Withering Mountains
An approachable roguelite with turn-based combat and unique status mechanics. Project is currently in development to be completed near the end of March, 2021.
Development log
- Post Jam Fixes ReduxDec 28, 2020
- Post Jam FixesDec 22, 2020
Comments
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Super cute game.
Tried to read all the text at the beginning, but it was a lot and without any images of what the various things represented I had no idea what it was all about, nor what was going on the game itself the first time I played it.
Then read it all again before playing a second time, and it made a lot more sense, and feel like I could've kept going endlessly on that run.
However, I encountered a bug, when I didn't have wood, but reached a campsite, and pressed the arrow to engage with the fire pit at the campsite. After that the character could face left and right, but could not continue its journey up or down, so was forever stuck just turning one way or the other on top of the fire pit at the camp site, so decided to call it quits.
Once you understand the game mechanics, I felt you need very few of the plants provided. I only used the red one once to heal an injury at the beginning of the second run, while still working out what the enemies were and how to engage with them, and what the shields were, but never after that.
The only plant I've used is the yellow one, and even those were generally in ample supply. I can see how the green one could be useful, but because there's the possibility to end the turn early, you generally don't need it, by being able to plan a full run in the next turn as needed.
Also in my first run I thought I was stuck, I thought I'd need to use the camp site as my base camp and was confused why I couldn't return back to it from the previous screen, I thought it was a bug or I was doing something wrong, preventing me from going back up to the camp site screen - I hadn't realised yet it was more of an endless scroller. The only other thing that took me a few turns to catch on, is that you can only carry one item of each plant or wood at once. So you need to plan when to use items and gather another one.
Anyway, very enjoyable, and nicely done, all the way up until the no-wood campsite bug, but I reckon the bug saved me from playing it for another few hours ;-)
Looking forward to seeing the additions you mentioned and happy holidays, if you're celebrating any at the moment :-)
Thank you for such a detailed run-down of your experience! This kind of comment is super helpful. :)
A couple of other players also posted about the bug you mentioned, and I have fixed it in the version I'm working on but haven't uploaded that build quite yet because I discovered a couple of other bugs that needed to get ironed out (just fixed those and expect to have the fixed version up some time tonight) and wanted to clean up the UI. (It's not quite where I want it, but it's better IMO in the newest version.)
I totally understand the confusion about not being able to go back to a previous screen, and the single-item-per-type inventory. While that is intentional, the fact that it's unclear is the result of the limited time to complete the jam.
In the version I will be uploading I tried to both pare down the text at the beginning and add additional details I thought were important - I didn't want to spend too much time on this though as I plan to have a more diegetic tutorial for the game when it's "done."
Thanks again for playing and I hope you will give it another shot once there's more content for it. :)
Great, thanks for your reply, and looking forward to giving it another go :)
I like the updates, though at first it seemed it might have become too challenging now, I tried three runs, in the first two I died quickly, since I was unlucky, not finding any wood for three consecutive campsites, yet having 4-5 frost damage, and encountering 3-5 enemies often at the start of each screen, so you can't go back to avoid them, nor go anywhere else because you're trapped, and one of each of each plant and even shields aren't enough to protect you, however on the third run I faced the same, but the enemies were further away, so I could manage to survive and then encountered sufficient wood.
The intro text is much easier to follow now I think, especially with the inclusion of the icons and indicators, though it would be preferable to add an option to be able to skip it, especially if already having just completed some games :) Because after my first two fatal runs of not even a minute each, I had to spend nearly as much time clicking through the whole intro again.
I also really like the addition of the "night is coming in the next screen" indicator (first I was worried the purple hue was some sort of bug), though the night itself could be slightly less dark, since it's easy to miss plants on the campsite in the dark, and sometimes even hard to find the exit, but guess it is still fine as is and a nice representation of day/dusk/night/dawn anyway :)
I also wish there were a way to be able to "rest" at the campsite, without using the wood, like if you have not taken any frost damage, but do have three "exhaustion" damage. Because of the wood shortage in the first two runs and the beginning of the third run, I decided to hang on to the wood with three sleep damage, but no snow damage yet, but then when you do have 2-4 snow damage and 3-4 sleep damage, camping with a fire only removes max 2(?) sleep damage. Anyway, again, it's still completely playable as is and adding an option like that might just end up making things to complicated, though I could imagine a prompt or something like (in pictograms only perhaps too) "sleep without fire"/"sleep with fire" when activating the campsite.
