West by ursagames
You found out that your friend was captured and is sentenced to be hung today!
You must figure out a way to rescue him.... but you are also a wanted man who has been down on his luck.
You have no weapon or money.
Good luck!
The delete key will end the current day. Useful if you get stuck.
HINTS * Teri is the only person who I had time to implement branching conversation * You will unlock new dialogue with her based on knowledge that passes between the days * Make sure you talk to her again if you can complete her challenge * Failing the challenge requires making the day pass to retry, sorry! * There's an alternative option to completing the challenge. * ~~Reading the notes (after talking to Morris) will give you another name to choose~~
Want me to play your entry on stream? Submit your game in this form: https://forms.gle/iF8tcbSzz7c9r5eb8
Made for LDJAM 47 - Stuck in a loop
My first time doing a jam using a bunch of stuff from the asset store. Had a ton of assets piled up from humble bundles and decided it would be good to get to know some of them. Was a lot of fun! It was nice to not spend half of the jam modeling a character.
I ran into a lot of issues learning some experimental / unfinished features in the packages and bugs with Unity 2020.1- However, I am happy with how much I managed to get done anyways even if it's a lot less polished than I would have liked. I do wish I had more time to fill in the planned content and add in some menus / options / title screens / cutscenes. But hey, I went for an overscoped idea and managed to get my core idea done.
Assets used during the Jam
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/horse-animset-pro-riding-system-79902
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/historic/polygon-western-pack-112212
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/ai/dialogue-system-for-unity-11672
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/props/low-poly-ultimate-pack-54733
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/simple-fantasy-ui-140925
| Youtube | https://ursagames.itch.io/west |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/west |
Ratings
| Overall | 895th | 3.431⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 846th | 3.305⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1172th | 2.984⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1139th | 3.273⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 598th | 2.966⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 668th | 3.5⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 63🗳️ | 108🗨️ |
This game was surprisingly polished for an LD game. I like the mechanic of resetting the day but keeping what you learned from before. I think there's a lot of potential in games like this which puts players in an open ended world with a narrative driven puzzle moving everything forward.
Just needs more content. well done!
I think the concept could be pretty cool with a lot more dialogue work and things to figure out. I had a lot of ideas about the character just bringing up knowledge to people that he shouldn't be able to know to be able to skip ahead in progress... I was also going to add a time limit so that the knowledge shortcuts would be useful. Sort of like a way to have checkpoints as the day resets. I am pretty happy with the shooting challenge though!
@creamybacon2 There's technically two ways to Save Carl, but they are the same ending since the ending was literally last second addition.
Whoa tumbleweeds
Hmm how do I continue the dialogue? Space? Enter? It took me a while to realize I have to mouse click on options (too much roguelikes, I never use the mouse :sweat_smile: )
Wow Percy Nash beat the SHIT out of me
Delete key didn't restart the level (perhaps it's supposed to be the numpad delete key, but I don't have a numpad?), so I had to keep fighting women in the saloon to restart it
I talked to Teri immediately after she came to the shooting range, and she said she could learn from my moves (as opposed to, say, "so when are you going to shoot, cowboy?"), so I thought the shooting was implicit and wasted a lot of time killing sheriff and whatnot before finally realizing I need to do the challenge.
Finally, I had real trouble shooting bottles correctly - it seemed like for the 4th or 5th bottle, the increment in mouse's movement always put me on either side of it. I gave up after missing it 5 times :|
@doc-moustache Yeah, you have to navigate Teri's conversation to advance the plot. The first thing you need to do is unlock her 4th initial conversation option which allows you to approach her as someone from her past that already knows her. The notes will unlock a 4th name from her past to choose from there which then unlocks her challenge.
Thanks Fraxle!
@eldar Thanks for all those impressions! There's definitely a lot of polish that I ran out of time to do there that could have helped. Not sure why Delete didn't work for you, but I only tested it on a windows desktop build- wasn't the numpad version though. Dang sorry about the aiming too, I was hoping to have time for sensitivity options menu in game, but alas my time was so tight that 90% of the dialogue was written / put in during the last hour as well as the ending. BTW if you talked to Carl after killing the Sheriff then you got the same ending as completing the challenge, so you beat the game! (Also yeah, I thought about Teri saying something else before shooting and more reactions to you missing etc, but I just didn't have time :P )
I did talk to Carl after killing the Sheriff, and ended up going back to the beginning of the day with the message "huh I guess saving Carl didn't do it" or something - is that what you're referring to?
Had fun playing it and managed to rescue my friend
The story is good for something made so quickly. A good measurement of quality is "would I like to continue playing" and i absolutely would :)!
Awesomely done!
As you probably already know, the biggest flaw I've noticed in the game was the lack of direction provided to the player. On one hand, it makes the game feel a bit like old-school RPGs where one needs to discover on their own what they need to do in the game, and figuring that out yourself is great! On the other hand, given I have no idea where to start, it was incredibly difficult to find breadcrumbs to progress the story. A classic example is where to find the manuscript: it's in an incredibly remote location I haven't even thought of venturing into until I experimented with Percy's AI, and noticed I could actually climb mountains (I also got the poor soul stuck, so yay!). I suppose the campfire smoke was intended to be a clue, but given Morris gave no hints as to the paper's location, I would have dismissed that detail as a nice background prop.
I could probably list a number of things that I think could have used improvement: touchy mouse controls, buggy dialog system (on papers, specifically), slow movement, poor AI, etc. But I think all those are nitpicks to a really promising mechanics that just needs more time to cook and be better realized. I hope to see more from this project.
P.S. Also, I actually did manage to pummel Percy to submission the first time around: no weapons needed. Huh, I guess that *is* a way to save Carl.
I have some mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it looks super duper great. Even if you used third-party assets, I think there's something to be said about knowing how to use them well, and I believe you definitely have.
On the other hand, I was never really sure about what I was supposed to be doing the whole time. :slight_frown: Every time I would find what I thought was a lead, it would end up being a dead end, which was kind of frustrating.
On the positive side of things, I loved that not only could I make my way all the way over to the arch in the background and get on top of it, but that you also had the foresight to put something up there for players to discover. :slight_smile: I thought that was super duper cool.
Otherwise it's really promising concept and great game for a game jam! Congratulations!