Play game
Little Roamers's itch.io pageRate this game
In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.
How does your game fit the main theme "Dinosaurs"? Please, explain.
You play as a young dinosaur who must find the way home. Explore, make friends, face danger, and survive.
How does your game fit the additional theme "Anachronism"? Please, explain.
You can find fossiles in the game scenes. These are inside small stones with a slightly purple color. Peck them and you will see ;-)
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I wish that there was a tutorial, the mechanics were not clear at first, to start I mostly tried clicking on every option that I could and seeing where that took me. I did eventually figure out the game, but it took me a while to fully understand things. I wish that you had some tooltips to quickly explain some of the UI works.
I was unsure how to interact with dinos that I came across which were friendly. I could click and drag on their image, but I could not figure out where to drop them. I figured it out when I clicked on one of the dinos without dragging them and got an interaction. It was not clear that I could do that, and being able to drag them around lead me to thinking that I needed to drag them somewhere. My one guess for why I can drag them, would be combat, but it looks like they are different images for the combat and the map, so... I dunno. I did not look at the hints sections in your page before, or while playing the game.
A couple of times I would get the cave event and it would say that one of my members who had been taken out in combat found the cave.
I multi-clicked on the attack button in a combat when I had one dino left, I won the combat, but it showed all of my dinos as being taken out.
I feel like moving to different areas without doing anything should increase the chance of next attack, as you can just collect dinos, then move on until you are home.
I feel like you should not be able to get the same zone/area twice in a row.
I like the way you give an indication that there is a friendly dino in the image, while putting them in spots that might not be obvious initially.
The combat feels a little too balanced towards the opponent, it was quite difficult to get through a combat without losing dinos.
It would be nice if there were more zones, as currently it can feel like you are going in circles on your way home.
I like this game. The art is nice, I really like the background images. I think that adding a tutorial would help quite a bit with understanding how to play the game.
-R
This game is so cool. I was really excited for it watching the development in the discord. It has such a cute art style and characters. I like the clicking on dinosaurs and the little rocks in the picture to interact with them, I wish there were more interactive elements, but given the scroll feature that might be an issue. But this game has so much polish and is so nice, I'd never be able to tell it was made in only two weeks!
Are there any random events that bring back dinosaurs? I had polly get taken by the river but I don't know if it would be possible to get her back. I got through my first run without any fights and got taken out by the fight in my next run. (Also lost someone to the cave crab lol). I think if I'd change anything I'd make it so changing location costs food/resources since there was very little reason to collect food unless you were resting, and there was no reason to rest if you weren't hurt, and if you aren't fighting you're not likely to get hurt, and you're not likely to be fighting if you're not taking time to collect food and resources.
Hi, thank you so much for your feedback. Yeah, it also consumed pretty much 2 weeks of my free time - this is how Jams go ;-)
And you summarized the weak point of my game so well - I will do like you said: Changing locations needs to have a cost, thought I implemented that, but it might be too little (the hunger is on a range between 1-10 - and goes down too slowly). Also there is a mood level prepared, to encourage realxing. But everything is very unbalanced or has no real effect at all atm, as my time was running out towards the end.
The art is fantastic and the game feels very polished. I could easily see something like this selling on steam with a bit more content. It was a cool wholesome choose your own adventure.
My biggest feedback is that the game doesn't incentivize you to take any risks. I feel like an element that could really help the game is some kind of growing pressure that you can relieve by taking certain actions. Maybe making it so that the attack meter raises every time you go to a new zone and have more events that reduce the attack meter. One thing to remember is people will optimize the fun out of any game so the idea is to make the optimal path or the path of least resistant the most fun. If you can balance exploring to get things that will help you in fights with trying to avoid fights I think you could create a really interesting tension for the player to explore.
Also I would recommend having a dino join the party be part of the the menu options. I ended up playing several games with only Ralph because I was a fool and didnt read the hints. The dinos just looks like they belonged so much in the picture that I thought oh hey a new dino to play with before I continue on my adventure. Game started making a lot more sense once I learned I could grow the party because it was impossible to take any risks with just the one dino in the party.
The battle mechanic was pretty good though. I really liked the idea of having to balance getting hit vs hitting the opponent and leverage the different strengths of the different dinos. Like I said before if the game incentivized you or forced you into more fights I think that would be really strong.