Also wondering if perhaps it's nice to add some sort of counter of campsites passed or some sort of collectibles, just as an added incentive for if you don't end up dying :) I know this wasn't something to include in the original jam, but might a nice little extra for continued (re)playability post-jam? As is now, I've just left the character at a campsite with a full health and inventory, I guess it might have been around the 20th campsite.
Thank you so much for giving it another go! I'm glad you're having at least marginal fun with it, considering. :)
I agree with your idea about a "number of days survived" or something like that, but I really wanted to finish implementing the "story" so there is an actual end to the game. However, reflecting on it, this might be nice to have regardless since players will have unsuccessful runs. It'd be nice to know how far you got even if you don't beat the game (maybe especially so?). I will probably add that in on the main screen or something.
I have some options/settings stuff on the table, actual attack animations for the Ice Mites (yes, they have names!), SFX, more enemies and environment types, etc.
I don't particularly like the way the plants and enemies spawn, so I'm working on a better implementation of that, too.
I also found another bug while continuing development, so I'm working on that right now. :/
At the moment, if you press in another direction with a valid target while already attacking a different valid target, the attack animation does not reset (like the original campsite bug). I had already thought this would be a problem and coded it not to allow an attack while one was in progress, but apparently my method to check for this isn't working for some reason.
The next update will just be to patch the animation locking issue I described above, but I'm hoping the one after that will be much more significant.
Thanks again!
Oh, an overall "story" for completion is even better of course :) Excited to check back in a bit.
I really liked playing this game as the gameplay mechanics were so simple to understand. The music is really calming and I honestly like the status mechanics implemented. Nevertheless, nice game! :D
Thanks for playing! I'm continuing to work on it at least through the end of the year. I've got some ideas to make the UI a lot better (and found another bug). the goal is to implement some new areas and enemies along with those areas, as well as a better in-game guided "tutorial" at the top so there's not so much front-loaded text (as Nathcra Games mentioned).
Again, thanks a ton for giving it a go and letting me know what you thought!
Loved this game, loved the music, but reading all the text at the beginning was kind annoying. I'm the kind of person that will read stuff at a reasonable amount to understand the game, but it felt like too much. Maybe if you plan on making more of this game, you could create an interactive tutorial. Also, my game suddenly stopped responding to my controls.
Oh yeah, for sure. The text was as annoying for me to type as it was for you to read. ;)
I just didn't have time to create a series of guided tutorials before the end of the jam. So, I wholeheartedly agree.
:/ Not sure what the controls issue is about - I'll definitely have to figure that out. If you don't mind, what were you doing when they stopped working? If I can get an idea of what the game was *supposed* to be doing at the time it might give me a place to start debugging.
Thanks for playing anyway!
Really cool game. Love the art style! Seems we opted for slightly similar mechanic hehe. We would be cool to see developed further with sound effects and so on!
Thanks! I'm looking forward to playing everyone else's games later this evening!
Fun game!
I think the status mechanics could be expanded somehow for a commercial game.
Ha ha ha, I had a whole bunch of ones ready to go, but no time to implement. Hunger, thirst, curses... If I keep working on it I will be working that stuff in. I also feel like, while the basic gameplay is in place, it needs to feel more fluid. it's very stilted because of the turn based play. I don't know - I'm sure there's a solution, I just have to find it.
Thanks for playing
Cool mechanics! Really neat game.
Glad you were able to get it uploaded!
Thanks!
Show post...
good
Hey, thanks for posting this, to let me know! There still seems to be some issues with the itch.io iFrame display at non-full screen resolutions, but I'm working on that.