Love the music and splitting mechanics are fun. great job!

nice job!

Really Good! I dig this a lot. Great Art. Simple game-play. Cute Snowballs that turn into Snow-people. I did get stuck in an area where I got a present and then couldn't get out of some doors? All in all this is a lovely game that was well built - Great Job!

Awesome game! Great work. Physics feel tight and the snowball splitting is really fun. I like stacking them up and watching the cute little snowman roll around haha.

Wow, amazing game.

What a cute lovely game! Nice job!

Thanks for the positive reception :)

@justwall-games Do you happen to remember what door this was? Some presents require you to sacrifice yourself afterwards, but I was hoping you could never get stuck. Thanks for the feedback!

Wow! This was a really amazing game, really got me into christmas spirit! The audio, the graphics, the simple yet amazing game mechanics. I'm truly amazed. Might be one of the best LD games I've ever played!

Just wow. :smiley: :christmas_tree: :snowman: :snowman2: :snowflake:

Fantastic game,this art and music <3 :)

This game is really cool, the song is awesome btw. I love seeing my swnoball grow as I roll, and the splitting thing works really well. The level design is also well thought. Well done!

Nice game, enjoyed it.

Very polished, I really love the text in the environment. I felt like I couldn't get a grip on the mechanics even after like 10 minutes of trying, I think that there needs to be a way for you to select which snow ball you control--the way it seems to switch snowballs based on which direction you move frustrated me. Thank you and good job!

This snowball is so cute ^^ The whole ambiance of your game is super chill and nice (graphics and music). I was unable to finish the game : I stopped in a place where my snowball was suppose to pass a door and the ice before the door had a circle symbol. I tried to make it bigger and split him but it didn't work. Anyway, I like the mechanics you created for this platformer :)

A super cute little winter game, with some very good music and graphics. I was not able finish the game, because when I reach a door after the message "Find your own way", I have no idea how to open this door. Overall this is a good and very well made LD game. Well done.

Thanks for the feedback!

@haneton @jk5000 There are 3 sizes of snowball, I think that door requires the largest size to open. Now that you mention it, it's totally not obvious :). I'm adding a note in the description, thanks for playing!

Had fun with this! The mood was really nice, and the music really helped set the tone of the game. I didn't get as frustrated as I usually get playing platformers, and I actually reached the end of the game!

Your game was played on my stream ( twitch.tv/ursagames ) for the first day of Ludum Dare streams - you can find the timestamp of your game here: https://goo.gl/N2rkr8

Pom pom pom pom pom :) ! I loved the music aha ! and I loved building snowmans and their faces too !
Nice job guys !



Hope you're proud of me ;)

That's an awesome game. 5/5 would play again. Great graphics accompanied by lovely music with well designed controls and levels. What else could I wish for?

Maybe a snowman...

Loved the music and the splitting mechanic was fun. I personally didn't feel the sacrifice because I felt I was all one snow character, so even when I split I still felt as one. Others can and probably will argue otherwise. Either way I had fun rolling around and the music was very mellow. It was great making it to the North Pole. An awesome Christmas game in time for the holidays.

Amazing how you've managed to keep the art style simple and neat but very cute and interesting at the same time.
This is such a dynamic game! We build, we destroy... Also I've seen many games with sacrifices of others but that's the first I've seen that sacrifices the others and the player too. You went all the way with the theme!
Lovely song btw 😉

Great game, good job !

Love it, great mechanics, everything about this game is great, Great job! :)

Great job on the game. It felt very charming and it was pretty relaxing to play especially with the music. It was a bit difficult to understand what the door were asking for. Overall a very enjoyable and unique game.

It's positive and beautiful and cute and funny. Really great 9 minutes and 31 seconds of my life! :) That music with the snowball pushing face - amazing! Even though, the door opening mechanics is underexplained I think, it took me some time as well to notice the paintings on the ground and to get which snowball size they are reffering to. But I got it eventually and it was mostly pleasing experience. Thank you for this, really!

The game is very cute. I liked the experience. On the other hand, it's not really a challenge, you just make a lot of "happy accidents" (as Bob Ross said) and hope for the best (and usually get it). It's very nice, it's just not exactly a game, at least not a game for adults; I guess it could be suitable for children though, considering the non-violent content and playful theme.

@miltonnh25 @honey Thanks for playing! The door opening mechanic really is underexplained... I added a short sentence in the tips section, but it would really be better to have this in-game... something to learn for next time, thanks for calling it out!

