I really like the setting! It's very unique (digging for a mammoth). Awesome, I did find my self getting a little tired of just pressing ok, I think maybe some screen effects when something noteable happens could be cool but for the time given this was awesome! great work!

Ok, think i've spent 20min playing this game and I've learned that I'm very terrible at decision making :D.
Super fun game :)

Great and addictive. Every time I thought giving it a rest, I had to play one more day. It was fun to see all those new additions to your settlement and having to do some long term decision that could be fatal to your crew. Good job!

Very fun! Got to 800 but then all rations were gone :( Every man for himself!!!! haha

Interesting take on the theme and a nice story line. A couple more SFX or animations would have been nice to spice it up a little bit. Really enjoyed it though and managed to get to the frozen mammoth! I did notice at one point I seemed to have 1 fuel left yet at the start of the day 10 fuel was taken but i was still able to play, might be a bug.

Well done ! I finish the game in the first try ! :D I don't know if it's easy or if a was lucky but I think the choice doesn't really matter. x) It's fun and I don't see the time passed ! Good job :)

@nurk well, generally it is more easy than hard. bunch of my friends tried the game, it is harder sometimes and you have to weigh you decisions.
some people played lost and some won barely.

so yeah I think you got lucky :D you can get scammed or lose scouts and other bad stuff will make it harder to win.

thanks for the feedback!

Okay what I learnt from this game is I'm very impulsive and bad at making decisions.
I should play more!
Great graphics, nice game!

Almost lost hahaha fun game! loved the character design. I was pretty invested in the story. I'd make it a little harder tho.

A lot of these binary-choice-based games suffer from the problem of having no clear link between the choices and their outcomes, but you definitely avoided that problem. I think I should have dropped below 0 fuel a couple times but didn't, but maybe there's a deliberate grace period? Anyways, I enjoyed the game.

Great experience! While there were a handful of typos, I didn't feel like any were egregious enough to detract from the overall experience. Great job with the atmosphere and the characters -- both their art and personalities. I feel like I understood each of them and who they were. Some of the font color choices (especially green) were hard to read, but overall this was a good time!

@3lstmsinatrenchcoat yes. I am trying to make the world alive as much as possible on this one. thanks for noticing :) I've been playin a lot of binary choice games as you call it lately and I do feel the same about them..

as for your question, you don't die immediately when you run out of fuel the fire Situation will go from glowing to whispering to dying in 4 days or so.. then you lose

It was very fun. I just barely won. One suggestion I have is to clean up the many grammatical and spelling errors. It's still a fun game, but proofread when possible.

@scubes-3-14 thanks man, I will proof read today !

Really awesome game! I spent a lot of time in it.

Played until the end, and won!
The cook character is very funny :-)

A note: I found this game through itch.io , but getting to the LD page to post a comment was another expedition (I had to infer the URL from the game name - thanks to the legendary search abilities of the LD website ...).

You should definitely embed/put a link to this page in the game, many players might be to tired from the mammoth expedition and not feel ready for this second URL expedition ;-)

@ace17 your comment was funny :P
thanks for your second expedition. appreciate it. but there is actually a link in the page.
it is the view submission on top of the page

but thanks anyway. I will also see where I can add another link in description or something.
also : I will play your game ;)

My bad, you're right!
Thanks for pointing me to this "View Submission" button, seems like I'm better at finding mammoths :D

Neat game. I had food more than anything. Wished that scientist would had proposed that food fuel conversion more often.

Nice game! I enjoyed the game and the writing in it. The setting was interesting. I agree with the complaint that the game gets repetitive quickly and I also noticed a lot of grammar/typos mistakes in the character dialogue, which is understand considering how much you guys probably had to write over the weekend.

Good stuff, played through it, dialog, art, and audio was very pleasant.

Great game! I played it a few times. Definitely a fun story. I really enjoyed it. Thank you!

@michael-wingfield wow I am really glad you enjoyed it... please feel free to suggest any edits because I would like to improve on this one!

I really liked that the characters seemed complex and that there were always good or bad consequences to your actions. It really forces the player to consider whether or not an action is worth the risk. Great job!

