Deep in Wraithwood Forest by HitchH1k3r
You traveled much too deep into Wraitwood Forest, and now you are cursed. Explore the deepest depths of the forest to find a way to keep the darkness at bay.
To succeed you will need to...
Light Torches 
Battle Enemies 
Push Runestones 
Find Mysterious Structures 
All in a Hexagon World! 
Deep into the forest is not deep enough, you will need to travel not just deep, but deeper and deeper.
Controls
- Hexagon Movement - Mouse or WASD + QE or Gamepad
Pro-Tips
- Most items will reset when you pass out in the deep, deeper, or deepest woods.
- Wraiths will suck in air where they are going to attack.
Known Bugs
- The game may run slowly when loading in the sound files. This eventually goes away (if it's too bad on your computer, you can leave the game open -- but don't play -- for ~5 minutes, after that it shouldn't stutter).
- If a wraith starts an attack and dies at the same time it's about to attack sound will play until the next time the player passes out.
Version History
Apr. 26, 2021 :: v1.0 - Jam release
Walkthrough
If you got stuck, or maybe just hate playing games ^_^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uUEcpXeUsA
| WebGL (All OS/Mobile) | https://hitchh1k3r.itch.io/deep-in-wraithwood-forest |
| 100% Walkthrough | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uUEcpXeUsA |
| Dev. Timelapse | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk_UyOkX634 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deep-in-wraithwood-forest |
Ratings
| Overall | 760th | 3.603⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 798th | 3.426⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 390th | 3.686⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 947th | 3.629⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1140th | 3.478⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 895th | 3.214⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1177th | 2.333⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 552th | 3.761⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
Congratulations, you did a really nice job!
And I had an idea had while playing to make moving around the map faster would be the wraiths extending the life of your torch as well. Stops the needs to travel back to safe areas.
@dzefris
**Hexagons are pretty great**, this is our second game using them, and first that actually has the player moving around. I don't think I could have pulled it off if it hadn't been for [this advent of code problem ](https://adventofcode.com/2020/day/24), and [this hexagonal tile math primer](https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/).
---
@mika314 @whysguy52 @evannex @rhoff95
We **didn't know how to do controls** for a hexagonal game with tile quantized movement. All the examples I can think of let the player click any tile and then move there (with path finding) over a number of turns. The standard control scheme of up/down and left/right breaks, and using **the 6 key layout** we ended up with **takes some getting used to** since it's not at all typical. For most of the development I used a gamepad, but it has it's own problems (6 directions instead of 4 make incorrect input much more likely). Ultimately **we ran out of time**, so features like hold a key to repeatedly move got cut... I also really **wanted the mouse movement to change the cursor** into an arrow indicating the current direction it would move the player, but ended up just **rotating the player** to face the mouse cursor (mouse input isn't tile based, but instead based on the angle of the cursor around the center of the screen).
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@singrid @crychair
You can **pickup sticks** to extend your torches life, and **light camp fires** in the wood to create a permanent source of light.
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@hcs-hades @sockpuppetcow
What parts of the game were the **most challenging** for you? We set out to make more of a **survival game** and it **slowly turned more "puzzley"**, so there is some questionable design (it basically turned into solve this puzzle in limited moves, with limited visibility, and also you don't know where your objective is). In **hindsight** it probably would have been **better to stick to puzzle _OR_ survival** centered mechanics. PS. **rune stones cannot** be **pushed on** to **stone path** tiles, I also put up a 12 minute walkthrough video that I believe covers everything in the game (**including secrets**) if you are interested in what's **deeper** in the forest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uUEcpXeUsA
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@lumous
The games a bit non-linear (12 obelisks and the can be gotten in several different orders), so I wonder **which one did you do last?** There are a **few fairly fiendish** ones I can imagine people struggling with.
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@daveroony
**Lag** is a **big issue** with this game, but I think it can be **partially mitigated** on many computers by **giving the game a bit of time to stabilize** (and probably download the large sound files). Some assets are unloaded when off screen, and the game should be making use of frustum culling to draw only what is visible. **WebGL is so performance critical** it would have been nice to have some **time to optimize the game**.
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@arthur-porto
There was a **planned feature** to **pitch the camera down** more when the player was obscured by tall objects (trees, obelisks, ...) this sadly was **cut due to time** constraints. The sticks' graphics were also randomize with only minutes left for changes, and that sadly had a negative impact on the ease of finding them (they do look a bit better now though ^_^).
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@nyanpierre @matt-swieboda @lb01 @phil-lesnar
**Thanks for the kind words**, with **no dedicated artist** we did the best we could graphically, and some things really suffered (the player character doesn't fit in at all, and I wish I could have made more decorative elements).
---
### PS.
I **accidentally** (*read: sleep deprived*) **opted out** of some of the **rating categories**, it would be **awesome** if some of **you could go back and add the missing ratings**, I'm interested to see what the community thinks of our sound and art (it was a real crunch to get it all made).
1 when I die , I want to restart in 1 seconds ,not a long change scene animation
2 I click a ground box , I want to move character to where I click rather than step by step
any way , that is a nice game ,glad you made this :smile:
Sometimes, particularly in the western portion, I found myself stuck in a "the way to win is not to move" situation with the wraiths. I wish there was a "pass" button. It also took me a long time to figure out that I could kill wraiths, and without that knowledge the western forest seemed apparently impossible. The movement seemed a bit sticky too, and using the mouse felt unresponsive. On the web version at least.
Besides all of that, it was a *lot* of fun. I loved exploring around in the darkness and finding campfires. The block pushing mechanic was basic but highly effective here. The only part that I felt the block puzzles got a little out of control were in the eastern water areas, if you died in the middle of some of those or messed up block placement then it was sometimes a pain to set everything back up. The audio seriously enhanced the experience, so really nice job on that! I'm just a sucker for hex tile games as well, so definitely bonus points there (hexagons are bestagons).
Although there were some hitches and issues, some x-factor about the concept and execution hooked me and had me happily playing through the whole thing. You guys made something really cool, I think this is one of the top games I've played this LD.