@tiar Is it the lack of failure state that makes it feel like it's not a challenge? Fair point :)

The way I think about game jam games is that I'd like players to experience a full run through the main content in about 5-10 min without getting frustrated. There are a couple points where this didn't quite work (e.g. people got stuck on doors or frustrated after taking the hardest path by accident), but overall, toning down the difficulty of the main path seemed well-received during our playtests.

I like putting respawn points close to the challenging sections because in my mind, solving the new challenge is more fun than spending time repeating a section you already understand. We put presents on the map with the idea that this would appeal to more completionist players, but maybe that didn't quite appeal to you?

Very fun game, the gameplay is great

Outstanding entry, weighing in strong on a bunch of categories! The core control mechanic was very creative, and very well done. That's not easy! The graphics were great, and the way snow accumulated made it feel very organic. Whatever discrete chunks there were underlying things in the logic, the fluffy snow felt real. The excellent chuff-chuff sound effects of moving around really sold the snow feel, and the vocal music was sweet and charming.

I did run into one problem: when the game told me to go my own way, instead of just building a snowman I somehow settled on the idea of jumping up then splitting midair to stick the landing just between the overhead spike and the ground. I managed to do it. But trying to do this precision maneuver really tested my control limits and I got a bit frustrated rolling off the edge. This was me being dumb, and generally I felt like the momentum controls were strong, and I enjoyed rolling and jumping over a bunch of pits, and later saved myself with a few nice midair splits anyway. But maybe at very low speeds the character could halt more quickly, at least near edges? The second minor splinter was that I didn't understand the unlocking of gates. Sometimes I built myself up to climb over the top, while other times I unlocked it. I never quite got the rules - I'd be doing stuff, and then click it would unlock.

But overall this was amazing and blew me away. My wife also enjoyed it and was singing the tune after we stopped playing (finish time 14:59).

Excellent entry you can really be proud of, nice work.

Ahhh, this is so cool! I love the concept and I'm impressed how much you managed to get out of it in the scope of the jam. Everything worked perfectly, the sounds and music were just spectacular, and there's tons and tons of polish. I particularly love the way the buttons pop in on the body. =)

I don't usually see tight level design in LD, but this really flowed well. I'm curious how much the skill of making a snowman would get locked in over just a little bit more time - I felt like I was advancing at just the right pace to match the content, but it was definitely a bit of a struggle on the last puzzle. I might succumb to temptation to come back to this one later and see how quickly I can zip through. Always a sign that an entry worked!

I think my only complaint is that I frequently wanted a way to switch which snowball was focused. It's part of the charm in some areas to have it set organically, I think, but especially in the later puzzles it just bugged me a bit. A minor thing - so many things to love here! Wonderful entry!

The character control is good, the gameplay is really smooth and comfortable.
I have been playing so many cruel or tough games in this LD, and finally I found your game, the soft music and the lovely snowball heal my soul. Thank you!

This was great. The music was simple but didn't feel to repetitive, and the graphics achieved everything that they set out to do very well. The gameplay conceit was great, and led to a lot of cool emergent things you could do which is really a sign of a great system. The door mechanic was fine after reading the tip, but that is something that should probably be in-game. Great job to both of you!

Very good one. Art is amazing, sound is good and the gameplay is super satisfying. Momentum is done so well. One little thing that should could be better in my opinion - there is no tutorial about doors that require building a snowman. I figured it out in the game on my own when tried jumping over it, but some kind of tip there would be nice.
Great entry, good job!

And special thanks for your post about technical side of the game, it was very interesting to read how you managed to achieve some of this stuff.

Really enjoyed the overall mood and graphics was a stand out. Very Impressed that you managed to make this game within the time limit.

Hope you develop a post jam version of this game.

Really good game! Thanks for sharing how was made :ok_hand: By the way, I've played in B/W I can't see the colors you have in the animated gif, is this normal?


Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@pkenney, thanks for the note about sound effects, we're pretty proud of the chuff-chuff :). We'll share a couple tips on sound design in the coming days. The spike jump can be done by just tapping jump, but the difficulty does feel a bit harsh at that point of the level (we watched people repeatedly fail that exact jump).

@justinmullin Any suggestions for the snowball switch? I really liked the concept of having multiple heads active at once and having them sacrifice each other organically, but there are spots where the camera doesn't focus on the one you'd expect. Maybe you have ideas how to solve this? I'll give more details in a blog post.

@goldranger I'm glad the peaceful aspect resonated with you :). We like positive games, even though it's not always that simple.

