itch.io

Hey everyone! 🌊

We've just released our first mayor update for Castaway dude.

Remember Johnny Castaway, the legendary 90s screensaver about a guy stranded on a tiny pixelated island? We wanted to bring that classic vibe into a cozy, interactive mini adventure, and Castaway Dude was born!

Our favorite marooned dude is stuck on a tiny tropical island and desperately needs a plan to get back to civilization. But escape isn’t easy. You'll need to fish, throw rocks at passing crabs, dodge a shark, send a message in a bottle, and craft your way off the island!

Features

• Craft essential stations : Campfire, Shelter, Fishing station and a Raft.
• Hunger and health system, cooking at campfire. Includes death state.
• Tiredness and sleep system.
• Creatures : Seagulls, Crabs, Sharks, Fish
• Swimming.
• Sprinting.
• Events feature.
• Achievements.
• Beautiful pixel art.
• Relaxing audio track and ambiance.

🎯 Community Stretch Goals & Updates!

The game is completely free, but I've added a public donation goal bar on the page! If you enjoy the game and decide to drop a coffee tip, every contribution goes toward reaching community stretch goals to unlock new features, expanded crafting recipes, and extra content!

👉 Play it in your browser or download here

Tried it out and it's pretty cool. Got stuck for a bit applying it to a single sound as the example show that you should pass the effect function without arguments but in fact you have to else it doesn't play at all. Apart from that nicely documented and easy to understand. I would recommend giving a short description on the audio bus system as well just to link the concept properly.

Thanks for this, a well needed extension.

Thank you we appreciate it!

This could be expanded to infecting the whole world. Very cool idea. Add some special zombies? Maybe have the player as patient zero on the level too and when he dies, game over? So many things you can do with this. Nice job!

Lovely art and palette choice. Animations are really nice too. Controlling the dog on small platforms are tricky though. Overall pretty fun.

Personally not crazy of being chased especially with over responsive controls. But bias aside it looks and feels pretty cool. Cool quirky music just way to loud.

Interesting  and fun mechanic. It will probably work well as a mobile game.  

Very cool! I think this game ticks all the boxes for this jam. Looks, feels and sounds great. A few small issues but I won't mention them as others already have.

Fun little game, the only issues I have with it are 1. Oh so tiny and sometimes hard to pick up the sheep, 2. Being colorblind, it is hard to see color differences especially if it is tiny pieces with color. The music and sound is pretty spot on and that goes for the art style too.

Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it! There are definitely some areas that need adjusting and polishing and we will address those as well as add more content soon.

Thanks so much for playing and making a YouTube video of the jam games! Survival elements was part of the game idea but the scope was too large so we left it out for the jam. We are continuing work on the game post-jam and cramming in everything we couldn't fit during the jam. This will also include making the crafting recipes much clearer.

I found this game a bit confusing but that didn't stop me from enjoying it actually. There is an interesting and cute crafting game here that feels like with a little love can be something really cool.  The art style seems fitting it just needs some polish and bling. I would be interested to see a full version of this. 

Thanks so much! We will be fixing issues and adding content after the jam.

Admittedly I wasn't very impressed at first and it felt like nothing is going to happen in this game and seemingly all you can do is rotate some pictures. Then I found some brick in a statues but and from thereon it was an absolute joy. Not super self explanatory but some games needs the player to discover things as part of the fun like this game did. Really enjoyed this game and I thing a full release will be great. Not too fond of the "assety" feel though but even so I would still play it as it is seriously fun. Nice job devs!

Glad you liked and thanks for playing. 

The game still needs more work, balance and content. We are going to do just that.  

Thanks for playing. Some items are hidden on the island and others can be fished out , the seagulls also sometimes drop items.

This feels like an 80s simulator. The low poly goes very nicely with the theme and the 80s music track is awesome. Would like to see the whole world outside the door. 

Thanks for the input. We will be continuing the game after the jam to fix issues and add content more content.

Hi and thanks for the detailed comments. All of these issues will be fixed after the jam plus more content will be added. 

Thanks for the input and playing. We had some ideas to clarify things but not enough time. But we will be adding it after the jam.

Hi everyone. We uploaded both a downloadable and a html version before the jam ended but we couldn't get the web version working until now. Our first time working with html so we didn't understand some things. Got it up and working now if anyone is interested in playing it and maybe even pop in a vote

https://functionunknown.itch.io/castaway-dude

Prrrr 

Enjoyed the feel of this game. Great color palette use to set the mood nicely.

Let's just create a new language for a game jam, why not. I love that you have to agree to.... what exactly did I agree on when I ticked that box?

A cool and well thought out little survival game.

Really enjoyed this one. It felt almost like a vertical slice, so polished and immersive. I can imagine this being a small part of a larger game.

A great way to make a game with no words. Love that you can draw on different parts of the map or even the whole map. A lot of potential for a full game here. The art style fits nicely it just needs some polish.

I know right? Those seagulls! We even made the game icon a seagull. Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for appreciating our game! Unfortunately we were running out of time (Submitted 30 minutes before closing ) and as a result we had to hack a few systems just to have the game functional. Fortunately, we will be continuing development of the game (after jam) to fix these issues and ad more content.

Congrats on your escape from the island! We have so many things we still wanted to add to the game and we too really enjoyed how it came out so we decided to continue working on it after the jam. So please, expect more...

That is correct, there is a semi-random system for items that favors giving an item not on the island. Glad you liked it.

Thank you very much for hosting the jam and playing our game. We really focused on what was expected  from the jam and it's awesome to see it appreciated. It was pretty hard but very much worth the effort.

I completely understand rating lower on audio but I just want to clarify that the music track was made for the jam using Fl Studio and only the sound fx was sourced from the GDC free packs.

Thank you!

Hi I'm really glad you liked it. I really wanted to have a web build but upon testing the game it didn't have sound for some reason.

Cool idea, definitely fun.

Hi, glad you like it and  sorry to hear you got stuck.

Spoiler:

The game only allows item drops if there is no other such item on the island.  Did you look around for any hidden items? This is probably the case, hope it helps.

Hi. The inspiration most definitely came from Johnny Castaway screensaver. This game idea has been on my plate for a while now. I just always thought it would be a nice game. 

We leaned hard into making it a calming experience so thanks for appreciating it.

Hi, glad you liked it and sorry you got stuck.

Spoiler:

 Maybe look out for the hidden log? Materials for the Shelter and Campfire are all on the island.

Nice one IGC :)