The overall presentation is pretty cool, I liked the use of sound effects, and the die rolling sounds plus showing the rolls helped me understand what was going on each choice. You also show what stat roll the buttons will use, this is a great bit of info to aid in strategy or playing smart, without revealing the actual outcomes. Very nice!
I wish we had a better chance to start out, maybe starting with a 2 or 3 of each stat might feel better. After a few plays I ended up just restarting if my stats went negative early on, as there doesn't seem to be a way to recover if the first rolls go south. I think the stats are good at adding tension, but they feel a bit off for actually playing this out.
I liked that we don't always have the stats to "risk a stat to do the thing" every time. That was good at capturing the feeling of weakness/pressure that the story has.
I found several paths that would give a stat boost for choosing to not engage and instead rest or refocus on the main mission. I'd love to see more of this. The current version has many of the neutral options also not do anything to the stats. I feel a bit robbed each time that happens, because I chose to "rest" or "focus only on my objective" but it wasn't reflected in the stats.
I also had a rough time visually on a horizontally wide monitor. It would be a good idea to limit the pixel width of the text display area, to avoid displaying long wide text that causes reader fatigue. Bonus points on the text size options, it's a good start!
The writing was rather good at capturing the mood and feeling of the game. Overall, I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for making it!
There also are a few routes where the scenario can get stuck or seemingly goes back to the menu. One playthrough I found the camp with 3 people, saved the villager, got the amulet, then the game pulled up the investigation with 3 dead people and I found a second amulet. The double amulet run then dealt with the cat and the game promptly just sent me to the main menu even though I succeeded at the bold option there. I'm guessing something overflowed or some state broke along the way, because most of the other times the game was pretty good at keeping track of time/events up the mountain.
I've also had a couple times dying to the final fight and instead of an ending the text just is blank, and the only option is the main menu. These were lost rolls so I assume the text would be similar to the "bad endings" of the fight, but it's a bit jarring to just roll and be told "go back to the menu" without explanation. I guess I rolled so badly the game master left in disgust, lol.
Oh dear, double amulets should not be possible. It must be an error in the script, possibly a root cause to the other problem. Thanks for the bug report!
Thanks for the comment about the size too. My intention was that it would be played on phones, and when I ran it in my browser, I just narrowed up the window. I thought about adding more robust sizing support, but that seemed out of scope for a jam project. You’re right that it’s awfully awkward to play wide.
Hey thanks for having the ability to change the text size! Also, cool game. It does seem to be on the hard side as even if you bump some stats, you usually just lose them the next check you do. I think it's because you need a flat 10+ to pass and most of the time with 2 D6 you will get 7. I played about 6 times and just started ignoring stuff because if you need to roll chances are you lose which makes you lose more stats and so lose more. I found it a bit annoying because I was trying to see all the routs but some of them seem almost impossible to get unless it rolls 2 sixes some time 3 times in a row it seems.
Anyway, I was trying to see all the things. Thanks for the submission.
One of the things I learned from making the game was the real cost of writing branching narrative. I will leave it as a puzzle here: if you type in the name of the author whose work inspired the story, you will get a little surprise that makes it easier to see all the things :)
This is really neat!! I've been getting into tabletop solo roleplaying games and have even made a small paper journaling game. I'll have to check out this system. I love the way the stats change organically with your choices, and I had to almost go with the stats rather than what I actually wanted to do.
Is your journaling game published somewhere? I’ve only tried two games in that genre, one being the excellent and recommended Thousand-Year-Old Vampire.
Nice work. Had me worrying at a time when I started loosing my points xD. It's a neat idea to make players think on their actions. If a may add a suggestion for the future, I would like an option for showing text without the animation, or to set the speed of the animation. Thank you.
I ran out of time for a full options menu, but text animation control would be the first thing in there. Note that you can click/tap the text to skip the animation.
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success always come at a cost :/ fun game! i'm interested in making a similar game in the future, so it's cool to see an example of this in godot
(oh, and thanks for the detailed blogpost. very useful to see how you put the game together.)