Very nice game! I love the idea and it was executed quite well.
Just noticed you opted out of graphics, would be cool to see you do your own graphics for this.
Here's my playthrough of it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/599709056

A little bit slow paced for my liking. The artwork is nice however.

Great game!

@mateusboga first of all; nice stream man, really enjoyed it.
also, the art and atmosphere was really was hand-picked and edited a lot.
the tone of the game was built slowly over 2 days. my artist (brother) was busy this jam. but art took a lot of time.

I really wanted to keep graphics because I wanted people to tell me what they thought of it. but had to opt-out for ethical reasons :D

the final version of the game we will re-create a better art!;)

A nice take on Reigns. I always liked that genre of game, managing resources and try to keep everyone happy.
I like the setting.... but a few things to notice:

- the game is really slow-paced. It almost feel like any choice isn't really punishing. I would have feel more engaging if I got punished more for sconsiderate actions.
- the font and the color you used is confusing with the background and it's hard to read (the screen is big, and the space taken from objects and element is huge). There was room for bigger fonts, but for some reason you decided not to :D
- the buttons are too small, it's the only interactive thing of the game. Make it bigger :)
- the dialogues are confusing, when choosing an action is it you the one talking ? or whoever talked to you first? if it is the first one, the dialogue seems incoherent.
- I stayed without food for 4 days.... Pretty good maintaing 14 workers alive and happiness moderate for 4 days without food :D I am a good leader :P

Anyway, cool take... But I would have stayed with the simplicity of the cards like in Reigns - or just bigger buttons for decisions. Lots of space, but poorly occupied.

I know the review seems overly critique, but I did like the game. And I am trying to give you honest feedback. I know it's a jam, but we're here to learn right :D

Thank you for your entry

@notapixelstudio not at all. all criticism is welcome. in fact since you are interested in the genre.. I would like to ask you a question ...but first things first.

first; I am testing the game on 23-inch screen. I found the text and the buttons annoying a little bit on mobile. I was wondering what screen are you using because no one else have given me that problem before.

to answer your question. you never talk at this game... maybe because you play Reigns you assumed that you have a response? IDK its very obvious that they are the one they are talking (I think)

as for Reigns... one reason I am making this game is that I hate Reigns :P (I do enjoy it but I disagree with a lot of design decisions and you don't feel like you are a king who is making important decisions at all)

you try to balance the four powers more than caring about what to chose (at least my experience) and some times I do want to 'decide' something for the story but I can't because I have to keep things in balance...

also when you start a war. you don't feel like you are at war... and your general will offer "peace" wither you started a war or not. and all important events are like that)


the experience I am trying to create here. is that when you start a war (for example) all characters will take priority and you can actually win-lose-negotiate... etc

an ally might offer to help you. your trading with them will go off.

it doesn't show in the jam version (couldn't make it; its alot of content) but if you ran into any "new Situation Develops :" like potato farm, Solar energy, or fishing camp)
what I really wanted is that having a farm will create a new benefits as well as a set of new challenges and decisions has to be made about it.

there is also 'Hidden situations' like a Blizzard (which never happens because of a bug, I will fix now)

you get the idea..


to be honest my interest in the genre came out of a game called "Underhand" (which is not exactly a story game, just unique atmosphere and a balancing resources" then I played and loved Sort the court. more than Reigns. and I only stumbled upon reigns because I started working at this genre and I was researching other successful games.

so Reigns didn't "inspire" this game. well it inspired it in the not-to-do more..

and that is why the game needs to be long (like Sort the court?) because its a story that you need to live in. but I agree the game feels like a bit slow... although its kind of what I am trying to do. I am aiming for the slow atmosphere here but I am far from nailing it.

and I wanted to say a few stuff about it...
1- noticed that people in the judging period they have this 'mentality' and they want to try more games and not focus on one game.
2- a lot of the 'Slowness' feeling is actually coming from boredom that can be reduced a lot by reducing repetition.
3- also making decisions have more 'powerful' outcomes.
4- maybe digging speed should have more ways to be faster. (runs usually takes from 15 to 30 mins) IDK will do 2,3 and see how it feels first.

sorry I ended up making a postmortem (I will mention you when I make an actual one. sorry :P)
last question: do you feel like having 3-4 options is more fit for this kind of game?
think Underhand or Emily is away. kind of choices.

