At first I was like, a walking simulator lets see...
The texts are well written and I liked the story.
The End was unexpected, good job!

Nice atmosphere! Unexpected ending :D

Nice bit of humor and creepy too! Not too long either which is what you want with a walking sim! Good entry

Unfortunately it ran really bad on my machine, but the atmosphere was nice - and I could glitch through the bamboo at the end^^

Nice game, but stopped reading pretty much after 2 or 3 signboards. It just didn't feel as part of the game. Which was a shame because at the end I had no idea what had happened.

Very nice visuals and world! It was a bit laggy on my computer when there was a bunch of bamboo in front of me. I was expecting some sort of jump scare or something scary when you try to go back to the start. Interesting twist regardless. I was able to walk out the map at the end. Would have been cool to have an easter egg for people that glitch out of the map like more evidence of the story or something.

Great graphics and mood. I liked the writing and the way the story unfolded.

Love the humor and twist. Caught me completely off-guard.

Interesting story/walking game with a twist near the end which I loved. Performance can be a bit choppy at time but other than that, great job!

I loved the atmosophere and the visuals (though performance is pretty spotty throughout). I think you did a great job with the sound effects - and it really sold the ending. Great job!

The visual style is great and reminds me of "The Witness"

choppy performances when turning around aside, the game looked very polished in the graphics.. i didn't like that kind of bloom on the signs, i don't know if that was intentional.. it made it hard to read for me
The last part was lovely.. once i read the sign i was expecting someone being behind and i slowly turned around to se.. nothing, i panic and at the last minute i see him appearing and then the scream, it actually caught me off guard.. again, amazing

I really enjoyed this. It was a nice relaxing atmosphere. The graphics are very crisp and pleasant and the music adds a lot to the experience. Like the others, I had performance issues as well. It was sort of exacerbated by the high mouse sensitivity.

Excellent work on it, though. Thanks for sharing!

@teezah Thank you for the comment, @frostfall did a great job with the narrative and the UI, I'm so glad you liked it!

@pythooonuser I'm glad you enjoyed the ending!

@archie-evans Thanks! We didn't want it to be too long in case players missed the ending or got tired of the environment!

@ancient-pixel Apologies about the performance, that's something I'll have to work on in future project, but I'm glad to see you loved the aesthetics!

@ehtd That's fair enough, we wanted to make it feel like a tour without the tour guide, but I'd recommend reading the last few signs if you want to know what happened with the ending

@c4scar Sorry about the performance issues, I'm planning on optimizing my next project, I guess importing a particle system with 1500 hairs as a forest from Blender wasn't the best of ideas, but you live and you learn! I like the idea of having an easter egg in the forest, I'll have to apply that to the next jam. Thanks for playing!

@linus-lindberg Thank you! The idea was to initially to have more guide notes, but thanks @frostfall the narrative worked perfectly!

@mehul Glad to see you enjoyed it! We just thought that we could have just an ordinary walking simulator, so when and doubt add a twist!

@saltfactory-studio Thank you for the comment, next time I'll try to not add so many trees at once as it was a hair partle system imported from Blender.

@dxk2294 Sorry about the choppy-ness, but I'm glad it didn't take away from the overall experience! The sound effects were all from freesound.com and downloaded some lofi for the background music, I'd love to make a project in the future with original sounds!

@rovernoon Thank you so much for the compliment, I love the visuals of that game and I'm so happy to see that you're comparing us to such a masterpiece!

@zerokun Apologies for the lag and the bright bloom, turns out Unity doesn't like looking at a lot of trees at once, but I'll make sure to optimise it for next time! We're glad to hear the "completely normal" ending gave you a bit of a spook!

@arancutter Thanks for the feedback, I wasn't aware how high the sensitivity was and I usually have sensitivity very high, especially on games, but I'll add an accessibility option for players in my next project. Glad to see you enjoyed our game!

What's up with the twist everyone talking? I didn't turned back as sign said to me and I left the place completely safe!
Anyway, gorgoes work, very liked the mood.

このゲームが大好き！

Seriously though, this was a super fun take on the theme, and really nice little horror game. The way the music slowly got more twisted, then fading out all together; the bamboo getting denser as I went; the story and it's delivery! Great stuff!

There were a few disappointments though. Mainly, the performance. I have a pretty powerful machine yet this game chugged at times. I'm assuming you guys are rendering all the bamboo at all times, which is why it would stutter if I turned around. Also, the scare at the end was good, but having the trigger box so close to the sign meant I had a whole walk back to the beginning, before being confused that I hadn't been eaten by a yokai. The scare still got me though, after I walked back.

Nice work!

Really love the aesthetic :)

An amazing game. I loved the mood and audio that you set. bloom was a little much and I did drop frames with a powerful machine.

Overall I love these kinds of games where they don't go for the obvious.

Really nice atmosphere, loved the tone very much :)

I learnt a lot about bamboo today. I liked the ending even though midway through i knew what was gonna happen. I feel the mouse sensitivity is too much and unnatural. But liked the game overall.

The ending was great, was just settling in to bamboo facts, really caught me unaware. Performance did cause a few problems for me as well, I would assume static batching or gpu instancing might do a good quick job of improving that. Loved the atmosphere though, great job!

I told myself halfway "Oh no, I dit not sign up for this", scary videogames do work awfully well on me ^^"
Anyway the tension build-up was very effective, (I also really liked the calm and serene begginings learning facts about bamboo) The concept was very well handled, congrats!

It's just like a bamboo wiki, as a game I think it's not only the walking. But nice art and I like the environment, Good Job!

Loved the atmosphere and how it was unexpected. Did have some performance problem too on a decent machine. As @octopoid said, gpu instancing and batching should help. I read you used a hair system from blender, before exporting, click convert on your modifier and then join meshes together (CTRL J) in order to have only one draw call for all bamboo and not one per bamboo :) Hope it helps.
Nice job !
Edit : I forgot to mention that the first time, the end did not appear ;)

I love the mood and pacing of the reveal. Solid experience, can't say much more than that! The first time I read the final sign the <spoiler> didn't appear, so I walked all the way back to the start like the sign said, but didn't get anything for that. I had to walk back to the end and put my face in the sign to trigger it.

What a nice chill tour through the bamboo forest :sweat_smile: Totally nothing suspicious...

On a serious note, it was an interesting experience. I think making the info text show up in the middle of the screen, as a UI element, would improve the experience though. That way you would not have to spend most of your time staring at the same plate model point-blank, and can appreciate your surroundings while getting the narrative element of the game. Also the final twist of the game could have been a little bit more subtle, but that's just a minor gripe :wink:

Nonetheless, it was an interesting game! Good job!

OK so I found it a bit cruel - here's what happened:
I read the 1st 3 messages
then is started talking about bamboos so I tl.;dr'rd and switched to speedrun mode

**[spoilers ahead]**

and then I got to the board with some blood on it
so I read it
and I was like "oh shit this just got real"
so I ren all the way back - like i turned around but I was really swifty about it so it let me go through
and ran (or walked - idk) all the way back to the spawn point

and then - nothing
so then I ran [walked] again to the note with the blood on it
and really stuck my nose into it to read it and get clues or whatnot
and THEN I turned around again
and THEN there was the jumpscare

It's really neat and well-presented - kudos there
But I found it a bit lacking in the gameplay & interaction departments
The fact you could change your imput at the start was handy - oldschool
thou it's a shame stepwalk dinn work on controller

Good job thanks for the experience - peace out :) :wave:

Nice facts about bamboos, I loved how it became gradualy spooky, good job you got me! :sweat_smile:

Just finished playing this game. I always wanted bamboo when I was younger! I really liked the artstyle - it's simply lovely. And I loved how this game gradually turned darker and darker, I barely even noticed that everything got dark and spooky. The ending caught me off guard.
Two issues though:

* The performance was often pretty bad, but that was mentioned several times.
* I did the same as @strangeryann, lmao. I read the last sign and ran away in the expectation of something jumping at me. When nothing happened, I went back, clicked on it and then I was finally spooked. Should be made more obvious to click on it.

But those are very minor complaints. Very good entry, loved it!

Excellent mood and atmosphere! The first time I found the final sign, the "final event" (no spoiler) didn't trigger and I thought I only had to go back all the way to the beginning. I just wasn't close enough to the sign "unfortunately" (well kind of) for me ^^ Anyway, I still enjoyed my walk.

The pleasant atmosphere and the skybox color worked well with the environment. The ending was a bit too loud for my liking, but hey, you got me. I wish I could have seen the ending character model a little longer, maybe placed somewhere on the map. Overall all the models fit the artistic style fantastic job!

Was snoozing the whole way and then...fantastic.

After sign like 5 I was like yeah GTFO, I'm going to another forest.
Pretty fun, I had a good time.
Nice factoids about bamboo.

And yet I got scared at the end!)) Nice work!

haha... I'm glad I made it to the end :) Nice entry with educational bits! Had some framerate issues on my PC (R380X, I5 6500), glad you put the options menu in the beginning but even on lowest settings it wasn't a fluent experience!

Improvements:
* Music volume is very low
* Missing footstep sounds
* Forest could become evern darker in the end IMO
* Combine bamboo trees to reduce drawcalls(?)
* Reduce bamboo amount by putting a texture after a certain depth to increase performance.

Thanks!

That was a cool experience. The most of the game looks like an idea for digital museum of bamboo. The ending surprising ;-) there is a space to evolve this game and add some investigation part or let player go back trough the same path but with things changed around. I like how you design the level with bamboos, it limit the player movement but with a very natural well.

@corruptor2037 Haha, you managed to escape the forest safely!Or did you ;) Glad you enjoyed the game, and thanks for keeping the suprise!

@tom-robson Thanks for the kind words! We worked hard on the visual aesthetic of the game and we're glad it resonated so well with eveyone. We're aware of the slight choppy performance and it's defineitley something we'll look into for a post gam update. Thanks for your review!

@m11 Thank you so much! It's definitely what we're most proud of :)

@maximilian-ansell Thanks for your comment! We agree with the perfomance but I'm glad the visuals made it a pleasnt experience for you!

@gaming-night Thanks for the kind words! We really enjoyed creating the visual style of this game, and thanks to the hard work of @humphreysmedia we were able to compile the assets into a relaxing (then not relaxing) experience.

@mza I also learned a lot more than I thought I would going into it, I even left out a lot of facts! We hope to ease the sensitivity in a post launch update :)

@octopoid Thank you! We're glad the ending did get some people and the visuals came across as we'd hoped. Thanks for the tip about the fps stuttering, I will pass this along to @humphreysmedia for a post jam update!

@rongefilet Thank you very much! It was challenging to transition from bamboo facts to horror but i'm glad it ended up working lol. We're glad you liked it :)

@coke Thank you so much! We're really proud of this one, especially the overall visual style! We're glad you liked it :)

@narom42 We're glad you liked the overall style! and thanks for the tip about the fps stuttering, I will pass this along to @humphreysmedia for a post jam update!

@annie-owl Totally nothing suspicious about the experience ;) That's a good idea with the text, we wanted it to feel natural but I definitely agree that would help soak in the enviorment. Thanks for the kind words we'll take that in for a post jam update!

@strangeryann Thanks for your comment, we appreciate the feedback! It's definetley fair the walking sim/ bamboo facts part might not be everyones cup of tea. We tried to keep it short and sweet to ease that but we could definitely make the final area trigger earlier. Thanks for playing the game! :)

@poroporo-su We're glad you liked the bamboo facts, we had just as much fun reading them when putting them in the game haha!

@dzejpi Thanks for the kind words! I kinda want to get a bamboo plant after learning about all the facts haha. Thanks for the heads up on those, we already knew about wanting to help with the performance but the ending area was new to us so we'll aim to make that bigger in the future :)

@phil-lesnar Sorry about the loud scream, we might have overdone it on trying to hit the jumpscare! That's a great idea @humphreysmedia did a great job on the model so we may consider placing it in the map if we do a post jam update! Thank you for the feedback!

@chrispy977 Haha thank you for your feedback! We're glad the spooky vibes came across over the nice aesthetic we went for!

@oc1d THank you for your feedback! We're glad you liked the game, thanks for listing out some issues we can definitely aim to hit in a post update. We're glad there wasn't toooo many issues haha, but thank you!

@wdebowicz Thanks for the kind words! We worked hard on the visual aesthetic of the game and we’re glad it resonated so well with eveyone. I love the idea of expanding on this some more, the forest was even more relaxing than we intended, but liked that it lured you into a false sense of security. We really appreciate you playing our game! :)

Nice little walking sim with interesting ending. I liked the art! It would be nice to optimize the graphics to be less demanding (less bamboos or use of instancing, I suppose). Good job! :)

Glad I missed the jumpscare, haha, wasn't in the mood for one of those, especially a loud one (though "loud" is all relative....except the rest of the game has no audio?). The tension build-up was great, though.

Having visited the arashiyama bamboo forest myself I can say that it was definitely much more calming than this game xD

I really enjoyed the environment design paired with the chill music, I'd consider adding some animal-ish sounds. (Unless animals/birds dont hang out in bamboo forests). The narrative was pretty straight forward, like the tone of the messages pointed towards an impending doom so I wonder if messing with that expectation would've made a stronger impression? Like I love a good twist in the tale you know, but thats just my opinion.

And like others have mentioned above, I had performance issues too, I turned on my FPS counter to confirm that it was dropping to 15-20 range at some points in the beginning, it improved as I went deeper in though, if that helps.

Overall, Id say its a good walking simulator which manages to re-create the feel of walking through an interesting environment but could benefit from some more work in the narrative to subvert player expectations and surprise them.