The little run animation makes me happy. zoooooommmm.

One question. Do you have to take the little flames back to the firepit, or do they teleport there on their own? It's hard to tell.

/fun and cute! spooky lore, love the draguan mine

Looks really pretty! Only big complaint is that the chests sometimes give you items that you already have, and that you don't need any more of (scythes, swords etc) but other than that pretty good!

very nice mood and graphics, the animations look pretty. The randomness on loot adds a good dynamic

@greenpixel that's a good suggestion! We had originally planned for more weapons, but you know how that goes :)

For this version, it might be good to limit weapon pickups separate from your item inventory.

@soskstu thank you! The lore was a cool inspiration. I'd love to talk about it in a blog post! @tempest-smh will love to hear that you enjoyed his mine haha

@amarokczukay thank you!

@confusedsoph thank you for playing! Yes, you do have to bring the sparks back. I guess we didn't explain it well enough. The deposit animation is maybe more noticeable if you have more sparks. If you only have one or two, it isn't as obvious.

I really like the back story and overall atmosphere. The game is simple but fun to play. My only complaint would be that sometimes I could not cut through the tendrils, even if I was right next to them. But otherwise great work!

Love the game's mood, you really nailed it! My only real complainr is that I found myself bumping into things more than I felt I should have. I think it was a combination of colliders being a touch too large and the chest colliders not disappearing quickly enough after opening them. Still, great job! :smiley:

I like that you can move fast and kick plant butt! There's a lot of potential in the items available and the concept of having to traverse further and further into the wilderness to maintain your camp. I wish there was more use for "permanent" items like the machete and scythe other than just having one, and being sad when you get another one from a chest. I can see this game being fleshed out a lot more with things like having to actually place down the automatic scythes to keep your campfire safe from vines as well, finer tuning on chest drops, and some kind of final objective beyond survival. Really cool concept, and always cool to see an actual intro in a game jam game!

Thanks @davidtheginger !! We were all really excited about the concept as well. Thank you for the kind words and the great ideas! We'd like to tune some of these things in a post-jam update, so stay tuned :)

Cool game! Loved the mood and the animations. One improvement I think would benefit the game is that the hitboxes for plants could be smaller than the sprites, and have rounded corners. That way the player would not get stuck on corners that easily, and the movement would feel even more smooth. Nonetheless, great effort!

I liked it more on my second run. At first i just didnt get used to the controls. Shift (and right even) is a strange choice for an attack/use button. Also didnt find any scythes on that playthrough so it was rough.

The second time things worked much better with the better weapon found pretty early on. I dont know if the sword is just worse in everything but it felt so to me. Maybe let the sword kill the tendrils in one hit while the scythe takes two but has more reach or something to make the difference worthwhile.

The hitboxes are a bit clunky as some said and the level generation sometimes cuts of paths that i think should go on. But the gameloop of going out collecting fire and bringing it back in time is really fun. I wish the tendrils would be a more primary danger to the fire though - the three times i played i always just failed to keep the fire alive without them getting even close.

Further notes and nitpicks: Bombs are underpowered; Maybe mouse controls could be better for orientating and scrolling through the items. One more item space overall would be nice. Not finding double weapons in chests (i always had tons of swords lying around). Maybe one more tree sprite for more variation.

Things i really liked: The premise is endearing and also a bit creepy. The graphics were nice and didnt bite another or had different pixel sizes (im really picky about that). Fun gameloop.

Good job and see you around next time^^

Loved the animations and the artstyle! Fun Game. (:

Thanks for all the comments. I love all the suggestions.
Several people noted the colliders being too big, it is an issue that we all knew about and was something we did has a hack for the HTML build. The colliders originally fit a lot better but as soon as we exported to HTML the colliders all shrank and you could walk through trees. With not a ton of time, I just made all the colliders bigger. I would really like to actually refine the colliders in the HTML build to play more like we originally intended.
I'm glad people are having fun with the game though!

@willoxs Thanks for coming by to play! You aren't first to comment on the choice of right shift ... Some thoughts on that. To us, we wanted to try avoiding the mouse and spreading the action across the keyboard. Also, because your targets aren't moving, we didn't feel like being able to attack in a different direction than you were moving was important. We do want to try controller support in an update, so we're excited to see how that feels!

I'm glad to hear your other suggestions! It's really important to me how people interpret things differently, so we can try to think more creatively next time.

I did create all the artwork (except the explosion -- last minute) myself at the same resolution, so I'm glad you found it, as well as the style and premise, enjoyable.