P.S. also your game is awesome!

Cool response @abdurrahman-khallouf :)

I did try on the android build as well and still same beliefs :)

- The button yes and no, since they are the interactive things ... Should be bigger. This was cool in Reigns. The card was there and you had to choose left or right. Simple, clean on point.
- the text is okay, but some keyword like 'frozen mammoth' gets confused with the background
- i get confused with the dialogue system because when someone talks, there is a dialogue box, then the box is different. So I thought you were the only one answering. But as I said it didn't add up
- The story is a good touch indeed, but it's hard to keep it coherent, obviously. E.g.: I wanted to NOT kill the dog, it keeps coming back and stealing food, but I've never killed it. No one gets hurt :) that is a decision, you should punish or reward for the decision


Yes people trying game on the jam will not lose, approximately more than 5-10 minutes. But ... It's gamedev job make a demo in which you demonstrate what you want to do in those 5 minutes

@notapixelstudio

- I totally agree with your first point. (just FYI you can press Y and N as well) no one tested it so I didn't mention it anywhere... also with your second. didn't have time to take care of things (also I dont really like the dialogue font)

- 3rd point. yes . also agree. will have to make it clearer. also when I watched streamers.. they stopped reading the small response after a while? some jokes are in small response. but because they are mostly boring. (do you have any suggestion on how to fix that?)

- last point : if you catch the dog. you can train it and use it for scouting. spoiler alert :P

and Story doesn't mean you get to do what ever you want. you have to make hard decisions.
also the dog would stop coming back eventually. but its random. if he came back more than 5 times you are extremely unlucky :P (the cook I think will tell you that he stopped bothering us)

This was a very clever and fun game, although my only complaint is that gold is extremely hard to come by. Other than that a great game.

Great game! I've enjoyed it a lot! You don't see much text-based games these days - people don't want to read. The chat-like approach is really appealing and delivers a good pacing of the story through dialog.

I hardly see anything you can complain about - all looks so nice and polished... And you can't complain about controls and feedback when all you have to do is to answer the questions in chat :smiley:

Played it through. It was interesting scenario for a management game. It had handful of typos here and there and at one point my scientist got really busy and could do three science projects at the same time. :D I think I barely made it alive tho.


I do not have a high level of English. And my game dragged on)

I already like the chat style and the graphic style. You're cool!

This game is great, it's one of the most fun games I've played in this

@kaappis thanks for reporting the bug. I thought i solved that already X_X

Was a good little game, plenty of stuff that can happen to keep it interesting.

If you were to take it further, I'd love to see some more extreme consequences for certain choices. Little events that might make you regret you choices. For example, I thought it would be funny to just annoy the chef and say no to almost everything he said. It'd have been great if, as a result of my actions, the chef hates me so much that he leaves, leaving me without a solid source of food.

That's just one example, but having little things that can be a threat other than the flame going out.

Good effort overall though!

The art is very good, and the sound creates a nice atmosphere.

it's really good and interesting ! i'm enter to the story and it was cool, i think it's a hell to balance a game like that gg !

Well made game! Good job!

Fantastic game especially for a ludum dare, Managed to survive my first run only just, it lasted exactly 30 days

finally... great entry, cute arts and well designed game. nice work!:thumbsup_tone2:


This has an amazing amount of content for a JAM game, and the choices one had to make were surprisingly cohesive and linked to the other characters responses really well. With time you could develop the existing base here and make a really robust storyline. I liked the whole core concept, and the character art, and the game UI felt very polished. Nice work!

The game is good and well balanced. Love the arts and situations, though yes-no buttons are a bit small for mobile.

There are generally a lot of potential pitfalls to these types of games but it seems you were well aware of them - great job overall!

I felt like fuel was particularly hard to come across, and I didn't realize that gold was completely non-renewable until it was too late. Otherwise I think you did a great job balancing the game out to create a sense of stress and desperation. I barely made it to the frozen mammoth - the fire was almost dead and pretty much everyone hated me, lol. The game took just about the right amount of time, the presentation was stellar, and the character writing was pretty great.

