The Sand Thief by Matthieu Riboulot

Surviving the End of the World
Design/Code : Matthieu RIBOULOT
Art/Sound: Clément NGUYEN
Arrows or A/D to move
W or Space to Jump
A or Mouse Click to Attack
Gamepad might be possible (untested)
Please download standalone version (exe or linux), it has more features and is more optimized.
Changelog Fix 7/10/25 - Fix camera following / player jump value - Fix some edge case on player collision - Better sprite cache to address lag
Ratings
| Overall | 361th | 3.569⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 367th | 3.375⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 618th | 2.815⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 528th | 3.446⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 217th | 4.071⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 38th | 4.214⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 243th | 3.786⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
the soud is a peace of art
Unfortunately, the jumping gameplay felt a bit rough.
Overall, it was interesting! Thanks for the gaming experience!
Loved the character and monster designs, especially the main character, I like masked chars haha. The time-collecting mechanic was a cool idea! The music was great, it added well to the atmosphere of the game. I did struggle a bit with the timing of the bigger enemy—it felt a little tough to figure out.
Very good entry!
@bzz-nsk The health bar is the timer. Each time you get hit, you loose time, and if it reaches 0, you die. The opening text is shaking for dramatic effect.
I like how the twist at the end leaves it open if you are just saving yourself or being a greedy bad guy :sweat_smile:
I'm very slightly disappointed you don't get an appropriate ending if you don't kill anyone, feels like it should be there. Unless we're counting the souls I took on the first try ^^
I checked both the standalone and the web versions to compare them. The music tempo changes are a fun idea!
Very beautiful entry, great job!
The music tempo was a nightmare to code and integrate, let alone taking 100MB of disk space for no reasons, never again xD
Ok, I get it now. It was not obvious for me that those are the memories/time of *others*. It is obvious if you actually stop and think about it, you're called a thief for a reason ^^ I love that little bit of obscurity though, better be a little bit too mysterious than to spoon-feed everything and leave no space for interpretation.
Uh, I'm sorry to hear that you're not satisfied. I don't remember how many stars I gave you, but for sure they were over average on every single category (but tbh I feel like I'm doing over average for everyone ^^).
I feel like worse results could come down to 'innovation' dragging down the rest, the core idea of 'just a platformer' could make the rest feel worse. The 'collector' theme we got this season sucked in my opinion, and I feel like collecting stuff around a map was a common trope this jam (I'm not sure because I played only like 7 games this season), so it could feel boring. You can see that these are your worst categories, they weren't your focus this time, but they may have impacted 'fun', 'overall', and 'mood'. The gimmick of fighting with time didn't feel very impactful to me, because it was too easy, I never felt in danger, so it plays as a very beautifully packed, smoothly working, just a classic platformer, nothing as *interesting* as some other games.
Grim analysis aside, I really loved it! I explored every nook and cranny over a few runs and had much fun!
I know you had some crazy results before and you had high expectations, but having two categories over 4.0, one top 100, and 360th overall are definitely good results. Moreover, with just ~30 ratings on each game you're bound to have some random variance depending on what raters you'll get. For example I tend to rate high ^^ I've also played the Sewer Tales and the Dwarf Looter (I'm yet to check out the others, I really like your games!), and in my opinion the Dwarf Looter was the best of the three. Do whatever you wish with that information xD
Anyway, to me, the comments are worth much more than the ratings. Don't let the numbers get in your head, game jams are not really about them, are they?