Keeping Your Fire Alive by Louis Hong





Hook
What lies outside the bonfire is abyss.
Why are you here?
Who are you?
There is one true ending to the game.
A short story based on The Egg Short story by Andy Weir
Hints
Use left click to play, you can click on most things you see. That's it!
PRESS M TO UNLOCK MOUSE
Orignal Plans, no longer possible but I got a better idea ;) (SPOILERS)

(Cover Image is Shovel Knight Screenshot)
| Youtube | https://louisgamedev.itch.io/keeping-your-fire-alive |
| Youtube | |
| Youtube | |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keeping-it-alive-the-fire-within |
Ratings
| Overall | 1555th | 3.35⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2169th | 2.775⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1731th | 3.025⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1707th | 3.429⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1803th | 3.15⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 807th | 3.421⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1572th | 2.533⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 423th | 3.842⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
I'm happy with my game.
But I know I have a long ways to go to be called "good".
if you found it boring, I want to hear it. if it was bad I want to hear it.
help, I wanna be better.
The game lacks some features and content, but it's understandable given how late you pivoted away from your previous idea. One solid criticism I have is that the timed dialog made the ending especially slow. With no way to click through the dialog or speed it up, I got impatient and exited out early (I've read The Egg before so I'm pretty sure I know how it goes, but please tell me if you changed it!)
Solid entry, atmosphere was great. Would love to see this expanded with more content!
I'm thankful for your generous feedback, and I'm also glad you read the egg!
The only issue I had was the pacing, the text at the "true ending" went way too slow and I wished I was able to click through it to read at my own speed.
Nice job!
The first time I run into the part where I chop down a tree and saw the red eyes were amazing. The narrative was starting to build up and it kept me hooked.
I quite hoped the game had more mechanics, aside from attacking trees and keeping the fire alive. Maybe there was and I missed them?
There should have been more visual cues to tell the player what to do. I was able to figure out what to do because I spam clicked everything and learnt from what it did. Since the game is simple enough, it is possible, however, it would be a better user experience if there were some visual cues.
Also, I am not sure if this is part of the game, but I chose the option where you stay for a while longer, but the text box said code breakpoint or something, that kind of broke mood for me.
Overall, a solid entry.
I literally recoiled from my monitor. Simple, but terrifying.
The storyline was really good too. I think I got the true ending. The text overall was *painstakingly* slow between lines, and sometimes (if the lines were long enough), it'd actually scroll past so fast that I would miss parts of the message. Unfortunately, the speed kinda took away from my enjoyment of the story.
Nonetheless, it is rather creative and simply terrifying. Again, your story is great, aside from the slow transcription.
I wish I could click text to continue. Especially in the last dialogue, the duration between texts got REALLY, REALLY long. Like, half a minute between texts. And then sometimes 5 lines drop so fast that it's impossible to read them properly.
And I wonder if there is more to do in further iterations of the loop? I:
- Let the fire die down and went up an iteration.
- Went exploring.
- Refused to go exploring once, got chided for it and went exploring.
- Refused to go exploring twice, died, got an ending and went up an iteration.
It seems a bit inconsequential to not be able to change the outcome if this is a simulation to prepare me for something.
Atmosphere-wise, I really like how everything works together with rather simple graphics and sfx to create a scary, desolated mood. I especially like the eyes! Although I am a bit sad that they don't seem to play any other role and they don't change anymore, and seem to have nothing to do with the simulation aspect.
Still, very interesting, if a bit unfinished. Good job, especially after pivoting from another idea!
The gameplay is here just to be part of an ambiance and a short narrative, and it fits well together. The eyes are really frightening and questioning.
As said by other, the text speed is awfully slow. I really tried but couldn't stand waiting so long to see the end of the ending. Too bad, It got me intrigued!
Thanks for the game.
Great mood! 💜 I had never heard of the story you based this on before so I had no idea what I was in for. So the world is written in C#, eh? Who'd have thought? 🤔
Audio and graphics work very well together, with the growling before you see those eyes, altho unfortunately I'd already seen the eyes in the screenshot so they didn't end up shocking me quite as much as perhaps they could have haha
I do wish I'd been able to progress the text at my own pace. Sometimes it was very slow, especially in between lines, but sometimes so much text would pass by so quickly that the box would scroll before I'd finished reading the first line and missed some words. 😢
Nice work! Looking forward to seeing what you do next time!