Mind The Vagazar by Ryan Ackermann

Keep the horrific beast at bay
The great Vagazar of lore is ravenous without steak in it's belly. Careful the beast is hunted by spears... it will ATTACK! You, a winged Cluffen, are responsible for this beast. Feed it a healthy amount of food or else. The hunters do not know how dangerous this beast is.
Controls
- ARROW keys or WASD for directional movement.
- SPACE or LEFT click for action.
Guide
Attack cows until they drop streak. Pick up steak and feed the Vagazar. Keep the hunters away from the bestir it's hunger will rapidly fall.
I hope you enjoy and have some fun defending the land and keeping the beast at bay.
Development summary
- macOS Catalina (os)
- Game Maker Studio 2 (game dev)
- Aseprite (pixel graphics)
- GarageBand & BFXR (sound & music)
- Affinity Designer (cover art)
NOTE: In order to launch the game on macOS, copy / move the game from the DMG to another place in the Finder, ex the Downloads folder. If you're running macOS Catalina, make sure to right click on the game after moving it and select "Open". After doing so, another "Open" dialog will launch the game. Annoying this is so complicated :dizzy_face:
Ratings
| Overall | 863th | 3.02⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 954th | 2.64⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 924th | 2.74⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 716th | 3.46⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 500th | 3.48⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 459th | 3.16⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 594th | 2.583⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 773th | 2.886⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
The game could be a little more challenging, but overall it was very well pulled off!
Good job !
@sergio-gonzalez Thanks for the kind feedback. I'm happy with how far I got, but if only I had a little more time to add a few more things and tweak the difficulty.
@patatenouille You are right, would have caught that with more play testing before the deadline.
@horbee Thanks! I had an item on my list to add scoring based on time. One of the things that didn't make the cut though.
:laughing:

But there wasn't really a change of pace, they kept coming in the same manner for 5 minutes. Or I wasn't patient enough?
- If I just wasn't patient enough, then some indication would be good for the game's progress.
- If there isn't a progress or goal, then it's a shame, because I really enjoyed the game, and wouldn't have stopped playing it if something new would keep me motivated once a while.
Maybe you could earn points, and there would be multiple levels, with new mechanics, or enemy types. And the higher levels would need a good highscore on previous ones to be unlocked.
Nice entry, enjoyed it, and the graphics is neat!
While the movement feels good, the attack hit detection was having some issues - sometimes I'd be unintentionally killing cows halfway across the screen. As others have pointed out, there did not seem to be any win conditions, only a loss if too many hunters accumulated, which was very easy to avoid once you got the mechanics down.
This is a great little entry, and by adding a score and a ramping difficulty to eventually overwhelm the player, I think this would feel like a complete game. Good job!
Good job.
Very good sound, with the evocative soundtrack along with the satisfying sound effects. I really liked the graphics. I liked your twist on the theme, keeping alive the hunters by satisfying a hungry beast was a cool concept based around a relatively cut-and-dry theme.
Areas for improvement:
As others have said, a harder difficulty curve would have helped enormously. This isn't necessarily feasible for 48 hours, but I would have liked a few more twists to keep things engaging, such as different hunters, or steaks going bad. A boundary to prevent the player leaving the area could have been nice, but it was fine not to have one.
Overall:
I love the presentation, through graphics, audio, and story, although I would have liked a little more in terms of game play.
@snail I really appreciate the feedback. I agree with your ideas for improvement. Next game jam I participate in, I'll remember how much difficulty progression helps.