SNE by Trexxak
A Tale of Misadventure
You and your expedition team were entrusted with a seemingly simple task: deliver personal mail and supplies to the research team in the frozen tundra. But as fate would have it, you awoke in the midst of a massive snowstorm, completely alone and with no one to help you on this perilous journey.
Cold as Ice
Brave the disorienting, infinite expanse of white snow, armed with only a compass to guide you. Conserve your resources and stay vigilant for the bizarre local wildlife that could spell your doom.
Surrounded by Darkness
Delve into this chilling survival scenario, unravel the enigmatic secrets of the frozen landscape, and do your utmost to not succumb to the creeping madness.
Not-So-Fun Facts:
- Missed the COMPO deadline as life had other plans on the second day...
- Intended to showcase a vertical slice of a grander concept, but, as always, I bit off more than I could chew.
- Missing features: Decision making, proper dialogue system, enemy variety, main plot (The wounded tiger)
Tech Specs:
- Godot 3.5.2
- beepbox.co
- Aseprite
- Phases of Prolongued Procrastination
It's been almost exactly 3 years since my first jam entry, and with this 8th LD installment, the era of middle high german games reaches its inevitable conclusion. Here's to another 3 years of buggy, nearly unplayable journeys! :D
| itch (web + source) | https://trexxak.itch.io/sne |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/sne |
Ratings
| Overall | 1046th | 3.058⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1055th | 2.827⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 953th | 2.904⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1118th | 3.058⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 853th | 3.231⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 444th | 3.423⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 989th | 2.26⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 460th | 3.673⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
Quite surprisingly and unexpectedly... I won! I will not reveal a secret of how I did it, though, nobody may know...
In any case, the game is very most atmospheric. The monochrome, the minimal and creepy ambience, and the main character being a gray Wookie - all compliment each other well and add up to a mysterious world. I really enjoyed that. And the wolf! Oh, the wolf is so creepy! Loved it!
The controls were easy to figure out, even without any description (I know, you need your beauty sleep :wink:). But the compass messages work rather confusingly. It took me a bit of it changing from "Go North West" to "Go North East" every step to figure out that it simply does not recognize the elegant simplicity of just "North" :grin:
I wish the story of missing people could unfold some more. As it stands, which I know you know, it ends before it really starts.
Nice play though, it was fun
It took me a little while to figure out why the lack of north and south and also I was confused how I ended up winning. I think adding a bit more to the gameplay would've really made the excellent mood and atmosphere shine.
Given the time constraints I think it is very good.
The animations and the music were cool, if you were to do more post=compo , some more wild creatures in the snow could be cool.

I am not entirely sure what, if anything, the player is able to do after encountering the wolf. Most of the time I just lost -- it seems to drain the bar faster once the wolf is encountered..? But one time I did win even after encountering the wolf, just by following the compass instructions.
The very first time I played this, and actually a few times after that, I did not encounter the wolf at all -- I mean, I saw some of them on screen, but never touched them, and I actually won quite easily.
One thing I really like is the compass directions are given entirely through text. This had me getting out good old Never Eat Soggy Waffles (as I am generally not good with directions without such a mnemonic)... this was quite fun. I like the ways your games often require novel modes of interaction, and I think this method of directional communication accomplishes that here. It really does just require the player to know their directions and translate them directly.
And, I mean, I kind of like the way the compass insists on always providing two directions. Going back and forth and back and forth and realizing I'm really just heading in a straight line... it's a fun little limitation for the compass to have.
The snow effects and vignette and the music all work together to build a strong atmosphere, as others have said.
Unfortunately there does seem to be some sort of strange behavior happening around the dialog boxes -- especially when winning, it *seems* like there is some interactable object there, that is opening a dialog box and then the YOU WIN screen, but I can't tell what the object is or what the dialog is. I tried to look in the source code but I can't seem to get the game to run in my Godot. I did find some text strings in the file player_state.gdc that might include the ending dialog, so I suppose I can consider that the true ending. :smile: