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Stormbound's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #471 | 3.263 | 3.263 |
| Overall | #525 | 3.053 | 3.053 |
| Creativity | #530 | 3.105 | 3.105 |
| Fun | #544 | 2.789 | 2.789 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Preferred Name
AlternalDev
Newbie?
Yes - I'm new to game jams!
How does your game fit the theme?
You have to start up and escape a coming storm
Created and submitted for the 2025 Inkbound Shovel Jam
All work aside from the used SFX were done by me. The SFX were created by Ovani Sound that I've purchased a license from to use.
Controls:
W, A, S, D - Movement
E - Open/Close Inventory or Crafting Menus
Escape - Pause
Left Click: Use your most recently selected Item in your Active Item Bar
Right Click: Place 1 of an item in your inventory/Interact with an overworld crafting station.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - Switches between your Active Items.
Fair warning that there's a lot of quality of life features I couldn't get into the game in time and unfortunately several dead items because of some of the mechanics that just didn't work out so this kinda became more of a bit of a roguelike game to build your way to the end of the game to win within 36 minutes.
Notable things I wasn't able to add into this version of the game: Item Durability, Item Placement/Ranges, Wall Breaking Visual, Proper Shadows, Cave Wall Floor differentiating from the top of the Cave Walls, the Iron Pickaxe is meant to destroy the Arcanite (Purple) Ore but is unable to, Item Labels, showing what item you have selected in your Action Bar, better functionality for the Inventory and Furnace, Resolution Options, actual Music, making all the Dead Items (Swords, Shovels, Hoes, etc) actually do something, more variety in the world, etc. Also, no more sometimes getting stuck into stone walls on spawn*
Most the bugs and missing features I'm aware of, I just didn't have time to get around to adding them in unfortunately
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Comments
Dude, this game is amazing! How did you even do all this in 10 days?
I really liked the artwork and pixel art, the main mechanics where very well implemented. I would really love to see a more finished version of this, I still had a lot of fun though.
Amazing job!
Honestly, it isn't as hard as it seems... Except for the inventory menu, that one is like bare minimum 200 lines of code, and still needs more. But yeah I kinda tunneled into tutorials for too long doing this that it kinda only really came together in the last 3-4 so I do wish I had at least 1-2 extra days to properly get it together, but I think the feedback on the game has convinced me to see what all I can do this coming week for it. Definitely not a full game, that'll have to come much further down the line with my plans for games I've been meaning to release. But I'm glad that you liked what I made thus far... Even if it doesn't really work or come together that well and thanks as well for giving it a shot and leaving feedback!
WOAH a whole crafting system is really impressive, especially for your first game! The art is really good and the game is really smooth, I'm super impressed!
I see a lot of feedback already that I agree with for quality of life stuff and one thing I also caught that I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned yet but the first load of the game sent me to a pretty random spot
Could you further clarify what you mean by stuck in a random spot so I can try to iron it out? But otherwise, thank you for the feedback, though it isn't quite my first game, just my first submission, though it is my first go at a game like this which wasn't actually too bad. Thanks again for giving it a try!
Yea to be more clear, when I started the game it showed me in a random location with no player sprite, and I couldn't move or really do anything. After restarting the game tho everything worked again
Also still very impressive for 10 days to get a full crafting system set up even if it wasn't your first!
That is a strange one, was it an area with a lot of stone walls or a cloud? If so then I think I can discern what happened but otherwise that kinda stumps me
It was a stone area. It looked like it was split between a stone area on the right half and a grass area on the left, but no clouds
Alright then I think it may have spawned you into the stone area and with how the sprite overlapping works in my game, the player sprite ended up getting fully covered up by the stone walls. Thanks again for further clarifying it!
For you being a beginner is crazy. I could never do this in this short amount of time. Please work on this after the jam, regardless of the results because this is AWESOME. A whole side effect of game jams is accidentally discovering a diamond and I think you struck gold. Would love to see updates!
I'll be looking to expand upon this maybe this next week to see what all I could get done and to learn a bit more about some stuff that I'd like to add to my other games. But after that I'll have to put this game on the ice for a bit since I've had 2 others forthe past year that I need to finally release. Thereafter I could certainly come back around to this game, though I'll probably end up splitting it into two different games since I did kinda combine two ideas of mine into one to create this game the way it was for the jam, since I think one or the other was a bit too much to learn for just one jam. Ramble aside though, are you suggesting my game is only gold amidst diamond??? I'm kidding, but thanks for giving the game a shot and believing in it's potential! I'll see if I can get that update out for it sometime this coming week
You have got a lot of solid feedback already and it seems you plan to maybe update the game after the jam ends, I think that would be a good call because it seems you've put together a really good foundation here (although a bit buggy/unfinished due to time constraints, as you mentioned). I do think with proper time and TLC this could be really cool.
