🌊 CURRENT

You are TALAA, a young coywolf. You wake up in your family's den and must explore the forest beyond it.


CONTENT WARNING

Contains suggested loss of life and possibly trauma-triggering scenes. If you are uncomfortable with themes of suggested drowning or verbal abuse, I would not recommend playing this or anything that makes you feel unsafe.


GAMEPLAY

Talk to everyone. Pick up stuff. Some of it does things. Progression should be obvious, you shouldn't be able to break the game's sequence.

Shouldn't.


Will add a gameplay video and a long description after sleeping.

I wasn't sure if I was going to finish this on time, but here it is! Holy nested logic blocks on nested logic blocks - this was fun.

The real use of AI was to summarize what I did and wanted to do into text. I know, how could this block of insane transcript text have been enough for me to proceed with this game? Who knows.

Ultimately, most of my brain power was kept afloat by learning a new, simple game engine. Not sure how I hadn't heard of Bitsy before.

The 'wolf experiences not good things but the world is also weird' theme is one I've been working away at for years, but only now am I really getting back into gamedev. Making something just to be creative.

Not caring about the perfect MVP when I can crack out something in 3 days? Hey, hopefully this won't be my second and last gamejam ever. I kind of refuse at this point.

Started three days ago. Genuinely can't wait to do a post-jam analysis on this once I've relaxed my brain a little.

Otherwise? I just locked in. Music, walk breaks, way too much pacing.


ALL SPOILERS BELOW

Introducing the worst thing to post on the internet:

the yap that started it all (click to expand)


you are tasked with summarizing this entire yap into a markdown doc without losing any detail:

All right, dude. So here's the story so far that I have for the game. So first you have the den room. Where you have to collect 10 paw prints? You can't leave the den until you've done that. As you're collecting the pot Brands it tells you the different sense. So it's like all the different smells of the different members of the back. All right great. Fantastic. So then you can go outside and then you're two siblings that are your same age or waiting? Like you're two litter mates. and so you can talk to them. But you can also go ahead and Skip talking to them. I guess if you really wanted to which is crazy. I might make it so you can't skip until you talk to them. I think that would make sense to do that. But I'm on a time constraint I have. About a day and a half remaining. And I'm trying to make this f****** game. actually coherent. I'm not trying to be an a******. But it's like I've sort of given myself way too many options. So I'm having to make reasons for there to be limitations instead of making it like this open Adventure. Which if I have more time, I totally would. Anyways, what's been tough is because I didn't make a Doc or anything to describe the start to finish what you do. I've just been making it and hoping I can figure something out. so anyways We go to that clearing. Right outside the dam, you're two siblings are there you can talk to them. And then after you've done that. You can go to another room which has your older brother. watching disorder guarding the place and they don't he doesn't really have much to say. Yet he might point something out that's useful for you to know but I don't know for now. We just says like Go ahead. I'm I'm on guard Duty. So then you go to the next room over you're in a forest by the way, I'm saying room. It's just that's the nature of the game into and so that's when you see the stream and there's a lot that you can cross. Now on the left side there is a rabbit. and the rabbit if you talk to it, it gives you a shiny Pebble and exchange for his life and then it disappears and that's crazy. Okay, cool. No, always remember this. Actually, no, I'm going to have it not disappear because then I don't have to have as many copies of the same f****** room. Okay, so you talk to the rabbit you get the pebble. And then it's just munching the clovers or whatever cool adorable. And then you cross the log and right as you get to the end of the log your exit is blocked. So you have to touch this trigger. And so you see the room do a fade out to White and then the deer that you saw. In the corner of the room disappears leaving behind the strange Crystal. spooky And sleep pick up the crystal. And I'm thinking that you can't you can't progress ahead any further until after you go back home and try to tell everyone about the crystal. I'm guessing like the older brother is pretty busy. Watching for security stuff and is going to tell you like. Don't even trip. Yeah, I don't know what that means go. Ask your mom or something. Maybe what he's doing now, maybe he's distracted because of the two siblings have now transitioned to that room. That sort of intermediary. I should probably name these better so you can keep track of what I'm saying. so anyways You you're telling your character is apparently telling everyone the crystal absorbed until your body and disappeared. And No One Believes you your siblings are like what what kind of story is that? I don't I don't get it. and then you go home and you try to tell your mom. but your dad is blocking the way home. Maybe it's like hey don't. I don't know. There's some excuse to keep you from going to the Home Place. He just doesn't want you to go back yet, or he's like you're not going back to the den until after I've seen. You and your siblings catch something or do something impressive? I don't know. He's an a****** the dad is an a******. so once you've talked to everyone. Mainly just once you talk to the dad and fall. These are a lot of annoying bullying variables. We have to keep making to keep track of it, but it's okay. This is how it works. So again, we if we have if we have just an integer we could just increment it and just try to remember if it's three. That means we talk to someone so if it's for if it's five, I don't know. This is a small game. So we'll just do booleans. It doesn't matter a bigger game. Maybe I would track that and keep track of it. Anyways, so now that you're sitting here - a crystal absorbed in your body and nobody wants to listen, the only logical choice is to head back to the crossing. The bushes that blocked your way have been cleared.

for some reason I started manic typing story ideas (click to expand)


somehow related

You proceed to a horizontal, simple forest room. The water rushing alongside of you. You reach the center, wondering if you should continue onwards alone. You find tracks of that deer that had vanished and left behind the 'crystal', and can follow them now. (a blocker might exist to keep you from pointlessly running home)

So, we can clone this room. Three times. Add variety, make the river rush more with each pass through. Add little details.

Finally, you reach a point where the river looks like it's encroaching into the bank, a single tile crossing that looks 'testy' at best - and you cross to the next room.

Cue the closest to a landslide sound we can! the next screen shows you in the water, only able to move down... underwater.

You hit the bottom, and another room fade transition happens. This one has you hidden (by having only tiles and the background color, then sprite color is the same as the bg). If you try to move, it triggers dialogue... this dialogue is from an unknown source.

'You've fallen in too deep for me this time.'

*this time*? Have I.. fallen in before? Who is this?

'... I have to let you go. To let us go.'

'Forgive me.'


CHARACTERS

NAME ROLE PERSONALITY NOTES
TALAA PROTAGONIST Curious, brave, small The youngest. Driven by scent and instinct.
WISTERIA SISTER High energy, some attitude One of the two siblings waiting outside the den.
SURGE BROTHER Bold, competitive The other littermate. Especially competitive due to how their father behaves.
FALL BIG BRO Stoic, dutiful On guard duty. Dismissive but not unkind. Tells you to "go ask Mom."
SPRUCE BIG SIS Not yet introduced Currently only mentioned by scent. If there's time, she might be introduced to tell some pack secrets.
REED MOM Dedicated, nurturing Tries to be the best mother she can be, would sacrifice it all. Blocked by Dad who forces her to rest and delegates cub duties.
THORN DAD Tough love. Kind of an asshole. Refuses to let you return to the den until you've "done something impressive." Gatekeeper figure who thinks Mom does too much.

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