Uplifting Game Jam - CASH PRIZES $$

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A jam submission

Voyage HomeView game page

A humpback whale's 5000 mile journey to be reunited with his family.

Submitted by L3V14THAN — 1 minute before the deadline

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Voyage Home's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Theme	#6	3.938	3.938
Visuals / Art	#7	3.438	3.438
Creativity / Innovation	#15	2.750	2.750
Gameplay/Fun	#16	2.688	2.688
Overall	#17	2.884	2.884
Upliftment Factor	#20	2.688	2.688
Music/Sfx	#34	2.375	2.375
Smoothness / Polish	#34	2.312	2.312

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

how the game fits the uplifting theme?
You play as a young whale making his first migration alone after being separated from his mother, all to be reunited at his destination.

how the game fits the ocean theme?
You play as a young humpback whale in the Pacific Ocean, making the spring migration from Hawaii to Alaska.

please If you used any per-made assets or AI generated content credit them
No AI used

Can you vote for other entries during the voting period? How many?
Yes, voting for a handful should be no problem.

Comments

breadwithjam939Submitted1 day ago

Movement is wonky fits the Whale baby quirk.Plus visuals are very cute

Submitted

Waste picker

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Vandervas GeneratorSubmitted1 day ago

Charming little game! Love the hand-drawn art style and cheerful little storyline :)

Submitted

SEQUITUR

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VinobhauSubmitted3 days ago (1 edit)

I reached the Walrus part on second level...

However, then I was stuck. I don't know why. The game hanged...

What I did? When you reach Walrus, first time I pressed F the message vanished...

Second time I pressed F, the game froze...

But I liked the overall art style. The hand drawn artwork looks great...

Submitted

Captain Crystabuss Files: Operation Salted Veggies

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L3V14THANDeveloper1 day ago

Sorry you ran into that issue. Yeah, that's a bug that I found the day after the jam submission ended, and happened due to my slapdash effort to slam the second level together in the last 20 minutes before the deadline, lol. Speaking to the Walrus clears an oil slick blocker on the west side of the level, which let you find your mom. But I forgot to add a check if the entity exists before deletion, so if you talk to him twice it sometimes tries to delete the (already deleted) blocker again, which causes the game to lock.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked the art.

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aksommervilleJam Judge3 days ago

Very nice! I like the hand-drawn art, has kind of a storybook feel.

I don’t know if this was intentional, but if you spam the spacebar, you can build up a whole lot of velocity. Kind of un-whale-like, but oh so much fun to fool around with :)

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L3V14THANDeveloper3 days ago

Thank you! I’m glad you liked the art, I just got back into making digital art and I’ve been having so much fun drawing again.

I’m also glad you found how spammable space was. It was initially unintentional, I’d dropped the stamina cost of space for testing and forgot to change it back, but it ended up being more fun that way so I never got around to fixing it. Long term it’d probably be best somewhere in-between.

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NemoGondorSubmitted4 days ago

Cute story, the movement was fun and slightly unexpected felt like sliding on ice, art was spot on! I enjoyed it.

Submitted

Octo's coral

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PGadSubmitted5 days ago

I loved the game. It's almost like Asteroids but with whales.

The art is spot on, the alignment with theme is perfect and music is excellent. Loved it!

Submitted

Until the Air Runs Out

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besedaSubmitted5 days ago (3 edits)

"submitted 1 minute before the deadline" <== Oh, brother! You risked a lot! You know you can submit your Itch page without any content on it, right?

~~I think the web build is broken. Am planning to try the windows build later...~~ Reloaded and it works!

Good effort. Based on the description I assume you put a lot of effort into the setting and the narrative (worldbuilding). That is fantastic. One small problem is that the introduction feels like an exposition dump - a bit too much. I always recommend this GDC talk because it's excellent:

It seems the whale is moving in the opposite direction of the whirlpool which breaks the immersion a bit. It's also a minor issue.

I think I got stuck on the second map - moved in all the directions I could but I could not find that warlus.

Submitted

The Last Mine (Uplifting)

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L3V14THANDeveloper4 days ago(+1)

I now know that I can submit before it's finished, lol. This was my first ever game jam, so it was very much a learning experience.

I completely agree that the introduction is very exposition heavy, and feels very heavy-handed. I'll check out the GDC talk, thanks for sharing and for the feedback!

Also on the second level there was supposed to be another character that would guide you to the walrus (and then the walrus was going to give you a quest to fetch something from the orca filled region in the southwest of the map) but I ran out of time. If you wanted to play it to the end, there's a little passage at the far right of the second level that you can swim through to to get to the very northeast corner of the map, that's where the Walrus is. Speaking to him will clear an oil-spill blocker for another passage on the left side of the map, which will take you to the end of the game.

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besedaSubmitted3 days ago

Oh, congratulations on your first game - achievement unlocked! :D

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StarXgamesSubmitted5 days ago

Cool game really loved to play great work

Submitted

Ocean Predator

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gainax2k1Submitted5 days ago

Cute game! I was fun feeling like I was drifting around corners.

Submitted