Haul and Pray by Shess
"I am only accepted as long as I am useful. If I don't earn my keep, if I don't constantly prove my worth, I might as well just disappear. And wouldn't that be better for everyone?"

Story: you are a jackal-faced demon far away from home, and while there is nothing you want more than to belong, humans aren't particularly eager to open their hearts to you. You should've perhaps grown used to it, but it stings every single time.
You do have a person who takes care of you somewhat, and he ordered you to go and retrieve some very precious cargo. The road to the meeting point will be tough, and your way back through the woods will probably be even tougher.
But there is a chance you won't be alone this time.
- Haul your cargo all the way back to the Mansion
- Pray to resolves situations where weapons are useless
- Collect items to receive useful action cards
- Receive unique hand-crafted feedback for every action
- Play in browser!
Controls: mouse only. [DRAG AND DROP] cards into the action card slot, and place items in your inventory to get more cards. [LEFT-CLICK] to go through text events.
Not every item can fit into every slot, and some situations can only be peacefully resolved through very specific actions, but you bet I went full crazy and prepared a description for every. single. possible. choice.

Code: Yanrishatum. Gamedesign, story: Shess. Art: Lolita. Music, SFX: Elvendan.
| in-browser (itch.io) | https://shess.itch.io/haul-and-pray |
| in-browser (self) | https://yanri.cc/games/haul_and_pray/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/haul-and-pray |
Ratings
| Overall | 81th | 4.172⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 462th | 3.569⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 208th | 3.81⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 577th | 3.931⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 14th | 4.741⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 37th | 4.345⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 20th | 4.431⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
Music theme (with "night arrangement") is absolutely fantastic too ! Nice guitar sound, fits perfectly with the mood.
Great job !
Also @flanne and @tyler-m, could you please describe the issue you encountered? Most of the interaction with the game is done through dragging and dropping cards and items into their respective slots, not clicking, but perhaps there was a resizing or a DPI issue that made it hard for your to grab stuff?
As for repetitiveness, yeah, the game lasts for 40 events, and there are 26 unique events in total, so some of them are bound to repeat (I wouldn't mind making more tbh, but even the text we already have amounts to 6500 words, and that's low-key insane)
We do have a workaround that forbids repeating events within a pool of 6, but the rest is RNG, and boy can RNG be cruel.
The sound & music works really well together with the other elements thus it feels like everything enhances everything else. Jolly great work with this!
There actually is a health system, but it's hidden from the player. Of course you can die if you choose the absolute worst actions in every possible case, but usually the game is tolerant to small blunders, rewards careful play and lets you regain some health from time to time, too :)
I'm stunned at what you could accomplish in a jam. :open_mouth:
With some additional tweaks, I could totally see enjoying a full version of this on my ipad. :smile: It already fits well with touch controls. And looks beautiful.
I love the inventory system. It made for some interesting choices. And needing to choose what to keep/get rid of.
I also loved experimenting and trying diff items, there was a nice sense of discovery. I think for me, there were a couple things that would've made the experience even better?... (maybe in ver 2? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: )
- It lacked a bit of tension. This was the main thing missing for me. It was such a great setting, with great character, and there were a lot of interesting player choices... but I didn't feel like I had enough indication or info on what some of those choices meant. Or why I would want to get rid of an axe to choose an apple etc? That's a really interesting choice, but there wasn't much reward or consequence in either. If I could tell my hero was about to die of hunger, choosing some food or fruit over a weapon could feel really rewarding. Or if I had hung onto my axe, and it pulled me out of some bandits stealing some stuff, that could feel satisfying as well.
- I already mentioned this above, but I think just a better indication of the state of my hero? Maybe it was there and I missed it somehow. But just some way to know am I low on health? Are massive mosquitos going to kill me? Am I about to die of hunger? (As a side note... I also couldn't figure how to cook the meat. :laughing: )
Ok, this is way too long a comment, but I really really loved this one. :heart: And with a couple tweaks to make the choices feel more meaningful, it could be really amazing.
I genuinely enjoyed making this game, even within the tight time constraints, so I low-key want to work on a postjam version for the first time in my life. This type of feedback is incredibly valuable to me: whatever's understandable and forgivable for a 72 hour project can still be improved upon later.
So you're right, while the game surely tracks the hero's physical and mental health, this info is hidden from the player by default. I didn't want to add visible meters with percentages and such because it felt too "game-ish", but introducing something less immersion breaking as an indicator is a good idea.
Based on other feedback, I think adding more events is a nice idea as well, since RNG can be an absolute spoilsport and spam you with the same type of event over and over.
Wanna make prettier win/fail screens, too ^^
I also don't know what the right solution is. Just having a UI meter I don't think quite fits your vibe in this... so not sure what that is? But could even be some indication in a story event? Or maybe a change on the character ui inventory? Some way to give that tension. Since with it hidden I didn't know if I was close to dying or hungry etc.
I'll have to keep an eye on this one, as I'd totally buy it later. :wink: :smile: