Jim's Quest for Birthday present by Sobigdrasil
Jimmy, a little but brave boy, set on a quest to find a gift for his beloved mommy!
Pick up your dusty metal detector and signal your way across the beach! Treasures are waiting to be found!
Buy the most beautiful Rainbow Pearl Shell for Mommy at Old Jack's shop!
That's our love letter to summer holidays that we want to share with you <3
Controls:
- W A S D - Movement
- Mouse - Aim
- Space (or E/F) - Interact or Dig
- Press 'E' to start the game
- Press 'Fullscreen' to enjoy the full view
Team:
Art: Natasha 'Sobigdrasil' Shestakova
Programming: glorius_silver (a.k.a. laminariy)
Music and sound design: Tim Medvedev
Find treasures! Buy upgrades from Old Jack! Save money for Mommy's present! And if you liked our game - feel free to follow the game's Itch page!
Unfortunately, the game has some issues with the 2K and 4K monitors (´-ω-`)
- Workaround: Scale down your browser window a little bit
| itch.io (post-jam) | https://sobigdrasil.itch.io/jims-quest-for-birthday-present |
| Newgrounds (post-jam) | https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/1029443 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/jims-quest-for-birthday-present |
Ratings
| Overall | 73th | 4.105⭐ | 173🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 225th | 3.686⭐ | 174🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 490th | 3.288⭐ | 172🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 171th | 4.144⭐ | 172🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 38th | 4.564⭐ | 175🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 42th | 4.214⭐ | 170🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 220th | 3.381⭐ | 161🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 91th | 4.229⭐ | 172🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 50🗨️ |
My eyes were really enjoying it, but I didn't have enough patience to earn 5000 :)))
Thanks for the opportunity to play in the browser!
Guys, you did awesome work! 10/10!
Beautiful work on the visuals and it's pretty fun to play too! Very whimsical
Oh, one thing though you might want to simplify the shop animation a bit, because after a while it started making me feel a little motion-sick.
The art style is so pleasing, and the music plus sound effects are super relaxing—never get old.
If I could suggest one thing: I'd love to see more upgrade options and some price balancing. Right now, early upgrades feel a bit too pricey, while late-game ones get cheap too fast.
Seriously great work though—I genuinely got hooked and lost track of time at one point! 🎮💫
I feel like the only thing to improve is the progression of the game. At the beginning it takes a bit too long to find itens while it also takes a long time to get upgrades. By the end its kind of the opposite haha
Aside from this small adjustment, really loved it, amazing work, congrats!
What was your experience like with Defold?
You actually can use the space button! We were in a rush at the last moment and completely forgot to add this to the description - sorry for that! And a big thank you, I'll fix the description a lil bit later.
The rest of the team, however, were using it for the first time and had to learn it very quickly. Because of Defold’s static asset workflow (which is a bit unusual compared to other engines) and the time pressure, they didn’t really get to use its full potential and found the editor a bit clunky.
On my side, I was really grateful for the hot-reloading feature. I had to fix a lot of sprite ordering issues right at the end of the jam, and it saved me a lot of time.
We will do our best after jam to fix issues... so you can pet a dog!
I see a lot of potential for development here. Maybe some chance encounters on the beach and chats with strangers, scaring away seagulls, picking up trash. Basically, there are tons of ways to spice up the main loop.
Great work.
For me it felt a bit monotonous and slow, I could suggest a faster pace for a gamejam, or (if there were enough development time) maybe there could be some additional challenges on the way or interactions with some additional characters (or even with a fisherman or the dog). But, at the end, this job is kinda monotonous, isn't it?
But nevertheless, it plays smoothly, the fisherman's hut looks especially nice and I made sure to buy that pearl.
Though, I do have a couple of nitpicks, the first being the treasure sometimes despawning/moving elsewhere right as I get to them, start digging them up, only for Jim to go like *"ehhh, nothin' in there"*, like-- what do you MEAN there's NOTHING?? There was SOMETHING literally a second ago??? But ah well, at least there is always more things to find, and even more after upgrading some more, so, I guess that's just a me problem. lol
And lastly - speaking of more - I do honestly wish there was more room to walk around in, because even when first starting out (and as someone else may have already pointed this out, although for a different reason), having to roam and metal-detect the same screen block can get a bit monotonous, if I'll be honest...? Again, upgrading the metal detector, luck and speed kind of ramps up the pace, so the monotony complaint feels, I guess, half-invalid? But what I am trying to say is that I am craving more now.
I can definitely see this being made into a bigger game!
I have two pieces of feedback, these are pretty high level and a bit nitpick because the game is in such a good and polished state, so don't take them as huge issues. Firstly the pacing was a little off. It took a little longer than it should have to get going and there were times I felt like I'd walk the entire beach without finding anything. I almost stopped playing early on, but kept going and it started to ramp up a bit. That being said this is a jam game, so getting the pacing just right is not all that important. haha
Second, it felt like you were trying to go for the intuitive gameplay where the visuals make it obvious what to do and what everything does. You succeeded in a few spots, but it could use a bit more refinement to fully get there. For example I had no idea there were upgrades until I stumbled on the shop when I went near the dog. So the dog and guy outside were good drivers for me to go to the shop, but iif the big "E" didn't pop up I never would have known. I also didn't know I could go in front of the shop until half way through. haha So having a little more obvious signs would be good and adjust important pieces so they stand out a bit more. Right now everything blends together too well. haha On the same note, in the upgrade shop it wasn't ever explicit what everything did. I was able to guess, and verify some of it, but for the first level or two I wasn't sure what things did exactly. For example, I was pretty sure the shoes would have something to do with movement, but didn't know for sure it was speed until I tried it out. The shovel I didn't know until I almost had it upgraded all the way and could notice a real difference. The clover I assumed had something to do with luck, but was never 100% of all if its effects. I know it allows you to get more valuable treasures, but does it also make them spawn more often, or something else?
Anyways, really awesome job, just some rambling feedback for you I was thinking about. Nice work!



