LudumData

Keep Dano Alive by Blue Pin Studio

[raw]
made by Blue Pin Studio for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

Dano and Luko are back at it again in an indirect sequel to our previous title Toaster Treasure. This time, Dano fell down a hole and Luko is tasked with keeping him well fed for as long as possible. Luckily Dano found a huge supply of Luko Coins and can fund Luko's new farm.

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Keep Dano Alive is a 2D Farming and Cooking simulator where you craft food and upgrade farms.

Please feel free to comment below with the score or email me at info.bluepinstudio@gmail.com and i'll add you to the list! :)

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Controls

Movement : WASD or Gamepad Left Thumbstick

Interact : E or Gamepad A

Crafting Menu : Q/Esc/Tab or Gamepad Start/Y

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We hope you enjoy our game! It represents roughly 38hrs of programming and 38hrs of art over the course of 3 days. If you would like to follow our progress on our next project, check us out on Twitch. -BluePinStudio

Change Log

4/21/2020 03:00

PLEASE NOTE, WE HAVE UPDATED ALL THE ZIPS BECAUSE SOME USERS WERE HAVING TROUBLE LAUNCHING THE GAME, EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FIXED NOW

4/22/2020 19:00

BLACK SCREEN ISSUES STILL EXISTS. FIXED ROUND 10 SOFT LOCK

5/6/2020 12:30

VERSION 2 IS NOW RELEASED! CHECK IT OUT, WE FINALLY FIXED THE BLACK SCREEN, ADDED A WIN CONDITION, ADDED MORE SOUNDS, FIXED A BUNCH OF SMALL THINGS. WE ALSO ADDED EVERY COMMENTATOR FROM THIS LD LISTING TO OUR CREDITS <3

PLEASE NOTE YOU CAN STILL PLAY THE ORIGINAL LD VERSION AS WELL FOR FAIRNESS

Youtube https://bluepinstudio.itch.io/keep-dano-alive
Youtube https://bluepinstudio.itch.io/keep-dano-alive
Youtube https://bluepinstudio.itch.io/keep-dano-alive
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-dano-alive

Ratings

Overall 1264th 3.487⭐ 80🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1151th 3.354⭐ 81🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1362th 3.224⭐ 80🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1513th 3.526⭐ 80🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1356th 3.525⭐ 81🧑‍⚖️
Audio 854th 3.385⭐ 80🧑‍⚖️
Humor 721th 3.289⭐ 78🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1380th 3.307⭐ 77🧑‍⚖️
Given 108🗳️ 146🗨️

Feedback

BillehBawb
21. Apr 2020 · 05:50 UTC
Whenever I open the game it is just a black screen.
Hueson
21. Apr 2020 · 05:50 UTC
Voice acting isn't something often tried in dare's. It's nice to see it here.
TimeTravelHamster
21. Apr 2020 · 05:52 UTC
Pretty good game and so much contend packed for a jam game. Very nice game i enjoy it. I got some issues with the collision boxes but otherwise everything worked for me. Thank for the game.
Yoshify
21. Apr 2020 · 05:54 UTC
I second what Hueson said, I can definitely respect any game that'll try something new. Thanks for the game!
ssh.randy
21. Apr 2020 · 05:57 UTC
unfortunately, i'm also getting the black screen :(
n00b
21. Apr 2020 · 06:05 UTC
This game definitely has a lot of polish. But it took me forever to figure out what to do and then after that I still felt like it was getting pretty repetitive going back and forth non-stop from the kitchen to the garden area. But it could just be that I am not a fan of this particular genre of games. The graphics and audio were pretty good and I thought there was a good bit of humor in the game.
khaotom
21. Apr 2020 · 06:07 UTC
Heh this is a pretty great take on farming and crafting.
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
21. Apr 2020 · 06:10 UTC
@ssh-randy and @billehbawb i ran into that issue when testing, i think it had something to do with how quickly i ran the game after i extracted or something. I closed Windows Explorer and re-opened it, worked like a charm. I'll investigate the issues. Maybe i have to upload a win32 and a win64 version
olafstromberg
21. Apr 2020 · 06:16 UTC
Same black-screen issue as others, but ran the exe again and it worked.
This game was quite fun, however it would be good to have a storage area for harvested food.
Also it would be good if the arrow keys/controller could navigate the menu and items there. I also accidentally quit to menu while there so maybe add an 'are you sure?'
nodice
21. Apr 2020 · 06:17 UTC
Really enjoyed the concept and props for adding voice over and extra details to make it stand out!

