that enemies can hit you only when you're in their lane. When I realized that the movement is smooth all around the vertical axis, I expected that the colliders would be something like on the picture.

Still I kept playing for a while cause I really, really like the graphics, and also I wanted to know if I'll ever reach the caravan or if I'm just stuck in a loop of procedural generation. I like the enemy variability, even though there's just two of them, they're very distinct by their behavior as well as player reaction to it. You got some good stuff going on, some neat ideas and very interesting art direction which rubs me the right way, you definitely should keep it up!
I cannot say much about the controls and the inertia as it is more a matter of personal taste but the speed of the player stays the same during the gameplay. It might feel a bit laggy with slower computer or bad internet connection but the speed stays the same nonetheless.
We thought that it would have been enough of a hint in the description to say that "...and remember to stay hydrated" for a player to understand that collecting water is essential to stay alive. I agree that some visual hint would be nice to have too.
The colliders are too big yes. Something like what you draw would be more player friendly as now the players collider resembles more the whole sprite than just the legs. The enemy colliders are pretty much how you imagined, maybe a bit bigger.