A Bad Wolf King is Hard to Feed by McFunkypants

[raw]
made by McFunkypants for LD33 (JAM)
Wolf King - a 3d platformer. Play here: http://mcfunkypants.com/king/

Made by @mcfunkypants @sir_carma @fasterthanlime for Ludum Dare 33

Welcome to a beautiful world in the skies. This is the world of our imagination, where you play as a peaceful shepherd tending your flock. You live in a small cabin among floating castle ruins in the sky. Explore the world, collect gold, find checkpoints, and have fun for no reason. This is a first playable MVP, not the finished game.

Gamepad is strongly recommended - using mouse and WASD is very tricky by comparison. Gamepad just feels right.

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Downloads:
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Windows:
http://mcfunkypants.com/king/wolf-king-win.zip

Mac:
http://mcfunkypants.com/king/wolf-king-mac.zip

Linux:
http://mcfunkypants.com/king/wolf-king-linux.zip

Web:
http://mcfunkypants.com/king/

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THE STORY SO FAR:
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You are a king who became a NECROMANCER. In discovering the secret to everlasting life, you were faced with a heavy burden: to stay alive you need to harvest the lives of the innocent. Instead of becoming a bloodthirsty monster, friendless and feared by all, you took the higher road.

Using your magic powers, you sequestered yourself from normal society and build a land where the souls of wild sheep could be harvested without resorting to killing them yourself. By putting lush fields high atop the clouds, and allowing a natural predator, a wolf, the roam the landscape, you were able to keep yourself alive while allowing your "victims" to live in peace, like any wild animal.

1000 years have passed, and the loneliness of your altruistic decision has taken its toll. The time has come to dismantle this utopia by collecting the golden soul crystals. Can you collect them all and bring your kingdom back down to earth?

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COMING SOON:
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There is no level two. Yet. We have a partially finished "snow zone" and "boss battle" that will be added in a post-jam release version. They explain the plot and provide a quest. Please consider this weekend-long jam edition to be the "vertical slice" demo of an upcoming game.

If you like what you see here, please let us know. If you think a full game that uses this engine and art style is something you'd like to see on steam, please let us know! It will fire up our motivation!

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You could say that with this game I'm "standing on the shoulders of giants". I could never have made this game in one weekend from scratch all by myself.

I am nothing without my art team.

Antoine (@sir_carma) was both prolific, motivated, and incredibly flexible, and took my ugly sketches and turned them into a magnificent voxel universe full of wonder. You can enjoy much more Antoine's art at: http://imgur.com/gallery/3dOfh​

Amos (@fasterthanlime) has composed some of the most beautiful and inspiring music I've ever heard in a game jam, and the adventuresome, light and sunny vibe of the music is what inspired me to make a game much like Super Mario Galaxy, Ratchet and Clank, or the LEGO games by Traveler's Tales.

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Download the soundtrack:
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Amos just released his first solo album entitled *andfall: https://amos.me/blog/2015/andfall/

What an incredible experience the last few days have been. I am deeply indebted to my team, and I'm so grateful to have worked alongside them on this exiting project. Together we all pushed each other to become greater than the sum of our parts.

I'm so proud of what we made. I love Ludum Dare.

ENJOY!

Christer Kaitila

http://twitter.com/mcfunkypants
http://mcfunkypants.com

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UPDATE, Aug 25, 10pm:
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Thank you so much for all your wonderful feedback. It makes us so happy to see screenshots of people who found every single gold cube! =D I just uploaded a POST-JAM HOTFIX to address the camera bug, missing gui, and tightened up the friction/gravity.

No new features have been added, only bugs fixed, so I suppose this hotfix is "legal" for judging, but I've left the original buggy version up for posterity and transparency. I think for the sake of the rankings in the jam portion of LDJAM you should rate the broken version. If you just want to play the game as intended, click the links below!

Thank you, and enjoy! =)

Ratings

Coolness 37% 1713
Overall(Jam) 3.76 130
Audio(Jam) 4.07 41
Fun(Jam) 3.46 243
Graphics(Jam) 4.37 88
Humor(Jam) 2.87 484
Innovation(Jam) 3.12 433
Mood(Jam) 3.60 184

Feedback

ninjacharlie
25. Aug 2015 · 01:08 UTC
I liked the light-hearted feel of the game along with the expansiveness of the levels. Camera controls were a little hard to get the hang of, but once I got going, they weren't too bad. Overall, it was pretty fun :)

And as always, nice job with the music, Amos :D
CaptainKraft
25. Aug 2015 · 02:52 UTC
Out freaking standing. Looks and sounds amazing. My only complaint is that the mouse sensitivity is through the roof.

