Cairn by Amaroq
Play as a mysterious shaman who must build a cairn as an offering to the Gods. The villagers each want you to take their stone in hope that their wishes will be favoured. It's up to you build a stable structure so their offerings are accepted.
DOWNLOAD HERE: https://leuamaroq.itch.io/cairn
CONTROLS: Arrow keys to move around. SPACE to interact.
HOW TO PLAY: Talk to the villagers and collect their stones. When you interact with the shrine in the centre, click and drag the stones from the inventory onto the screen. Then you can build a cairn. The game ends when you build to a certain height.



Ratings
| Overall | 855th | 3.45⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1403th | 2.684⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 999th | 3.075⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 633th | 3.65⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 748th | 3.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 314th | 3.725⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 334th | 3.8⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 7🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
Graphics are a bit flat sometimes, especially in the rock minigame. That + the fact that the background stays perfectly unchanged in "rock view" made it a bit confusing when i first opened it.
Vibe was successful IMO. Would have been interesting to have the option to just *refuse* stones. Interesting, not necessarily good. And most likely out of scope for the jam, so im not complaining at all.
Also, have to appreciate that not only there's music, but it's a full track instead of a 30 second loop that moves and changes just enough to never get boring, AND fits the mood.
Bugs:
- the rocks keep their momentum after you drop them (take rock > let it drop > catch mid air > release, now the rock will continue with the momentum it had on that fall, tends to be dangerous)
- there is nothing (afaik) preventing the rocks from going off screen and getting lost
- rock picking up logic (when clicking, what chooses what rock to take) isnt perfect
- lets you place rocks inside others, which generates physics instab... wait, is this a feature?
To be honest i couldn't made a pile of rocks, the base was not plane and some problems with gravity and drags. But i could see the first part and the dialogs and it was really well made, the cairn part didn't work out for me because of this frustration and its a shame because if it was a little bit easier it could've been a really great entry.
I understand the time limitation to work on this on a weekend, but maybe it was a matter of priorities, the cairn and rocks part for me it was where you want the player to have the best experience, because is the name of the game and the theme and i feel most of the "polish" was done in the first part which i enjoyed btw. Well, just a little feedback if its useful for you guys for future projects.
Best of lucks, keep doing awesome games!
Using the mouse and arrow keys is a little awkward. I would have liked to use either WASD for movement or the mouse to interact.
Not only that, but I found the gameplay itself rather frustrating, though I admit that mostly comes down to my inability to stack rocks. Even then, the fact that the rocks can roll to outside the screen and that the player is able to constantly hit existing rocks with rocks they hold means that the possibility of accidentally toppling the entire thing by simply moving a rock is quite high.
In any case, the mood and the art style were relatively successful in captivating me, despite the other factors not quite working. This premise has potential, but its design needs to improve.