LudumData

The Cold Night by Steffo

[raw]
made by Steffo for Ludum Dare 50 (JAM)

It's a cold night. Evil lurks in the shadows.

Luckily you've managed to set up a fire.
The flames dim with each passing moment, plunging you deeper into the darkness. You must gather wood in order to protect your only source of warmth and light.
But trying to do so... is just delaying the inevitable.

Patrizio Pulpito, our hero

You play as Patrizio Pulpito, a lumberjack hipster and hoverboard enthusiast.

A regular snowman

Try not to die against hordes of snowmen, and keep your fire alive to avoid awakening the ancient evil!

The ancient evil

(Which is not actually in the game because we ran out of time. Oops.)

Power-ups

  • Branch: Keep your fire alive!
  • Mega Arrow: Pierce through enemies!
  • Crossbow: Shoot faster!

Branch

Controls

  • Scoot around with WASD or ←↓↑→
  • Aiming with the Mouse Cursor
  • Shoot with the Left Mouse Button

Screenshots

screenshot.png

Link https://github.com/RYGhub/ld50
Windows https://steffo.itch.io/the-cold-night
Mac OSX (untested) https://steffo.itch.io/the-cold-night
Linux X11 https://steffo.itch.io/the-cold-night
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-cold-night

Ratings

Overall 317th 3.824⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Fun 268th 3.771⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 698th 3.314⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Theme 108th 4.235⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 510th 3.871⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Audio 246th 3.824⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Humor 725th 2.875⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Mood 189th 4⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Given 41🗳️ 48🗨️

Feedback

TheMentalSheep
05. Apr 2022 · 03:07 UTC
Had fun playing the theme was incorporated really well. The art was nice and the fading flame effect was very well done. , Great game submission all around
Mateu
05. Apr 2022 · 03:09 UTC
Well this was certainly an experience! The mood was spot on. It was absolutely terrifying when my fire started to die out. The gameplay was also pretty good too, at least for a little bit, until it devolved into running around spamming at all the snowmen, trying to pick up as many rapid fire upgrades as possible. I got a time of 5:31.

Side note: you might want to take into consideration the performance of the game. My laptop was struggling a little bit.
MrDandro
05. Apr 2022 · 03:22 UTC
This is a great game! I loved the art and the music, they did a great job setting the mood. The light dimming really put the pressure on to keep running around to try to survive. Awesome submission.
MattFisher
05. Apr 2022 · 03:26 UTC
This was fun! Simple and effective, the mood, art, and music blended together nicely
Cookie_CHR
05. Apr 2022 · 09:09 UTC
@thementalsheep @mateu @mrdandro @mattfisher Thanks for your compliments!
@mateu I put the performance issue in [the project's GitHub page](https://github.com/RYGhub/the-cold-night): we may improve it in a post-jam update 👍
🎤 Steffo
05. Apr 2022 · 15:34 UTC
Well, @mateu, you currently have the WR :smile:

Our best time was ~4:20, in 1 minute the spawn rates increase significantly, so performance problems are pretty much expected :joy:
Baconinvader
05. Apr 2022 · 20:29 UTC
Nice little game, I liked the fire mechanic and the music. Snowman spawns are a bit over the top but I guess you can mitagate that with the powerups you get. I basically tried to just move in circles and collect as many items as I could, perhaps some obstacles in the game map would helped with forcing players to change up their strategies?
Matt Rice
06. Apr 2022 · 23:55 UTC
The fire and fireplace assets were really well done. Also, loved getting the giant machine gun arrows. Really made me feel strong. Unfortunately my shot is pretty poor and I didn't get very far but it was a lot of fun!
sampenland
07. Apr 2022 · 00:09 UTC
Cool idea. I was horrible tho lol didn't last long. The mood was really cool - all the music and sounds were spot on!
InappropriateName
07. Apr 2022 · 00:13 UTC
My small brain thought the fire was running out really quickly and didn't put 2 and 2 together and see that snowman + fire = No fire (for a lot longer than i'd care to admit haha). Shooting through the fire to power up the arrows is a really nice touch! The effect on it was very nice! Great work!
Cookie_CHR
07. Apr 2022 · 08:30 UTC
@matt-rice @sampenland Don't worry, I'm not really good at the game as well - and I helped creating it!

