Encroaching by Ava Skoog

This habitat is no longer habitable. Grab your headphones and a gamepad to really throw yourself in, or your keyboard and loudspeakers in a pinch. Find out what is encroaching on these woods.

Credits 🦌
- Ava Skoog
- Marte Kvamme Strømmen
- (most sounds from zapsplat.com)
Controllers 🎮
WASD + QE or dual gamepad sticks.
Fixes 🛠
- Wasn't possible to turn around quickly by steering backwards due to a bug.
- Animations of deer walking in a direction weren't triggering properly due to a NaN issue.
- Enemy spawning wasn't working properly, making them not appear sometimes.

Ratings
| Overall | 415th | 3.55⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 924th | 2.888⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 469th | 3.3⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 817th | 3.225⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 219th | 4.038⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 128th | 3.775⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 849th | 1.982⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 16th | 4.25⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
The evil laughs are a good touch too. Only the chirpy birds sounded a bit too happy and morning-like, the crows fit much better. You may want to opt out of the humour category as well, unless I'm just humourless…
Btw, if you feel so inclined to try my entry, please wait a bit. It's incomplete but I'm actually making a playable post-compo version. You can rate the current one but there isn't much of a game there.
Anyway, great entry. Actually kind of sad I saw all the in-production pics as I already knew what was going on. Next time I'll have to mute your twitter during LD 😁
The game is quite moody and the theme and introduction of the game got me curious. But the execution need some improvement imo.
- The control is... very bad. It just feel unnatural. Every time I see a hunter and in my mind I was like "SHIT A HUNTER! RUN!!" and I press back, but the deer just stand there stupidly, and I got pulled back to reality "Oh right it's just a game" and it felt really bad.
- There's nothing telling me what to do in the game. I know I'm supposed to dodge hunters, but what else other than that? What should I do instead of just standing still?
Thanks! Agree on the chirps actually, but it was the best forest ambience of all the tracks I could find and I didn't have time to edit it, so I had to go with that, heh. Pretty sure I have to rate your game based on the original version but I'll be happy to play the update anyway! Do tweet me when you're done. c: And yeah, maybe it was my fault for revealing too much on Twitter too, heh.
@avavt:
Thanks for your comment! Yeah, there were originally plans for you to be able to sprint to escape and I also considered making you automatically faster when getting shot at, but in the end the game was a bit too easy anyway and doing so would've removed all the challenge and it was too late to come up with a better design as a whole. ):
It's interesting to hear that your immediate instinct is to just stand still… I hadn't even considered that, heh. You're meant to keep walking to see what you can find. So do try that if you decide to give it another go! c:
Standing still when pressing backwards sounds like a bug tho… Let me look into that…
**EDIT:** Fixed it! Thanks for notifying.
Good stuff :8ball:
There is the issue of not having a clear goal though, I couldn't really figure out what I am looking for or what to do.
Audio cues to pick up the position of the hunters in the fog is great. Unfortunately, a lot of it is covered up to the loudness of the deer's footsteps, so you might want to lower the volume of unimportant sounds.
And when I played it through and saw the deer lying on the floor, I thought that was my former body. I let myself be killed, but that was not the case. You could still do that. The more often you get shot, the more depressed it gets. However, this would probably lessen the feeling of not knowing if you arrive. Because everywhere you could see the corpses as points showing a progress. Hm. Maybe you can just try it and see what the reactions of the players are.
Is there an end or a goal to reach ?
The mood you created is excellent, the audio is disturbing (as it should be) and the graphics are really nice (they're like a bit dreamful so it creates a spooky yet wonderful atmosphere). I really enjoyed it. I think that if you had put some imaginary creatures instead of hunters that would also work with the mood. :smiley:
I think it would be cool to have some sort of indication as to where to run or if you're close to escaping or not. Or maybe I have missed something.
Overall, great entry, congrat's!
The game is on itch.io now too: https://prinsessa.itch.io/encroaching
@antoined73, @axoona: My tip for reaching the end is to try to walk in more of a straight line than in circles to get forward and eventually find it—direction doesn't matter. c:
I completed the game but I was just kinda exploring around not really feeling any pull towards a goal, maybe more hinting like trails on the ground or any clues like that would help me feel like I am searching for something specific.
Overall Stunning entry and very immersive! Amazing job!
Feels like it's a really good setup, but I feel like there could be more of a deeper meaning or significance, or progression to the game. Like as you go on there are less trees so you are found more easily, or something. This was still pretty cool though!