I know I am giving criticism, but only because I see such a solid foundation here. Excellent job!
what a great feedback, so many good thoughts. Thank you. Reading this on my phone, will come back when being on my desk again
Hey Ninja, thanks again for your feedback. Your critics are spot on and very welcome. I was postponing the playtesting and balancing from one day to the next - always in the hope the game is ready soon :-D Well, turned out I needed until the last hour to get most things working - then time was up and game wasn't playtested a single bit. Actually, I had my first playthrough only after submission period was over :-/ Was suprised things were not completely broken and one can actually play it :-)
What I want to do: Making Attacks more frequent. They add so much excitement and strategy to the game, having runs without any Attack was not my goal at all. But I still think chaning locations shouln't raise the Attack, as the forward momentum gives you a chance to keep your distance. On the other hand, there should be more presure forcing/wanting you to stay in a location for longer - doing actions that keep your pursuers a chance to catch up with you. Growing hunger is one of these things, also a fading mood can work for that.
To make the dino selection more clear, I will rework the hint - saying clearly: click on the dino to befriend it. And also repeating that hint until the player actually does so. Don't want to show too many actions - making players look and search in the pictures should be part of the experience. Talking about that: finding fossiles atm is just raising a number. But with enough time, I would have given each fossile an advantage in battles. But that would make balancing the battles even harder, I was so happy to find a relatively simple algorithm which creates challenging situations in battles. Let's see...
Very nice, wholesome game! I got “The land before time” vibes from it, I don’t know if that was intended though since the art is very different. The game is quite polished, too.
Yes, indeed this movie served as an inspiration. But I would never compare my hobby drawing skills with its first-class animations and background art - it's more the plot that inspired me.
Wait, are you saying that you cannot compete with dozens of professional animators dedicating years of their life to a single project, while being paid for it? :D
Jokes aside, your art was clean and suited the game’s style perfectly (maybe the proportions of the Allosaurus are off, but honnestly that’s just the paleontologist in me nitpicking). Keep up the good work!
The art is great. The mood is cozy. I also really like how there is a little bit of strategy in choosing different actions for your group so that you don't just die out.
I would play a more fleshed out version of this outside of jam. Maybe there can be abilities for each character and such.
Hi John, thank you for playing our game and for your encouraging words.
Had dino personalities and abilities on my list of ideas, but time was too short. At least the tank made it into the game. For the flying dino I had the idea to add an extra location choice, as it provides more overview - things like that... And their personalities would have made them dropping comments in certain situations, like "The cave looks scary" for a young, cautious dino., or some dinos being too freightend to swim accross the lake.
I love the art, sound, and feel of this game! The color scheme is so nice. I didn't realize I could click on things in the pictures until reading the comments. Also, I discovered you can reach home by simply repeatedly going to an area and then leaving it and not actually doing any of the game actions. Then I often found myself wanting to just do that since it was the low risk option compared to events where you often lose health just by random chance. Overall, this is a really delightful game though!
Haha, yeah, think you've found a loophole in the game mechanics. Switching locations doesn't consume any resources—I thought I'd implemented it differently. Unfortunately, I didn't have time for game testing, so everything is very unbalanced. The group of dinosaurs was supposed to share a mood, and each individual dinosaur was supposed to have its own meaningful hunger value. If all of that worked well together, there would be an incentive to use the other actions frequently. As it stands now, those incentives are lacking.
I am more than happy you like the art and sound. Drawing the dinos and their environments was my favorite part of the jam, and Gwyne did an awesome job with creating these atmospheric tracks.
Thank you so much for the kind words. It means a lot to us that you enjoyed the game so much!
Hey. Been a while since I saw an update, and lately was wondering what you were working on. Nice to see you've got something new.
Starting out I chose the options in order, gaining enough attack power to cross the river. The option for food said "The group explores the area", but the previous story made it sound like you alone were washed down the river. I'm assuming this is generic text used throughout, including after you gain companions. It then said that "The group" had made it across and "confused your pursuers". This feels even more odd , as nothing up to this point mentioned any pursuers. Again, I'm assuming some general text that is reused and soon there will be pursuers, but at the start it feels off to not have any mention of pursuers and then evade them. The next options included playing, which again talked about multiple dinos. I'm assuming that as I gain more they will show along the lefty edge by the one I currently have, ans am fairly certain I only have 1 right now. If developing this game further. I would consider adding some alternate text based on the situation, such as size of group, and if being pursued.