I don't have much else to be critical of. I guess probably my next biggest gameplay complaint is that it wasn't totally clear to me what the connection was between worker health/happiness and the rest of the game. I'm guessing it affecting mining speed or something, but I wasn't totally sure.

Definitely one of my favorite entries so far.

@epicular thanks man for the review. good feedback there.

there is an event to get you gold. if you send scouts to the North you might get the hunting bears event and you can sell their fur to get an extra 20. also if you built a fishing camp or encountered a Blizzard you might get a little bit of gold as well...

I should add an advice that would tell you how rare gold is . as well as making more of these [rare to come buy] events...

IDK if your happiness got low or high on your run. but your crew will clearly tell you that they came with low spirit and they are preforming less.

Health was the last thing added to the game and it is just like happiness with a lower effect.. even though it should be more important

I am glad you like it. feel free to follow me on twitter or here if you are interested in updates because we plan to expand on this heavily :) @Abdurrahman_kh

This was great. It looked good and felt smooth. There's a lot of detail in it and I loved the writing. Nice job!

Definitely one of my favorites. I beat it on the first try. The dialogue is fantastic and the art is great too.

Really enjoyed trying to make right choices and manage the resources. Also got very lucky with the RNG as i was about to lose when i found 50 fuel! Mad it on my first try even

I really enjoyed this, and learned alot of little things I could have done to improve my project. I really like how you could see the cost of the choices before making them, while still having unforseen but still predictable consequences! The characters were pretty enjoyable, but I suspect the chef hates me, I never did anything to imporve the kitchen but hit Fantastic mining speed asap. Great entry

@ilprinny wow fantastic digging speed is really rare!
good job on your game as well. it needs visuals and stuff but to actually see the penguins moving is really nice. would make a great mobile game IMO.

Loved the experience. Won on the first try but there were some hard choices here and there. Great work!

I really like the atmosphere of the sound effects and background art. The character art has personality, too. :)

I imagine English is probably not your first language -- the writing is probably the main things that could be improved, but otherwise it works. :)

Great entry!

Really well-made game. The dialogue is entertaining and the random events are fun and interesting, and the minimal yes/no gameplay is really clever. I had a lot of fun getting to the end, I just barely scraped by!

Cool game! The atmosphere reminds me Frostpunk, but events a bit repetitive.

Thanks for showing me this game, it was a lot of fun playing this and chatting with you at the same time! Unfortunately I couldnt make it to the mammoth, but i still enjoyed it. I might try the game again later in order to finish it. Good job!

Nice game! It feels very polished, and I had fun with the scientist's inventions. The graphics are minimalist but work very well (I love the character's portraits).
One detail: I noticed a few typos (feul for fuel, gol for gold).
I played twice, and first play I thought I'd die by lack of fuel, so the second one I focused on that and food became scarce and health bad, so I think the game is well-balanced too. Congrats!

I played through the game , overall good job on everything. Art was good and dialogue was great . I basically used up my gold and made sure there was plenty of food resource and that seemed to do the trick.

Love the visuals in this game. The presentation is super nice, very impressive

The art is really nice on this! The character portraits are appealing, the sound effects and ambient noise worked really well, and the humor was a nice touch. If you were going to push this beyond a ludum dare game, I'd love to see separate art images for the things that the scouts find. It would give a nice taste of what's going on outside the dig site. This is overall a great submission, thank you for sharing this game!

@hwaet yes we want to create more art and stuff for a full version. I am also thinking about creating a time line with "iconic" moments after you finish. even digging should be more interesting and have their own story line. maybe will even add a map! (will experiment don't want to ruin simplicity)

Nice atmosphere, fitting art and ambient sounds and fun events. Good job!

This game is incredible :smile:! Just when I thought I was gonna fail, I managed to find the frozen mammoth! The game kept me immeresed into the story and there were so many things to do so it wasn't boring at all! The only thing I wish I knew was that money is something I need to spare since I can't get any of it back unless the miners find some. But even with that fatal mistake I made by spending everything in first 20 days, I managed to beat the game. Good job team :thumbsup:!

@lukvasando thanks man! I am glad you like it! we will develop a big one with more events and story.

there is an event to get you gold. if you send scouts to the North you might get the hunting bears event and you can sell their fur to get an extra 20. also if you built a fishing camp or encountered a Blizzard you might get a little bit of gold as well…

Hello! Your game was played during my stream!

