Don't Rock the Boat! by Keke
It's 1867, Canada. You're but a humble voyageur trying to eek out a living by ferrying your barrels of goods down the St. Lawrence. Profit is not always guaranteed and the trips are dangerous. At any moment, your dreams and livelihood (and your life!) may be dashed against the rocks... literally. You can play it safe or load up your boat with as many barrels as you can, but just remember: DON'T ROCK THE BOAT!

Controls:
Arrow keys or WASD to move
Space/Esc to pause
Go into settings to choose movement style & toggle death by shore.
Credits: Lalaine Ulit-Destajo, Keke Zhou, William Yates & Urim Park
| Windows | https://kekezhou.itch.io/dont-rock-the-boat/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/dont-rock-the-boat |
Ratings
| Given | 1🗳️ | 1🗨️ |
Difficult and time consuming, but still strangely enthralling enough to keep me playing.
Which of the two control schemes do you personally prefer?
The UI is very complete, it has settings to tweak (death, soundtrack & movement type) so that it can get closer to what one prefers.
I really loved the lighting of the boat when it gets dark. Good job :)
Unfortunately I had trouble playing the game properly. The crashing mechanic was a bit wonky and I sometimes ended up insta-dying when the boat was wedged between two rocks. When I first entered a town, I thought I might go all the way and filled the boat to the brim. Unfortunately the game was broken after that because I couldn't go forward anymore (the boat went backward instead). On my next attempt I bought only one barrel and successfully brought it to the next town only to realize that the price had gone down and I actually lost money on the trade.
I think the game is on the right path overall, but needs some tweaking to really make it fun. Being able to plan trading routes with different goods and figuring out where to buy low and sell high, with a challenging and fair gameplay that rewards risk but does not feel frustrating, and finally by not ending the game on a crash but allowing you to continue with financial loss instead might make this quite succesful on platforms like Kongregate.
I'd urge you to continue working on this.