Loot Keeper by outstar
Inventory management simulator gone roguelike!
Are you one of those damn hoarders? Do you loot every single house on your way - as long, of course, as their owners don't see your dirty hands touching the cutlery? Well, this game is for you!

But this time, you don't have unlimited inventory space. Try to fit all your crooked swords, magic shields and useless food items in the little space you have - all that in a randomized dungeon, with enemies out to get you!
What's going to cause you the most trouble - a legendary skeleton mage or your beloved items?

Game includes:
- 91 (!) hand-drawn and digitally colored items, because our artist is crazy
- ~~ring meta~~ we nerfed rings so you can't get invincible with them, you little minmaxers!
- a fridge
- very smelly pickle
- tutorial guy who's TOTALLY not one of the enemies you fight in the dungeon, nu-uh!
- happy developers who actually DID sleep AND walked the doggo during the jam
Game made in a team of 3 for Ludum Dare 42 Game Jam.
Code / Implementation - Memoriesin8bit
Implementation / Animation / Code - Outstar
Art - Titos2k
Updates
Version 1.1:
- difficulty grows way faster, making the game harder at higher levels
- weirdly-shaped items are easier to stack now
- rings got nerfed
- starting events are more balanced
| Windows | https://outstar.itch.io/lootkeeper |
| macOS | https://outstar.itch.io/lootkeeper |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/loot-keeper |
Ratings
| Overall | 90th | 3.972⭐ | 181🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 225th | 3.645⭐ | 181🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 106th | 3.823⭐ | 180🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 34th | 4.317⭐ | 182🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 51th | 4.437⭐ | 184🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 203th | 3.423⭐ | 178🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 141th | 3.739⭐ | 176🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 99🗳️ | 73🗨️ |
Moving items around was pretty awkward, maybe just clicking and dragging would have been easier for the user.
I felt like I spent a lot of time just sitting and watching combats. In fact, I'm typing this review as I wait for 4 combats to finish before the next camp site with nothing for me to do. I think it would have made a lot of sense if I could move items around during combats / transitions as well, so I spend less time just sitting and watching. Alternatively, having some numbers for the enemies so I get an idea of how effective or close to death I'm coming would give me something to think about between chests.
Love the refrigerator!
Sometimes had a lot of difficulty mousing over items, like my mouse would be right in the middle of them and it wouldn't register. I later realized the mouse-over and clicks were per-pixel, not per square! Just having it be per-square would have made it much less frustrating trying to select things, although I appreciated how I could (very rarely) squeeze two items into one square.
I made it to Level 10, and haven't taken any damage yet (as far as I've noticed)... I guess I'll go into battle with just a rotten cucumber and see what happens when I die ^_^.
I the main problem is that combat don't have any feedback at all. You don't see how much damage you deal or how much damage is dealt to you, so you can't see if your setup is effective or not. Also, being able to change your gear mid fight could be great, because that would allow you to quickly adapt to what's coming and would make the fight more interesting in my opinion.
Adding a rarity system would also improve the planning phase, because you could see at first glance what items you should keep and what's garbage.
Good game overall, nice work !
Having a tutorial is really nice too. I really liked the skull guy.
It was a little tough to tell what was going on in battles, it would be nice if you could see their stats too, like a previous commenter mentioned.
Nice work, guys :smile:
One issue is, that once you have some equipment set up, the game can essentially play itself. Maybe some mechanic forcing you to replace equipment after a while would help with this?
I would be really nice to have indicators to damage done and suffered during battles, and enemy stats too.
Was killed a bit too fast on my first try, having even a bit of negative stats was more substantial than I assumed initially. :P After I got the hang of things the difficulty curve turned out to be well-designed; I guess you could say that at some point later into the game it gets easier than it should be, but some form of "power creep" was to be expected, so I can't even consider that an avoidable problem, especially in a jam.
The controls were adding a certain charm to the game - my initial expression was that it'd be a mouse-only game with drag-and-drop and maybe some additional clicks needed (like LMB for item rotation), but keyboard controls were playing nicely into all the chaos and "panic mode" moments. My only small gripe was that the item movement was a bit too responsive for my liking - sometimes holding a key down for just a tad longer than usual was leading to the item moving two cells in the appropriate direction instead of just one like I intended.
Special props for the physical/magic system of stats, love it for years thanks to Pokemon games. Imo, this system is the main reason the game works that well, providing the motivation to actually swap around physical and magical "builds" and save some of the unequipped items. Without it the game'd come down to quickly summing all the stats to constantly assess what item brings the most "net profit" per tile and replace the worst out of equipped items, assuming it's worse than the item being assessed; that'd also make intentional item destruction way more beneficial (there'd be almost no reason to keep anything with less overall stats than everything equipped). But I don't want you to fall asleep reading all the praise I have for this system, so I'll stop here. xD
Well done, thanks for the game!
