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A jam submission

Winter's HowlView game page

A top-down, survival and team management game for Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2
Submitted by GameDevAaron — 48 minutes, 37 seconds before the deadline
Rated by 23 people so far
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Winter's Howl's itch.io page

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How does the game fit the theme?
You are leading a pack of survivors through a frozen wasteland, however mistrust divides the group. It is up to the player to uncover the secrets that each character may be keeping. All the while there are rumors of Hellhounds afoot... surely they aren't real?

What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
None! :)

How many people worked on the game?
5

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Comments

Submitted

I really liked this one. The mechanics were there to keep the story going, the dialogue was interesting and sufficiently short, loved the ending.  One of my favorites. The pixel art was on point!

Submitted

The visuals and sound were really nice. At first I was like "where the hell do I find stone?", until I realized the walls were actually mineable. I gave the guys what they wanted, wandered around for a bit, but nothing happened after that—wasn't quite sure what to do there. Also, the arrow is super slow and clips right through walls. The clipping isn't a big deal, but the projectile speed is just way too slow.

Submitted

Interesting premise! Liked the 2D graphics!

Submitted

I got to the end of the story and get an ending. but is that the real ending?

This game is packed with all the nice things. Cozy snowy environment, good pixel art, superb music, good gameplay and nice story that fits the theme of the jam. You are doing a really good job!

Submitted

i had allot of fun digging up the surrounding area, the artstyle is also pretty good,  it has a mix of minecraft and zelda which is pretty cool :D

Submitted

love the game! really chill and need to explore. art, gameplay and everything else all well done! i wonder how much content you put into the game. made me wanna play all day! but i need to do other things... i will come back and just take my time to play it all the way! great job!

Submitted

It's a chill game, although I think the beginning could have been a little more fast-paced, but it's a good game and has really nice 2D graphics  :P

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I am not sure if it was me or the game. First I enter the game and trying to find food. And figure out that hunting rabbits can get food, but I can't eat. Which as the npc said I need to find the cook. And I find really hard and died in the second run I finally find the cook. Yeah, the cook is really hard to find, for me to say. Overall, the game itself is not bad but it still needs to be dived in to make it more fun to play, and makes the direction more clear (unless you want to make the direction lie but the player need that feeling)

Developer

Thank you for playing and sharing your experience! It is good to know as devs where players get stuck. We can look at adding names above the npc's heads so the player can quickly identify which npc is which. Cheers for stopping by! 

Submitted(+1)

Very satisfying game and I really liked the puzzle to discover what is happening with the village. Just the hellhound I didn't understand what to do with it.

Developer

Thanks for playing! Happy to hear you enjoyed the experience. The hellhound was a late addition that will be fleshed out more post-jam update! 

Submitted(+1)

This was such a  good game. The sound  track was  great and  the game play as well. This is so far my favorite game from this jam, keep up the good work. I loved that I could actually pet the dogs and that you had to do some "side quests" and explore the map to see if what people  said  was true. This was really polished and  for  a week long  game jam,  was way more of a finished  product  than i would have thought. Good job.

Developer

Thanks Logobogo for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed. Lots of late nights debugging to get the polish up to standard lol

Submitted(+1)

This was polished and well put together I especially liked the sfx and dialog. 

Developer

Thanks for playing! I agree Rob did a great job implementing the sound design!  

Submitted(+1)

Nice cozy game- even with the setting it felt good to play, love the artwork- great pixel art. I think i missed something cuz i didn't understand who not to trust T_T 

Developer

Trust no one! lol

Thanks for playing :) 

(+1)

Really cozy game despite the setting, loved exploring through the snow, but I missed something because the story wasn't progressing after I gave people what they asked for. I tried a lot to find the key to the box or something north-east as the kid said but only found the hunter's arrow. I think it may be a bit unclear what to do after that.

The art is adorable, really, you guys did a great job! The only nitpicking I have is to try to have all assets share the same resolution across the entire game. I think the text can pass, maybe, but the menu should absolutely have the UI elements with pixel sizes consistent with the rest of the art, it'll make justice to the great assets you made!! Congrats!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you for playing through! Maotica and CoolG did a great job on the assets I agree! 

That is a good point with uniform pixel sizes across the game. I will also consider adding more dialogue later explaining that the character's are very unreliable in their directions and are not to be trusted. 

Submitted(+1)

Loved the atmosphere and art style! It was really cozy. The survival mechanics weren't really clear initially, I didn't get any feedback from being damaged by the cold but eventually I found it out. The story was nice, though I would really love a backstory to understand what happened. The 'banish kid' put me in a hard position, I kinda had to banish him after playing too much... Jokes aside It was also very satisfying, the mining mechanic was good; I'd only change once thing since 'physically' you can't reach far already, It would be good to have the mining be: you get close to the rocks or tree, click > mine. Pointing makes it less... satisfying. I didn't get much the story about the monsters taking the place of the people at the camp and that red eyed wolf, I couldn't kill it so it was kinda unfair as I only could run away. Other than that this was a really  cool idea, good job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for taking the time to play through our game and leave feedback! 

Your points of criticism are fair and are definitely on our to-do list of things to improve upon. 

Submitted(+2)

I never expected a survival game! This is a pretty nice surprise and a very underrated experience while still being somewhat on theme, nice!

Thanks for checking it out! <3 

Submitted(+3)

The art is so cute! Also loved the story, overall a really solid game that really fits into the theme!

Thank you for the kind words! <3

Thank you! Maotica and I did all the art, so I'm really happy you like it ^^

Submitted(+3)

Finished the game :) This game is gonna do numbers in ratings. Relaxing and fitting music and sound effects, good story to keep you engaged with characters having colliding backgrounds, artstyle was super cool and fit the ice cold theme setting very well, gameplay had 0 bugs as far as I remember, and finally the theme of the jam was a big influence and fit very well the game. No complaints from me! :D

Thank you for the kind words! We definitely put in some overtime to make sure it was as bug free as possible. I'm glad you had no issues ^^ 

Thank you for the kind words! Our team was very hardworking <3

Submitted(+3)

This game just blew our mind, it was so polished and very fun to play, didn't even feel like a game jam game! Very well done!

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed playing  our game! ^^

Aww I'm happy to hear that ^^

Submitted(+2)

The game was very fun. It is a bit odd that the mining mechanic is based on mouse position and not in front of the character but the game is very well executed.

Developer

Thanks for playing, Panda, we're glad you enjoyed! Thank you for the praise regarding execution. 

Good feedback about the controls, this is something we are looking to address in our post jam update. 

Submitted (6 edits) (+3)

Fun little game. Was confused by the e over the fire at the start but quickly got it. Music was nice and melancholic. Suiting the story.

Story was small but interesting, each person had their own personality that could be shown in the small number of sentences.

The digging and chopping mechanic were fun. Loved exploring the environment and finding things in the snow.

Why does it take time to walk through a tree when it is chopped down? You can walk easy when cleared with digging, but some points I was walking into the tree until it respawned so I could go forward.

It took me a while to realise I could use E on something in the game. Once figured out, I got through the game quite quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed this game, thank you.

(+1)

Thanks for checking it out! We will definitely be changing some of the things that you mentioned in future updates <3