You guys rock
Ellian
25. Aug 2015 · 03:04 UTC
Oof, the controls/camera could be thighter... but graphics and sound are amazing, and the overall quality of this thing is impressive!
Super relaxing, too. Damn some of those gems, jumping right is hard!
Lady Beardo
25. Aug 2015 · 03:19 UTC
Wow! Gorgeous.
Ninja Garage
25. Aug 2015 · 04:20 UTC
Voxelicious!!! It is kinda hard to play but everything here is too awesome!
tuturto
25. Aug 2015 · 06:18 UTC
Gorgeous looking and fun to explore around. Looking forward how this will develop in the future.
jackrugile
25. Aug 2015 · 06:56 UTC
Great job, you guys! I had fun exploring the world you crafted. It has a very calming effect on me for some reason.

I always wondered what it would be like if contestants simply got to pick from the top three themes for their game. It might solve a lot of issues people have. Glad you went with your theme of choice, it turned out excellent.

My only criticism was the view controls. It very well might just be me not used to controlling a game view with the mouse in that fashion, but I struggled with it. I of course have made games with controls that feel perfect to me, and then everyone says it's hard as hell to control. So yeah, it very well could be me, but maybe it needs some tweaking too. Not sure what the solution would be.

Keep it up, looking forward to your entry in December!
madmaw
25. Aug 2015 · 09:46 UTC
So pretty. Made me want to explore the world, although I spent a lot of time falling off it
ruerob
25. Aug 2015 · 10:31 UTC
That's a really nice game!!
I really like the exploring factor and had a lot of fun finding ways to reach the gems!
I've seen some little glitches like disapearing or flickering gems, a block with changing colors and I can't jump when I'm to close to the next step on a bridge sometimes, but that didn't kill the atmosphere.
The atmosphere created through the visuals and music and exploring is awesome and I'm very excited to see the post compo version! Great work! I want more because you are awesome!!
matthias_zarzecki
25. Aug 2015 · 10:44 UTC
Lovely work! The cuboid voxel-land is great :D
metalchouchen
25. Aug 2015 · 11:39 UTC
Amazing works ! Art is really cool, the shader on cube works really nice. The camera is a bit hard to understood but it was really nice to explore this world. Congrats!
local minimum
25. Aug 2015 · 14:35 UTC
Unfortunately I was really struggling with the controls and I can't really put my finger on what it was, but I just couldn't get to go where I wanted to in any ordered fashion. I found one coin/collectible, killed a sheep and activated a spawn point. But then I just got no where more. I also almost got stuck between the spawn-pad and its fence. The game shows a lot of promise though. Both music and style felt really good.
jovoc
25. Aug 2015 · 14:57 UTC
Looks fantastic! Nicely done, and a great vertical slice in that it left me wanting to play the full version :) I loved the blocky look, but I had trouble telling which direction the player was facing, maybe just a three pixel face or something would help.
AtkinsSJ
25. Aug 2015 · 16:01 UTC
Took me a long time to discover that you can double-jump. I probably hadn't drunk enough tea.

It looks and sounds lovely, but I found the platforming a bit frustrating. I didn't feel that in-control of where I was going, and jumping onto small things that seem slippery meant I kept falling off. I couldn't figure-out how to get the gold on the flag, and kept falling into the castle and getting stuck. There seems to be a bug that stops you jumping when you stand next to a block, which didn't help.

But, with that fixed, and the controls tightened0-up a bit, it could be great! Atmosphere and aesthetic are perfect.
elefantopia
25. Aug 2015 · 16:20 UTC
Beautiful but Unplayable
NidzaKornjaca
25. Aug 2015 · 16:37 UTC
Great look and music, the controls were giving me a hard time though.
shawn42
25. Aug 2015 · 16:49 UTC
Amazing. Camera controls were a little tricky, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Nice work.
gnuwilliam
25. Aug 2015 · 17:18 UTC
Very well done!
commodoreKid
25. Aug 2015 · 18:08 UTC
I thought something would happen once I collected all the coins but no... *sniff* :P It was a good looking game. I don't like voxels much so I"m not the person to say anything about the future of this kind of game. Music is nice. As you also probably know there is this mouse sensitivity issue. Wish the story was more implemented to the game.
K.Chplr
25. Aug 2015 · 19:38 UTC
I had some issues with the controls though, my controller did not work correctly with the game, even after trying to set it in the Unity options window (it's a Logitech F310 used on Mac fyi). The left and right arrow keys of the keyboard did not work in the game for some reason, despite being correctly set in the options.

