Afraid to Turn by rhoff95

Find a cure deep in the forest before you fully transition into a werewolf!
Please give feedback! I will make sure to return the favor for everyone in the comments.

Objective
Collect 5 golden berries and given them to the wizard. He will give you a potion that will cure you.
If you fail to do this in time, you will fully transform into a werewolf and will not be able to return to human form.
How To Play (Click the moon to start)
- The deeper into the woods you go, the more golden berries there are
- Avoid the huge wolf. It takes 2 hits with a rock to go down
If you look carefully, you can see the wolf peeking out of the woods. Throw a rock at its eyes to scare it away
You can also press buttons frantically to punch and kick if he is on top of you
- Transformed limbs will give you bonuses to movement speed and throwing strength
Controls:
- WASD or ARROWS to move
- AIM with RIGHT MOUSE
- THROW with LEFT MOUSE (you have to be aiming to throw)
- Ctrl also if you are using touchpad
- PICKUP / INTERACT with SPACE / E
- Q to cycle help text
The Wizard can help you | Don't let this happen | Find these berries
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Ratings
| Overall | 299th | 3.631⭐ | 272🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 473th | 3.292⭐ | 273🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 418th | 3.264⭐ | 271🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 514th | 3.481⭐ | 272🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 206th | 3.825⭐ | 274🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 146th | 3.735⭐ | 272🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 370th | 2.657⭐ | 234🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 110th | 3.877⭐ | 270🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 191🗳️ | 271🗨️ |
I found the wolf eyes very difficult to see against the background, especially when they looked very similar to the 1 pixel gaps in the treeline (which could have been intentional?)
I'd love to see this fleshed out a bit more. The rock throwing doesn't really feel great and having to run all the way back at the end is a bit tedious.
All in all a solid entry. Well done!
I like the parallax background :)
I think it's cool that the wolves shake your berries/rocks off to pick them back up again.
I had no problems seeing the wolves' eyes. Throwing the rocks is definitely the best strategy vs trying to land 2 rocks before getting bit.
Only gripes I felt was the long backtrack to the wizard.
Also I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong, but I gave the wizard the berries and then the potion spawned, but I wasn't able to pick it up off the ground with my pickup button. Then the darkness consumed me, rip :laughing:
Solid game :)

I'll leave the tab with your game open for now
I love the pixel art animations. And who doesn't love parallax scrolling?
You did a very fine job for only having 48 hours. Keep up the good work!
Love the art and the sound effects, great atmosphere!
but don't like the way of aiming, but the rest is great.
Really great animations given the amount of pixels you were working with, and sounds were super solid. A strong compo entry!
You nailed the autmosphere and the way the art of the character changed over time was so good. Took me a few tries to really get it, but man-
Awesome job.
The only feedback i could give is just the controlls are a little hard on track pad. It might be worth it to make "throw" something like space when you're holding the right click- it was difficult to swap between moving with my left hand and then finding the control key when that's not a button i click super often.
Rreally really awesome job tho. Amazing game :)
I beat the game on my forth playthrough. On the second and third, it seemed that throwing the rocks only made the wolf come out quicker. Even in the last playthough, I threw a rock, it started chasing me, so I let it follow me all the way back to the wizard.
Managed to complete the game in a few runs - perfect amount of gameplay for the game jam. Thanks for it!
The game was really good, and fun to play ! I don't think I have anything to add to all the other comments, but I definitely enjoy playing it !
I like it, I liked to play, that was actually fun and after I came to wizard with wolf on my tail, I didn't realized that he made a cure for me and thought I lost cos wolf catched me hahaha
Great Job!
The game looks great and I love the atmosphere. Maybe the controls could be a bit simplified, I feel like it doesn't come naturally.
I liked the mood, the story, the scary wolf :smile:
A very Great submission ! Good job !
Спасибо за игру!
Out of curiosity, did I have to mouse over items when pressing E to pick them up? I couldn't tell, but I sure always did.
Also, I wasn't sure what the green/orange/red arrow was.
Anyway, it was pretty tense and the art was great!
The sounds and atmosphere were also very well done!
Nice and fun, good job :)
An excellent LD entry. I didn't quite understand the point of the two icons next to the rock/berrie counter, but I didn't seem to need to either :)
The sound really adds up to the pressure.
Here's a timestamped link to the stream vod: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003143985?t=2h36m57s
Don't get fooled by the long text in the Cons list. I'm trying to come up with solutions to improve these points.
Pros:
- Graphics and animations are nice, especially with the changing character modell. Not all games need millions of pixels
- The sound effects are selling the mood very well, but the howling is a little bit too loud. Maybe adding some volume sliders woudl have been nice.
- Clear objective
Cons:
- Not clear what to do, when not reading the itch.io page. There should always be a tutorial in the game and as nice as the idea of having the moon as a start button is, it is not obvious for the players and some will struggle right there. I was reading the itch.io page and I knew what to do, but having the instruction on the wizard is weird and takes away preasures time during which the timer already starts to run. Some kind of movement tutorial would have been nice, followed by a cutscene of the player getting bit by a werewolf and the wizard then telling the player to find the berries.
- Thowing stones feels weird and I'm not sure how the scaring away works, because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The arc is also a little weird. It makes sense for the stone to not get thrown too far, but it felt a little short when trying to scare away the wolves.
- No real challenge if you realize that you just have to watch the trees for the yellow berries and as soon as you have 5 you return. You can't get killed by the wolves and fighting them off is super easy. There should be some consequences if the player is not doing this fast enough.
- No true pixelart. The biggest issue here is the rain which is clearly not following your pixel sizes for all the other elements. If you make a pixel art game, it would be nice if you stick to the minimum pixel size, in this case: the stone, and not have any object with a smaller size. In addition, the background is not following the pixel raster because it is moving continuously, instead of pixel by pixel. Give the pixel perfect camera of Unity a try ;)
- I have no idea what the square UI elements are. Some clarification would be nice. The long one is obvious after picking up a stone or berry.
That's it from my side. I hope my feedback helps you improve your game and any future game you will work on.
Have a nice day.
Anyway, I had fun playing this, and it was very appealing in both terms of audio and visual! :)
The audio especially was great!
Awesome entry.
Wolf bites take too long and this is a little annoying.
Which engine did you use?
Congratulations!
Either way it is an amazing game. Congrats!!!!
Graphics are simple and nice, clear and consistent and get the job done. And I loved that you included the transformations in the graphics - both the character model and the icons. The only minor suggestion improvement to the graphics I have is the colors - it could be darker, more bluish-grayish in tones to create the ominous atmosphere of a full-moon night. Would go well with the whole werewolf theme. And if you'd put a row of trees sticking out (like 3/4 length) from the bottom of the screen, we would feel more like in walking through the woods, rather than just on the edge of it.
Soundscape is spot-on. And again - amazing attention to detail here as well, with the footstep sounds changing as your legs transform.
The gameplay itself feels fine. Controls are responsive, and I didn't meet any bugs. It took me a while to figure out the best positioning to throw a rock at the wolf without being noticed first, but I did and afterwards I was a rock master :wink:

I also was unsure whether I was to head back after collecting all 5 berries, or keep moving forward. If it is to move back, it can feel like you're in an impossible situation if the moon is nearly full and you have a long way to walk back after getting the last berry.
I wasn't entirely sure when the limb changes were happening and what benefits I was getting out of them.
The game was definitely a cool experience, and well made within 48h. Well done!
The wolf gameplay felt a bit fuzzy and I didn't always quite get when I scared them off or if I was doing the right thing