I chose to go to a plateau. It mentioned a friendly looking dino, but none of the options let me interact with it. I suppose may the play option mentioned above was our "group" playing with the other dino? I get the impression we are going to be recruiting others to join us, so I was expecting some thing offering me the chance for that. It was listed as an "Unknown Event", so I'm guessing that it was a random chance what happens, and I could have gained them, depending on RNG.
So far, in each area, I've been doing the rest and food options, followed by the event. I'm not seeing a reason to do them in a different order. Maybe it affects the outcome of the event? Since the event requires "Attack" energy, it makes sense to build up more before doing it, and sometimes is needed to even do the event.
We are at a lake looking for food and water. Is it a fresh water lake? We should have plenty of water. A nod to the area you are in would be nice.
Crossing the Deepstone Lake, it again mentions pursuers. It really isn;t clear who or what is pursuing us.
I've reached the first location where there is an Unknown Event on 2 of the options. The Play & Relax that had an Unknown Event looks to have given me the same "Tumble Around" message I've seen before. The river crossing this time did result in being attacked, and "Ralph" losing 3 of their 5 HP. I think this is the first I am seeing their name. Having been attacked, the comments about pursuers better fit.
At this point I'm wondering why your energy is listed as Attack. There has only been one fight so far, and it seems like we tried to run away, rather than fight.
I entered the Darkmouth Cave. I like the change in music. It gives a nice sense of things are different here. Do you risk going deeper or flee while you can? As I was typing this the music cut out, and it took long enough to loop that I thought it wasn't going to. Not super long, but enough that I noticed. It may be the fact that I had paused to write comments that made it stand out more. A bit less delay would be nice.
I've reached the Rock Bridge. I'm at 95% Attack, though I'm not sure if that matters or is just energy to do things. It looks like RNG has favored me. I made it through, though I just noticed that my Attack has dropped to 0%. Maybe the high value helped get through? I also seem to be at full health again. I wasn't really monitoring that, so maybe it recovered during rest. With full screen there is a fair amount of space between the focal point of what is happening at the bottom center of the screen, and the top corners with stats. I glance at the Attack more often as it matters for doing things, but the HP means less for my general decision making.
I will acknowledge that at this point I have not tried leaving an area without doing all the options. I may need to try again and experiment, but this run is going well, so I don't want to mess around at the moment.
And now I am back at a Darkmouth Cave... I'm only at 25% Attack as I enter it. Depending on what happens inside, will I make it this time?
A Cave Crab attacked. Now there is the question. I can't rest, and if I go deeper, then decide to return, will I be hit again? I can't rest here, so if the Attack % matters, I'm not likely to make it through the cave. I'm going to play it safe and leave.
At the other area I paid attention to the dino at the top left when I chose to rest and saw the quick popup of -1 food +1 HP.
And upon exploring the area, what should I find... another Darkmouth Cave. Let's hope this one doesn't have any attackers inside. It does. Another crab. I'm at 60% this time, and only 2/5 HP. I'm going ahead. This was also the second location, and I'm not sure what my options will be going back. Next room allowed rest, putting me up to 75%. I made it through, though again am down to 0% Attack.
When I rested this time there were 3 icons. They go a bit too fast and I was slightly distracted, so did not catch them all.
A little ways further, and I found another cave. I'm only at 3/5 HP, and 50% Attack, so I'm going to leave. I'm also almost home.
I'm now watching the icons by the dino and Searching for food and resting don't seem to always go well. I'm now down to 2/5 HP, with a river to cross. If attacked, I'm dead... backing away again.
So close to home and things are going poorly. I'm losing HP as I rest and find food. I'm now down to 1/5! I should have tried the cave.
I made it home! Though my group is still just 1. As I played I learned the name of the dino is Ralph. It would be nice if there was a hover tooltip that showed the dino's name, and any other stats, over clicking on them brought up more details. Same for any other area with interesting info. After my note below about getting a fossil, those showing what you've collected would be nice.
I'm acknowledging that I read on the game page about dragging dinos in combat and fossils. I saw that there were fossils at some places, but never collected them. I restarted and this time started to mouse over and click on the images. It was not clear the first time through that you could do so. I had doen some mousing over and clicking before, but it was more on the icons and bigger things, and missed that I could click on the small rocks. I'm assuming that this is how I'd also get another dino to join the group.
I found a location with a dino and clicking on them gave me an option for them to join. Now it seems like you may have to choose what to do at a location, if there are multiple options. Do you have the dino join, or do you go for the fossil? Now that I know to look for them, I'm mousing over every rock to find them. Sometimes they blend in well. It is a nice little extra for those who know to look. There could be a bit more guidance as to the images being interactable in the game itself. I read the hints on the game page, but once I was in the game the images did not really stand out as more than a set piece, especially when nothing I initially clicked on did anything. Maybe make the first one have something large and more clear to teach players to click on things, so they will then look closer in the future.
Now that I'm watching stats more I'm reevaluating if I should always rest for the Attack boost, but lose food.
I reached a scene with both a fossil and a dino. I started with clicking on the dino, then went back up to see if I could also get the fossil. I moused over a rock where the dino had been and the cursor changed, so I clicked, and it popped up letting the dino join again, except the button did nothing. For a while I thought I was soft locked. Then I found the fossil and clicked on it. That allowed me to do the fossil interaction and move on.
I have encountered my first combat event. I was wondering on my first run through about the comments on dragging dinos around. I'm at 100% Attack, so I could flee, but I want to see how combat works. The Allosaurus has 33 HP, and at max we can do 17 damage, so 2 turns to beat it, with the second turn allowing 1 to move to defense... but I'm going to lose a dino. Darn. I did not pay attention and moved some to safety, but missed the updated calculations and now I'm worse off. I ended up fleeing, as I was going to lose even more. I took a lot of damage there and now I have everyone alive, but at 1 HP. A bit better paying attention and I might have been able to win without losing anyone, but pulling back to defense and missing how that altered damage was a mistake I made that hurt the outcome.
I rested, and now have a cave... I hope no surprise attacks inside. Everyone is at 2 HP. And I lost Brandon to a Crab. I had 70% so pushed through and made it with the rest of the group now at 3 HP.
The caves seem fairly common. That may just be due to how I pick locations. I've had bad luck getting attacked or slipping when crossing water, so favor other locations. I'm acknowledging that the crossings are probably similar to the caves and give a boost to getting home, and considering the crabs, are probably equal risk/reward.
I was attacked again, but had enough HP to not lose anyone. I was at 60% and made it through.
I went to a river next, but was too low on Attack to cross it. I ended up back at a cave. Was not attacked, and had 50% Attack. I made it through and that brought me home again. I found 5/7 Fossils, though for a portion of this run I was distracted by other things and forgot to check for them.
Overall a neat little game. I do want to replay the combat at some point and try to win to see how that goes. I still ended up losing a dino, so should have gone with the original way I saw to win, with losing 1, but everyone else staying at higher HP.
Hello Dragon Isle! Thank you so much for playing our game and for taking me onto the journeys you had. Reading on my phone, will come back to you when being back on my desk
Thank you for this detailed description of how you played and understood the game. It teaches me so much about my (wrong) assumptions about what players will understand without the game providing further explanation.
The clearest to me is how you percieved "Attack". Looking at it through your eyes, it makes totally sense. Rest for a while -> increase your attack. But it's not like that. the Attack percentage wants to signal when the next Attack will happen - so my thougths were more like: Resting for a while gives the predator a chance to catch up with your group. The label below the indicator says "Next Attack" but that's it - nothing explains this important number in more detail. "At this point I'm wondering why your energy is listed as Attack." might have its answer now? Likewise, when the Attack dropped to 0%, that meant you pursuers lost your tracks. Makes sense now?
And yes, the texts are generic - for each kind of text there are some variations, but most expect there is a group, not only the Para you are starting with.