Very charming and very cozy game! I really liked the art style!
One remark: Fullscreen does not really work that well on ultrawide screens, but it could if the last few assets that are cut off at the 16:9 screen border were not cut off, because some of it actually looks nice like this!
For a jam game though, this is very impressive and such a nice entry. Wish you good luck!
I enjoyed playing your game. Nice introduction to the concept of the game with the drawings at the start. The music is very nice and chill. The graphics and animations are very cute.
Overall, very well done! :clap:
The little intro was a stylish and good choice.
You immediately knew what to do.
I personally would have liked it, if there would be a number above the treasures, so you know the value.
The little animations around the house like the old guy smoking or the dog is elevating the chilling mood.

The music is fitting and I like the song. Has a good amount of variety.
The game progression system motivated a lot. :)
really nice visuals and music, you clearly aimed for a cute and cozy vibe and it works perfectly!
i liked how it’s immediately clear what to do, there’s a simple goal and a clean loop that supports it. it gets a bit repetitive, but with such charming visuals it’s not a big issue.
one small thing, the character feels a bit slow to move, almost heavier than expected.
overall, really great!
I noticed sometimes treasures spawned behind the store and they were unattainable; maybe some collision/spawn area mismatch?
Very nice game, congrats!
I figured I'll have a go at your game. Obviously it's really well made, very beautiful, very well polished, with nice music. I think the upgrades are quite well balance considering the difficulty of balancing a game during a game jam.
I have a few nitpicks : I think the controls of the metal detector are a bit janky, it's especially visible at the begin where you are trying to be mindful of your movements. I also found the animation of the shop to be too long, sometimes I just wanted to by an Item, but I had to wait for the bouncing shop to come to a stop, but I were too impatient and bough the wrong item instead.
These really are minor details in an overall great game !
The mechanic was a pleasant surprise, it feels fresh and new.
Визуальные и звуковые подсказки были очень понятны, что значительно упростило игровой процесс.
Чтобы купить драгоценный камень, я использовал стратегию прокачки каждого предмета (чтобы посмотреть, что они делают), а затем вложил все в удачу. В голове роилось множество сундуков с сокровищами. Я сохраню игру, чтобы попытаться прокачать все предметы до максимума! Кажется, самых настойчивых игроков ждет сюрприз.
Поздравляю всю команду!

:')
I'm actually opening the archive right now to enjoy the world you've created! once more, thank you for being so nice to our team

I did struggle a bit at the beginning, because the first treasures are so slow to find and worth so little, but once the upgrades started happening it was like a rocket ship of unlocks!
Thank you for the game! Very cute and cozy.
I think the jam version itself is very polished. The game is simple but that's just fine, I really enjoyed it!
The kid vaguely reminded me of Waldo. :eyeglasses: Luckily he ain't wearing a red striped shirt and his chin is in reasonable proportions!
---
The graphical style is very well thought out and polished. Although, the way how you dig around and otherwise interact with the environment could benefit from some additional feedback to give it a more "organic" feel or something...
Can't really articulate what I exactly mean by that, or if such a thing is even feasible with this certain graphical style.
But yeah, don't worry about my incoherent ramblings and nitpicking! Keep on jamming!