That aside, it's truly amazing what you managed to do in three days, the visual style and sounds are spot on.
chromebookbob
25. Aug 2015 · 20:22 UTC
Wonderful environment but difficult to understand what to do
Mr. Jif
25. Aug 2015 · 20:35 UTC
The controls and the camera were a little difficult to get used to, but the game looks and sounds awesome!
KevinWorkman
25. Aug 2015 · 21:59 UTC
As always, great job. Very cute, and I wanted to get to the end of it. But I feel like it was designed for a controller, so playing on a keyboard was pretty difficult. I ended up getting stuck inside the castle. Might consider having the mouse click trigger a jump, that way I could play with the arrow keys (only up and down seemed to work) instead of the "looser" wasd. Just a thought, but overall it was good!
Jishenaz
26. Aug 2015 · 01:34 UTC
These are some of the best graphics I've seen this LD. You guys made a voxel-ish Mario Galaxy game, and it's amazing. Please keep developing!

Concerning controls, the camera movement with mouse was a little weird, but I got used to it. What I didn't get used to was the player's momentum. It was hard to stop the player when moving and that cause me to fall off a lot.

Overall, beautiful work!
daydalus
26. Aug 2015 · 04:07 UTC
Very well done and polished. Love the art style, level design and music - it all worked together very nicely. Controls were a little tough with keyboard + mouse. Lots of the jumps demand fine precision - and the physics was a little slippery. Overall - lots of fun - reminded me of minecraft + mario 64. Great work!
🎤 McFunkypants
26. Aug 2015 · 04:48 UTC
==============================================

THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your wonderful feedback. =D

BE SURE TO PLAY THE POST-JAM HOTFIX. Way better camera, more air control, less slippery physics means the controls and "feel" have been vastly improved. No new features have been added, so I suppose this fix is "legal" for judging, but I've left both versions up for posterity and transparency.

- McFunkypants
- Aug 26, 10:00pm
reckhou
26. Aug 2015 · 08:37 UTC
Great world-blend shader. But the FoV made my head spinning. Anyway, well done!!
Joror
26. Aug 2015 · 09:32 UTC
Cool worldy-jumper :) the curved world made it easier to spot all the gems from afar. Sometimes a bit finicky with the jump controls, but at the end I had it down!
iossif
26. Aug 2015 · 13:40 UTC
took me a while to find out that there is a double jump. after that it was great fun to play it.
terop
26. Aug 2015 · 13:54 UTC
extreamly high quality entry.
Otrora Games
26. Aug 2015 · 14:03 UTC
Outstanding work!
ChrisFagan
26. Aug 2015 · 14:32 UTC
That was really fun, though it was really frustrating getting the gold above the castle, if you fall in the camera was hard to control.
gcrsaldanha
26. Aug 2015 · 15:11 UTC
That..was...awesome!!!

Unfortunately I do not have a GamePad, that would be sweet.
BeardoGames
26. Aug 2015 · 17:15 UTC
Dang this is beautiful, and the music and sound are quite nice too. Overall this is just about the most polish LD entry I've seen this time around. Excellent work!
ferpess
26. Aug 2015 · 17:37 UTC
Great fun to play the game,and amazing graphics and music!!Im a sound designer and my only complains are:
hope there's some ambience sound for the scene
footstep sound can tell the texture of the surface
Very cool game and I really had a lot of fun with it!
mantis
26. Aug 2015 · 18:50 UTC
This is just amazing. Wow :)
Jesse Freeman
26. Aug 2015 · 22:45 UTC
Nice art style and really love the level design. Great job!
Unept
27. Aug 2015 · 04:31 UTC
Though I may be a bit nauseous, I commend you on your game. It was beautiful and clever. The camera view was a bit odd, and I got small bouts of vertigo, but a pleasant experience anyway. Nice job!
CrazyMinnowStudio
27. Aug 2015 · 04:52 UTC
It looks beautiful, the curved world adds a nice interesting perspective, and the music is perfect! My only critique is the camera movement. It feels parented to the player which adds all the little player jitters and twitches to the camera for a slightly dizzying effect. Add a little camera dampening and it will be fantastic. Great job!
Birke
27. Aug 2015 · 07:37 UTC
Very nice looking game and great audio as well. It seems like the camera right now is parented directly to the player character which can make for a bit of a bumpy ride. I'd suggest you use something like the SmoothDamp function in Unity to create a smooth camera follow solution.
SoulGame
27. Aug 2015 · 09:15 UTC
13/13 :)

You did an amazing job. Everything is cute, smooth and enjoyable. Loved the sens of (almost) pointless exploration, climbing trees, jumping off moutains, entering abandoned sky fortress... Very clever way to draw the terrain btw.
Kudo to the music composer for his piece, that just works so well with the game ^^

II found very poetic to land on clouds, that was both cute & fun :)

Regarding theme, I think the point of Ludum Dare is to put yourself to challenge by facing constraint and overcoming it with Game design. Choosing his own theme is for me a little misunderstanding on what is ludum dare ^^ Considering that and respecting your choice of transparency, I prefer note to rate the entry as it put itself apart from the jam (too me).
Dikkop
27. Aug 2015 · 10:51 UTC
How is the 3D world built up, is it a camera image effect or did you build it from a 3D mesh with voxels?
MechanicalLife
27. Aug 2015 · 14:49 UTC
Lovely looking game! I managed to finally find the last cube:)
I had a small issue with camera stuttering and some control problems but beside that a really beautiful and fun game.
Xanjos
28. Aug 2015 · 01:16 UTC
There were some times where the camera was actually more of a hindrance but I loved the voxel art style and the huge size of the game world plus I liked the little jingle that plays when you find a gem.
inbetweengames
28. Aug 2015 · 12:20 UTC
Beautiful and confusing, enchanting all around!

I'm not sure I understood fully what I was supposed to do, but that didn't really matter. I was just enjoying life in this beautiful place you created. :)
cbstegeman
28. Aug 2015 · 16:13 UTC
I didn't find the controls difficult at all. Very relaxing and beautiful game.
Erkberg
28. Aug 2015 · 16:50 UTC
I really enjoyed playing this. The visual style is nice and clean, the music is fantastic and the world just feels alive. The explorative gameplay is also something I really like. The controls work pretty well, but there are also problems: Sometimes jumping when underneath something was a bit frustrating because the colliders show no mercy. Also, the camera was stuttering sometimes. Apart from these minor things, I just loved this game and I'm hoping to see it developed further.
LegacyCrono
28. Aug 2015 · 22:03 UTC
Oh man, this was difficult to play in a laptop. I like the tranquil atmosphere, but I'm not sure how appropriate it was, considering the game story... I'd sure expect something more ominous.

The graphics are beautiful, and the background music was really good, it reminded me of the Chrono Cross soundtrack for some reason. The fanfares, on the other hand, were a bit annoying, and I felt it clashed with the relaxed feeling of everything else.

Physics was a bit clunky. It's hard to put in words but it doesn't have the tightness you'd expect for platforming. The camera doesn't help either. That moving platform was a challenge because jumping at it was tricky, and then when you landed on it it had no friction...

