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The Doldrums's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #17 | 4.154 | 4.154 |
| Overall | #53 | 3.859 | 3.859 |
| Graphics | #59 | 4.308 | 4.308 |
| Quirkiness | #80 | 3.846 | 3.846 |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #87 | 3.769 | 3.769 |
| Secondary Theme Interpretation | #129 | 3.462 | 3.462 |
| Gameboy Soul | #202 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game meet GBJam's theme
It is a treasure hunt for gold and other things worth finding on a tropical island.
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Comments
I knew I recognized those glyphs from somewhere... burning bright indeed. 🙂
Wonderful little logic puzzle! The hardest difficulty was a bit intimidating at first until I mulled over the logistics of where things would have to be if you are able to travel X-Y steps away. The art is dreadfully fantastic, the music is grim, yet driving (in a sort of "death march" kind of way). I appreciate that digging in the wrong spot just kills you of exhaustion -- it's hard work!
Fantastic! Great work!
In my first couple of playthroughs on the easy difficulty, I cheesed it by going all the way to the NE tile, and then used the directions to figure out what the treasure tile is relative to my tile, and then moved there... but the treasure seemed underwhelming.
Then I tried minimizing my steps, and ultimately managed to beat all three difficulties in lowest possible steps, for much more satisfying endings. Really cool!
One small gripe I have is that it says "An expert explorer would do it in X steps" - but isn't there some luck involved in determining your starting location? How do you compute the expert explorer's number of steps? Is it just the shortest path from your starting position to the treasure while avoiding the traps?
Anyway, really amazing game on all fronts.
Thanks for playing and for the thoughtful comment! Getting to the shore as quickly as possible is definitely a meta strat for orienting yourself. We discussed something like getting exhausted by sun exposure if you move through too many shore tiles in a row, but didn't end up actually implementing it.
Re: the expert explorer scoring - the threshold is the shortest path length from player spawn location to treasure location plus a number of steps of padding to allow for determining your location. The padding number was tricky to tune properly, but we tried to account for finding your location while moving away from the treasure while still being able to get the best ending. Maybe a better version would determine that padding number more dynamically based on the map configuration and the player spawn location.
There is definitely luck in terms of the map configuration, the treasure location, and your spawn location. We tried to smooth that out by having the map generation and player spawner make some guarantees about the player's initial location (not too close to the treasure or a sudden death tile, on a shore, or on a landmark) and the map (landmarks should be reasonably evenly spaced out). But even still, some map + spawn combos are going to be way easier than others. If I had another week of jam to work on the game, I probably would have spent a lot of it on map generation and player spawning.
Thanks again!
good game, but how do i find the landmark of where the treasure is kinda confusing but it has great visual novel interface. keep going!
Thanks for playing! Finding where the treasure is on the map is the whole challenge of the game :D You use the directions on the back of the map to figure out where the treasure is, and then use the map and exploration to figure out where you are. When you know those two things, you can go to the place where you think the treasure is and try to dig it up!
Really cool game! The atmosphere and music are great and I really liked the treasure hunting and map mechanics. It has such a unique feel to it. Great work!
(pls play my game)
Thank you for playing!
Wow, this was a great play. I was totally sucked in after the first run. The atmosphere is immaculate; a great synergy of the subdued but trepidatious soundtrack, minimalist environmental art, and the gripping writing. Everything had an air of mystery that peeked my curiosity.
The gameplay loop took a second to wrap my head around, but I got better after each play and managed to get the 'even an expert mapper couldn't do better' line for each difficulty. The randomization of it makes it fresh each time.
When I found the first note in a treasure chest, I stared at the first note for a while and noticed that the characters were consistent to the english alphabet in the glyph. I started mapping them on paper, and after a couple more runs of this managed to spell out one of the phrases. I was curious if it was from somewhere and found out it was a passage from era appropriate poetry.
I think I've gotten 4 endings so far, and am curious if there is anything deeper here that I haven't seen.
Awesome entry!
Thank you! Hats off to you for beating the harder difficulties and solving the ciphers. Not to be too shameless, but if you enjoyed the ciphers, you might like our gbjam 12 entry, which is entirely solving ciphers like those (and this game is a prequel to that game in the ness/chris/ollie gbjam cinematic universe).
Spoilers:
There are three end screens for finding the treasure, depending on how many steps it takes. There are endings for digging in the wrong place and for going to a sudden death tile. Finally, there are endings for solving and failing to solve the cipher puzzle.
Wow! Surprised and delighted by this one. The idea is so original. The vibes are chef kiss. And the puzzle is fun! Maybe I'm the only freak, but I really appreciate the harder difficulties and I thought the map being inaccurate was both mechanically and thematically interesting. Mechanics, music, and art are all top tier. This is really special and incredible, great work!
Thank you! We had an even harder difficulty that we removed where some real landmarks would be hidden from the map. Early playtesting indicated that it made the game virtually impossible to win, but maybe we can put it back in for you to try out :D I also wanted to have a mode where the map changes every time you look at it, but didn't have the time to implement it.
The plant growing animation is excellent. Really digged the game play loop once i figured out what was going on as well.
Thank you! We're lucky that we have such a talented artist to make animations like that
Such a cool and creative idea. I have always loved this kind of games and the "aha" moment when you finally know where you are on the map was great!
Thank you!
My favorite game so far. Also RIP big man
Thank you! this game is dedicated to all of the cousins who are no longer with us.
Fun game! I like how it doesn't hand hold and the player has to determine where they are. The art style is very cool as well. Great job!
Thank you! We are very lucky to have such a brilliant artist on our team
I loved this, really enjoyed the addition of the note at the end and working it out. The storytelling and ambience was top-notch. I found I enjoyed the easiest difficulty the most, but I did also manage to find the treasure on harder difficulty with some brain strain.
Thank you! The harder modes make my head hurt
Cool concept! Although I'm not sure "fake landmarks" is a fun gameplay element, I enjoyed the eerie vibes of the art and music, and racking my brain for a bit. Keep it up!
Thanks! The random perturbations of the map are a divisive design element, but we left them in the harder modes for people who enjoy suffering.
The Tyger
Cool game! Had fun with this one! Nice work!
Thank you! And a tip of the hat to you for working out one of the puzzles