I also wanted to say, the art is really good, and your implementation of the various menus is impressive too, I do imagine that took quite a lot of effort for something that kinda flies under the radar of most players as it seems like a "given" for a game in the genre
This is a cool little game overall, congrats on your first jam submission!
Thanks for giving the game a shot, and yeah I'll expand upon it post jam to at least get it to the idea I had initially. It did kinda come out to not be too bad despite the time constraints, and it's a good foundation to build upon further. But I also do have two other games I need to finish first to releasing at long last but I'll try to get this game to the state I had hoped for in this upcoming week. Thanks again for the feedback and giving the game a try
Wait a minute... 8 stones around a circle for a furnace... punching tree and solid rock to break and harvest them... I think you came up with a new and clever million dollar idea! Although I feel like you should have gone for a 3d look :P.
Jokes aside, l ike others mentioned quite ambitious to create so many systems into your first ever game jam submission. Which is risky and sometimes pays off and other times hits you, because you may have lots of bugs or even a game breaking one.
This may not happened this time - but beware with statistics i just made up in my head - I would guess, if you already endangered by scope creep in a jam game, its even likelier to happen in a full indie project.
But nevertheless... it worked, I had fun and liked it overall... So keep improving and also think about cutting features in favor of polishing existing ones. And only if features are working and polish - think about adding something.
Great job completing and submitting the project 30 seconds before deadline - imagine internet dying here x_x
Yeah I definitely took a risk for my first game jam, I wanted to challenge myself to learn all these new mechanics and apply them to my game in a short time and honestly it didn't go as bad as it could have, I just ended up spending too much time learning how to make the game rather than actually just making it that most the coding was done in the last 3 days. It kinda suffered a bit as a result like taking too much from Minecraft's crafting system, which I did want to diverge from but with how the game doesn't really tell you much and considering how much time people probably could only put towards these games, I figured it may be best to try to match their crafting recipies since it already was familiar in order to not have players get stuck on unfamiliar crafting recipies. And then I also put the book in as well but ehhhh...
Overall I'd say it was still worth it in the end, just wish I could've had an extra day or two to get it all right. But now I have the knowledge and the foundation and with this experience, even the motivation despite the 36 hours I spent without sleep trying to get it in on time, because it did come out to be close to my vision despite all the hardships and now I'll try to continue to make it so. At least for this next upcoming week because I've got some other games to finally release in the meantime. But yeah, scope creep is definitely something I've got to put up with but with my major project attempting to create a universe that pushes creativity to it's limits, well, I try to do all I can to my own detriment. But with this I actually did have a limit on the total scope at first, but could never quite reach it totally in the first place as that deadline definitely hit me... As many can see that now, oops.
But thanks for giving the game a shot and for the feedback as well
Sheesh, Ive seen simple dialogue systems.. Inventory systems.. BUT A WHOLE ASS CRAFTING SYSTEM??!?!?! Thats mad xD
AND THATS NOT ENOUGH... YOU DID THIS AS YOUR FIRST GAME?!?!!? Thats worse than mad.
You are a freaking legend..
I cant believe how you managed to fit all that in this 9 day deadline. Your hard work really shows
I did notice some QOL features missing but u did address them already.
I tried the crafting and it does its job pretty well tbh, I can easily dismiss the missing qol features but stuff like a tutorial, something explaining what to actually do were harder to ignore.
The ambition was great, but the product needed more time in the oven.
Its still great to see how you took such a big project and actually managed to server a playable game, like its not broken and buggy to the point of crashing every min. Thats a big deal
You did a great job imho. I wonder if u are planning to work on this more.
Id love to see where this goes!
Congrats on your first game, you really nailed it.
Also btw.. 30 secs before the deadline is cruel lmaoo
Also, yeahhhhh I really rushed the final parts of this to meet that deadline xd and unfortunately it didn't quite pan out to make a fully functioning game either :S
Well, technically not my first, just that the others I've been working on, I haven't yet quite completed in my journey to learning all that I can to truly be able to publish a first solid, quality game. But this one serves as both a challenge and a first step into the game dev world, of which I was purposefully ambitious of in order to try to learn more in such a short time which was more or less successful, but I should've done the learning part before the jam, that way the code could've been done in more than 3 days. I do wish I could've had another day or two in order to really solidify it as that deadline and some last minute issues kinda made me rework the game to still end up in an unfortunately broken state. Regardless, it was good fun, good learning and has a good foundation that I'll try to see if I can manage to build it to be what I was hoping to submit this coming week, but I'll have to come back around to this game once I finish my other games I've been needing to release for a while now, but thanks for giving it a shot and for the feedback!