If you want to know the timestamp of when your game was played you can see it in this spreadsheet:
https://tinyurl.com/yau8hjzn

And then look in my latest videos and find your game being play (after the current stream ends)
https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos

Hey guys, great game you have here ! Loved the dialogues you have written. Game is challenging and fells polished :) Keep up the good work.

Cute game, like the way it's going, maybe a bit slow sometimes. Yet the graphics, mechanics and dialogue are really simple and interesting. Nice entry

I really liked it! It was truly engaging. Graphics were nice as well. Great job!
Text itself could use some work, though. Many sentences are not capitalized and I found typos. There is one even at the very beginning, where it says "This Expedition have one purpose" and should be "has".

I won on my fist try but by the skin of my teeth really ;). Ended up with a lot of food though, nobody ever went hungry.


@fabula-rasa thanks man! Yes I wrote it once and was done, never reviewed any text :_) , had to test and balance a lot. And I think the result is engaging for a jam... I like how different the runs are, today someone played it had plenty of fuel but he lost 15 people to hunger. He couldn't do much with no men!

The game was fun to play, it got really close for me in the end but I did it, I found the mammoth. I really liked the gameplay. The game would have profited a lot from some mor work on the graphics. Like actually showing the camp, the fire the drill etc. Or even just something more than white boxes for the names.
Might be something to work on in the future :)
But nice take on the theme and good job in general!

Very enjoyable! The graphics are very nice and the sound is also fitting (would just add a small music track for some suspense) I played once and won much effortlessly so I think it could be a bit more challenging. Great work!

Really enjoyable game, good characters. Really interesting to see descision making game. Tho I managed to find the mammonth, but that is because game really don't count your firewood from day to day. If the firewood deficit was more important this mission would have been failed undr my control. But again - it is nice game.

@ausstein couldn’t agree more!

@trigueiro I am thinking about increasing the difficulty & also making a hard mode. but also a lot of players are barely winning. sometimes your RNG is very generous.

@bredian what do you mean by it doesn’t count your firewood? couldn’t understand what you’re saying.

but to explain whats going on; it decreases by 10 every day. after that your fire place starts to fall down. from Glowing, to Whispering to Dying and then you lose the game.

@abdurrahman-khallouf Well, I meant that I haven't noticed the effect of getting to the next day without firewood. I thought my fireplace falls down for other reasons

@bredian oh ok. thanks for the feedback. I will make sure the fire is something visual and very clear whats going on in future versions. after all its the most important thing in the game !

Really nice original idea. I love how dynamic and varied it is. You really feel like your choices make a difference. Nice work!

Cool idea, I like the humor in the game (especially talking about comments and some funny situations like the drug thing) and also your game fits the theme quite a lot.

I did not expect that a simple dialog based game would bind me so muhc. I played through the whole game - as it seems in a manner you did not expect (defensive) and it was quite a lot of fun.

Thanks for submitting!

We streamed the gameplay live on our twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/firesplashtv), watch out for the highlights of todays VOD ;)

Well Done. i like the the look of the people very much. :v: Keep it up

Really Cool game! I got really invested in it. Great job!

okay, that was an exciting game. unfortunately i died at 950m. damn. well done, congratulations.

Nice art and polished interface! Atmospheric background sound. Sounds go well with events. Dialogs and events are interesting and catchy. Scrolling with mouse wheel is pretty slow and needs fixing in HTML5 and Windows versions. Scrolling in Android version is okay. Android version needs compatibility with notch on display: it hides some letters. Sometimes digging depth doesn't update after Mine Supervisor's report. Found Frozen Mammoth on the first try :) maybe game needs more goals to improve replayability and/or statistics/achievements on the final screen.

@retrome wow that was one useful feedback. I think you are the only one who tried all versions...
I didn't try notch device thanks for mentioning this. also we're thinking about expanding this with ways to win and multiple endings, achievements + statistics on screen. in addition to a lot of new content of course. follow me on twitter if you want to see how it goes.

if you have anymore ideas I am all ears.

I intentionally made the jam version winnable. so far I think we have 80/20 win/lose rate. but for a full release winning will be harder and runs should feel very different and with less repetitiveness inside the one run.

okay, that was an exciting game, (I won) good job!