@vlandemart, @zicboy, @kleinzach, I'm working on a slightly-revised post-LD version with a better intro for doors, will probably post it on itch.io before Christmas.

@franfox The game should be in full color, are you using anything specific to play in black and white?

In the past, I've used the [High Contrast](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/high-contrast/djcfdncoelnlbldjfhinnjlhdjlikmph/related) chrome extension to test for accessibility, maybe something like that is still active for you?

Here's a [windows build](http://kodobolt.com/games/2018_LD43_Snowcrifice/Welcome%20to%20the%20North%20Pole%21_Data.zip) if the WebGL version gives you trouble.

Man, I was obsessed with Loco Roco when it came out, so I LOVED this game. It's beautiful and satisfying and delightful. Fantastic work!

@fre I agree having all the snowballs roll at once was important, and felt great, I was thinking only of the camera focus. I was initially picturing a cycle left/cycle right button (or even just a "next snowball" button) that would just focus another snowball with the camera. The auto-focus did the right thing most of the time, though, and I wouldn't want to see that functionality sacrificed (hehe) for the sake of a fiddly input thing. Honestly thinking it through maybe if the camera would do a bit of a zoom to ensure that each snowball is visible, that could help; I think my discomfort mostly came from losing some snowballs off the side of the screen sometimes if I was spread very wide. Probably something where my intuitions are inferior to feeling out a tweaked system, but there's my two cents. Looking forward to trying a post-compo version some time. =)

Loved the game, the art is simple but really nice, the music is cool and the cconcept is great. Only downside is for the doors opening (as already said in some previous comments) as it not really clear what you have to do to open it (you understand quickly but it can still be frustrating to not know what to do) and the separation in two is quite unconfortable (when you change side, you change the one who is in the center, to make snowman, especially at the end, it is quite difficult when you manipulate 4 snowballs to make 2 snowmen, ...)

Great job overall :)

Aww that was so cute!
I loved the faces on the snowballs and snowmen. The music was adorable too. Really nice mood on this one. It was very fun to play around with the snow, growing and splitting both felt satisfying, building specific snowmen was an interesting challenge. All in all, great submission!

The gameplay reminded me of loco roco by the way.

One way to give it even more character would be to give the snowballs some cute voices :D


For some reason I can already hear "do you want to build a snowman" in the background. That was a very cute puzzle-platformer, and one that reminded me very much of _Katamari Damacy_ with the growing snowballs. While I didn't collect all of the different presents, I did make it to the end and had a nice time overall.

While the music was very season-y and snow-y (those are verbs now), I do think it got repetitive after a while, in opposition to the rolling sound effect that definitely gave the snow a very audible texture which felt really nice. Presentation was really cute with the different snowballs growing in size, and the spike hazards were visible enough despite being ice-toned to match the rest of the presentation. Not terribly innovative, but enough to have a nice time.

If I had to point out a complaint tough, I'd have to agree with some of the previous comments regarding the sudden switching of focus between snowballs depending on the direction you moved. I feel like it'd have been better to delegate that task to it's unique key as I often found myself switching between different snowballs unintentionally after already having gotten one snowball where I wanted it to go. Some of the puzzles to get some of the presents also felt a bit too harsh compared to the rest of the game (like the one from the screenshot I shared above).

Other than that, I really liked it! On [behalf of our team](https://discord.whalesandgames.com), thank you for this snowy experience! Glad I had to chance to give the game a go after you guys posted your programming post yesterday. Cheers! :whale:

This is honestly one of the most unique games I've played so far.There's a lot of potential for this mechanic -- I think you only scratched the surface with this jam. And that's not to say I didn't enjoy it, because I really did. I managed to find 4 packages. It's really cool that you managed to put little secrets into a jam game.

The music got a little repetitive, but it did fit the game very well. The art for the snowball faces was spot-on for the atmosphere the game had. Awesome work!

No idea what to add. It's just a great entry, it's puts me immediately in a good mood. Very well done!

Amazingly clever!

Very funny mechanics, well polished. I've finished it and it was very enjoyable experience :) Took me some time to figure out how those pressure plate works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAUXM7NIRZ0

It is a really really cute game. From the graphics to the music I felt it was appealing and quiet in its sense. I mean it is a great little game no doubt! :)

Really nice game! :)

Awesome game, it's telling how good a game is by how long you keep playing for :D. Really like the mechanic

What a clever game!