Nice interpretation of the theme, too.
The tutorial was a bit wordy for my liking. Maybe it's an idea to introduce new concepts as they are relevant, instead of saying everything from the get-go?
The arts great, the concept is great, even the sound is nice, the only place it really falls down is I never really felt like I was managing my inventory except for a few occasions were I'm just clearing space so I have more time to move things around when I encounter a smaller chest. I would have liked to see some fast paced decision making where you are weighing up what you have against what is coming but in the end it felt slow, relaxed, and frankly very passive.
I'd really like to play it again after its had some re balancing because there is potential in this concept. Although this is nothing like FTL in gameplay I think I can see it trying to evoke that same kind of panic and pressured "oh god oh god, what do I do? oh yeah I can do this quick quick quick" thought process if fine tuned but as an initial demo / concept piece its wetting my pallet for more
p.s. Just played version 1.1 and its a big improvement. A lot more challenging and tactical management of your inventory is much more important now. Good luck in the dare and I hope you do continue to work on this after the jam.
Overall I still like this game. Still playing. Great game made in LD42, very well fits with the theme.
I feel like the controls are a bit clunky though : like other people said, playing with the mouse AND the keys feel very strange.
First, I would prefer that as the game goes on the larger items scale better than the smaller ones, thus encouraging me to ditch small easy to carry rings and try to get tricky making crazy shapes work because square for square they are better. I ended up on lv 17 wanting to play more but I had only 1, 2, and 3 square objects and the whole stress of the game was gone. Second, I would speed up the clock of the entire game every level thus making it even more stressful as you go, trying to swap objects in less and less time and in more and more complicated shapes trying to juggle actually making progress on your stats while also not accidentally deleting things and losing. Lastly, I would show whatever numbers the combat is generating as a distraction and to make the slow parts when you don't need input for a while more fun, and to make the individual stats and monster types more useful.
Bravo.
I love this idea because I've had it since YEARS ago and hadn't been able to make a decent enough implementation of it yet, this looks sweet but I can't play it - OSX/Web version???
I retrospect since your stats can stay ahead of the curve pretty easily the most important thing is to preserve your equipment at all cost. I lost because several of my equipped items were deleted and I lost every subsequent battle.
The game in itself is very polished, congratulations!!
Mad props to your graphic designer as well!
I started this game like 3 hours ago and I still did not loose a life and I don't think I will :)
Few suggestions from my perspective of view to be more interesting.
1. Limit number of rings in main inventory to 10 maybe or something because I made my inventory mostly with rings and from my perspective it seems I can not loose anymore.

2. Add damage/life bar on character and/or enemies or something.
3. Increase damage dealt by enemies even more.
4. Increase difference in stats of items while level progress
5. Maybe even items equipped to be damaged (used) over time and crack and removed from inventory (so that you replace them more often).
6. If you add this item crack/destroy and more dmg by enemies. also to add like potion item which you can drink near the camp fire (rest area).
Like I said this is amazing game I love playing it and I would like to see it on mobile phone as well.
Keep up the great work !!!
It's a clever idea to put bad items by default to fool noob players like me. I had equipped the pickle and the banana without looking to their stats, and I didn't understand why I lost heart on each fight :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
After some plays, here is my feedbacks to improve the game (I know it's time limited and that it was impossible to do all of that ^^):
- It would be good to stop manually the timer when we open a chest and that the inventory is already good
- There is a lack of feedback for the battle, it would be good to have the life of the enemy or some info that shows to the player what it really happens.
- I didn't find anything to restore my lost life, I don't know if there is an item for that, but if it's not the case, it would be good to have one :smile:
- I think the drag'n drop would be more appropriate to move items
Very best.
We were learning the software during development. And 3 days wasn't enough to make this happening, but eventually we will get there :smile:
And the idea, which is not a secondary thing, is really good. It works well and it has humor, awesome entry! May I ask you guys how many years of experience have?
I think the game should give me more reason to keep items that are not better than what I have equipped, like the ability to sell items or something like that, otherwise I just destroy everything that is not needed. Another thing is item selection, I usually ended up moving the item that I didn't want to move when they were overlapping, maybe cycling the items under the cursor every click would be better.
Great job.
The inventory part is very fun and interesting, but action part lacks some involvment
At least a little line with message "skeletor missed the attack with 3% hit chance" would make it more engaging for the player
The theme is represented well, with the inventory being the main focus of everything. I think it was a good idea to then take everything else (like the looting, fighting and progression) automated, as it would have become to complex with having a complete regular RPG system ON TOP of the inventory, and would have made the inventory just feel like a gimmick rather then the game-play. Good design choice!
