Unfortunately I didn't have the time to finish the game in one sitting, but based on the other comments I assume there is an end goal to the game, I just didn't find it. I still enjoyed it very much, it's amazing that some people (even as a team) can put together a full-fledged 3D game in just 9 days. I loved the snow deformation, the map and the strategic choices of leaving the vehicle on the road vs bringing it back, taking more food vs fuel. My choice was to fill up the tank during the night and bring more food for a longer expedition during the day, though it probably wasn't the best strategy since I miscalculated on the distance and no amount of food could save me once I had to leave the vehicle a long way from the safehouse. At first I was missing some music, but then it felt like the silence supports the depressing nordic atmosphere even better. Congratulations, a well-polished game!
Play plow
The Operatorhood's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Accessibility | #5 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Originality | #17 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Graphics | #25 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
| Overall | #26 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Controls | #31 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Audio | #43 | 3.056 | 3.056 |
| Fun | #44 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Theme | #46 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.6
Theme Interpretation
Player journeys through the snowy mountains to join two disconnected villages
Wildcards Used
Map a new world as you explore it
Something is hidden but it's right there
Discord Username(s)
JKrychowiak, Żenia, bobbypopcorn
GWJ Participation Level
1
Team Size
3
Comments
yeah, in retrospect it was a mistake to only state the player’s goal in one tutorial screen, I think you’re not the only one who missed it, sorry
I’m super happy to hear that you based your resource management on the time of day! I was kinda hoping someone would do that lol (even though I failed to give the game enough depth to actually require/encourage that)
thank you very much for playing!
First operator died after walking over the hills like a horse from Skyrim and then starving because no-one in the last town would sell him beans. Second operator died in the brutal last stretch that took me at least 20l of fuel. Third operator got his well deserved $100...
The snow deformation was cool and the idea of the game was fun but was maybe a little tedious at times walking back and forth to fill up on fuel. Maybe could have used a second vehicle that's a bit faster than walking but only works on ploughed terrain. I wonder how long it would take to play without any deaths, that last stretch would take a decent number of trips back to refuel.
This was great! I loved that there was more to the game after running out of fuel, and even after dying. Impressive performance also on the web for a 3d game too.
That what pretty cool, good work!
The ending was really cute and made me chuckle. The mechanics are interesting and the game was fun to play. The snow deformation was also a cool gimmick.
I was a bit confused at first because the map wasn't that accurate and I didn't read the tutorial on where I was at the start (which is my fault, duh). Speaking of, the tutorial you added is really cool, I think I would have been lost without it.
The potential is there, I would love to see this being expanded upon!
I liked this game. Good job on having tutorial elements and making it easy to get into. Feels good to plow the snow!
Dude made a whole 3d game for the jam - impressive!
Very cool snow mechanics and good immersion with sound effects etc...
Also, gameplay is deeper than it first appears: managing fuel, food all at once really does require a good balancing act.
I did get a few visual glitches, but this feels like the kind of game that can immediately look publishable by upgrading the models & post-processing!
A roguelike snow plow game was definitely not what I was expecting but it was interesting.
I like that when you die you get a new operator and you have trudge back to your plow and bring it back. I completely went the wrong way at the start and had to walk back awhile to get my plow, I'm glad my character handles like a elder scrolls horse and can scale vertical walls. Made the trip way more interesting.
I initially had a bug where my camera wouldn't stop drifting, it eventually stopped when I tabbed back out and in enough but not really sure how it fixed it.
I'm impressed with how well polished the whole experience is, nice work. I'll be awaiting my 100 dollars in the mail.
Really loved this game! Huge respect for the scale of the world. The map was actually really well made, and I’m honestly surprised I still managed to get lost (though, considering my history with navigation… not that surprised, being directionally challenged has been a long standing pattern in my life).
Overall, the game's super polished and detailed, great job! (^^)
I love when people make huge worlds like this for game jams. This fit the theme super well. I think the gameplay was a little tedious at times, but the world design and the goal of getting to the end kept me intrigued. The game looked pretty at times, but then sometimes the shadows would glitch all over the place. Is that a limitation with godot or did you mess up something? I've never utilized lights/shadows that much so I don't know. Anyways it was a cool journey and mostly very well executed!
hey, thanks for playing!
the glitchy shadows are not a Godot problem, but actually a few things on our end,
the day/night cycle setup is a little messed up I think, the sun angles are pretty awkward and lead to objects casting very long shadows for the majority of time. before we had environment art I “solved” this problem by simply disabling shadow casting for the terrain mesh. it stayed disabled for the release build and we never made a second iteration for the sun angles, so all the objects added later that do cast shadows (trees, buildings, etc.) often cast shadows that appear “detached” from the object itself, and pretty far away from it, because the ground they’re on does not cast shadows (that’s why shadows look way worse for the objects on hills).
then there’s also the issue of shadows disappearing/flickering as you move, I’m not entirely sure but I think it is also caused by the shadows being too long, which does not work very well with LOD.
also (there’s gonna be a few “alsos” here lol), we are using a custom potato heightmap terrain system, because at the beginning of the development we only found this plugin ( https://godotengine.org/asset-library/asset/231 ), and we were afraid it wouldn’t work for web build (which is quite important for jams), and more importantly, that we wouldn’t be able to modify the heightmap at runtime. the shader used to render the heightmap is far from perfect and I’m pretty sure it has some issues with calculating normals and due to it being a displacement shader, Godot might have some issues calculating bounding-boxes (I’m not sure how lighting works internally 🙈, but that might be a factor).
a cherry on top is that shadows appear deep fried because the sun is moving constantly, so you’re constantly seeing the edges flicker.
TL;DR - Godot is fine and I appreciate it a lot for the fact that in a setup like this shadows work at all xD
sorry for the chaotic response, but I really wanted someone to ask about the tech behind this game 🙈, so thank you!
thank you again for playing, cheers!
Very cool idea! I managed to do it with just one operator :) I scouted ahead at the end to see which path was the correct one. Very impressive snow mechanic, no idea how to do anything like that. I love the fuel/food decisions and planning ahead to walk back if you needed to. I think the only thing I wish there was more of was some variations in paths and maybe some little campsites or something in the hills as walking around in the forest was my first instinct lol. Well done overall, y'all should be proud!
really interesting idea, there is so much content in this game and the gameplay was really cool, one bug i encountered was that if i stopped moving my mouse for 0.1s the camera would start that idle animation, other than that was a really cool experience
hmm, that’s interesting because I don’t remember implementing any idle animation for the camera xD
I do remember experiencing some issues with the mouse-controlled camera drifting if the mouse was held still in other games I made though, so that might be an issue here as well for some browsers/setups (if you were playing the browser version that is), regardless, sorry about that 🙈
thank you very much for playing!
This is really cool (no pun intended). I enjoyed planning how far to drive before running back to shelter.
I never worked out how to eat food, so I got through the game by loading up entirely on fuel, and sacrificing the operators. After clearing the game, I checked the start again, and the button was mentioned in the tutorial. It seems like an important point, so maybe make the tutorial a bit briefer, and/or put a button prompt on the HUD.
The deforming snow is really impressive, and the snow material is also very nice. I think the level design might benefit from more variety of paths. For example, maybe there could be sheltered paths which are easier to walk, but which are too narrow to drive through. Or windy areas where health drops much faster out of the plow. Strategically planning routes was very fun, so I feel you should lean into that more, if you continue developing this.
Overall, a very nice concept, and well executed!
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