Also your hint about missing that dinos can be befriended by clicking on them is of great value. When the first dino shows up in a scenery, there is a hint "Hey! There is a dino! It looks like it might be friendly." But theither is this hint repeatedly showing, when players do not click the dino, nor does it say something like: Click on it to befriend it. I did that for the fossile, but forgot to give clear instructions for the dino. Btw, you can collect both, you don't have to decide.
I was planning to show your pursuer in the progress bar - showing up in a seperate circle "behind" you starting from Attack 50%, catching up with this number raising towards 100%. But time ran out, and I wasn't able to implement this in time.
My music "system" is pretty rudamentary and caused some trouble in the game. I will rework it, and will try to find a way to loop thorugh tracks without the delays you percieved.
In general, I want to make Attacks happen more often, as they add a big chunk of strategy and excitement to the game. Also, the options should be more balanced.
Thanks again for describing your journey in so much detail, this was so interesting to read.
Wow, I really did not pay very good attention when I played. I completely reversed how I viewed the Attack compared to what it was. I saw things like crossing the rivers as needing a certain amount of energy to do, and the Attack being that energy, instead of them being a good thing that lowers risk. I think I read "Next Attack" as your next attack power, rather than the odds of it happening. I will say that, due to my misunderstanding, I favored high Attack, and yet only once had a fight in 2 runs. If the fights happened more, that may have helped clue me in. One of the kids played and I know they got more fights. We need to go over their review and get it posted.
This helps clarify the game, and totally makes sense now that I know what I'm looking at. A bit more instruction/tutorial in game would certainly help. Even without it, the game was fun. Understanding things would allow for better strategy, though from my runs it did feel quite easy. Increasing the chance of fights would add to the challenge and need to think about how to handle it.
Great work as always! Beautiful art and great music. I managed to get to the end without encountering the allosaur my first time through, but we lost our triceratops along the way :(
The combat mechanic is very cool, I put all of my dinos into attack and barely made it out alive. Great work.
Hey Frog, thank you for your kind words :-) You have contributed to a game as well? Would like to check it out.
A complete run without encounter - wow. I am curious - did you find the shortcut? Had no time for playtesting - and the number of actions is limited. I think I would have tweaked some things here and there to make the attacks more frequent. But for now it is what it is.
I didn’t contribute a game to this jam, I just saw the notification you had uploaded a game!
I think I was able to back out of locations that didn’t offer chance reduction, and kept my % very low. Then I got the shortcut through the cave, I think that helped. I felt like I only encountered the allosaur when my percentage was very high.
Loved the drawings and the audio. The game is very cute and the pacing is nice. It's a little hard to know what to do next but you can find your way around just fine. Great work!
really liked the game but I got stuck on the allosaurus fight.It just kept saying "hey there wanna come along" and when I clicked that nothing happened. Graphics wise, the game is super cute. The music and sound design is phenomenal, well done.
Just gave the game a test. My first real play through, actually :-D I wasn't running into the bug you describe, the fight started just fine. Game has a hell lot of states, sounds like you were running into a side case.
Action "hey there wanna come along" pops up when you click a dino... Ohhhh! Now as I write this, I had another idea. Started a new fight - and there it is... Yeah that's a bug. When I click a dino in one of the battle rows, without dragging it, the same happens to me. And from there the game is broken. Sorry, never tested a click in that situation, as the dinos are supposed to be dragged. Darn...
Oh it's okay! I'll try the game out again, I'll be sure to drag and not just click!
Thanks a lot for pointing that out. I've put it on the games page.
Played game again, I'd really like a longer game in this style its so good. I did the break the game again, if you click the empty space after collecting a dino it just breaks everything. But the game is super cozy, its great.
omg... you are a real game breaker :-D I fixed that bug for the fossile, but not for the dino! Okay, it's coming on my bug list. In my case it didn't break the game but the dino card just spawned several times. But maybe you found a situation where this is having more critical side effects.
There are the Sourcery games which heavily influenced our dino game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/411000/Sorcery_Parts_1_and_2/
Also, if you like these choice based mechanics in general, 80 Days is often referred to as being the gold standard of its kind.
What I personally really like to play is Card Survival. It looks strange at first, but it goes really deep and tickles my imagination.
If you want to give one of my other games a try, you might like Fall of Days. It's a different mechanic for sure, but scratches quite the same itch.