LudumData

Wickie by detectiveLosos

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made by detectiveLosos for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

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Unstable signal on the radio and uneasy waters all around you. Take a deep dive in a life of a lighthouse keeper. Your duties are: - Fuel up generator to keep lighthouse working. - Listen to the radio in case of any distress calls. - Guide lost ships using the light. - Don't forget to take a nap once in a while!

How to play (IMPORTANT!):

  • You have to spend 7 days on the lighthouse to finish the game (sleep = next day)
  • Check notice board each day to see what happened
  • Radio also needs energy to function
  • How to read routes: i.e. there is a ship on it's way from Roma to Loco and it needs the 4th sector of it's route, this would be it (count dots in the right direction): Tutorial.png Tutorial2.png

Controls: - WASD - Movement / Select dialog option - Mouse - Look - E - Interact - Escape - Exit interaction mode

Team: - Leonid Dudakov (https://twitter.com/DetectiveLosos) - Lighthouse, island and water assets, VFX, Lighting - Natalia Sedova (https://www.artstation.com/natalyasedova17) - Interior assets, Game idea - Annie Owl (https://twitter.com/owl_annie) - Game design, Programming, SFX

Audio Samples: - https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/418387/ - https://freesound.org/people/Jace/sounds/35291/ - https://freesound.org/people/pulswelle/sounds/339517/

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Link https://dashingashes.itch.io/wickie
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/wickie

Ratings

Overall 420th 3.75⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1048th 3.146⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 433th 3.604⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1277th 2.891⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 57th 4.563⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 131th 4.022⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 24th 4.458⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 20🗳️ 26🗨️

Feedback

HyperTheory
05. Oct 2021 · 08:28 UTC
The detailed 3D scene and atmosphere is impressive. Well done!
Hobzone
05. Oct 2021 · 09:02 UTC
Really good game, I've loved the mood.
jefvel
05. Oct 2021 · 21:36 UTC
This game has a really nice mood, wow! I do think I accidentally got softlocked somehow. I managed to show the path for the first person on the radio, then went to sleep. After that the radio was silent and I couldn't turn on the light, even after changing the battery things. Maybe I'm missing something?

Great job on the visuals, it looks super cool!
notanimposter
06. Oct 2021 · 04:20 UTC
Awesome atmosphere, but the motion blur made it hard to look at. Didn't see any way to turn it off.
Annie Owl
06. Oct 2021 · 09:13 UTC
@jefvel You need to fill up the canister with fuel in the basement. It's not very intuitive, because you need to insert the canister, then aim at the lever and press interact again - then the empty canister would start filling up and flowing. But you haven't really missed that much. Sadly there are no other new events or something else throughout all 7 days, only new ships to guide :slight_frown:
![Untitled.png](///raw/a20/d/z/4767b.png)
jefvel
06. Oct 2021 · 11:01 UTC
@annie-owl Ah, gotcha! I didn't know the basement machine was a refueling station. I thought it activated the canister and started using its power. Maybe it could have had a sign saying what it is, or that once the canister starts glowing it gets automatically ejected signalling it's done. And I think the movement speed could be increased a little bit.

Anyway the game has a really nice atmosphere! Got metro Exodus vibes from hearing the guitar on the radio.
Annie Owl
06. Oct 2021 · 22:30 UTC
@jefvel Yeah, I know that the game turned out to be extremely unintuitive and somewhat frustrating when it comes to interactions and movement. I spent too much time on some minor stuff (like playing around with Unity Audio Mixer), instead of creating a better user experience :slight_frown: But at the end of the day I'm just happy the game works because it was in a really bad state few hours before the submission :sweat_smile:
ThePirateNun
06. Oct 2021 · 23:07 UTC
This was a super cool game! First and foremost, the visuals are stunning! Everything looks so nicely stylized and the lighting is really great for conveying the mood that the game is going for. I also really liked how the radio worked, it added a ton to the vibe when I would switch it over to some slow guitar music after a hard day's work! It took me a little while to figure out the loop of the game and how to use the map and all of that, but when I figured it out and I got the "signal received" message on the radio, it was really satisfying. It felt like after I figured it out there wasn't too much more to do other than go through the loop and enjoy the atmosphere, so I would love to see more things to shake up the gameplay a bit quicker. But once again I had a great time, well done!
baconharemthug
06. Oct 2021 · 23:21 UTC
Very pretty visuals and great atmosphere, and I liked the radio tuning mechanic. I played around with the radio for a while and there didn't seem to be any distress calls though. Also the tie-in with the theme is pretty unclear.
Annie Owl
07. Oct 2021 · 08:55 UTC
@thepiratenun Yeah, my time management this jam was pretty bad, and I have not implemented many of the things we initially wanted to add in our game, so the gameplay is very barebones. I'm glad you've liked the atmosphere though! Our modeler and VFX artist worked hard on that :slight_smile:

@baconharemthug The idea was that the radio signal is Unstable, and you have to browse through the radio waves to find distress calls, or some tunes to listen to after the hard day at work :slight_smile: Also, the situation at the sea is pretty unstable throughout the whole week.
Tardif Adrian
07. Oct 2021 · 20:15 UTC
Very good visuals, lighting and atmosphere.
hiroboto
08. Oct 2021 · 02:38 UTC
veeery impressive overall mood setup by a combination of high quality graphics and audio! good job!!
DragonSheep
08. Oct 2021 · 02:55 UTC
It's a simple game, but tranquil. I just wish there was a save feature so I could boot it up and play a day to relax for a bit, without losing my progress.
Dustin Brown
08. Oct 2021 · 03:06 UTC
Wooooow what atmosphere. Loved the game. Genuinely isolating and relaxing. Gonna have that Ukelele piece stuck in my head for a while!
IntoDarkness
08. Oct 2021 · 13:35 UTC
Solid graphics :a: , nice atmosphere :v: I love it . Awesome Work guys
Local Minimum
08. Oct 2021 · 18:31 UTC
Great graphics! And cozy game. Not what I'd expect after your previous entry :laughing:. I found the game quite intuitive even though I was slightly confused first time at the radio because I though I would give the coordinates there too and it wasn't obvious to me I should `Esc` my way out of it.

I really like walking sims and it very much feels like one!

First I took a lap outside the lighthouse and noticed that I could interact with something in the dark. A later day I tested with one of the light fuel canisters and it disappeared. So I went inside and noticed it was the refueling station. Doesn't really matter, but perhaps there needs to be some tweaks to collision boxes for that ray. It also felt a bit too generous that I could peak up between the gaps of the stairs and interact with things very far away. On the other hand, one might not want to force the player to walk all the way up to every station to be able to interact...

Anyways, solid entry.
subcreation
08. Oct 2021 · 18:41 UTC
Very atmospheric game, very pleasant to look at. The mechanics were hard to understand, however, and the movement seemed slow. I also had a low framerate. The radio mechanic and overall feel of the game was really cool and lent a sense of weight to the actions you are asked to take, I found myself wanting to help these ships. Great work!

I'm just surprised that the lighthouse is still powered by whale oil...
kalevrk
08. Oct 2021 · 21:57 UTC
Unfortunately, I don't have a Windows machine, so I couldn't play or rate the game, but I just wanted to say that the concept and the mood from the graphics are fantastic!
Raykon
08. Oct 2021 · 22:37 UTC
Graphics are really pretty. The atmosphere is great but I think muffling the sound of water while you're in the lighthouse would make it even better. On a bigger scope it would be cool to take these basic mechanics, add a thriller story and you would get an epic atmospheric game à la Firewatch.
Annie Owl
11. Oct 2021 · 10:02 UTC
@local-minimum I'm glad you've enjoyed the game! The interaction bug comes from the fact that I've used the same technique as for our other 3d-projects (that didn't have any walls blocking the point of interaction) :sweat_smile: Have not thought about that while coding, and when I've noticed the bug it was too late.

@subcreation I'm glad you've got the dishonored reference :smile: Yeah, sorry for the low frame rate. We used a lot of post-processing and did not have much time to do any optimization.

@kalevrk I'm glad you like the looks of the game. We can probably make Linux or Mac build, but we can't test it. Sadly, the web build is out of the question, because Unity Web GL Build does not support the post-processing that we are using.

@raykon We were using Firewatch as a reference point while discussing this game idea! We were planning to add more narrative, but I wasted a lot of time on other minor things and had no time left for that.
Kiwi663
12. Oct 2021 · 20:17 UTC
I love it, fantastic graphic and mood.
pedrocoden
17. Oct 2021 · 01:46 UTC
wow, the graphic is really amazing!
Rengo
21. Oct 2021 · 17:38 UTC
Amazing graphics sound and mood! i love the setting and i might be biased because deep water always gets me.
however i wish there was more speed and action to this game