Guard the Forest by Phobos

[raw]

made by Phobos for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

:fuelpump: Summary

Those damn tourist have no respect and leave trash everywhere in my forest, I'll clean it all well !

:joystick: Controls

Move -> W/A/S/D
Sprint -> Left Shift
Interact -> E
Pick up -> Left Clic

:exclamation: Disclaimer

All code is made by me
All sounds and visuals assets are free to use
The web version takes a bit of time to load and need to be played in full screen (UI is broken if not). Also it might lag a bit and visuals are a bit darker.

Image Sequence<em>001</em>0000.jpg

:star: Credits

Julien MACHADO - Developper / Game Designer / Level Designer

Nicolas SAUSSOL - Level Designer

:notepad_spiral: Patch Notes

07/10/2025

Fixed walking sound persisting after blocking player movement
Added smoke particle to campfire to indicate them better

08/10/2025

Modified trash models on day 6 and 7 for visual clarity

Source Code	https://github.com/Saturn1B/LudumDare58.git
Web Version	https://phobosrandom.itch.io/guard-the-forest
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/guard-the-forest

Ratings

Overall	497^th	3.367⭐	32🧑‍⚖️
Fun	661^th	2.845⭐	31🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	537^th	3.017⭐	32🧑‍⚖️
Theme	140^th	4.1⭐	32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	197^th	4.1⭐	32🧑‍⚖️
Audio	282^th	3.446⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Humor	597^th	2.42⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Mood	110^th	4.067⭐	32🧑‍⚖️
Given		38🗳️	36🗨️

Feedback

Mihu

Oct 07th · 15:18 UTC

Game looks great, too bad I can't play it as I'm not on windows.

MRjasperDR

Oct 07th · 15:35 UTC

I really liked the mood of this game. It had some nice horror vibes, and the creepy elements like picking up organs and the blood trails were a cool touch. However, it was quite hard to find the trash you need to collect, and it started to feel boring and repetitive pretty quickly. I played until day 5, but it took me a long time to find the trash each time. The map might be a bit too big, or maybe there should be some kind of indicator to help locate the trash. I’m not sure if I missed anything that happens after day 5.

🎤 Phobos

Oct 07th · 15:41 UTC

@mihu I can try doing a Linux build if you want to test it !

Mihu

Oct 07th · 15:43 UTC

@phobos I think a web version would be preferable in general for everybody in the jam, but a linux build would be nice as well

🎤 Phobos

Oct 07th · 15:43 UTC

@mrjasperdr Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it ! I feared the map was too big, one of my friend suggested me to add smoke to the campfire to see them better. Might add it if it's not against the jam rules. Also game goes only to day 7, you didn't missed a lot.

Andreyvhc

Oct 07th · 15:46 UTC

The theme of the game is good, which helps to think about the purity of nature.

Alekcey Ovalnyi

Oct 07th · 16:01 UTC

I've completed your game. And I can say that it's quite problematic to find garbage. Also, I was quite confused by the cloud wall, I thought it was considered a terrain limitation. I wasn't too stressed when the black silhouette appeared, but in the following days, I perceived it as a background. I think you can add teleportation to the player when they're not looking at it.

zircon123

Oct 07th · 16:19 UTC

Was a bit difficult to know what to do early on

🎤 Phobos

Oct 07th · 16:38 UTC

@alekcey-ovalnyi Thanks for the feedback ! I really wish I could have made the dark silhouette more stressful, making them teleport as you said or even spawn when just walking but I ran out of time. I'm curently adding a small smoke effect to make the campfire easiest to find, as it's the problem most mentionned.

stolvann

Oct 07th · 20:41 UTC

I love loved the graphics and the overall atmosphere! I played up to day 5 as well, had fun just exploring around. Some of the trash I found were a bit unsettling, but overall the game felt more peaceful than scary. My computer was heaving a bit loading everything though.

outstar

Oct 07th · 20:47 UTC

I couldn't find all the trash past night 5 unfortunately, walked all around the campfire (the one after the hill one) and only found about 70% of them, seemed to be nothing else :( But the game kept me on my toes, the dark silhouette was scary - at least up until I just walked through it and nothing happened, I became more relaxed afterwards :)

🎤 Phobos

Oct 07th · 20:53 UTC

Thanks @stolvann and @outstar for the kind feedbacks. Just saw that some trash on day 6 and 7 completely blend with the ground espicially in the web version. If you move the mouse around the campfire you might see the interaction text, but I'll swap the models as soon as I can to make them easier to see !

iDeNoh

Oct 08th · 04:36 UTC

The *atmosphere* holy crap. Some of the trash is pretty difficult to see (near black on black) but I absolutely loved this. very creepy vibe.

GuyInGrey

Oct 08th · 04:48 UTC

I couldn't get through the whole thing because I can't do horror games, got terrified the first time I saw the silhouette. Very good atmosphere, and I LOVE the aesthetic. I did get a lot of lag/lag spikes as I played, though.

breadstick

Oct 08th · 04:52 UTC

Super eerie in the best sort of way! I loved the visual aesthetic and atmosphere... I'm usually good with horror games, but something about the crunched graphics and hostile color palette gets under your skin, and then when you see the silhouettes, it really feels frightening.