It was pretty fun exploring around and looking for the cubes. Too bad there's no actual reward for finding them all... Still, great job!
Erlend Aakre
29. Aug 2015 · 01:32 UTC
Very nice world, everything was very polished. Did collect 13/13 but then nothing happened, but it was fun just exploring. Definitely has potential!
OnionBlaze
29. Aug 2015 · 09:04 UTC
Lovely music! I had fun roaming around, mostly just looking for sheep and messing around with them, haha. I also like how the world looks kind of curved. Good job!
wdebowicz
29. Aug 2015 · 10:40 UTC
The game is very nice and I was very relaxed while playing. I like the feeling of being on another very small planet. It would be nice to add just "WIN" text after collecting all diamonds. The sound of "text writing" is too loud compared to music. The mechanism of checkpoint is cool, I have more fun knowing that after "dead" I will be just moved to last checkpoint instead of losing progress. I'm sure it will evolve to great game!
AViTT
29. Aug 2015 · 13:30 UTC
Really enjoyed playing this game. The music and art style create a nice relaxed mood for the game. Love the small planet like world. Only thing I felt missing was a win condition. Once you got all the bricks should say win or well done click to return to the menu screen so you can play again.
SelfTitled
29. Aug 2015 · 18:19 UTC
9 golds in, I was like how the hell am I suppose to get that, when I realised I could double jump lol.
dickpoelen
29. Aug 2015 · 19:45 UTC
I didn't even come close to finding all the gold. Found the mouse controls not super at times, but I'l try again later with a gamepad. I can see that controlling much better. Great vertical slice. Reminded me of Captain Toad.
Schrodinger Games
29. Aug 2015 · 20:53 UTC
Pretty nice enrty, love the music very relaxing. A bit hard to control hero and camera although.
tehPHEN
30. Aug 2015 · 21:01 UTC
Got lost a couple times but it was fun!
GaTechGrad
03. Sep 2015 · 05:26 UTC
Your entry reminds me a lot of Super Mario Galaxy. The camera was really well done. The graphics could use some work, by adding character models and animations. Some additional abilities aside from just jumping would have been nice.
bombjack
03. Sep 2015 · 18:56 UTC
nice game. good job :)
Omiya Games
03. Sep 2015 · 20:07 UTC
This is a pretty relaxed collecta-thon. No killer enemies, no environment hazards, just collect every shiney. It's pretty fun! Got all 13 gold pretty easily.

I think the sparse checkpoints was a bit annoying. Some more action might be nice (and probably already planned).
Lancelot Gao
04. Sep 2015 · 04:58 UTC
A beautiful cube world! I found the control is a bit too sensitive for me. And I think a third person follow-behind camera will be enough for this game and much easier for the player.
Franklin's Ghost
04. Sep 2015 · 12:44 UTC
The atmosphere of this game is great, the visuals and music worked so well together. Did find the camera controls quite difficult though but still had a lot of fun trying to collect all the gold and just exploring the environment.
Rialgar
05. Sep 2015 · 22:02 UTC
From your tweets, I expected it to be more difficult, but was great fun nonetheless.
NightShadow0
08. Sep 2015 · 13:55 UTC
I absolutely love the 3D world, it's really well done. Controls felt a bit too floaty for me though, it's rather easy to fall off, especially when treetop jumping. I also thought the sound effect jingles were a little excessive and too long, but that's obviously very subjective. Note that i played the original version so any or all of this may be outdated. Great work!
allinlabs
13. Sep 2015 · 21:33 UTC
The controls are a little too sensible to my taste, but exploring this beautiful world make it up for it.
laubisch
14. Sep 2015 · 01:23 UTC
As always, McFunkypants, an awesome entry, man! :)
Congrats!
Ludipe
14. Sep 2015 · 16:58 UTC
The art is really cool and the levels have a pretty solid design. Controls felt unresponsive, that might because of the browser. It'd be cool to expand the core mechanics and add a twist.

But overall is an extremelly awesome jam game.
randomhuman
14. Sep 2015 · 17:23 UTC
This looks really cool, but the gameplay didn't really click for me. I got stuck in the castle thing where I probably wasn't supposed to be able to go, but it seemed as viable as anywhere else...

Anyway, I'd love to see a full game set in this world and with this art style, that much is superb.
hexagore
15. Sep 2015 · 00:36 UTC
Beautiful game and I really appreciated the almost Nintendo-like music. I'm sort of glad you just completely ignored the theme because with.. what... 25 minutes of the competition to go.. I'm completely sick of the monster thing. Like, really. I wasn't able to play it with a gamepad and I realised that was going to make it almost impossible for me to get all the thingies in the time... but overall this was a lovely thing to play. Thanks :)
yuigoto
15. Sep 2015 · 00:40 UTC
Nice! The game is quite relaxing and challenging too!

I really dig the voxels and the simple design, by just using cubes to represent the characters, animals, etc. The way the world is rendered/presented is really nice too! It felt, somehow, like something in between Animal Crossing and Sonic Xtreme for this wide-angle/globe camera thing. :P

The soundtrack is really something in the game, it's relaxing and soothing, while the SFX don't interfere too much with it, so it creates a nice experience. :3

I struggled a bit with the controls, though, but nothing much, it was a pleasure to play! I had a bit of trouble, also, reaching high places, but it was a nice challenge to do it. :D

The story is also a good one and offers a lot of possibilities for challenges and expansion. I can see it, also, as a children's story book, don't know why, but it just felt like some books and stories I read when younger. :P

Good Work! :3