Kaze No Kami by ssh.randy
You are the Winds of God! Wreak havoc upon the lands, and keep your flame alive!
WASD to control the Winds of God.
Play here
We wanted to explore the concept of the player being a usually inanimate force, so in this game you play as the wind. We didn't get as far as we wanted in terms of art, level design, sounds, and additional game play mechanics. However, we did complete our basic proof of concept for the core fire spreading mechanic that we find is quite representative of our initial vision.
The player must balance multiple supplies of burning tiles in order to (in this case) stay alive. We also provide some natural barriers (water, rain) that the player must avoid. It would be interesting to add other agents, such as burning buildings, NPC forces, elevation maps so the fire could climb up and down hills. We also wanted to add objectives to the game (protect this forest, destroy this polluting factory, etc).
Looking for feedback on: - How do you think we could improve the core mechanic? - By nature the controls are very limited, but do you have other ideas to use wind force as an interesting interaction? - What do you like or dislike about the concept?
Things we know need improvement: - Sound - Art - Level design
| Youtube | https://lab318.itch.io/kaze-kami |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/kaze-kami |
Ratings
| Overall | 2056th | 3.091⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2209th | 2.739⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 371th | 3.75⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1444th | 3.557⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1842th | 3.114⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 2030th | 2.86⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 58🗨️ |
Thanks for the game!
After a while, I really just stopped caring about what the ground looked like and just moved around. The "protect the forest" idea is intriguing and I'd love to see some mechanics added revolving around NOT burning certain things. (Like turning forests/cities into grass/flowers over time, etc.)
* The Wind has very global effects; maybe something local could be fun? maybe one or two objects like hot air ballons that can be "controlled" and crash into something?
* I like the calm atmosphere of the game; its really just playing around that I enjoyed. BTW I actually did enjoy the sounds
we'll make sure to make an update to this game at some point. we'd love to release it on android!
Since you asked for suggestions:
* I'd make heavier use of the wind lines to really sell that the player is controlling the wind.
* I read the description text, but it still wasn't clear to me what I should be doing while playing. It was fun as a simulation, but as a game, I didn't know what my goals were and whether or not I was achieving them.
* I think there's a lot of opportunity for interesting wind-based gameplay. You can clearly blow the fire around. I expected to be able to blow the rain clouds, but I don't think that's happening? Might be interesting blow regions of hot and cold air? If you're a destructive wind god, maybe play around with generating and controlling tornadoes.
Anyway, great work.
Those ideas sound great. A lot of our limitations were because we lacked the time to polish our game, we just wanted to demonstrate the core concept first. But we will keep these in mind when we make followups!
The gameplay is super simple, but I think it doesn't have to be more than this. It was pretty fun just trying to burn every thing :)
Could use some nice, relaxing background music to take it to another level, but overall nice job!
It's too bad you didn't have time to add more features because after the first few minutes of play it loses some novelty. As you said, a few other agents would bring a lot of life.
As for additional controls, what about some cooldowns, like launching a tornado to quickly recover from a bad situation?
Anyway, great entry.
Now just put it to good use!