Now a few of my issues with the game:
First of, the sound was not that great... The music just felt off and out-of-place, the camping music was the worst offender of this and completely destroyed the otherwise cool "dungeon"-mood for me.
There is also an issue with the pacing. While the looting and managing parts are fine and has a quite nice stress factor to them, its just way to much down-time in-between those parts, especially while fighting several enemies in a row. The complete lack of interaction in-between does become rather boring as you just wait for the next chest or fire. It also took quite a while for my inventory to get full, and actually have any inpact that I got new things that started to fill the space, especially as its so easy to get rid of the most worthless stuff by just stacking them in a corner during the campfire.
And the combat is... soso, as mentioned I have no problem with it being automated! (it is however, way to slow... it should at-least be interesting to look at). But the main issue I have is really one of information (or the lack there of). I have no clue of what decides who wins the combat. Obviously larger stats are better, but compared to what? I cant see the enemies stats, so I have no reference to what the numbers on my gear actually does. Also, do I need more armour then attack? Can i focus in only on attack and make a "glass cannon"? If not, then there really is NO choice but to try and always keep the stats at the same level, and I am suddenly very much at the mercy of the random loot drops to be good.
Also I side note: why could I not drop and drag? Really felt like the game should have been played with only the mouse.
With that said! A solid game with a lot of potential. The bonus is the really solid tutorial, showing really how much effort was put in to the details! Great job.
I would have prefer a full mouse gameplay though, maybe using drag and drop and the wheel or right click to rotate the objects, because when you have to be fast, moving with WASD and rotating with a different key is a bit complex.
Anyway, I really loved it, a very well polished game, good job ! :thumbsup:
Those things aside, this is incredibly polished for an LD game. It just looks great and I enjoyed the music (although the dying sound effect was a bit out of place). It nails the theme and is the best take on "running out of inventory space" I've played so far.
This is one entry that I really think should be developed further; you guys obviously have the skill and people love a good loot/strategy game.
This is one a the best entry i've seen !
I kid you not I had this exact idea but you guys executed it 10 times better. The art excellent, I loved it!
I would've preferred to rearrange stuff using the mouse alone and maybe rotate stuff with the mouse wheel or right click. It was kind of weird to click stuff and then move it with the keyboard.
But the game was pretty awesome, specially for a Jam game. Congratulations on the superb team effort!
I drew you a quick thing, hope you like it:

Congratulations on this entry!
The gameplay hooked me pretty good. I played until level 12, here is a shot of my build not long before death: https://imgur.com/fI6dtQb
There was a nice moment of panic when I got a chest and it overlapped some of my key items! Early in the run I tried hot-swapping during a chest, to change from a sword to a hammer to alter my build to better suit the next monster. I missed by a cell and ended up going with neither main weapon for 3 guys straight! That may have ended that run, actually.
So a few times I was wondering, why not allow the hot-swap with a brief ability between fights, but maybe that's not a good idea, I'm not sure.
I definitely got into the whole inventory fiddling, and felt pretty clever a couple of times when I realized I could re-org a layout to free up a slot in a certain shape to accommodate a particular new item.
Very cool, and very well done.
Great concept! Some parts of the execution are a bit messy, it feels like, like the interspersed mouse/keyboard controls, and the "next" queue scrolling in the opposite direction of the player (maybe it does make more sense that way? not sure). It's definitely got potential though. Keep at it!
By the way! You may want to credit the sources for your music? The rest song was quite peaceful and happy, it was nice to listen to while micromanaging everything, haha.
If there is one gripe I would have is that the feedback during the fights was almost nonexistent - I really want to know why exactly I lost certain fights so I can equip better for them in the future.
But let that not detract you from the gold nugget you got here, I played this game far longer than I should.
The timer added too much pressure to place everything during the treasure phase. I often wanted to adjust the positions after the treasure destroyed items, or while walking between enemies, but it was locked in. I feel like it would have been better if I had pieces appear in the middle and I had to move each one to a location as similar to how Tetris gives you one piece at a time. I was not given enough time to make meaningful choices about want I would like to or not like to keep, and once I did have time to review what was in my inventory I had no way to destroy things I didn't want to keep.
The graphics are nice, and I like how the whole theme of the game was incorporated into the design.
However, the gameplay struggles since neither the idle game or inventory puzzle have been fully fleshed out. In idle games, I'm given the opportunity to take actions while hero's continue, and in puzzle games, I'm given enough time to make decisions. It was not transparent how much I would need to defeat enemies, only that I should have high Magic or Melee numbers. While I wanted to prepare for an upcoming level while at the campfire, I couldn't always see what was up ahead. The only time I had to see and react to things that were further in the level was during the treasure phase, but that didn't give me enough time to evaluation, place, and respond to what was coming up ahead.
I hope you keep working on this game. If the timing for sorting treasure was balanced better, I think it could be a very solid game.