Peace!

cool animation and I love the gameplay

Really nice art and music, the feel of the game was great. The art for your little character was really good too. The gameplay was pretty confusing to me though. I survived 9 days on my second try, but I feel like I played the game wrong. I thought there might be enemies that show up because of the bomb, spinny blades, and sword, but nothing ever came. Also the controls were really, really bad.

Hey there! Really enjoyed this entry, with the concept and setup. I was really immersed into this Balkan gardener that's trimming ever-growing weeds! The art is fantastic, and so is the music. Also really enjoy this "push your luck" mechanic where I have to go back and check on the base every now and then.

I think my only nitpick is also around the choice of right shift as the "use key" since it kept triggering my sticky key as I was spamming it to cut the tendrils. Another feedback is around progression - I wish the treasure chests meant more (e.g. if I find another scythe maybe just buff my current one by a tiny bit? so its exciting to keep looting them). Anyways, these are all nitpicks though. This is a really great entry!

I really loved it!! Other people have already had great ideas in so far as criticism (re: hitboxes, controls, ways to improve weapons). Additionally, I thought the music was lovely, I only wish it was a bit longer before looping, I really like the instrument you used.

Someone mentioned it being a bit disappointing when chests dropped the machete or the scythe a lot when you already had it. This is something a lot of games tend to do, so, not the end of the world to me. However, perhaps a way to make it a bit more satisfying would be to have the chests drop a spark if it detects the player already has one of those in their inventory. I definitely think you should still be able to pick up multiple teleports, those were life savers! :sweat_smile:

Overall, super fun jam game, kudos!

@boxedmeatrevolution thanks for playing! The items like the bomb and spinning blades were to help keep the vines away (for example, you could place the blades down to keep trimming a spot of vines at an opening).

Sorry you had trouble with the controls. We'd love to hear what didn't work well for you so that we could try to improve them!

@wildmusketeer Oh wow, I didn't even think of sticky keys!! Sorry about that :D Let's blame Windows ;) If you had to pick a replacement key, what would it have been?

That's a great idea on how to make the duplicate drops worth it! Thank you for playing!!

@gardenovena Thank you for the kind words! I'm biased, since I did the artwork and music :) I chose a complex time signature (which actually inspired the premise), and it ended up being hard to work in ... so I didn't have as much time to build the score that I wanted. Alas!

I like the idea of dropping sparks instead of a duplicate weapon. We'd need to tune down the number of chests so that it didn't become too easy, perhaps. But we're getting so many good ideas of things to try!

Thanks again!

Oh, that is really cool about the music being a special time signature!! Also, I totally forgot that I wanted to mention, 10,000 bonus points to you for basing the premise off of more obscure (at least in the English speaking world) mythology, I adore when people do that, thanks for sharing!! :hearts:

Great mood the graphics are cute but i think that what sells it is the music and the sfx! the gameplay is original and fun! the only think id change is that i would do something about the duplicate weapons maybe powering up existing ones or turning them into sparks. but the fact of aving to return to the fire makes for an original and fun gameplay gj!

Nice game! I think it would've been nice if I had some timer or indicator about the flame as I went out into the woods. Now every time I teleported it's because I wasn't sure about the state of the flame.

I like the lore and the game is pretty relaxing to play. The visual and music are exceptional too. Good job!

Nice voice acting at the beginning, it really set the mood. I also liked this take on the theme. I enjoyed the map generation and thought vine growth was cool. Well done, elegant game for 72 hours!
P.S. The sticky key popup got me few times

I think it could be really fun if It was made into a full game. I couldn't tell if the vines were able to destroy my fire? If they can, I think they should move faster, It would give me a reason to use the spinning swords. and also some sort of enemies that try to put out your fire could be cool.

Just my critiques! It's a cool concept, and I like the character design!

I really dig the move speed and the fact there is enough to work with for the player to know what's going on. I think the map generation is a little too aggressive with the tree placement, especially since it doesn't seem like trees can be cut down at all (Vines are dubious depending on if the player gets a scythe soon).

Late game, the seeming lack of respawning made it too hard to progress much longer.

It also seems like specific rewards only need to be earned once (scythe/sword) and additional pickups just waste inventory space.

Also, 'shift' is a dangerous key to utilize when multiple taps are needed (so many prompts about Windows "Sticky Keys")

Otherwise, this is a great concept and I hope it gets polished later on!

@sheepolution great comment!! Thank you for coming by to play. We are glad we thought to give the player a mini-cam view of the flame, but you are right: it gets hard to tell at the lower flames. We've already had a few ideas on ways to give the player a more exact indication, so thank you!

@epicgamefan @davidsheadgames This ended up being comical for us (in an egg-on-face kind of way). None of us has 'sticky keys' enabled, so this wasn't an issue that even occurred to us. But obviously, it's a problem that many people have faced! We are considering uploading a minor fix with an alternate key, so nobody else hits this annoying bit -- any suggestions?

