LudumData

The Dragonsitter by JoeShanahan

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

You wake up on an unfamiliar shore, with memories of only one thing: "Keep it alive"

You must scavenge as much food as you can and firewood too, not for your own sake, but for that of the dragon you are babysitting.

Controls: Move: WASD or Arrow Keys Space: Use tool or throw item! C: Crafting Menu Mouse Wheel: Change Item

(you can also use the number keys to change item)

If you can keep the dragon alive until day 3, it will grow into an adult! Kids grow up so fast these days...!

FAQ:

Q - There's not enough food!
A - You can get apples from apple trees, you go up to them while holding nothing and press space.

Q - How do I equip the gloves?
A - You change your equipped item with the mouse wheel, or by pressing the number keys (eg 1, 2, 3, 4).

Q - The fire went out before I could move the dragon! What do I do?
A - Sorry, we didn't have time to handle that, you have to restart! :(

Q - Are there any more quests after building the bridge?
A - We wish there were, but ran out of time!

Q - What do the beds do?
A - Another victim of running out of time, they don't do anything.

2020-04-21 01-12-23.mp4.00<em>06</em>56<em>28.Still002.png 2020-04-21 01-12-23.mp4.00</em>02<em>31</em>24.Still003.png

Youtube https://horsehead.itch.io/keep-it-alive
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-dragonsitter

Ratings

Overall 614th 3.75⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Fun 491th 3.696⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 738th 3.534⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Theme 406th 4.052⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 959th 3.81⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 969th 3.074⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 853th 3.589⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 32🗨️

Feedback

No Grapes Games
21. Apr 2020 · 03:58 UTC
Neat take on survival games! It was a nice relaxing experience.
I did run into some bugs you could fix if you plan to continue working on it: While typing the dragon's name, C opened the craft menu. Also I managed to put the dragon out to sea with the gloves further that I could reach him!
Lishnor
21. Apr 2020 · 15:17 UTC
Really fun game, love the idea, mood, and overall experience. Its really grate.
toxicon
22. Apr 2020 · 09:07 UTC
somehow my fire disappeared. i like the idea and the story youre telling. very nice done. most of it feels very smooth an i like the art.
tab1bit0
22. Apr 2020 · 09:28 UTC
God job! I got to the fourth day. No matter how much you grow, dad will always carry his baby dragon in his arms
JavaSaurus
22. Apr 2020 · 17:59 UTC
Nice game, we liked the looks of it. Maybe the dragon would be better off being purple, so it stands out more from the environment. Other than that, the WEBGL build seems to lag a bit, so you might want to consider uploading the standalone version! Also, I don't know why this happened, but our spacebar was not working to feed apples to the dragon. Still, I liked the audio and atmosphere, Great Job !
woody_builder
22. Apr 2020 · 18:00 UTC
I really like the soothing sounds an mood. nice work!
MatheusBorba
22. Apr 2020 · 18:00 UTC
very good
TCiceroDev
22. Apr 2020 · 18:08 UTC
Really cool game. My dragon died of loneliness while I was carrying him though :{
Toffanim
22. Apr 2020 · 18:12 UTC
neat little game! aside from the fire going out at the beginning everything zorks fine :) cute game and nice experience! I would have loved the music to stay at the level from the beginning it was a bit loud and kinda off putting the wayn it goes louder
nice entry!
🎤 JoeShanahan
22. Apr 2020 · 21:01 UTC
@tcicerodev Oh no! We totally forgot to make the love value go up when the dragon is being held... That's such a sad way for the game to end! I'm sorry :(
TheQiwiBoy
25. Apr 2020 · 21:12 UTC
I really liked the music. the only thing is that if you throw your acorn while running, the acorn floats in mid air and you can't chop it down. I also liked how if you hit your dragon with an axe, then the heart goes down.
🎤 JoeShanahan
25. Apr 2020 · 21:24 UTC
@theqiwiboy Ah you noticed the axe! That's the only tool interaction we had time to put in for the dragon

![applytool.png](///raw/bed/62/z/333e3.png)
Elektroney
25. Apr 2020 · 22:05 UTC
GJ Keep it up man!
TheAmerican
25. Apr 2020 · 22:30 UTC
Fun game! I didn't see if there was an ending...I got pretty far, and I was expecting the dragon to turn on me or something. I didn't see a way for the acorns to spawn, so that would put a cap on how long you can survive.

Oh, what were the beds for? I didn't notice anything.

Nice try, trying to make me feel a sense of ownership naming the dragon. I kept it as "Dragon". (partially because I was too lazy to name it) That thing is devious, and I should've thrown him back into the ocean.

Nice music, graphics, and controls. The lute playing was a bit grindy, but not too bad.
I liked your modular pick-and-place system. Nice work :)
Tea
25. Apr 2020 · 22:35 UTC
Amazing game! Played until day 7 and loved every second of it. Honestly if I had to think of something to critique, the dragon's models could maybe have used some refining and honestly the biggest problem with that was trying to find where was the balance of keeping the dragon safe and secure, and balancing with that was somewhat difficult, but overall a very fun experience! Great concept and very nice gamefeel. I especially liked how neat the UI looked! I did find a small bug with the river, sometimes when trying to walk in it it teleports you to a bit weird and stuck-y places.
Neon
25. Apr 2020 · 22:39 UTC
That was fun! Spent the last day just jamming next to the dragon, after having gathered a backlog of materials. Very good, would've been perfect if the melody of the instrument matched the background music somehow.
Voodude
26. Apr 2020 · 05:57 UTC
Wow! On-screen tutorials in a game jam game??? Also, way to get people invested by allowing you to name the dragon. I can't imagine how much more attached I would have been if the dragon made sounds when it is hungry, full, happy, etc. Keep up the great work!
mirsakka
26. Apr 2020 · 08:16 UTC
Lovely idea and kinda relaxing atmosphere. :dragon_face: :heart:
🎤 JoeShanahan
26. Apr 2020 · 10:05 UTC
@theamerican Yeah, we wish there could've been an ending but unfortunately ran out of time. Once the bridge is built there's not really anything else to do, and I found during testing that's possible to do in just one day. The dragon will continue to grow up until day 4 though.

We planned to have more needs, like comfort and hygiene that would unlock after a certain time. The beds would've factored into comfort. But you know, time constraints and all that!

The lute really needed to have more of an effect, it's just when we were testing it I would always find myself distracted by it and just spend minutes at a time running in circles round the dragon playing it :sweat_smile:

**after five minutes of playing the lute instead of doing any work with Skype still on**.
me: "...wait, was my mic on the whole time?"
my team: "Uh, yeah, hahah"
🎤 JoeShanahan
26. Apr 2020 · 10:09 UTC
@Tea oh wow! That's amazing! We're so glad you enjoyed it :blush:

If we'd had more time we wanted to make the progression system last over multiple days, so that you'd still be unlocking things after more than just the first day. The hope was that *some* people would get hooked and just enjoy existing in the world, but for everyone else there would be goals to work towards. It sounds like we managed to hook you, which is so wonderful to know that we're going in the right direction!

Our artist was fantastic and made some really great environmental models, but unfortunately didn't have time for characters, so that fell to me. That's why it looks undeveloped compared to the rest of the art, because it's programmer art :wink:
🎤 JoeShanahan
26. Apr 2020 · 10:12 UTC
@neon The music would be great if it blended in with the background, that's a really awesome idea! Our first idea was to have lots of different songs all mashed together so that when you were playing you could be like "...wait, is that song what I think it is? Is that the Final Fantasy battle theme?!". Ultimately we only had time for the one though, but I like the one song we have :smile:
🎤 JoeShanahan
26. Apr 2020 · 10:14 UTC
@voodude Proper onboarding is really important to us, even for a gamejam game. If people don't "get" your game they're not going to give it enough time to enjoy it. The naming the dragon thing was a shower thought, I realised it'd take like 5 minutes to implement and would do exactly as you said! :smile:
Anuradha
26. Apr 2020 · 15:35 UTC
This was a great little idea! I really liked that you could name the dragon, and that you had a small tutorial too. It's definitely a fun game with a great atmosphere, and it has a lot of potential. The different mechanics were easy enough to grasp and complemented each other very well. There are a couple of improvements that could be made, though. Using the mouse only to scroll was a little awkward, as I instinctively wanted to use the mouse button to interact/use objects but instead had to keep going back to the spacebar. I also think the balance was a little off, as I found it very easy to keep the dragon alive. This might have been because I didn't play past day 4; although I was enjoying it I kind of ran out of things to do very quickly. It would have been nice to pause it as well, as time moves quite quickly. I think if you had reduced the amount of mechanics you decided to include for the gamejam, you could have created a smaller but more complete game. It's definitely one I would play the heck out of if you finish it though :smile:
🎤 JoeShanahan
26. Apr 2020 · 18:34 UTC
@anuradha You're totally right, we tried to add too many mechanics, so they're all super thin! We added crafting, but there's only one (real) recipe to craft. We added the axe, but it can only do one thing. And we didn't have time to balance either. Our artist by the middle of day 2 was like "Please stop adding new systems and just finish the ones you've started!" :sweat_smile:

Another thing though was that we wrote all the code from scratch, and recreated a bunch of basic systems that we'd already done before in the past. I think if we try and go simulation game again, we might start from some base code or libraries, so we can focus on the gameplay code rather than putting in the basics from scratch each time.
DoctorTM
28. Apr 2020 · 04:19 UTC
Waw, really nice game! The dragon is so cute :)
kfischer-okarin
29. Apr 2020 · 06:48 UTC
That was a nice little dragon raising game and even in 3D. Very nice.
I felt that all the mechanics were introduced much to quick in a succession... and also I felt the little apple trees never became bigger so I eventually ran out of apples.....
VernalBehemoth
08. May 2020 · 12:20 UTC
Nicely done, really enjoyed this. The game was super playable, really amazing how you did all this in the time frame!

It was a little easy once you figured out what everything does.

Great work and such a polished game considering it was within a Jam :)
moorcore118
12. May 2020 · 18:33 UTC
Awww, so cute :3 OK, actually this is really good! I enjoyed the process so much, you did a great job! I liked the sense of movement, picking things up and other actions. Overall the game looks nice, the visuals, SFX and music - this all feels like a whole complete game :3