@baconinvader I'll put an issue about obstacles in the GitHub repo. We actually wanted to make some, but we weren't sure how to prevent snowmen from getting trapped behind obstacles and creating huge clusters, and basically time ran out too soon.

@inappropriatename do you think we should add some more instructions?
MrPouletBZH
07. Apr 2022 · 12:59 UTC
Nice little game, with a clever core gameplay idea. There is definitely too many ennemies too soon, but except that point, it's a pretty solid entry pleasant to play. Good job to you all!
real_flamingicecubegames
07. Apr 2022 · 13:47 UTC
This game is pretty fun. I did run into performance issues late in the game because of the hundreds of snowmen on screen, but it wasn't enough to ruin the experience. Good work.
Skleembof
07. Apr 2022 · 21:13 UTC
Simple fun, I liked it! I love how the music fades into silence as the fire dies out.

My only complaint is that its really hard to come back from a dying fire because you can't see where the branches are. I think you should add another radius around the radius of light that is just bright enough to see items on the floor so that its possible for the player to come back from the edge of death. Also a sound effect for picking up items would help as well
Cookie_CHR
07. Apr 2022 · 21:24 UTC
Thanks everyone for the compliments! 😄
@real-flamingicecubegames Yeah, performance issues are a problem, we will try to make it better but - as you said - since there are hundreds of snowmen on the screen, it can't really improve much
@skleembof Wait, i did record a sound for picking up branches! Didn't we... *[checks the game]* No, we didn't insert it into the game! 😨 It will be there in a post-jam update, i guess
LDJam user 120213
08. Apr 2022 · 00:34 UTC
A short but fun arcade game, didn't realize at first you could pick up the sticks, i like the mechanic of shooting through the fire to get piercing shots! The ramp up is a bit fast, goes from almost nothing to completely overwhelmed in seconds, would have enjoyed a more gradual ramp up so the game would last a little longer and I could get more powerups, would have also been nice for the normal fire to auto-fire with the button held, clicking the mouse for every shot in a game like this was a little intense.
SeniorWombat
08. Apr 2022 · 20:07 UTC
Quite a nice game. I like the graphics - it's very atmospheric, and the music fits the whole thing. And also game mechanics are very clever!
Difficulty level is quite uneven in my opinion - it gets too hard too fast (exactly the same as in my game xD), but apart from that, it's a good game. Well done ;)
angiemon
10. Apr 2022 · 15:45 UTC
Currently on my Macbook, unfortunately the MacOS Link doesn't work - since it says untested I'm going to assume you don't have a Mac to build from - Mac Builds only work when built from another Mac - I know, I know.. this been going on for at least 7 years and no fix yet, which is freaking ridiculous.. something about how windows writes files with read/write permission or whatever... honestly it's embarrassing Unity hasn't fixed this by now.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/mac-unity-build-from-a-pc-not-opening-on-mac.947727/

okay, enough of my rant - just so you know :) Will play your game on my windows machine later
(Btw: if it doesn't fuck up your lighting (so 2D will always work) you can try to build a WebGL version!)
🎤 Steffo
10. Apr 2022 · 16:25 UTC
@angiemon

> honestly it’s embarrassing Unity hasn’t fixed this by now.

Our game is made in Godot, not in Unity, no need to hate on them ;P

Anyways, it's not a bug, it's working as intended: it is not the responsibility of neither the game engine nor your browser to give e`x`ecution permissions to the file you just downloaded, as it would be a serious security vulnerability!

You should decide whether to trust or not the downloaded file, then grant it the `x` permission yourself!

Not having a Mac, I'm not sure of how OSX displays the Unix permissions on its user interface; this is how the same permission is granted on KDE, which uses the same permission system:

![2022-04-10_18-24-49.png](///raw/d4d/z/4dc31.png)
angiemon
10. Apr 2022 · 17:08 UTC
@steffo hehe oops, I was quick on my Unity hate :) :p (no I mostly love Unity, but come one they're pretty big and this is something you'd think they have fixed ages ago) and we we're also cursing them because we had to build from a Mac, so it's a fresh wound to to say :b

So they could ask mac/windows to work together with them and do some scripting solution idk, it's just insane this has been a problem for so long

The mac builds that work (=built from a mac) also had to be allowed through the mac security thing because unidentified developer, yadda yadda, but I don't even have the option for this :( it just tells me to move it to the bin - I'm assuming it's the same read/write stuff blah (I'm an artist, forgive my ignorance :D)
ReyGis
10. Apr 2022 · 19:21 UTC
Wow dude, that was awsome thanks for that, i really enjoyed it. You managed to surprise me, every rounds discovered a new mechanic, like the bullet flame threw the fire was not expected in a 72h game, GG
RatFace
11. Apr 2022 · 18:41 UTC
Great game! Fire dies a bit too fast in my opinion, and the bullets are tough to see, so it's difficult to aim at the snowmen if they're far away. Fun game though!
LiquidFunk
11. Apr 2022 · 20:55 UTC
I really enjoyed the atmosphere here, great job! I found it a bit difficult though!
🎤 Steffo
11. Apr 2022 · 23:10 UTC
@ratface

> Fire dies a bit too fast in my opinion

You mean normally or when snowmen touch it? ;P

> the bullets are tough to see

You can shoot through the fire to make them :fire: brighter!

> Fun game though!

Thanks! :D
kuggenhoffen
12. Apr 2022 · 14:48 UTC
Very fun and good looking game! Nice touch getting fire arrows by shooting through the fire. Machine gun bow felt a bit overpowered but was very necessary after a while :D.

After letting the fire get low it felt very difficult to come back from that.

Good job!
Daniel Robledo
13. Apr 2022 · 18:13 UTC
Very looking game, I like the usage of lights and shaders, it matches so well with the jam's and game's theme :)
The gameplay is also refreshing, the inevitable is not just getting killed but also running out of flames, good job there
Remn
14. Apr 2022 · 16:40 UTC
It looks cool and is played. But there are too many enemies at the beginning
Necdilzor
14. Apr 2022 · 17:24 UTC
Nice game, it was over quickly though. A suggestion would be to implement waves for combat and an interlude between waves to gather branches.
Loved the music and graphics!
DaleP
15. Apr 2022 · 01:32 UTC
@steffo Re: Mac file permissions, it absolutely isn’t normal to make the user mess around with file permissions to open your app on MacOS. The OS has its own system for asking the user if they trust downloaded apps, called Gatekeeper, and it expects the file permissions to already be set by the developer to whatever they need to be for the app to function. The files inside the app bundle (folder with .app extension) aren’t really supposed to be touched by the user.

I don’t mean to sound argumentative, that’s just how MacOS works.
SleepyStudios
19. Apr 2022 · 15:20 UTC
Nice take on the theme. Combining all the powerups together felt really satisfying especially since you just blasted through all the enemies. I wish the snowmen branches had more of an impact on the fire because I ended up randomly running around in the dark hoping to find some bigger branches. Overall though good work!
Sopata
21. Apr 2022 · 13:23 UTC
I agree with the others - this was a nice take on the theme. Maybe the powerups could be a bit more visible and I would have liked the snowman spawns to be a bit more balanced to have a learning curve (just like in Icy Tower - you don't go to the fastest stage in the first 20 seconds).

Apart from that - I really liked the aesthetics and the mood - good job!
GOOD LUCK!