Good idea, and well executed, controls are a bit stiff & awkward though

I really like this game. Nice sounds and music. Great idea for light charging - loved it. And i survive final wave... so proud of myself... Nice game - great work

@anrqangel Can you elaborate on the control issues? Curious how I can improve there.

@ladislavodstrcil I'm glad you liked the charging! Just came to me about an hour after announcement. And congrats on that final wave :ocean:

This is interesting. Good job

I liked the charging mechanic. Had a good mood that was added to by managing whether the axe was holstered. Great work!

OKAY THIS WAS LITERALLY AMAZING. I love the way the crank makes you vulnerable by taking your hand off the mouse. it really instills the fear into you. Im telling you right now, this is a masterwork in game design, from the cranklight controls to the swinging the axe. this is beautiful... i cant get over how much fun it was, along with how atmospheric it was. truley beautiful. thankyou for making such an awesome game, loved the bits of story and mystery. loved the ending nearly brought me to tears, i love this.

@anrqangel Can you elaborate on the control issues? Curious how I can improve there

the cranking is awesome but if you can make the character follow the cursor, controls would be smoother and a little easier to get used to.. In the end it is your game however and if getting used to the controls is part of the challenge then cudos.. all in all still very well executed..

I really liked the mechanics of the game, mainly the flashlight one, it's a really fun game, I didn't find any bugs, the music and SFX were really put in good use. Great work!

@bgamedev Thanks!

@landosystems Glad you liked the holster mechanic. I did play around with unholstering automatically on left-click and decided that it removed a lot of the tension from holstering. Thanks for reinforcing that it was a good choice.

@hiremedeveloper I'm so glad you got that feeling. That tension of needing to physically make it harder to defend yourself was the core I built the game around, and I'm happy it shone through for you :heartbeat: This is exceptionally kind feedback, thank you.

@anrqangel Fair point. I got player movement working very early and then never went back to play with it again - I got used to the 8-way movement but did also think about the scheme you suggest here (W moves to cursor, S moves away, A/D circle-strafe?) would be a good experiment at the very least. Thanks for clarifying!

@marcelo-zoletti I have no doubt there are bugs :wink: I sourced all sounds from Wikimedia Foundation, which was such an incredible resource here. Thanks for playing!

Cool game! Controls were nice especially the swing.

Nice atmosphere, kind of hard to manage everything at the same time though.

nice mood, actually had me pretty scared

Very atmospheric game! The use of light also really adds to the games mood! Overall, this is a great jam entry, which I enjoyed playing!

Loving this game! The music, the art design, really really well done!

@vignesh-raj Thanks! I was concerned that the swing would be hard to understand, but I'm glad you liked it.

@codexus Did that management subtract from your enjoyment? It's intended to make you feel strained, but I'm curious if you had another take.

@marcusnystrand I like making spooky stuff. :ghost:

@black-flag Thank you, lighting was actually something I decided I wanted to play with before we even got the theme. Glad it helps!

@nicolasjl9 Thanks! The music is not mine, and I pulled it off Wikimedia Foundation with attributions on itch. That being said, I definitely spent a lot of time browsing Wikimedia looking for juuuuust the right sounds and made some edits both in-engine and using Audacity. As you might have guessed, I very purposefully built the finale to play off that soundtrack. Glad you liked the combination. The art is all mine and was done in Aseprite, which I think is a really great tool for this style of art.

Thanks for leaving the suggestion to play, over at my game. This is actually the first game in this jam that I’ve _won_! Everyone seems to be making impossible to win games. Yours, while challenging, was fun and rewarding. The cranking action was a nice invention, and I felt really lost in the woods. Good job!

very good atmosphere, and the mechanics help to serve that atmosphere very well. i'm especially a fan of the tooltips providing some insight as to why a thing might be going wrong, it fills in the gaps that you might not be able to figure out for yourself. the arrows were similarly very helpful for preventing you from wandering around forever, which was nice. i think i only made it through the last ten seconds of survive purely by luck and stumbling into potions and swinging my axe blindly, but the music was fantastic on that part! i really enjoyed this!

@damienp Glad you enjoyed yourself. I would have felt bad plugging my game in your comments if you hadn't. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I put some time into making sure the difficulty was tough but fair... until the finale, I suppose.

@twobitadder Hey, thanks for checking this out! I'm glad the tooltips helped - I wasn't sure if they'd be visible enough. The arrows were crucial to making this work, as well - although I'm uncertain if I should have had them point directly and unerringly to your goals. A bit of uncertainty there might have been interesting.

As the developer, I should tell you that the secret to winning the finale consistently is to practice spawning the potions where you want them. This *is* a skill and not at all random chance! :wink:

Nice little game. Was put off by the cranking (having to "turn" with only three fingers on the arrow keys is a bit hard). I read in the comments that you intended to make it that way so the player needed to drop the mouse and rush the keyboard, but I think the same feeling could have been convoyed by making circles with the mouse, because you already need to lower the weapon to charge. :slight_smile:
This aside, nice "slenderman" feel, and good boss battle! Sound atmosphere is also really good. Congrats!

@thibaud-ligneul That's a possible alternative, but I'd want to then toggle the player rotation off, or else they might look a bit silly when charging. Additionally, the physical feeling of removing your hand from your "weapon" (the mouse / the hatchet) was important to me. But point taken that the interface could still be developed. Thanks for playing!

Initially I thought the controls were awkward but then I read what someone said up there about how it increased the tension to have to remove your hand from the mouse to crank your flashlight. I guess it's atypical so it just felt like a mistake but I think it's pretty cool.

It's really hard to play on a laptop (where right click is two fingers) so an alternative to holster that isn't right click would be nice.

RATED PRETTY GOOD! AWESOME GAME!

really liked the use of the arrow keys to charge the batteries

Hi!
I'm more fan of in-game tutorial, rather than the wall of text with the instructions and the controls.
Also, It's quite awrkward that the player isn't looking in the direction that he/she is moving.
In the audio side it's very completed with the bits sounds and the atmosferic loop.
Nice entry!

Big oof on the last wave, nice work with tensity.

I like how you made gameplay:
- help for navigation, so you never be lost
- time for prepairing before wolf attack (i saw games where something kills you from the darkness and you have no chance to avoid it). Oh, that feeling when you hear the wolf pack barking...
- mechanic with flashlight is amazing. But maybe it's unnecessary to hide/unhide axe cause you already need time to transfer your hand to the arrows and back to the mouse. Plus player can use new strategy - don't move, but recharge flashlight and fight off enemies
- Flasks for hp nice mechanic too (there were too many for me, but it's just for me)

Thanks, i really enjoyed this game!

@kuiefs Yeah, never really considered playing on a laptop. This is a fair consideration - I could have allowed for accessibility remappings even if I considered the "intended experience" to be using a real mouse with an easy right-click.

@euforia-games THANK YOU FOR PLAYING! :grin:

@laura-del-pino I also prefer an in-game tutorial - I envisioned a sunset section where you chop some wood with the hatchet and use the flashlight to find your way to the campfire. Time didn't permit it, unfortunately. I agree that the controls could use some tuning as well - and for your edification, I intentionally made the PC androgynous, so they're whatever gender you want. Glad you liked the sounds, I really feel like the game started to come together when I added them.

@karenin-dmitry No navigational help made the game an unfun slog - that's also why I tried to be forgiving with health drops, because I wanted folks to get to the end of the game within a few attempts. Making the enemies fair was important to me. I tuned their attack speed such that if you turn away from them and run, you can get out of bite range, leaving them frozen for a counter-attack. However, trying to walk backwards from them isn't fast enough most of the time, and you'll get munched.

That leads me to the holstering mechanic... I wanted you to feel vulnerable whenever you had to recharge the light, so having you put the hatchet away was an extremely direct way to communicate that. I like games that give a variety of player options in approach but that tense feeling is too important to me to compromise. I tried to keep it fair with the bark arrows, though - most of the time, you'll have enough warning to move your hand to the mouse, right click, hold left click, and face the wolf before it reaches you. Tense, but almost always winnable.

Thanks for your detailed feedback. Wish I could give more than one heart!

Nice game with very good atmosphere. I really liked the flashlight recharge mechanic!

The flashlight charge mechanic was a great idea! Also the atmosphere was pretty dense! The combat lacks a bit though, it's hard to say when wolves attack.