Note: We settled on keyboard-only, and we were trying to find the right keys to engage both hands, rather than making it a left-hand only game. We also preferred the idea of keeping the mouse out of the controls, because the environment didn't seem to really need it.

@masterofcheese Thanks for commenting! You've actually hit upon one of our major design pivots (I'll post a link when I make a blog post about it). In short, the vines _used_ to be the big threat. They spread _a lot_ faster, and if they reached your home, you lost. There seemed to be something missing in the gameplay, though, which is when we added the sparks to feed the flame. We felt like that added a lot of fun, but it also made the vines more of a nuisance than the main threat. We like your idea to add enemies, too!

lovely game with great balance on the basic mechanics! music felt really good, and the animations/graphics were nice. I love the growing evil weeds. If anything I wanted a bit more, some sort of story, villain, purpose, but.. this is maybe a great foundation to add on to! Great Job!

Really great idea! The mood of the game is really nice and also well supported by the atmospheric music the pretty graphics. Though I would lie a bigger focus on actually beating the enemy (vines) more than panicly running around to find more sparks. But apart from that your idea is very well implemented and fun to play!

I like this. Almost rpg vibes, like running and slashing trough the map!
Good assets use!

Fun and very atmospheric. I really like the artstyle and animations, and the premise is quite an interesting and unique one.

The flames seem a little sparse, as they don't respawn (as far as I experienced), so I never really ended up having a problem with the tendrils, as I kept losing by letting the fire burn out. That combined with the fact that the tendrils didn't really do anything to the player other than block their path, made them more of a nuisance than a looming threat. I can see what you were going for though, and I'm sure if I had gone long enough they would've become more overwhelming.

Some major roguelite vibes with a unique twist gives this a lot of potential to be expanded into a full release. I for one would love to see it. Good work!

@dileriuml Thank you! All the artwork (except for the last-hour mine explosion) was done by me and the team!

@nikolaj @urjarm @eyedromeda Thanks for playing! I'm glad you all seemed to get what we were going for. Obviously, we had to achieve some sort of balance between the "fun" mechanic and the challenge. The vines definitely did end up being more of a barrier than their original villainous role, which we were happy with all things considered. But we do have big ideas for updates! Stay tuned :)

really nice idea

Really cool game! Lasted for 7 days before I got stuck far away from the fire without any teleport scrolls :(
I felt like some items were more useful than others though: the teleport scroll and the scythe were powerful, while the land mine and the thing that rotates in place and damages nearby roots were kinda useless. The mood was great, with the introductory narration and music during gameplay really selling that whole "The world is ending" vibe.
I'm not sure if I missed something or if there is no "every 10 seconds" theme on this one.

Overall, really enjoyed it. Congrats!

@fedora thank you for the play! You highlighted so many of the things we were proud of, but also some limitations we hit.

For example, the mines and spinning blades were more for defense, before we decided to modify the objective for the jam (see our [dev log](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/dragua/follow-the-fun-dragua-dev-log-2)).

For the theme, we wanted to implement the timer into the world rather than making it a "game timer". The vines grow every 10 seconds, and if you notice, the music has a repeating drum beat at the same time.

Glad you liked it! Thanks for the excellent feedback.

The game is great is very good, it has good graphics, good audio and good gameplay

Thank you @siria-games! We appreciate you coming to play :)

Aaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhh, once it got to the point where the I had to go further and further to gather sparks, I reached a point where I was like "Well damn, I'm way too far to make it back now. I gotta find a teleporter spell stat.

I spent SO LONG looking for a chest, and all I could find were sparks. :sweat_smile: I had like 15 sparks in my collection when I FINALLY opened up a chest with a spell in it, and I absolutely FUMBLED the inventory controls and got a game over. :sob:

I would say the anguished "NOOOOOOOOO" emotion you got out of me means that you did a good job getting me invested, hahaha. Great job with this one! :thumbsup:

Thanks @coleslaughter !! We definitely enjoyed the emergent risk/reward panic of having to go out further and hoping for a scroll to teleport back. Admittedly, the control scheme wasn't the best.

Interestingly, we didn't know what the final game was going to be from the start. A lot of the items were tuned to an old objective that we eventually swapped for the fire/spark objective. Fortunately, the portal scroll was already in the game and turned out to be the perfect item for that chore.

This was very fun! Playing always felt good and fresh, finding new items was very rewarding and made me wanting to find every other item - especially in the beginning. Animation work is fantastic, the sprites look fantastic - all in all just an awesome job!

Thank you @trexxak for the very kind words! Glad you enjoyed it :)