The Bottom of the Snow by Enver Arco

[raw]
made by Enver Arco for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

snow.PNG

Controls

  • [WASD/Arrow Keys] - Movement
  • [Space] - Jump
  • [E] - Interact
  • [R] - Use Shovel
  • [R] + [S] - Shovel down
  • [N] Toggles smoother controls (player slides less etc)

Instructions

The Bottom of the Snow is a game where you play an eskimo in a snowstorm trying to protect your home by getting rid of snow and survive the harsh climate. * Sleep in the bed to refresh energy. * Use the fireplace to warm up * Eat fish to avoid starving * Items may be hidden within the snow * Befriend a seal! (and if you're nice to him you might even get rewards)

Post-LD Bugfixes:

  • fixed the error from running low on energy/hunger/warmth
  • fixed issues with dialog display
  • fixed a bug with the fire
  • fixed a bug where fish were displayed as gem
  • fixed a minor animation issue
  • fixed an issue with snow not being solid

Post-LD Bugfixes #2

  • Fixed issues with showing dialogs
  • Fixed a bug with jumping
  • Fixed issues with the fireplace
  • Added an option to enable easier/more balanced settings and display hints. This can be toggled via [N]

Team

  • wogandmush
  • substain
  • vir
  • enverarco
  • ghostcat
  • lehip

Ratings

Overall 1382th 3.244⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1542th 2.884⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 821th 3.291⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1350th 3.279⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 689th 3.86⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Audio 609th 3.535⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Humor 531th 3.171⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Mood 674th 3.667⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Given 122🗳️ 64🗨️

Feedback

Rein
27. Apr 2021 · 08:11 UTC
Every time my green arrow runs out the game crashes and I get a unity error in the browser. The game seems interesting, though a little more guidance on what I should be doing might help. Also, sometimes I can stand on the snow and sometimes I can't? It was not very clear why that was happening.
LocustJin
27. Apr 2021 · 08:16 UTC
Funny game with beautyful graphic design, unfortunately during day 3 my game crash. Overall it is very nice game.
Twigg
27. Apr 2021 · 14:04 UTC
Nice game! The art is fantastic, but the mechanics are a bit confusing and the movement is too floaty.
Niklas Zhaga
27. Apr 2021 · 14:55 UTC
So sweet mood, I wanna play this at christmas!
profan
27. Apr 2021 · 18:25 UTC
I died at day five, neglecting staying warm, I must admit I laughed when the character just fell over like a log on day two the first time they got too tired to go on :D

Charming :) Feels like it accurately represents what shoveling snow on the moon might be like
frnknstn
27. Apr 2021 · 20:02 UTC
I enjoyed your use of the theme. The art and sound is high-quality. There are a few bugs and wierdnesses with the game, but overall I like this entry a lot.
LDJam user 251170
28. Apr 2021 · 15:09 UTC
Took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do but when I got there I had a fun little run with the game. I loved the seal, they're now my best friend and will never be replaced. Unfortunately I couldn't find any fish and kept dying at some point, was I unlucky or just a bad player?

+ Seal
+ Survival aspects
+ Limited maps (I dislike getting lost on huge maps)
+ Audio effects were great
+ The combination of gameplay, audio effects and graphics set a nice mood.

- The survival aspects were a bit confusing at first
tessahardin
29. Apr 2021 · 01:33 UTC
I thought the art was really nice and the concept was really cute, really good vibes here but I couldn't find any fish or the seal- maybe I'm just not good at the game
jujuformatic
29. Apr 2021 · 09:18 UTC
good game but a little too hard, I never saw equipments on 6 days and the wood is missing. The graphics are good and the idea too.
EdouardLaPoire
29. Apr 2021 · 10:47 UTC
i liked it but the movement is too inaccurate and it is a bit annoying to shovel one by one
Anuke
29. Apr 2021 · 13:18 UTC
Anyone else have issues with this game not working properly?
- on Chrome, the Unity loading bar doesn't go up at all *(possibly an issue on my end, happens with most Unity games)*
- on Firefox, the title screen shows and the first "level" loads, but it's completely dark. I can move around and interact, but only the text on the top is visible. Checking the console, it looks like there are shader compilation errors?
Junamai
29. Apr 2021 · 15:24 UTC
Awesome game! Love the cute character and enjoyed chopping trees. Died of hunger on my first run but after a while managed to survive a bit longer (after I figured out how to shovel out items)
Also really liked how new trees grew each day and more snow piled up!
Impressed how many different mechanics are in the game and the music is really nice as well. Well done! =)
Edur
29. Apr 2021 · 17:48 UTC
I like the art, music and idea but gameplay was a bit slow.
PineappleGladiator
30. Apr 2021 · 09:55 UTC
A very nice entry! The overall mood of the snow getting deeper and deeper fully reveal the theme. For me personally, the controls lacked dynamics but overall everything is great!
monninen
30. Apr 2021 · 16:46 UTC
Graphics and parallax look good. Movement is way too slow and floaty, so it is very boring to move around. I had to idea what was goal of the game and what I need to do.
metapoua
30. Apr 2021 · 17:12 UTC
Anyone have 2 fps like me ? (not beacause by internet debit wich is quite fast) Can't play it...

@enver-arco and rest of the team can you upload a downloadable version ?

EDIT: works without full screen with playable fps

I'm not that much into survival games, but I like the snow mechanic idea, this make everything a discoery.
Pixel art is quite nice too, and mood feets the game.
For flaws, i felt movement & gameplay too slow (but maybe related to my fps), and and contrôle are not that easy, the slide may be too strong
ardorugus
01. May 2021 · 03:02 UTC
Loved the art. But it's so hard to find some fish, and the snow respawns are so huge... Nice seal, always carried that cutie around. I get, it's survival, but the art feels in need for a more easy-going fun music, to balance the tone. Once woke up in the snow. Dug through, though. Otherwise would be sooo saad...
mr forty two
01. May 2021 · 11:08 UTC
The graphics and audio were great and made for a great mood. The instructions were not very good, and it took a while to learn how the game worked (and I still don't think I'm doing it right). The was the snow piles up each day is cool.
LRVStudios
01. May 2021 · 18:15 UTC
Really good idea! I liked the graphics and the changes in the dialogues. The atmosphere of survival provides an excellent mood to explore the theme, and the mechanics - altough limited - are pretty interesting.

But I must say that the amount of snow generated is huge! This can be a problem of "repetition" later, as we have to "clean" most of the time "tons" of snow. And the amount of fish we found is very low. I couldn't survive more than 5 days - with a lot of effort cleaning the snow haha.

I say this because the game seems too cool for a "repetitive survival mechanic", which I imagine is not your intention.

That said, it's an incredible game. You could add some new sub-mechanics like "fishing" and find food more easily, "dig" faster or lessen the spawning of snow - maybe an 'power-up', idk.

Overall, i really enjoyed this game and will be looking forward for an update. Great work!
Substain
02. May 2021 · 08:12 UTC
Hey and thanks everyone for your feedback! :slight_smile: :bow:

@twigg @niklas-zhaga @profan @frnknstn @jujuformatic @edouardlapoire @anuke @junamai @edur @pineapplegladiator @monninen @metapoua @ardorugus @mr-forty-two
We just put up a new version that fixes some issues and adds a new setting. This can be toggled via [N] (see description).
We also included a windows build for those of you who had problems with the WebGL version.

As many of you mentioned the slow/sliding movement, we did not have time to fix that during the jam, but we addressed it in the new settings.

One of the ideas was to let the player find out what to do. I feel like it's kind of hard to find out because of the survival part and I agree that some more instructions would have been helpful. We added a few hints within the new setting, at least.

@rein @locustjin
Since you've tested the game, we fixed the error (in a previous update) - although you probably didn't miss a lot, because the error only occured when one of the ressource bars went to 0.

@kepsert @tessahardin
You should find some fish (or something to trade for fish) within the snow - there is also a visual clue for these. At the beginning, you can find the seal on the right, next to the igloo, but he might be already buried in snow.

@ardorugus
We thought about making the soundtrack either more 'happy' or more 'sad/dark', but we (I) went with the latter because it fits the theme/story better

@lrvstudios
Thank you! There actually were plans for some of these ideas (upgrades, for example), but they just did not make it into the game due to the lack of time. :(
sacredbacon
05. May 2021 · 02:51 UTC
I like your take on the theme, very fun survival game. Art and music are great. Keep up the good work!
Marc Jones
06. May 2021 · 21:00 UTC
Lovely pixel art and the audio suited the game really well. Perhaps there's some randomness in the game, because my first couple of tries I couldn't find any fish in the snow. I think you capture the routine nature of survival games, which considering it's a jam game is impressive.
LDJam user 234807
08. May 2021 · 14:57 UTC
Very addictive game. Felt sorry for the seal. Carried him inside at night lol. Never made it past Day 4, I always ran out of fish. But really enjoyed playing.
BoClow
10. May 2021 · 06:36 UTC
Cool take on the theme! I liked the seal and interactions with it. got to day 7 by keeping the seal happy.
felo07
10. May 2021 · 23:21 UTC
The art was great, first game about snow that I see, very unique. Music and sound effects were matching, but I would change the jump sfx. Also the jump is going to high and falling too slow, maybe to change the physics a lil bit. Great game! =)
LDJam user 243489
15. May 2021 · 13:59 UTC
The most intense seal-befriending game I've ever played, quite a brutal game but quite fun. The fact that snow shovelling has to always remove 1 block at the end rather than 2 at once like normal is a bit annoying and makes cleaning low lying snow twice as hard as it should be
Yrasin
17. May 2021 · 21:18 UTC
I might be stupid, but I couldn't find out how to eat. So even after several attempts I always died of hunger. However I really enjoyed shoveling away the never ending snowy landscape. A nice spin of the theme. Good job!