I think the gameplay is fun but I wonder if maybe instead of 1 coin per recipe finished you get incremental coins, 1 per 5 seconds for example.

I say this as I found it hard grasping what I needed to do and if I had more coins I may have been able to find out without having to restart the game and reading the guide again.

The idea for this game is great! hope you continue this one in the future.
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
21. Apr 2020 · 06:25 UTC
@olafstromberg Oh thats a good point! I completely forgot people using controllers can't navigate the menu. Damn! perhaps i'll update that feature after the jam :)
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
21. Apr 2020 · 06:50 UTC
I have updated the downloadable zips. There should be no further black screen issues. Just in case : it might be better to download the one that corresponds to your operating system :) Let me know if there are any more issues
ARBEX
21. Apr 2020 · 10:10 UTC
very polished!
dm2684
21. Apr 2020 · 11:07 UTC
Very cool!
Frozen Spirit
21. Apr 2020 · 12:00 UTC
This was amazing! I loved the voice acting and the mechanics were really fleshed out. Good job on the super cool game!
lvl76blastoise
21. Apr 2020 · 23:38 UTC
Nice game! There's a few things that I think would of made it even better.

Some background music that plays while you are moving around (although maybe this wouldn't work great with the voice acting).

An ability to swap items once you pick it up.

If you could swap items you could work on collecting stuff for multiple recipes at a time. Maybe I didn't choose the right upgrade path but I found myself waiting for things to complete a lot in the beginning.

Overall good job though! You got a lot done in the allotted time!
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
21. Apr 2020 · 23:52 UTC
@lvl76blastoise Thanks for your suggestions :) There actually is background music perhaps you put the volume slider too low. You can go to the MAIN MENU and adjust the volume then press LOAD GAME to continue. Cheers!
KeepingHimAlive
22. Apr 2020 · 00:24 UTC
nicely done! well executed crafting game. the mechanics were pretty straight forward so not much confusion.
Mikabrytu
22. Apr 2020 · 01:12 UTC
The game art is nice and the mechanics are solid, but I really miss the possibility of drop items while playing and the voices was kinda creepy haha.
Solid game :)
Physiker2001
22. Apr 2020 · 08:40 UTC
Cool game, especially the voice acting! Reminds me a bit of Stardew Valley? Black Screen was unfortunate but reopening it helped, don't know what went wrong...
Keep it up!
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
22. Apr 2020 · 11:34 UTC
Thanks for the feedback! @physiker2001 I think i fixed the black screen forever now. Only one can hope!
Kriss
22. Apr 2020 · 14:48 UTC
Very cool!
Skeletor
22. Apr 2020 · 16:12 UTC
I played and enjoyed your game more than I though I would, once I understood the mechanics I really had a good time. Maybe some music in-game would have been nice. I am just a bit sad that when I accidently clicked on the button to go back on the main menu and saw the Load Game button I still had lost my upgrades.
NoamRaz
22. Apr 2020 · 17:53 UTC
Cool Game! Like It Very Much!
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
22. Apr 2020 · 19:11 UTC
@thanks @skeletor and @noamraz :)

