By The Fire by Ani
Don't let the fire burn out!
Collect wood, feed the flames, keep the area clear & watch out for the weather!
Play it in browser here


Tools: Unity, Blender, ChipTone, BeepBox, Clip Studio Paint
Change log 04/04/2022: fixed interaction bug.
| Link | https://annekatran.itch.io/by-the-fire |
| Link | https://annekatran.itch.io/by-the-fire |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/by-the-fire |
Ratings
| Overall | 62th | 3.944⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 139th | 3.708⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 256th | 3.417⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 65th | 4.139⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 4th | 4.625⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 121th | 3.667⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 205th | 3.181⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 38th | 4.069⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
- gameplay tick down is maybe a bit fast - it seems to go down when not raining faster then the recovery from breaking down trees
- SFX/music all work well with the game
Controls felt little bit weird, but made running around feel like watching a stop motion animation, giving the visuals some extra fun twist.
I was wondering what the point of the rocks were at first, and why you could break them down. It was then Zeus showed himself and it made a bit more sense. Do the number of rocks ultimately affect how many trees grow?
On an entirely unrelated note, the beetle makes me think of It Takes Two :')
The gameplay is very simple and easy to understand, I had so much fun running around with little logs on my back. I've also noticed how the stones increase difficulty by both hindering your movement and decreasing the space for trees to spawn, very good!
All in all, everything is super polished, you did an amazing job for your first game jam!
Nice Work!
@glayson Thanks! I agree, I could definitely do with going over the input.
You should definitely do this again. Huge *thumps up* for your first submission!
Also small advice, if you can also make the Q key go left and Z key go up (as well as the W and A of course, you'll support both azerty and qwerty keyboard, allowing users to not change their layout before playing ;)
The gameplay was very intuitive and surprisingly fun! I liked the idea of the rocks being in the way, but in the end they were not much of a problem for me I must say. Often I could just walk around them, and by the time many of them had gathered I had already almost lost anyway :) I don't think this is a real problem though, just an observation. On the mechanics side I feel like throwing a stack of logs had the same effect as throwing just a single log into the fire? Maybe this is just my imagination? I kind of expected the healthbar to shoot up once I threw in a big stack of logs, but this did not really happen
The music was a little repetitive, but not very annoying, so I think it is fine. It is definitely better than any music I ever made, so just the fact that there is music impresses me XD
Amazing job with this! I saw this was your first game jam, so that makes it even more impressive! Also, welcome to the hobby :) I started about a year and a half ago (after thinking about doing one for way too long) and I must say it was the best decision ever! They are just so much fun! I hope you will have the same amount of fun as I have had :D
Really good submission to the compo.
Pros:
- Adorable main character
- Great minimalistic visual on isometric scene
- Good game feel, so the gameplay itself
- Clear and responsive controls
- Nice take on the theme
- Music in Compo is always a +
Cons:
- I believe leaving a tree or stone away and coming back to it resets it's ATK (actions-to-kill) counter. Would be nice if each individual object had them, but I believe that was to prevent insta bashing (focus out and in on the object to rapidly take it down)
Solid, properly scoped entry and excellent job!
### SOURCE CODE ISSUE
I believe you have only provided the actual `source code` instead of the entire project to check it out. As per compo rules, it would be nice to see all of it (placement, scenes, graphical materials etc) and not just script codes.
I got two ideas for your feature updates:
* Add outline highlighting when you can chop a tree or throw the trees into the fire.
* You could consider adding mouse support for the direction. Maybe the control would be feel easier.