This was actually rather well polished... took a little while to figure it out ... but got there :smile:
Good job

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:

Honestly one of my jam favorites so far! It's basically Escape from Tarkov, but only the scavenging and loot management. I love how focused it is and how it makes the inventory juggling meaningful. The different item effects were really fun. More varied items with emergent interactions and maybe a few more obstacles along your way (the city map really doesn't do anything currently) and I can easily see this being a very good full game. Great job! :)

I liked it.
The interface felt weird and complicated (spent 5 minutes trying to get out of the inventory).
Once you get over that this game has some really nice interesting inventory mechanics.
This puzzle part was the most fun for me.
The Fungi are OP. You can basically just get those and not care about the contracts at all.

Overall its a nice game, well done! :)

I love how inventory management is the real game! It's like a puzzle game but with the puzzle not being the focus. Love the different effects objects have on your inventory.

Played it for way longer than expected. Fun game!

Very cool mechanics! At first I couldn't tell what was wall and floor, and I wish the more expensive contracts were calculated first. Music was actually pretty good. Overall, nice job!

Really cool little game! Loved the upgrade mechanic part. Wish there were music controls.

Okay, I'm calling this an end now, it's getting very repetitive! 😅 How many inventory upgrades there are? Even for few rounds I was just doing it for the sake of doing it. Didn't need like half of the inventory space to complete the 5 mil contracts.


Would have been cool to see more of the item interactions. Quite a lot of the existing ones were completely moot too like the explosives (would have to be dumb to trigger em) or the wrench as you wouldn't want to break anything anyway.

Some of the descriptions were also kinda misleading. The crystals did break even though you put only duct tape on top of it and the heavy alloy things didn't mention at all that they wouldn't break the same item. Kinda weird how the lighter one still breaks the heavier one though.

**Broken crystal with duct tape on top**

**Stacked weights**

You could also quite easily cheese the "after x steps do something", especially the artefacts by just keeping them in the boxes and picking up right before finishing. Not exactly sure but I think I also saw a timer reset when putting artefact back to box.

Early on this was a mega fast way of making bank...


And speaking of shrooms, the definition of "adjacent squares" is quite loose here as they at least wrap around the level which caught me by surprise. And because of that took me quite a while to figure out how to properly contain them or let them grow to desired number instead of just treating them the same as artefacts.

The best tactic anyway seemed to be to just keep fishing for the best tier contracts you have and them not having ridiculous requirements like 6 artefacts.


or


But then it was very disheartening when you work hard for filling a good paying big contract and the map just doesn't spawn one of the items needed. Also very annoying when a lower tier contract (which is above the good one) you weren't paying attention to snipes some materials from a good one.

The timers were quite often on top of the tooltips.


Anyways, good job! 👍

**edit:** Oh yeah one more important thing I forgot to write down. One major QOL improvement would be to hilite the contract lists with to reflect on what you had already gathered. Had to do so many careful double checks on these.

**edit two:** And another thing came to mind when I was going to the grocery store. Moving stuff on the inventory was kinda fiddly and clunky. The hit areas seemed a bit small so it was easy to missclick when not paying full attention. Definitely drag and drop moving would have felt nicer.

Cool idea!! very unique puzzle that surprised me with how intuitive and engaging it was :) No complaints from me - this is a solid entry that fits the theme well and is fun to play. It would be cool to see some stuff implemented (magnets) down the line :)

Thanks to everyone who's checked out my game so far!

@chesiq Good idea, especially in the web version. That one ignored all the individual volumes I set for different sounds (including the music), so everything is just all playing at the same (loud) volume.

@antti-haavikko Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! The inventory size goes up to 12x10 (which was basically the max I could fit without having to resize cells) which yeah, is probably way more than is needed. I could've used some more time to balance out the progression a bit more to fix that.

And oh dang, I thought I fixed the crystal-duct tape issue at one point, I must not have though. As for the weights, I added in the heavier one last - I forgot to go back and make it so the the lighter one couldn't break it. And the tooltips bug, I hadn't noticed that one while playing but I'm pretty sure I know why it's happening.

@eggland-games The mushrooms did end up being horribly unbalanced too in the end, I think they needed more of a negative attached to them, or just a lower value.

If I do an update post-jam I've definitely got a few QOL fixes I wanted to put in, but ran out of time to do neatly. One of them was some sanity checks for item generation - because yeah, it sucks when a contract is just straight up impossible. Ditto for checking stuff off contracts as they're completed! I hadn't actually thought about processing higher value contracts first like @afroant suggested, but that would fix the issue you were having too.

I definitely want to add in drag and drop too, because I did find myself trying to do it that way in testing a few times. I debated which way to do it at the start and did kinda want to implement both, but just started with clicking and never got around to adding in dragging!

@ivysly Thanks! I did want to implement magnets, but time was running out and they needed a lot of new inventory stuff. The idea was that if placed beside another magnet they'd join together permanently and span multiple cells, maybe in a post-jam version. I only ended up adding ...11? of the ~26 items I designed, so there's definitely room for expansion!

This game was so much fun! I love the interactions between the different types of items and the idea of running around and scavenging things. The music and the mood matched the game as well.

The only problem I had was that you could only complete one contract at a time (I believe). That meant that even though I collected things for the higher tier contract, I accidentally ALSO completed another contract and thus didn't get as much gold as I could have gotten.

Anyways, this game was a lot of fun to play! Good job!

What a fun game !

Brilliant little game!

This is so addictive!
I played it way longer than I had intended.
The core gameplay is super simple, yet the loot instincts are on fire and one has to scavenge the city over and over again ^^.

Very nice! Please add more items, and some obstacles or enemies in the city!

I had a lot of fun here and this will get a high mark from me!

Thanks for submitting it!

Good idea! Although I would like a bit more of guidance.

This was a really addictive game! I really liked all of it!

I enjoyed the game loop, and it's cool that the progression keeps continuing for so far. I was disappointed I wasn't under much pressure while scavenging. But in another way, that makes the game somewhat relaxing, which is nice. A few items disappeared while I was moving them.
My favorite part was the sales screen after you return- that was really satisfying.

Thanks for making this!

That is an excellent mechanic! I have always toyed in my mind the idea of physical inventories (to no avail), but you nailed it!

The contracts are also a great way of giving the player objectives and constraints.

The navigating around the map is also very smooth.

I would love to see a full title around that mechanic, if you ever do it, yell at me and I'll buy it in a heartbeat!

This was a really great game and a concept I never expected from this jam. As a proof of concept, this was great. A lot of others have already mentioned some great QoL changes that would help a lot, like clicking and dragging, as well as a grocery list you could cross off for items. The sales screen at the end was really nice as well as some small stuff, like being able to go under trees. I'm hesitant to say that there should have been a timer to add some more pressure to the game, cause that would change the pace from an inventory min-max style game to a frantic, grab as much as you can game. Great work overall!

The concept of the inventory as a puzzle is very cool! I would have liked a little more "sense of progress" aside from the expanding inventory and the contract prices, like something to buy with those money :D
A question: are the contents of the crates completely random or do them depend on the active contracts?

@as-you-like-101 @chesschaser @njitnelav Thanks for playing!

@jonas-michael I'm guessing your issue is that if you have two contracts that both need 1 scrap, then you need 2 scrap to complete them both. I didn't get time to add a proper tutorial in the end, but this is definitely something I need to emphasise in it!

@mordrick I'm playing around with some ideas for how to add some hazards to the city in a post jam version (@hydezeke @randomerz which will hopefully add a bit of pressure, and the I'm trying to design it in a way that adds a little (implicit) time pressure too with the difficulty ramping up the longer you're out there) , and I've definitely got plans for more items!

@binaryprinciple Yeah, I ran out of time for putting together a tutorial in-game, so it just kind of throws the player in the deep end. Definitely something I wish I'd had time to fix.

@kroltan I'd love to take full credit for the mechanics, but you should check out Moonlighter if you haven't before - it was the starting point a bunch of my ideas on physical inventories! That said, I'm definitely toying around with ideas for a post jam version, so I'll keep you posted 😁

@kumber As of now, completely random, unfortunately. It was on my list to put in some sanity checks so that there would be, at minimum, enough items in the crates to complete all contracts, but I never managed to finish it in time. And for more upgrades/progress, I've got some plans for how to expand that because yeah, for now it's fairly shallow

Hey matey, thanks for submitting your game to stream, it was a lot of fun! Here's a link to the vod if you'd like to rewatch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1171753717

Cool little game