Nicely done! I think that this game is great for the most part, although it has a lot of capitalization errors and some typos.

Fun. A mobile version would be nice. Good choice of sound. Could add a few more animations, for example depth/digging could be superimposed rather than just written as text. Popup of new item images could also be added.

@bkmld we have a mobile version ;) its not ideal but it works just as fine.

also we will expand on the game with more art and visuals.

Alright here's my feedback:
* The mood is really good with the wind and the fire. Can you link to the sfx's you used?
* The decision making is good, but the buttons are quite small and I don't like the font. There are also a lot of capitalization errors, and some typos.
* Main complaint is that it takes too long to complete. 15 min would have been better than around half an hour. I beat the game first try, but wouldn't have retried if I failed.
* There isn't anything going on other than the text. I would some visuals, like a mineshaft showing the progress towards the mammoth. Perhaps have something resembling the camp as well.

Fun game... lots to think about in order to keep everyone happy. Nice graphics and sounds! Good job!

Well done! It was a fascinating adventure, making difficult choices and handling the situation under dire conditions. The dialog is good and the different characters are all interesting.

About 500m in I was quite sure, that I could not make it. But I still did, which makes it clear to me that you balanced the choices and effects quite well!

Very similar to the game "60 Seconds! Reatomized", I guess you were inspired by it?

Managed to win on my first go though it felt really touch and go at times. I ended up sending off and sacrificing a lot of my workers for long trips simply so they would use up less food when back at the camp. Would like to have seen more scenarios in other play-through for a bit of variety.

@zubspace thanks for commenting. I tried my best to make the game hard enough but for a jam I wanted most people to win. I think we have about 80% win rate.

also thank you for mentioning 60 Seconds! Reatomized. I don't know that game but I am sure interested now. I checked the game on steam it looks very fun. I will defiantly get it and play it. can't thank you enough!

Wow! This game was longer than I expected for a game Jam game! I loved the resource management and the sound design really added to it! Thanks for this great game! A wonderful upload to this Jam!

Fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/LDazM6iYHxE

The game is really good, and I really like the idea, also the decisions all feel very impactful, and the story is great

Really cool concept, was not expecting this to be that fun. Well done guys!

Fun game with nice art style of the characters. I like the gameplay, it really feels like your choices make a difference, even though it isn't always that obvious. I also like the fact that all the characters have quite different personalities. My suggestions are improving graphics of the UI and adding some more unpredictable situations to increase the difficulty. Overall great entry.

Just managed to finish on first go. Felt very balanced for a jam game, great job!

wow. it is interesting. I liked the mechanics of the game. it's a little easy to pass, but it's not a drawback. cool job

Just finished it. I enjoyed but the decision making and it's clear you put a lot of effort into trying to make decisions interesting. It seems like prioritizing mining above else always pays off since it's the only thing tied to making progress. There's also quite a few spelling mistakes but that's a fairly minor complaint. It was a lot of fun playing it, so great job!

The mood of this game is very good and even if at first we can thought there's almost nothing to do , the variety of the events make the decisions not so easy to take. And it seems not easy to manage so much text. Congratulation to the team. The interface is clean, and we can enjoy a good time in this cold place.

That was really fun! :D
I personally enjoy games that have you ponder between tough decisions while resources are scarce, like FTL, This war of mine, 60 seconds or something like that.
The bacground icy wind sound really added for a great atmohsphere, the pictures were cute (although you don't want to be rated on those, so I suppose you didn't make them?)
Pity the Text didn't suit the cute rest, I feel like if you would have spend 20 minutes on looking for a fitting font it would have imrpvoed the whole mood :)
I liked the gameplay system and enjoyed hating the cook ^^
I loved all the different options I have, sadly I never got to try the fishing camp thing because I was already so advanced and couldn't spare the workers :)
I think if you want to work on it and maybe tweak the rules of the events happening a bit more, this could become a real cool game :D
Good job, very good for a gamejam :)


Aaaaaarrrrh! I was at ~950m when the fire went out.


That said, I really enjoy these narrative-rich resource management games. The writing here is witty, while still making a lot of sense.