It's snowing here at my town so my experience was even better. Great entry! Well done! :)

What a delightfully charming experience - the visuals are just so cute, the music is amazing as well and the platforming feels nice.
I'd have liked to be able to switch between the snowballs I control as opposed to controlling all of them (and then having to corner one of them and work from there).

Very cool mechanic! I did get frustrated at times cause after I split my snowmen I would want to control one ball and the game would give me control over another ball instead. Because of that there were more than a few "snowcrifices" that needed to made. Haha good job guys!

Very well done! Your idea for the theme is great! Simple and effective mechanic! Congratulations.

Great job, this was a real breath of fresh air to play! I disagree with pretty much all of the criticisms noted above except for the camera focus issue, which seems like a Hard Problem (tm) to solve, as I like the spirit of controlling all of the snowballs, but this can cause issues when they get split up. You could try putting in some functionality to reduce the likelihood that the snowballs get separated, but that's sort of against the flow of the game and also wouldn't even work well in all cases. There's no way to read the player's mind and figure out which one they "want" to be the focus either. I don't like the suggestions offered about controlling only a single ball at a time as I feel like that really strips the game of some of its character. The only thing I can really think of would be to come up with some smarter heuristics about where the camera focus should be. If this were a console-only game you could maybe do something around using one analog stick for movement and the other analog stick to help hint the camera, but I'm not sure that would translate to PC controls as well.

Perhaps the camera maybe should be conservative at first and try its best to frame all of the active balls, but start to disregard balls that are being left behind based on some heuristic involving the player's movement directions/inputs. In terms of level design I think (???) this also means you might need to be careful about having drops that are too tall since having one ball get separated from the group very quickly by falling a long distance could be a difficult situation to handle.

Anyways, going to stop talking about that not as I won't pretend to have a magical solution to that problem. Overall this was very charming and fun. The music track worked great and was definitely a highlight of the entry. Obviously it would have been even better with some added variation (a B-section of some sort) but this is a jam entry after all...

The level design was quite sensible for the most part, though some of the extra challenges involved quite a bit of backtracking to get back to the main path; I think that would be on my wishlist to see if it could be eased a tiny bit for a polished version. The various gate puzzles were okay but I think it was sometimes a bit awkward to roll around back and forth in a somewhat narrow space (sometimes with spikes on one side) trying to roll up more snow. It worked just fine, but I feel like it sort of broke the flow of things. I think rolling around more freely and having fun with growing large and then splitting again is a real strength of your game so IMHO it felt like some (not all) of the gate puzzles as well as some of the more mazey challenges broke the flow a bit.

The visual design was great and all of the details (snow particles, layered backgrounds) really helped bring things to life. The snowball behavior itself was quirky, but in a good way that lent itself to experimentation and having fun, rather than feeling like a fight against a physics system. This is very rare to see pulled off successfully -- great job!

Last but not least, the writeups on implementation details are much appreciated. Thank you for writing those!

One last thing, it seems that your game is among several Unity WebGL games that I've played that has a delayed audio initialization issue (specifically with Chrome browsers) where the audio is silent for a few seconds until it is able to initialize correctly. I also had this issue with my initial WebGL build. Unfortunately this is not under our control at all as its a browser implementation issue of all things -- see https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=914757. Switching to an asm.js build (instead of WebAssembly) does fix the issue if you are so inclined to do so.

lots of charm in this one.

I loved the graphics, I found them very well polished for the jam, and the snowballs are very charismatic!! I Liked a lot the expressions on them!

The music fit well with the snow theme. And the idea of the game fit very well with the Ludum Dare's theme!

I liked the mechanics, they're fluid and easy to use. I had some problems when jumping at the corners of platforms, where the characters stopped and couldn't jump. I had to split or go back and try to jump again.

The camera was very intuitive, It foccused very well on the character that I was moving.

It's an amazing game!!! Congratulations!!

awesome game i love it :) it give a lot of fun. graphics and sound are amazing , really really great job :)

this is probably my favorite game :)

loved the music and overall mood. Very nice and enjoyable mechanic, loved the concept of having to make different sizes of snowballs to pass doors. Got stuck in some cases, where a "sacrificed" snowball blocked my only path, but solved it by restarting. Great entry. I enjoyed it very much!

Cool game. I liked all the mechanics, audio and graphics. Cool work!

5/5
Love the snow effects and the feeling of moving the character! And the song and sound effects are super! This is really well made an this was lots of fun!

Also love the graphics in general. The level was also a lot longer than I expected, which was another nice surprise. I also enjoyed reading the write-up of the implementation details.