Even though it's a little unfinished right now, I still had a bunch of fun with it :)
Little's definitely a understatement, but I'll try to bridge that gap in due time, thanks for giving the game a shot!
making mechanics like this in 10 days i cant think of that in the best est of dreams now someone like u has the right to say gamejams teach you so many things incredible game
Once you get your hands dirty with game dev and get a good lot of experience from it, it isn't too bad, though the menu stuff definitely is a bit rough to grasp. Some tutorials out there as well I've come to realize just don't work out, so sometimes you've got to navigate through the code yourself. I think it is good to challenge yourself to make miniature versions of a wide variety of game genres akin to a game jam like this so you can really grasp at all the different means of crafting games there are, because then you'll really become knowledgeable on a lot. And eventually it won't get so bad. I thought this game may have been impossible to make once before but now for what it is, it wasn't too bad, I just got too stuck up on watching tutorials during the game jam rather than before xd. But now I have a foundation that I can build upon in the future and in due time I will, though I've got some other games to tackle first.
I wish you well on your own game dev journey after I've gone ahead and tried your own game. I believe you've got a lot of potential of your own and you know maybe if you wind yourself over to the GameMaker sphere I can help out with some things (since I'm unfamiliar with Godot and heard it's a bit hard to get into :S). But here's to making some good games to come
This is a very ambitious project, that seems to be well on its way to be realized. Unfortunately there are many bugs and issues that still remain to be solved. Others have pointed out many of them, but one I haven't seen here is that dropping a item while in crafting menu will cause its sprite to remain interactible and its resources inaccessible in the middle of the menu until you leave it. When I handled the recipe book this way, my game crashed. Congratulations on completing a game for your first game jam!
Yeah, it's unfortunate, wish I could've covered several more things before the submission time came to an end but time caught me unfortunately. Thanks for giving it a shot and mentioning that particular bug with the recipe book that I don't think I've covered yet
Dude, making such mechanics in such a short amount of time is insane! I think you scoped a bit too high for 10 days, but this is still incredible. I hope you learned a lot and, maybe, will even finish this project later :)
Unfortunately, I ended up spending a lot of time looking at tutorials which I think really cost me my vision (especially since some of those tutorials didn't end up working xd). But you're right I came in ambitious as heck to make a game like this in a matter of days, and I feel like I just about could have if I better managed my time. Given an extra day or three and I'd probably refine it, probably will end up trying after this Jam wraps up but yeah, good experience and good learning even if it came out short. Thanks for dropping by and giving it a rating to
Hey so this is an incredible project. I hope you have learned a lot from it. From playing it, I can see that you are totally capable of making your vision come to life, but it seems like your idea was just too ambitious for the limited time frame you had. This is my first game jam also, and I made a big effort to make the smallest game I possibly could - and I still wasn't able to fit everything that I wanted into it. I'm impressed that you were able to get as much done as you did in the time, though! I'm curious if you used a dynamic tilemap for the stone tiles, or if they're all just individual objects.
I did challenge myself to try something new for the game jam, but I probably should've done the learning part before the actual jam since all the coding basically happened in the final 3 days xd. But it was a good experience to try to make this kind of game in a short time and kinda did motivate me to learn some more since even in such a small time I was able to get a lot of it working... relatively well. That said... It's also a bit of a caveman-esq code style because I did make some compromises on some knowledge I thought would be too hard to grasp at my current level and thus the entire floor in the game (grass and stone tiles) are in fact all objects. I feel like there's a better system I have in mind for the game when I do get around to making this a full game that works with tilemaps that'd be much better for the game's optimization, but otherwise the current iteration utilizes an activation/deactivation square around the player to make sure the total objects active don't overload the game which has fortunately worked well enough for the moment. But I'll definitely be looking to better optimize the game to come when I do come around to eventually get this to be a full release, but I've got some other games I want to get to first. That all said, thanks for coming by and giving it a shot, I also did very much like the game you ended up making to and would like to see more if your own game to come if you as well will be choosing to continue development on it post jam
Thanks for that in-depth description, actually that's a very clever solution.
This game is so complex and detailed wow! Incredible that you were able to implement so many systems in such a short timeframe. I can clearly see the game direction you were heading in + all the systems that you've set in place, amazing job esp on your first jam!
Thanks for stopping by and giving my game a shot, even if it fell short! Thanks as well for the feedback, I just about got the framework of things working but that was unfortunately right about at the tail end of the submissions time, but I'll look to flesh this one out some more to get it to that initial vision I had for it
Very impressive for a first time game jam to make a game as complex as Minecraft! You should be proud of yourself. I can see this game becoming a mix of Minecraft and Terraria. As you mentioned, there are a lot of quality of life features that would make the game easier to play for people who have not tried Minecraft, but you have made a game with incredible potential!
The first time booting the game , my character is just inside walls unable to move. The crafting system like minecraft is very interesting . This could be a good 2d top down sandbox game if put a more time. Overall its a very nice game
Thanks for giving the game a try, I'll see if I can put some more work into it these next few days to see if I can have my original vision for it be realized
Really ambitious and impressive for a ten day jam, especially when its your first entry! Im aware that you weren't able to put in a qol features. That being said here are some bugs/problems ive encountered during my play that may or may not be previously acknowledged:
It would be nice to have some visual feedback on when mining stuff, i thought i couldnt mine stone or trees cuz of that. I only realized that i could cuz i randomly decided to give it a shot. A simple shaking of the sprite block being mined would suffice.
There are some areas where i couldnt place my objects. Also there seems to be an invisible collision in the mines
Also didnt know that there was stone pickaxe cuz the recipe book implied that there was only iron pickaxe. Had to use my Minecraft gamer brain to do that. Also there wasnt any recipe for a furnace
When using my pickaxe would be nice to have a durability bar shown, also it would seem that the durability decrease regardless of where i click instead of having it decrease when mining ore/stone
During smelting, the collected items didnt seem to stack properly, i had to drop them individually in order for them to stack.
When exiting the smelting ui the items seem to be flung pretty far from the furnace
Couldnt progress further cuz i couldnt get the purple ore to drop no matter how much i mine it
All of these aside, its insane that you were able to implement a crafting system in such a short time (a bit clunky, but impressive regardless). Hope you can still continue working on this game! Would like to see where this one goes. Also congrats on submitting your first game!
Yeah, if I had extra time I would've gotten around to implementing most of those problems you mentioned, I just unfortunately fell short with how long it had taken for me to get the menu design up and running. Some of it also kinda relies on Minecraft knowledge since I figured it may be for the best unless I want to include all recipies in the book since otherwise people may get stuck on trying to figure out how to craft items. Either way or neither, there's not really much of a clean solution since I had set out to have some more recipies with the idea that people could experiment with various recipes to see just what all the game had in store, but that's probably not the best thing for Game Jams like these now that I've gotten the chance to play other games and the book method is probably the best for that case.
Surprisingly, in Gamemaker, the crafting system actually wasn't too bad to implement. Fortunately, it worked just as I'd imagined it aside from a bug or two that I ironed out. With what feedback I've given, I'll try to see how long it would've taken to fully get the game that I had in mind that I originally wanted to submit done and maybe update this game/others that would like to know about the update, but I do have some other games to get to finally releasing on Steam here soon and first. But I'll definitely come back around for this game in due time, though it'll probably need a new coat of paint for the true original idea I have for fully fleshing it out. It is a good foundation though, and I'm relatively happy with what was done, just wish I had the slightest bit more time to fully realize it all. But my Ted Talk aside, thank you for trying out the game, and leaving the detailed feedback. And you've got a darn good game yourself that I couldn't say much more beyond the fact that it was good. Keep up the good work on your end and I'll see what I can whip up with this project on my end.
Like you said, yes it's def not perfect. My first time I spawned in stuck inside the ground, also the hitboxes for hitting stuff could be inconsistent but even so I see the vision and I already feel the minecraft inpiration. I think your scope was huge and you still managed to get a lot of things done. Impressive, good job for your first gama jam!
Ah, I thought I had fixed that spawn issue. Fickle thing it is. But yeah I do wish I had another day to really iron things out as some things just couldn't come together last second, I tried to adjust for those factors and it just became a bit of a mess in the end. But I'm still happy with what I've learned and one day I will make something out of this game. Thanks for coming by and trying out my game!
Hey there! Just saw your community post and came to check it out. I know how hard it is to "just get started" XD making games, but this isn't a bad start at all. Nice animations and art in general. Keep up with the work!
If you have some time, check my game! I believe you will have a good experience.
Yeah, but honestly this wasn't as bad/hard as I thought it'd end up being, in it's own way it's been inspring and kinda revitalized my game dev spirit (after a break since I pushed the final 36 hours trying to bring things together). Thanks for coming by and trying the game out! I'll look to try your own game out in a bit here
You have a lot of good stuff going on here - just wish there was more!
I love the sprite's animations, although I found having it just 2 directional felt a bit jarring in a 2D top down based perspective. Totally understandable given the jam's short time frame.
