It was shortly after I received a Flamin' Hot Keytar towards the end of my second day that I realized it was impossible to lower your debt with a metal detector. I was a mad man trying to beat the clock but there is just no way to win!

Great work - so many sprites, so many quips by the people in the background, really good job on everything.

I love the presentation! The pixel art, music, SFX, and the background stuff like characters talking to you as you walk past, and the leap into bed at the end of the day, is really great.

Unfortunately, unless I missed some hidden mechanic, it seems the there is basically no gameplay apart from to hold right and spam the spacebar. You will never miss an item this way and it guarantees you get as much as you can from a single day.

The idea of going deeper and deeper into debt is a nice one though, just not sure it's effectively communicated in the game.

Heh, nice interpretation of the theme. I enjoyed it; even though there wasn't a lot to the gameplay, I liked watching the story unfold, and all the little background details made the forest and the little community seem very alive. And I always chuckled at Earl's "Waaagh."

@morphine Hey, glad you liked it! I tried to capture that air of futility as you struggle against the clock and debt but inevitably fail. No matter how many rad keytars you dig up...

@sam-bigos Yeah, I definitely could've done better at conveying the debt thing. I'd had cutscenes in mind for between the days, but I got into the later hours of the second day and it just wasn't happening. As far as the gameplay is concerned... it's sort of a spoon to the soup that is the kinda crap story, sorry. xD

@logan Thanks, I made the "Waaagh" myself. xD

Great job! Nice mood, sounds and pixel art but I found the gameplay repetitive.

Please clean up your download! You have a compressed binary, and an uncompressed binary, and your source code, and it makes the download unjustifiably huge. Not scoring on that, just complaining.

I liked everything about this game except the game part of the game, and the portrayal of some of the characters. The latter is a taste/culture thing, but regarding the former, it's just not engaging, and I nearly quit after the first 30 seconds figuring I had done everything I was going to get to. I was right, but I'm glad I stayed for the less tangible details. I'll say the decrease in the number of items in later days was a neat idea, but didn't exactly help me enjoy playing. There really needed to be more to the mechanic.

The details going on in the background are great (though some initially tricked me into expecting a story hook from them), and the music is so easy to fail to appreciate, being as tasteful as it is. To anybody else reading this, listen to it! It's great! That's <48 hours for legitimately good music that changes level to level!

I appreciate the game as a commentary on debt and the difficulty in escaping it. The music and sound (waaaahhhhh!) were really superb, and the graphics were well done. I enjoyed my time playing it because of the music and the side characters, but the game itself is just not all that fun unfortunately.

As an aside, the left/right were swapped on my controller, an xbox one controller.

One of my favorite LD games I've played so far! This one felt very complete. The rockin' tunes, the pixel art, and the sense of humor. All wonderful and it put a smile on my face. Awesome interpretation of going deeper and deeper into debt lol. My favorite was the old dude on the rock sippin' his beer. Keep it up!!

Firstly, don't worry about Game Maker, it be like that sometimes xD That engine does all the wonky stuff. No one would disqualify your game because Gm decided it's a few hours before the jam. It just happens.
Now to the actual game. It was awesome! I love the graphics, music and sounds (my fav was no the waaah but the ohohohoho of the picnic people btw). The jump at the end of the day was satysfying. Some people mentioned that the gameplay was repetitive etc but my interpretation of it was that during playing it's not about crazy mechanics but about realizing something about the debt and then just stopping when you feel like it. That's why I rated it high ^^ Good one!

A surprisingly meaningful game for 48 hours - well done! The idea of falling deeper and deeper into debt and being unable to dig yourself out was a very unique take on the theme, and having to figure out through gameplay that you couldn't get out was a good way to show that. The gameplay, though, was tedious - a lot of the time was spent just walking right for minutes, and about halfway through I realised the metal detecting - the only real gameplay mechanic there was - was pointless too. Still, I suppose it does show the hopelessness of the situation well, so I shouldn't complain that much about it.

The artwork was nice and the day-night cycle was a great little touch, though it did feel a bit sudden that it changed so quickly. The background was really good too, and the little details like the cut down trees around the lumberjack's house just helped make the world feel more alive. I liked the animation too, since it felt pretty smooth, if a little slow for the speed you were going at. The music was brilliant, and very high quality for the 48 hours. Having different tracks each day was really nice too. The sound effects when talking were also great, so good job on those.

It was a nice experience, and had some real depth to it, so well done!

nice work. like a lot.

interesting work! i enjoyed it a fair bit, between the flavor of the bg characters and the silly pricing of things - could definitely be something players could sink hours into with upgrades and such, but that's also probably not rly the point of the game.

Loved this. The other characters and little background scenes kept me going to the end. The metal detecting got tedious but I couldn't decide if that was intentional( and part of the theme) or not.

Great looking game.
I really love how frustrating it is.. xD

Fun concept, I think its a bit light on content inside, but what's there is really fun. I think a larger debt meter might help convey how impossible it is as well. Overall really well done though.

I really liked this. The gameplay is not engaging, but it really doesn't need to be - the repetitive, pointless nature of it kinda connects to the trouble of paying off immense debt. I think that you made the right decision in dedicating time towards the minute details, such as the dialogue, music, and background. Each day, I saw something new or interesting. The last walk, wherein the debt doesn't matter and the dialogue becomes much more personal, was a nice finishing touch. In all, I think there is a lot of substance and ideas portrayed in such a small game :)

i like your pixalated style. although the game play is quite boring, i still find an interesting concept

Almost didn't click on this game because it didn't have a thumbnail on the LD homepage but I'm glad I did, haha. Funny concept and I appreciated the surprise of all the different objects you can dig up. It's also a nice looking game and the audio is a banger. I like how you gave both audio and visual feedback for the metal detector. The concept fits the theme perfectly even when the gameplay is a little tedious at times.