This Special War by mvasko2

Your country is at war.
The enemy is on a killing spree, destroying everything that comes their way. You have managed to escape into the forest.
But for how long?
It seems death is inevitable. You will either get killed by enemy soldiers, or by coldness and hunger.
You need to get out of here. You need to get help.
Controls
- Up or W - Go up
- Down or S - Go down
- Right or D - Go right
- Left or A - Go left
- Shift - Sprint
- E - Use nearby item
Software used:
- Godot - game engine
- Krita - painting
- Ardour - music and some sound effects
- Explodomatica - for explosions and gunshots!
Ratings
| Overall | 311th | 3.444⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 509th | 2.815⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 556th | 2.593⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 596th | 2.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 206th | 3.722⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 55th | 3.907⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 12th | 4.259⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
I love these kind of survival-like games
This game is so ATMOSPHERIC!
I love the stealth-feel to it! The graphics are cool and music fits the theme perfectly!
I think it would be super cool if you had a helicopter come in at the end to pick the dude up.
Overall a really good game, well done! :smiley:
I'm not sure if it is intended, but we can use the radio from outside the house. I've tried several run to verify, and each time I've been able to reproduce it:

Overall, you managed to create a great mood. And you can now improve it by adding more polish, some kind of intro/outro, using customized buttons and not default godot UI, etc. Good job, and thank you for sharing your game.
The only negative thing I would say is I don't think it fit the theme. The ending wasn't inevitable since I was able to 'win'.
Other than that, very good atmosphere and everything else.
Nice game.
I like that you took the time to have the lights from the guards spill into the rooms. How did you do that effect?
@robert18 Yes, you are right, it's not much of a challenge and hunger does indeed go below zero. It's a feature, not a bug :slight_smile:. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake and makes the game too easy, but it was a conscious decision, because I wanted the hunger behaviour to be more "realistic". Anyway, with Ludum Dare, I have a little bit of a history of making my games too difficult, so I figured it wouldn't be too bad to have an easy game for once.
@arqitech I love the helicopter idea, thanks! The exit point was actually one of the last things to be added and had no idea what it should be, so the red cross was kind of a rushed lazy escape hatch :slight_smile: The helicopter makes perfect sense.
@ironcutter I definitely wanted some more obstacles and hazards along the way, but you know how it is with time and ambitions :slight_smile:
@itskdog I agree, it's a bit too easy. I originally wanted to have a lot more survival mechanics in there, such as hunting for food, making campfires and stuff like that. In fact, the game started as a little clone of The Long Dark in a war environment. Of course, in the end I had to cut a lot of planned features in order to meet the deadline :slight_smile:
@itskdog, @chocolat-endive Thanks for pointing out the radio thing, it's a bug, I probably should have made the radio trigger area smaller or take the walls into account somehow.
@i-am-lloric, @stuntcomposer, @guillem-serra I guess you are right with the theme. I considered having the character die in the end after actually delaying the inevitable (hunger and coldness), but I couldn't help the urge to have a happy ending (sort of) in this one.
@candlesan Glad you noticed, it's really nothing special :slight_smile: Once you have 2D lights setup in Godot, you just need to make sure shadows are enabled on the light itself, and you have a `LightOccluder2D` on the building. Feel free to check it out in the [source code](https://github.com/MilanVasko/ludum-dare-50) (you will probably be most interested in the `enemy.tscn` and `building.tscn` files). Or just read up on it in [Godot docs](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/2d/2d_lights_and_shadows.html) directly, I just followed that tutorial :slight_smile:
@hmightypirate True about the difficulty. Patrolling enemies were actually on my TODO list, but they didn't make the cut (they were **very** close though :slight_smile:)
i dont have anything to add that hasnt been addressed. just that i enjoyed your game and well done for trying to take on a serious topic.
The gameplay itself felt a bit repetitive, without much variation over a relatively large world that is meant to be explored. There are also some points that could be polished. For example, I found it hard to "read" the bars showing hunger, cold, etc. (they were too thin, with the labels far from them.)
A nice compo submission!
I definitely agree that there's a shortage of content, gameplay and polishing here. I would like to keep improving the game and add some content to it. Hopefully time allows for it :slight_smile:
@who "This War of Mine" was, indeed, one of my inspirations. In fact, I've listened to its soundtrack while programming this game :slight_smile: