Pyre by Foursay
This is Ludum Dare: Delay the inevitable. What is inevitable, then? Loneliness? Death?
Or… a dying ember?
This game is about how to delay a dying ember's death and how to save your own life. Somehow, fire are just like people: we are eager we are what's left of our desire. And we burn it. We are burning pyres.

Tutorial
Click on the item to pick up
Click on the pyre to add this item as fuel
Sometimes you need to save the ember
By continuously Clicking the pyre.
Clickable objects have outline. Sometimes, you can click on yourself.
| Link | https://foursay.itch.io/ld50-pyre |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/pyre |
Ratings
| Overall | 117th | 4.05⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1001th | 3.092⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 466th | 3.526⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 67th | 4.295⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 147th | 4.378⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 6th | 4.603⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 7th | 4.641⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 49🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
+ Great music as always
+ Cool twist in gameplay
+ Good cutscene sequence at the end
- Guide is a bit confusing, when you need to, you know, Dark Souls 3
Over all great experience! Love it.
I also really liked how you made everything black and white except the fire which made you focus on it more.
I really don't have any feedback to give. Maybe the one thing is those white flashes in the fire felt a bit weird to me. I feel like they were a little sudden and broke the immersion slightly.
Really amazing job! I am happy I played this one :D
I don't know if it was a bug, but the ending just kind of stayed playing and didn't end. I had to use alt-F4 to exit.
Spectacular entry !
I admit I wasn't really sure what I was doing -- I fed everything to the fire but it seemed to die as I did so, so cause and effect wasn't very obvious. I definitely feel like I missed something but not sure what...
Would love to see more things like this in the future!
I would only change the dialog system. Instead of changing dialog every few seconds, the player could skip them with a click of a button.
The graphics, sounds and music are all top-notch and contribute to the mood and the story very well.
There's not much gameplay and the ending seems buggy (it stayed on forever, had to close with Alt+F4), but those are just nitpicks.
Great job!

I loved this! What a gem! This felt like you buy a lite version of a "real" game on steam where you only get to play bits of the game or something ^^
Where to begin. Graphics. Sound. Atmosphere. Perfect. Basically 5 stars all around.
The choice of font was perfect and from a graphic design point of view sooo satisfying (after gamejams I'm so sick and tired of damn Arial... ^^)
The story was, although cryptic and short very touching and.. haunting?
Amazing. The part about your past etc. gave me a bit Detention vibes (great Taiwanese Game!) also a bit Limbo, but not as in a clone, something very much unique!
At first I was a bit annoyed that you have to constantly click, but then I liked how it added to the urgent and inevitable feeling (so maybe adding a little "click" indicator - like a cursor animation that constantly clicks and then like the word click animated (so to indicate, hey, you have to click more often) would have been nice :)
Also, the text should be a liiiittle bit more in the mid of the screen I think - there is space and otherwise it was a bit too high up there and I sometimes almost missed stuff.
But that's very nit-picky - I loved it, really! Good job guys! Gave me goosebumps :)
@shadowcast thank you as always. I like the walljump, seriously.
@jogy34 thankyou! it takes time to figure how particle works and make sure the visual looks great.
@mhm32167 thanks for playing! I never thought that before the theme reveal as well...
@dunusoor thanks for playing and liking the game!
@therulermeasure Fun Fact: the music part is the less time-comsuming part for dev, and the most time comsuming part is particle since I just picked it up this time... thanks for playing!
@yulotomorrow thanks for playing! glad to see your sequal for LD48 as well! Congrats!
@cloudinksk thanks! the emotion and mood is about everything here
@kazuren thanks for likeing the ending! the black art style is simply because our artist is occupied but still manage to produce amazing art in this style. Thanks to Ciel again!
@eggshelldog the theme is actually quite complex from my perspective, but in players view I think just take this game as "accept your void and do something differenrt like burning" or something else - it could be whatever you like. Thanks for playing!
@wuppos thanks so much for your comments! thanks for likeing the mood and atmosphere since that is also my focus this time. It feels great to see you are glad to play the game!
@c-even thanks for likin the immersive expereince!
@anton4ik-dev so the theme is absolully not intuitive "thanks to" my bading wrting lol, I try to convey something emotion about topic for accetping your loneliness, void, and death somehow, but I really don't know how to convey that in a good manner. Also every single of my game does not have an exit button lmao, I might need to take care of that next time. Thanks for playing!
@raxah thanks for liking the mood!
@hekateras thanks for playing! I feel like I am making better music that LD48 lmao.
@dans17 that could be some problem that the game is lacking "gameplay", I really need to make some game-feel game next time. Thanks for playing!
@ardorugus I took sometime to move on the "burning" theme, since I was such a kid who like to burn down every garbage in the forest (yes, fire hazard warning), which makes me less lonely at that time since watching the burning fire somehow make me less lonely - exactly the scene in the game. Thank you for enjoying the game so much.
@squimmy it definitely looks like Limbo lmao, I hope the theme is quite different from that though. I NEED TO MAKE SOME EXTI BUTTON NEXT TIME, of course
@lilianc like mentioned above, exit button request accepted! And thanks for likeing the mood and music!
@joselor thanks for accpeting this type of game! thansk for playing!
@leekanarchism thansk for liking the mood whilte don't quite sure what's going on - the theme is not intuitive but glad you enjoy the atmosphere!
@scootaloozamyslona yes, the dia system is cringe for my poor coding skill... And maybe I was too much focusing on the presentation this time. Thanks for playing!
@moonchain thansk for enjoying the game!
@mvasko2 thansk for liking the game overall! WILL BE EXIT BUTTON NEXT TIME
@likirus make the emotion feels gre3t is my duty this time lamo. Thanks for playing!
@suchista thanks for liking the game! the experience takes time to polish especially for the audio and particle lmao.But worth it for having comments like yours!
@apandso I wished it could be longer as well, as long as its not a borning journey in the end. Thanks for playing!
@zitao-ye thanks so much! 能得到默哲这样的评价俺真的很开心!
@angiemon thanks for your so detailed comments! it feels so great to have people like you that feels the detail and esthetic pick like the font choose and other stuff (it really took me sooooo long to pick this font). I also like Detention and Limbo! And yes, the text and click could be more polished, especially for the text (I guess I just would like to not take too much space for the gameplay, but it turns out really disturbing). Thanks again for playing the game!
thanks again to everyone!
As usual, absolutely wonderful audio and visuals, keep up the good work!