The strong point was for sure the visuals, I like the intro and thought the font used was quite fitting and I loved the fog of war effect that expanded and receded based on the player's proximity.
I think you have a great deal of potential with this and would advise you expand on it in an update maybe post jam?
For a first jam game this is a solid entry, congrats!
Ah how I wish I just had another day or two to really just flesh everything out. Most the menu work took up a lot of my time, unfortunately, and some of the systems just didn't work at the end so I tried to rework the game into a Roguelike but also ended up adding a bug to the game that makes in incompletable. By the way what do you mean by just 2 directional? I'll be looking to expand upon this idea post jam (especially because this kinda came together better than I expected it to), but I do have some games I need to get around releasing soon enough first and foremost. But thanks for coming by and trying out the game! And likewise good stuff on your own game, I hope that I'll see yours get fleshed out too
I think we both share the issue that we ran out of time on our games to get done what we wanted.
I don't think I articulated very well when I said '2 directional'. What I meant was even though you could move up, down, left and right, the character sprite only had 2 directions it would face - left and right. So when moving up, generally the player sprite will show their back as if they are walking away and moving down they will show a front on view. The sprite you made shows only left and right facing sprites. Totally understand making custom sprites takes a long time in short jam. My own MC sprite took me a full day alone to make start to finish NGL.
I'm down to play your update for sure, no rush if you have stuff on the backburner you wanna get through first. I can just follow you here on itch and it will pop up in my feed when it drops. Good luck, I'll be waiting :)
Ahh I gotcha, yeah I originally had started out with making a game akin to Vampire Survivors last year that uses that similar flat sprite system in it that I've been rolling with in most my games for the sake of simplicity and in some ways I've liked the amount of detail I can put into them whereas the multi-directional may be a bit less detailed at time in my eyes, but that may just be a difference of perspective. Regardless, I probably could implement something for the player to indicate them looking towards the cursor in some way. I think I'll probably add a few more things to my game and update it relatively soon, but it won't be the full idea fully recognized, that's going to be something even more ambitious to save for down the line, but thanks again for checking it out!
If it's a design choice, that's cool as well. It's just the top down perspective is more conducive to 4 direction sprites, but if this means you prefer to put more animation on your 2 direction sprites - that's cool as well and it doesn't detract from the game, it's maybe just not what I am used to I guess. I'll be awaiting the update :)
Woah, a survival crafting game for a game jam!? As your first submission!? Woah... that alone has my admiration .
The pixel art is nice to look and and effectively conveys each resource! Nice having tinier icons for being a drop on the map compared to the larger icons in your inventory! After figuring out my inventory and reading the starting book, I managed to get quite far down the line of progression! Took me a while to learn I could get stone naturally though... and I didn't seem to be able to obtain the purple ore. Placing crafting stations also seemed a bit finnicky with having large collision boxes and no clue what was up with the placement range.
I admire the ambition and desperately hope you resume to expand upon the concept well after the game jam! There's great potential here and you've got the right ambitions for it!
Thanks for the very detailed reply to both the game and my original post! But yeah I definitely came in ambitious for the jam, but figured I could get this game in a good state for it. For the most part I did, but unfortunately the menu design took quite a bit of time to get working and some of the systems I wanted to implement (saving) I wasn't able to get functioning, so I tried to convert the game into a roguelike-ish game last second and unfortunately as a result, ended up having a bug occur with the Iron Pickaxe that made it unable to mine the Arcanite Ore (the purple crystals) that it was meant to. Likewise, the crafting stations I was overly cautious about their placement and made the range of it too far away from the player that it became a bit of an issue. One day though I'll come back and flesh out everything that I made here, because it was good fun all in all, but I've got some other games I've been working on that I've been needing to get out on Steam first, but thanks for coming by and checking out the game! Best of luck on your own game's future as well!
First off, I really liked the art style and Sprite animations! I went around for awhile just collecting resources, but couldn't figure out how to access my inventory to see my supplies. All I could do was scroll through the book and collect resources. (Lol, might have just been user error caused by lack of sleep.)
Hey, thanks for being the first one to come by and try out my game (even before I posted about it). I wasn't able to get the controls into the game since I kinda rushed to get the game together for submission before the deadline unfortuantely (that and this was my first submission/post on Itch so I didn't want to accidentally edit anything and make it invalid), but I've updated the game page now to mention the controls for the game. It is also kinda a broken game so it doesn't fully work, so don't feel like you're missing out on much. But thanks again for coming by and trying out the game, best of luck on your end for your game, I hope I'll see the lore of it fleshed out into a game at some point when you can