LudumData

Where the Fire Goes by Roka Josh

[raw]
made by Roka Josh for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

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The Game

'Where the Fire Goes' is a turn-based puzzle game where you must use your ability to move rocks and trees to stop the fire from spreading and destroying precious flowers and trees. Don't get distracted by the ever-increasing inferno however, as you are not flameproof, and staying alive is equally as important as keeping the plants alive!

Our 7th entry into Ludum Dare and another ambitious one. We would love to make more levels for this introducing new mechanics and developing on all ready established ones, as we have never really made a puzzle game before and it was a fun and challenging experience.

How to play

The help pages in game are quite detailed and should tell you everything you need to know but here is some more information: - 'Left Mouse' on adjacent tiles to move there. - 'Right Mouse' on adjacent tiles with items on to pick them up, or on empty tiles while holding an item to drop it there. - 'Escape' to open pause menu in the campaign mode. - Use the buttons at the bottom to either progress a single turn without performing an action, or to skip until the level is resolved either with the player winning or dying.

Screenshots

All screenshots are taken from levels before doing actions as to not give away the solution!

screen2.png screen3.png screen1.png screen4.png

Credit

  • RokaJosh: Programming & Art
  • Yarro (formerly Thomu): Art & Music

Links

  • Our Company Website: http://jagtek.co.uk/
  • Our Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaGTeK_Games
  • RokaJosh Twitter: https://twitter.com/RokaJosh
  • Yarro (formerly Thomu) Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/y-arro

Tools

  • Unity 2019.1.12f1
  • Photoshop CC
  • Piskel
  • Aseprite
  • Pixel FX Designer
  • Bfxr
  • Ableton 9.5
Youtube https://jagtek-games.itch.io/where-the-fire-goes
Youtube https://jagtek-games.itch.io/where-the-fire-goes
Youtube https://jagtek-games.itch.io/where-the-fire-goes
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/where-the-fire-goes

Ratings

Overall 741th 3.69⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 819th 3.523⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 871th 3.455⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1119th 3.705⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1677th 3.273⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 1243th 3.023⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1624th 2.474⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1702th 3.1⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

Pagetb
21. Apr 2020 · 17:18 UTC
cool idea!
Scoobyben1
21. Apr 2020 · 18:06 UTC
nice idea, I enjoyed the mixture of "save the plants" and "save yourself" puzzles. One suggestion would be to add keyboard controls - I found it a bit frustrating to have to move around using the mouse on a grid that feels like it would lend itself quite nicely to keyboard controls
🎤 Roka Josh
21. Apr 2020 · 18:34 UTC
@pagetb Thank you!
🎤 Roka Josh
21. Apr 2020 · 18:35 UTC
@scoobyben1 Thanks for playing, keyboard controls and other control methods are definitely something we would look into if we were to develop this further.
Mika la Grand
22. Apr 2020 · 16:56 UTC
Nice idea and overall pretty thought out mechanics. Though, some keyboard controls would be great. Some of the levels also seemed a bit out of place, there wasn't a clear flow between the levels. I would start off be introducing the concept of keeping ourself alive and then the mechanics revolving around the environment. I also found level 8 to be too difficult.
🎤 Roka Josh
22. Apr 2020 · 19:14 UTC
@mika-la-grand Thanks for playing, your criticism is very helpful and we have had another comment asking for keyboard controls so it is something we would definitely add if we work on this more. Not only did we want to add more levels which we couldn't due to time limits, we also found it hard to balance the levels. Level 8 was put last because we found it to be hardest. As we originally didn't have any levels where the goal was only to survive it was more of an afterthought which is why the levels turn up later.
-banzi
23. Apr 2020 · 20:33 UTC
Great game! I enjoyed how the graphics combined with the music and UI looked polished and complete. Good job!
ArtemFTW
27. Apr 2020 · 23:14 UTC
Well done! The graphics are great and the soundtrack is nice. Great job!
Madbarron
28. Apr 2020 · 00:09 UTC
Great puzzler! The top and bottom ran off my extra-wide screen, so it would be nice if there was a windowed mode or if the game letterboxed. I had to figure out the final level without knowing its name! I think the graphics would look a little better if they were less zoomed in, also :) Really solid game, well done!
🎤 Roka Josh
28. Apr 2020 · 09:59 UTC
@artemftw Thank you for playing, we are glad you liked it!
🎤 Roka Josh
28. Apr 2020 · 10:03 UTC
@madbarron Thanks for playing, I agree there are a few issues with the scaling, as were struggled to get it right on a 16:9 monitor!
Phoenix Fireflower
02. May 2020 · 21:34 UTC
A great, original puzzle game. The puzzles were not too difficult and the sandbox mode is a nice addition.

I wish you could zoom out to reveal the complete map of the level, it would really help in some puzzles.
epb9000
03. May 2020 · 09:21 UTC
Cleared all the levels! That was great. Seconding zooming out or maybe a minimap. Oh, and perhaps a prompt on the complete level button. I may have burnt myself a few times hitting that one instead of advance fire one turn.
🎤 Roka Josh
03. May 2020 · 19:25 UTC
@phoenix-fireflower Thank you for playing the game, in hindsight that would definitely be a useful feature!
🎤 Roka Josh
03. May 2020 · 19:26 UTC
@epb9000 I'm glad you like it, and thank you for playing. We went through a few things with the complete level button and progress fire one turn button to try and get them to be easy to understand but we couldn't figure out how to word it!
Eli Delventhal
04. May 2020 · 01:35 UTC
Pretty nice game! Solid level of completion and good exploration of a simple core concept. I didn't see any bugs or major flaws in the game, I think you set out to do what you wanted to. Plenty good for a jam, and has the potential to be a bigger game if you chose to make it so.

A couple minor gripes:
- The spreading mechanic, for whatever reason, was never super clear to me. Like I still don't really know why on the last level I succeeded (and failed times before). Exactly when a fire can catch wasn't super clear to me. This meant that the puzzles either felt easy, or I succeeded without a super clear reason why (felt more trial and error than the "I'm such a smart badass" feeling I get from super well-polished puzzle games.
- The music got quite painful, quite quickly. It was completely fine at first but is far too distinct and "hard" to be on loop, IMO.
- Some minor UX gripes, like I would have loved to just move on to the next level instead of going back to the level select after winning a level, and clicking the "Next" button after winning a level would keep the level I had just beaten selected instead of moving on to the next one. Caused me to select the same level again a couple of times.
🎤 Roka Josh
04. May 2020 · 12:06 UTC
@eli-delventhal Thank you for playing the game, and thank you for your feedback. It's very helpful mentioning things like this because while developing the game you get used to how your own game works as you program it and you kind of just expect people to understand it, and identifying key areas like this shows we need a better way to show how the fire works or just generally show more information to the player. Thank you!
ZipLockBagMan
04. May 2020 · 12:27 UTC
Really nice idea and well explained in game! I would've liked some keyboard controls. Also, the spreading seemed confusing, especially on level 6 (level I got to). I'd moved all the trees off the brown boundary but fire still spread. Hope you carry on working on it in the future as there is a lot of potential there!
🎤 Roka Josh
04. May 2020 · 14:20 UTC
@ziplockbagman Thanks for playing our game, what I am guessing happened is that you put the trees off the brown and onto a tile adjacent to them. What happens here is that the tree tile will ignite and as trees keep fires alive for longer, they can wear down the flame rating of dirt tiles. Usually dirt tiles cannot be set alight by nearby fires as their flame rating is longer than a usual fire burn time. We should have explained this better or perhaps made a level to showcase this mechanic in affect!
Nelson William
04. May 2020 · 17:34 UTC
Very nice game. I usually don't like puzzles (too hard for my little brain), but this one was really pleasant and easy to understand. Had some trouble with the last level but it was just me overthinking... :laughing: Here's some feedback:

* Pixelated fonts are hard to read when they're very large on a large screen.
* Since the trees are 2-tiles tall, it takes a little longer to grasp their impact in the game. Maybe some smaller bushes (i.e. same size as rocks) would make them easier to comprehend.
* Keeping track of the 'time left to burn' on each tile is pretty much impossible. A small counter over each flammable tile would really help.

Anyway, very nice game. Congrats!
🎤 Roka Josh
04. May 2020 · 17:55 UTC
@nelson-william Thanks for playing, that bush idea is something we overlooked but in hindsight would be so much better, thank you!
alexbljack
08. May 2020 · 18:49 UTC
Very interesting and cool idea! As mentioned before controls need improvements and timer for flames is not always obvious. Inspite of it - good puzzle and level design makes it really fun to play!
🎤 Roka Josh
08. May 2020 · 19:23 UTC
@alexbljack Thanks for playing!
StaNov
09. May 2020 · 17:35 UTC
This is by far the best game I've played this LD!

Great mechanics, great graphics, good music and sound effects, intuitive bug-free gameplay.

The last puzzle was very puzzly :)

Thanks for making it, it was really fun!

And thanks for playing my game! :)
🎤 Roka Josh
09. May 2020 · 18:12 UTC
@stanov Thank you so much for the kind words they mean a lot!
magus24
10. May 2020 · 23:36 UTC
great game, the puzzles are fun, the graphics are good and I liked the menu and the selection of levels that reminded me of the super mario world, very polished. What I liked the least was the sound that seemed somewhat invasive, for a game where you have to think. but it's ok in general
🎤 Roka Josh
11. May 2020 · 00:13 UTC
@magus24 Thanks for playing and thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you picked up on the level select as the Super Mario World vibe was what we were going for! :smile: