A Thousand Islands, and One by esayitch
A Thousand Islands, and One is an exploration, sandbox game. You are sent to plunder the wealth of a thousand pastoral islands. That is all. You are not told anything about the islands, or what you are searching for. Discovery is afoot.
You are not even warned about what might kill you! All you know is that a seer foretold your demise. Thankfully, you have many clones to continue your work.
The game saves your progress between sessions. If you wish to start from the "beginning", press R+Q in the title screen.
Can you slay a dragon?
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How to get: Use the Drive link to download the zip, unzip it, open the folder, and double click the name of the game.
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How to play: 1) Arrows to move around. 2) X to embark and disembark from your boat. 3) 0 to mute. 4) +/- for volume control. 5) R+Q in title screen - HARD RESET.
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The game was made solo using HaxeFlixel, paint.net, Visual Studio Code, and sfxr. I wanted to learn a couple of new things about procedural generation, so I went that route. I also felt compelled to participate in the 50th LD, not having participated during the past 3-4 years (and having participated a few times before).
I was devious and (hopefully) subtle in my implementation of the theme. I hope you catch it. And I hope you enjoy the experience, if you play! I tried to add a few surprises.
P.S. 2 hours before the deadline, I tried to make an html5 build, and it didn't work and I was too tired to fix it. So Windows is all there is, unfortunately.
P.P.S Jenny if you somehow find your way here, I love you.
Ratings
| Overall | 283th | 3.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 491th | 2.889⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 143th | 3.685⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 558th | 2.846⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 52th | 4.204⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 222th | 3.407⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 116th | 3.692⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 31🗨️ |
Right now the game lacks a bit of depth, as as far as I understood, I just had to wander the island until I find the treasure. I think adding a series of minigames to find treasures would benefit the game a lot, but that is not something one can achieve in a jam.
Overall, good direction. Keep working on it, seems like it could end up as a really cool game.
"Right now the game lacks a bit of depth, as as far as I understood, I just had to wander the island until I find the treasure. I think adding a series of minigames to find treasures would benefit the game a lot, but that is not something one can achieve in a jam."
This is indeed in the game, a few islands in. There is a surprise in island 5, and another in island 9, if you get that far... that aside from the various types of natives you encounter.
The art was good and the retro style worked great! I actually spent a long time playing.
Great compo game and thanks for uploading!
@darandin You've actually found my (maybe too experimental, maybe too meta) interpretation of the theme - it is inevitable that players will leave the game at some point, never to return, I try to delay this as much as possible by:
1) Having countless islands, which is not enough by itself as they need to be compelling enough to be discovered... Which brings me to...
2) Hinting at great depth in terms of what there is to discover by careful management of "discovery", first of treasure types, then of different inhabitants, then of some preset surprises, then by combinations of all of the above. Naturally content is the main bottleneck during a 48 hour jam, so the illusion of depth was the trickiest part.
I'm glad you've spent time with it :D
Procedural generation of islands is absolutely amazing, and the pace and the story tells me something about the bigger picture, I'm not sure what it is... I plunged about 12 islands by now, will definitely come back to it later to see what treasures and secrets this game holds...
Nice entry though, good job
That said, I did kinda feel like the game lacked something. It felt a bit repetitive, even with the added features in later levels. I don't honestly know what I was hoping for, or if it was even feasible in a weekend game jam honestly. (maybe some story, or explanation around the mystery?) But still an interesting entry.
I'm not really a fan of the sound effects, I found them to be too harsh sounding for the mood that the rest of the game has. Otherwise it would have a very relaxing vibe (if not for the dragons etc).
Procedural island generation is neat. At first I was a bit lost, but I guess that's on purpose.
Good job!