The overall presentation is pretty cool, I liked the use of sound effects, and the die rolling sounds plus showing the rolls helped me understand what was going on each choice. You also show what stat roll the buttons will use, this is a great bit of info to aid in strategy or playing smart, without revealing the actual outcomes. Very nice!
I wish we had a better chance to start out, maybe starting with a 2 or 3 of each stat might feel better. After a few plays I ended up just restarting if my stats went negative early on, as there doesn't seem to be a way to recover if the first rolls go south. I think the stats are good at adding tension, but they feel a bit off for actually playing this out.
I liked that we don't always have the stats to "risk a stat to do the thing" every time. That was good at capturing the feeling of weakness/pressure that the story has.
I found several paths that would give a stat boost for choosing to not engage and instead rest or refocus on the main mission. I'd love to see more of this. The current version has many of the neutral options also not do anything to the stats. I feel a bit robbed each time that happens, because I chose to "rest" or "focus only on my objective" but it wasn't reflected in the stats.
I also had a rough time visually on a horizontally wide monitor. It would be a good idea to limit the pixel width of the text display area, to avoid displaying long wide text that causes reader fatigue. Bonus points on the text size options, it's a good start!
The writing was rather good at capturing the mood and feeling of the game. Overall, I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for making it!
There also are a few routes where the scenario can get stuck or seemingly goes back to the menu. One playthrough I found the camp with 3 people, saved the villager, got the amulet, then the game pulled up the investigation with 3 dead people and I found a second amulet. The double amulet run then dealt with the cat and the game promptly just sent me to the main menu even though I succeeded at the bold option there. I'm guessing something overflowed or some state broke along the way, because most of the other times the game was pretty good at keeping track of time/events up the mountain.
I've also had a couple times dying to the final fight and instead of an ending the text just is blank, and the only option is the main menu. These were lost rolls so I assume the text would be similar to the "bad endings" of the fight, but it's a bit jarring to just roll and be told "go back to the menu" without explanation. I guess I rolled so badly the game master left in disgust, lol.
Oh dear, double amulets should not be possible. It must be an error in the script, possibly a root cause to the other problem. Thanks for the bug report!
Thanks for the comment about the size too. My intention was that it would be played on phones, and when I ran it in my browser, I just narrowed up the window. I thought about adding more robust sizing support, but that seemed out of scope for a jam project. You’re right that it’s awfully awkward to play wide.
I just pushed up version 1.0.2, which includes two significant updates:
The game doesn’t crash after boldly encountering the beast at the peak ascent.
Each attribute now starts at +1 instead of 0.
Thanks for your feedback!
Hey thanks for having the ability to change the text size! Also, cool game. It does seem to be on the hard side as even if you bump some stats, you usually just lose them the next check you do. I think it's because you need a flat 10+ to pass and most of the time with 2 D6 you will get 7. I played about 6 times and just started ignoring stuff because if you need to roll chances are you lose which makes you lose more stats and so lose more. I found it a bit annoying because I was trying to see all the routs but some of them seem almost impossible to get unless it rolls 2 sixes some time 3 times in a row it seems.
Anyway, I was trying to see all the things. Thanks for the submission.
Thanks for checking it out!
One of the things I learned from making the game was the real cost of writing branching narrative. I will leave it as a puzzle here: if you type in the name of the author whose work inspired the story, you will get a little surprise that makes it easier to see all the things :)
This is really neat!! I've been getting into tabletop solo roleplaying games and have even made a small paper journaling game. I'll have to check out this system. I love the way the stats change organically with your choices, and I had to almost go with the stats rather than what I actually wanted to do.
Thanks for making and sharing this!
Thanks for checking it out! I wrote a bit about my inspiration on my blog: https://paulgestwicki.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-endless-storm-of-dagger-mountain.html
Is your journaling game published somewhere? I’ve only tried two games in that genre, one being the excellent and recommended Thousand-Year-Old Vampire.
Nice work. Had me worrying at a time when I started loosing my points xD. It's a neat idea to make players think on their actions.
If a may add a suggestion for the future, I would like an option for showing text without the animation, or to set the speed of the animation. Thank you.
Thanks for checking it out!
I ran out of time for a full options menu, but text animation control would be the first thing in there. Note that you can click/tap the text to skip the animation.