For the issue you described @skeletor , the game only saves when you complete a round i believe, to prevent soft locking a save. :) But i definitely see how what you experienced would be frustrating. Next time i'll add a confirmation for leaving the menu.
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
22. Apr 2020 · 21:29 UTC
DID A SMALL UPDATE TO FIX THE SOUND ISSUE PEOPLE WERE HAVING. THANKS FOR THE FEEDBACK GUYS
fiwon123
23. Apr 2020 · 00:01 UTC
Interesting game dude, it's remember me a bit overcooked
CrumblyBread
23. Apr 2020 · 00:15 UTC
It's pretty good, it needs a bit of improvement and work, but I think this could be a functional game that I would enjoy. Probs for the voice acting, I might hear the "here you go Dano!" in my fricking dreams :D
Shaolin Dave
23. Apr 2020 · 04:45 UTC
FYI your Mac version doesn't work. Most Mac games are breaking now because of security issues with .zip and .rar files, and it's pretty easy to fix, but yours has something besides that and I wasn't able to figure it out.
thelemba
23. Apr 2020 · 05:01 UTC
nice game, I think you could reduce the movement speed and make the area more dense/less spread out.
genuinely surprised when I hear woman voice! :))
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
23. Apr 2020 · 05:36 UTC
@shaolin-dave oh yeah? I dont have a MAC computer to test it on, i figured i might as well upload export it using all of the options and hope they all work the same as the windows one. In non-jam environments i would've been able to ask someone to test it to for me :P Thats my bad
Shaolin Dave
23. Apr 2020 · 05:53 UTC
It happens. If I see any similar issues and find a solution, I'll let you know.
Mika la Grand
23. Apr 2020 · 07:23 UTC
Pretty funny how you tied the game in with your previous game. Though, I would have liked some way to store food. If I need to make two items, one of the fields is useless because I first have to make the other item. The game is a bit confusing at the start. Since the potato field is already operational, but others aren't. I would start by having the player activate the potato field. Maybe also display "currently inactive" on fields that haven't yet been activated.
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
23. Apr 2020 · 07:50 UTC
@mika-la-grand Hmmm, thats very wise. We were battling with different models, unlocking everything at tier 1 at first or keeping everything locked in the beginning but then it introduced a lot of potential to soft lock if the player bought the wrong thing. There's definitely a better way to do it than the way we did it but it was very rushed :P
Thanks for your feed back! and thanks for checking it out
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
23. Apr 2020 · 08:41 UTC
@shaolin-dave I tried uploading a new version of the MAC build to itchio. Perhaps that one will work, if that one doesnt work then i'll have to tackle it another time.
Vivoubos
23. Apr 2020 · 15:03 UTC
Funny game. It's good to play with a gamepad! :)

It's begin long a the end, but i enjoyed playing this game! Good job!
Drums
23. Apr 2020 · 19:32 UTC
I LOVE the amount of detail that went into this. It looks and feels great and had me chuckling as well. Thank you for making it :)
AdonisDevs
23. Apr 2020 · 22:05 UTC
This was very entertaining in the late game, but there is a lot of waiting in the beginning. Overall, this was pretty fun, and I enjoyed the graphics! I got 16 :)
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
24. Apr 2020 · 01:14 UTC
@vivoubos @drums @adonisdevs thank you very much for playing and i love to hear the good feedback we spent a lot of time thinking and working on it :id:

I'll add your score to the list @adonisdevs, check Itchio
cheesepencil
24. Apr 2020 · 02:54 UTC
I made soup! I thought it was fun. The voice acting was cute but the guy in the hole had so much echo effect I couldn't really understand him.
xitaro
24. Apr 2020 · 17:44 UTC
Hi! i downloaded the win64 version, but, when running the exe, all i got is a black screen :(
Attala
24. Apr 2020 · 18:02 UTC
Cool voice acting and nice game mechanics. My daughter loved it and wants to play more :) Nice submission.
Vertuga32
24. Apr 2020 · 18:22 UTC
It's not bad overall. But it's very boring to wait for the vegetables to grow, and until then there is nothing to do.
Gorypixels
24. Apr 2020 · 18:32 UTC
The voice acting crack me up! jajajaj a looot of content for a Jam game, great job guys!
Mykola
24. Apr 2020 · 19:21 UTC
Took me some time to make the game launch but after trying different zips and executing multiple times it worked! The concept is great, reminds me of Overcooked. Gameplay is smooth, no bugs found and quite polished. Art is great and there is a lot of it, I really liked it. Music and sounds are very fitting and voice acting is very nice to hear, even though it sounded a little bit artificial. It's amazing that you created all of it in just three days!