I do wish there had been a little more to the development over the several days--I wanted to know what happens next!

🎤 Phobos

Oct 08th · 11:53 UTC

Thanks @idenoh @guyingrey and @breadstick for the amazing feedback, love to hear that you liked the game ! I've tried to fix the trash being hard to see sometimes.

Shram

Oct 08th · 17:37 UTC

I don't think it's clear which fire to run to, but it would be nice to add some smoke to the right fire. I also didn't quite understand the plot.

🎤 Phobos

Oct 08th · 18:51 UTC

@shram thanks for the feedback. It's weird, there is smoke normally on the right campfire. Can you tell me wich version did you play and when you downloaded it ?

KafuuChino

Oct 08th · 20:00 UTC

Well done on the post-processing dither effect and the atmosphere! Footstep SFX are also consistent. Took me quite a while to see the campfire at first though, maybe adding some guidance would be helpful?

JonasOlsson

Oct 09th · 10:50 UTC

Good job! Would be nice to have the option to invert the Y axis for the mouse (I am totally lost when I have to use regular). Took me a great while to realize that there isn't trash scattered everywhere and I went in the wrong direction at first. Over all a nice entry!

🎤 Phobos

Oct 09th · 12:03 UTC

Thanks @kafuuchino and @jonasolsson for the awesome feedback, I'm glad you appreciated my little game.

Coda Highland

Oct 10th · 01:14 UTC

The dithering effect is an interesting choice of aesthetic. Unfortunately I got kinda motion-sick while playing it, and it didn't help that several days I had to wander all over before I found the trash. (I did notice the smoke. That helps.) Sound design works pretty well.

cartmouse

Oct 10th · 16:29 UTC

Unfortunately I couldn't play this. There was a dither texture rendered over everything (I could see the UI and some movement in the background but not enough to actually do anything). Just thought I'd let you know. Happy to provide more info if you need for any debugging or anything, just give me a shout.

![Screenshot 2025-10-10 at 17.24.33.png](///raw/c78/56/z/6f32f.png)

Eugenik

Oct 10th · 16:31 UTC

haa thats hot.

🎤 Phobos

Oct 10th · 17:45 UTC

@cartmouse AH, interesting bug, never happened to me and I have no idea how to fix it. Do you have any particular screen resolution or something. Maybe try the windows version if you want to test the game.

someone

Oct 10th · 18:36 UTC

Interesting art style. The forest is now clean.
Not sure who these fools are who keep leaving stuff in my lovely forest.
It took me a while to find the trash at first, I ended up wandering most of the map before I spotted the campfire.
Some of the items are almost impossible to discern from the background.

Patatje

Oct 10th · 20:44 UTC

Duuude i was constantly waiting for a jumpscare but it never came xD Nice game overal very good atmosphere.

🎤 Phobos

Oct 10th · 22:12 UTC

Thanks @someone and @patatje for the review. Isn't the fact there is no jumpscare the real jumpscare (not trying to find an excuse at all)

zestymachine

Oct 11th · 08:40 UTC

premise makes me think of friday the 13th and i really love it for that

robert18

Oct 11th · 15:16 UTC

I always love low-res 3D games, though I would have liked if the gritty filter was a bit toned down. Also I struggled to find the trash, marking the location of day 1 with smoke was a good idea. Athmosphire is great I was already on edge expecting jumpscares

Samuli

Oct 11th · 16:09 UTC

Great mood and style. Pacing was quite slow and boring, but at some point I noticed that strafing was faster than just running straight, which made it more tolerable. Really digging the dither!

jk5000

Oct 12th · 10:03 UTC

An okay little horror game.

Wouter52

Oct 13th · 19:25 UTC

Oh this was great! Just enough horror to leave me engaged. Just subtile enough to not let me close the game because I'm a wuss haha
Love the graphics, I'm a sucker for these kind of visuals!

🎤 Phobos

Oct 14th · 10:59 UTC

Thank you all @zestymachine @robert18 @samuli @jk5000 and @wouter52 for the feedbacks and reviews ! I'm glad you enjoyed the game even though the pacing might feel slow sometimes.

eloc

Oct 14th · 15:51 UTC

This game's beautiful, and I was genuinely startled when it started getting stranger. Didn't expect that for some reason lol Some music/ambience would have been nice however!

Daniel123

Oct 15th · 02:49 UTC

I really like the art of the game and the idea of reducing the game’s file size. My laptop doesn’t have a GPU, and it usually lags when running 3D games. But it didn’t happen with this game — that’s really great.
Maybe it would be better to add some background music in this game.

Catusfelony

Oct 15th · 16:03 UTC

The dither effect is really good at making you imagine things where there is nothing. I actually freaked out when the first shadow figure showed up, but then I ran into it and nothing happened so they became my friends. When I picked up the body on day 7 a whole bunch of them appeared and I greeted them with love and warmth. Got to keep the forest clean!

5H08

Oct 20th · 00:48 UTC

At first I was wondering why a game about picking up camping trash would have such an ominous tone, but then it came clear. Good job on the horror build up! Other than the framerate being a bit choppy it's a solid psych horror experience. The dither shader works really well in building up the atmosphere.