The main improvement point would be complexity progression. You have a lot of content but you need to do the same thing all the time which gets boring quite quickly. Would be good to diversify that somehow bby introducing new game mechanics.

Overall, very impressive and I enjoyed playing it!
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
24. Apr 2020 · 20:30 UTC
@xitaro Yes many users reporting the same problem, i can't find the source. I think it has something to do with the audio not being loaded at the start despite being asked to play. Opening and closing the game a few times seems to fix it for some reason.

@attala Thanks for your feedback! Glad you enjoyed it:)

@vertuga32 Yeah we were hoping to add more complexity but ran out of time. Thats what the bread and cheese machines were for. They were going to require other raw ingredients to function.

@gorypixels Thanks so much!

@mykola Yeah we're aware of the issues but unsure how to fix, it requires A LOT of A-B testing. As for complexity we planned to utilize a multi-step crafting system where you have to make milk into cheese and wheat into bread before you can use it but we ran out of time to implement and test all of that. I think we just got too ambitious with the variety of recipes and should've focused on complexity first. I actually find the game pretty boring myself, unfortunately. For the next jam we'll have different priorities :) Thanks for your feedback
David Bohan
25. Apr 2020 · 16:29 UTC
This is an excellently solid game. The graphics and sounds go together very well, and the voice-acting is both funny and actually well executed! This feels like a clicker game but with movement, which is a pretty interesting take. Overall, really great work on this game. Congratulations!
SAVVU
25. Apr 2020 · 22:41 UTC
Awesome content and the game is exactly what a game jam needs! Your sprites look all great and the mechanics are pretty good as well! You surelly keep on developing the game!
Team-on
25. Apr 2020 · 23:56 UTC
Pretty hard to understand how to play, wish to have ability to open tutorial anytime
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
27. Apr 2020 · 04:44 UTC
@david-bohan @savvu Thank you very much for the kind words!

@team-on You can start a new game relatively easily by clicking Main Menu and clicking New Game to get the tutorial again. But i can see how it might be hard to figure out since we heavily rely on people being familiar with games like Overcooked and Stardew Valley
AcidmanRPGz
28. Apr 2020 · 02:43 UTC
Most games I play for a few minutes and then stop. This game I had played 30 minutes of without realising, it's so good! The music was so calming, which is good since I'm really stressed about school at the moment, the graphics look like terraria, which I love, the gameplay is cool, although I personally would have done it differently, it was different and unique! My only major complaint - the camera movement was a little nauseating. It seemed to sort of vibrate ore something. Also, the time limit was a little bit long, I never felt really rushed. And maybe get a bit more money in return for feeding Dano or a bonus for completing an order, but other than those minor issues, this has probably been the best Game Jam I have played!
eduardogacn
28. Apr 2020 · 05:39 UTC
good game
Jin9310
28. Apr 2020 · 08:47 UTC
Wow, this feels really complex and can´t believe how much you were able to fit in. Awesome job!
geroblacksmith
29. Apr 2020 · 01:36 UTC
I had to open it three times to get the game to work, I had a good amount of time playing it, I enjoyed a lot to give Donald (or dano) the food, the voice maybe it's not the great quality, but hey... yummy yummy in my tummy makes me laught xD, the only game I put 5 star in overall tho-
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
29. Apr 2020 · 05:49 UTC
@eduardogacn @jin9310 @geroblacksmith thanks for your feedback :D I'm glad you enjoyed it
akitl
29. Apr 2020 · 08:59 UTC
good game, but so i want store the food !
fabula_rasa
30. Apr 2020 · 10:08 UTC
Very engaging game! At the beginning I felt a bit bored, there was a lot of waiting around and I wished that I could just pre-gather ingredients. But the tempo soon picked up and I definitely wasn't bored :), I really enjoyed myself. If Dano keeps eating this much, he will soon grow out of that hole he is sitting in, like a huge fleshy tree :wink:

Graphics was pleasant and the audio as well. I didn't notice any bugs. Superb job!

I got Dano 51 dishes, apparently. And I just run out of time by 3 seconds really (I was on my way to his hole, dammit ;)) on fulfilling the next one.

![Screenshot_8.png](///raw/732/a2/z/3397c.png)
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
30. Apr 2020 · 20:27 UTC
@akitl Thanks for the feedback! Perhaps in V2.0

@fabula-rasa Thanks so much for playing! I added your highschool to the list. We'll figure out something to spice up the game loop a little bit and re-release it as V2.0 after the jam!
Thiago Nascimento
01. May 2020 · 14:55 UTC
Funny game! Dano is a hungry ass mfkr
Rhiz
02. May 2020 · 18:33 UTC
Fun with trying to remember how to make everything and where everything is while trying to save seconds where possible like checking recipes when you are waiting for one thing to cook and holding the first ingredient of the next.

It seems like it has a maximum speed and efficiency you can go at except for upgrades, but it seemed like the game was balanced for this. I never lost any time, always staying at above 4 minutes. Felt like an endless stalemate.
It didn't seem like there was much of a strategic layer to upgrading the ingredients since the requests were random.

It's impressive how many recipes you have specific voice lines for.
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
03. May 2020 · 05:42 UTC
@thiago-nascimento Thanks! haha i passed along the comment to him

@rhiz Yeah you make an interesting point, we wanted to make compound recipes with the cheese and milk but we ran out of time. Currently you get less and less bonus time each round, so every player is destined to fail eventually. The true test is how many food items can you hand in before the timer runs out.

Version 2 actually has a real win condition and some external forces acting upon the player as well so that should spice it up. We're making V2.0 to celebrate 100 downloads and putting all of the Ludum Dare commentators in the credits as well. That'll be published after LD46 is over.
AndideBob
03. May 2020 · 14:21 UTC
I was about to give up on this game as it only launched with a black screen, but boy am I glad that I read the comments and then proceeded to try starting it a few time. Because when it worked the fifth time around it was a lot of fun! It was really calm yet hectic at the same time. The voice-acting was great (HINT: Next time you do voice acting, try to add subtitles for those who can't have sound or can't hear to begin with). There is one bug I found, which is when you make the protein shake CHERI will say 2 voice lines at the same time.

I managed to produce 36 items before I got too hungry to keep playing and actually made myself some food and not more food for Dano. I wish there was a different sound when you made good food but it wasn't on the list, instead of Dano saying that it was disgusting.

This is a super solid Entry to the jam and a lot of fun to play. Well done!
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
04. May 2020 · 17:21 UTC
@andidebob Thank you very much! We managed to get to the bottom of the black screen, it was related to multi-threading. In the post-LD version and any future games we will stick to the mainthread until multithreading has been worked out :)
Nelson William
06. May 2020 · 17:28 UTC
I just played the jam version of it (for fairness :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:). I enjoyed playing it for quite some time. It's pretty relaxing and simple. The descriptions are cute but whoever added the 'garlic shake' should be banned from Ludum Dare! It did get boring after some time, since it's a lot of the same happening multiple times. Also, I couldn't understand a word from Dano in the opening dialogue. Anyway, this was a pretty great entry, congrats!
joe40001
12. May 2020 · 05:08 UTC
Here is the VOD of me playing your game on stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhXLQHA-5Z4

I enjoyed it.

Started at timecode 5:40

Did a 13m59s "speedrun" at timecode 39:30
🎤 Blue Pin Studio
12. May 2020 · 20:45 UTC
@nelson-william Thanks so much for playing! Yeah perhaps we went a little overboard with the echo effect :up:

@joe40001 Wow! Thanks so much for playing and thanks for the video, its always good to see and hear playtesters. :)