A downloadable game for Windows and macOS

There isn't a way out of this

The sound of dripping water echos around you, but you aren't alone in the dark. Caught in a recurring moment, you need to find a way to escape- or help

Made for the Pirate Software game jam.

Waw-sco-taw-NAWSH

Move using arrow keys or WASD
Interact using E
Click on dialogue to select
Space or enter to continue dialogue

As this is a jam game, there will be bugs and you may get stuck. For your convenience you can reset to the title screen by pressing "ESC", or to an ending screen by pressing "O"

Due to how variables are stored between scenes, you may need to fully quit the game if there is a node that is being carried over incorrectly. While I am working on fixing it ASAP, it may still be present in the currently build available

Thanks for your understanding - Len

Hello! I went into this wanting to try and solo a jam. While there are things that could be improved, and bugs that could be squashed, I'm pleased with the amount I got done in the 2 weeks. I enjoyed getting to try out frame by frame animation and making music; I don't want to think about coding again for a while. Probably could've saved myself some headaches by using a flowchart, but here we are...

And here we are!

It was nice to make something for the first time in a long time. If you take the time to play this- thank you. As with many a jam game, this one had bugs. So while you can complete the game, the way between you and secrets may be perilous. But folks have made it through to all the endings, so the loop is closed. Where I can, I have tried to make it as easy and possible to reach all endings.

For the first time in ... 5 years I think?- I made something. For that I'll be eternally grateful. It was nice to make something- anything- again, so thanks Pirate Software community.

I am really proud of what I accomplished by myself

I am particularly proud that all of the fonts are my own handwriting! I made fonts!!!
I learned a lot about animating, and it was really interesting to get to try out frame by frame
I made music! It maybe doesn't suck! I can't listen to it anymore from playing through the game so much!!!
I learned a dialogue system! I had never used Yarn Spinner before starting the project
I only cried about coding ONCE in the whole 2 weeks, which honestly is a record for these types of projects
I learned about 2D lighting!

If you'd like to know more about the characters in the game- they're based off of the rivers of Toronto. You can learn more about the buried rivers, streams, and creeks (and visit them, if you feel so inclined) at Lost River Walks.

Theming explained:

The theme of "it's spreading" is expressed through the river motif, and the ever flowing thoughts I have about exploring the relationship and tension between place, ownership, love, and cultural understanding. The idea of the fact that all of the the water below the city is being held back, and the eventuality that it will one day flow and spread again.

Nothing is done alone, even if you're making a game by yourself.

I got a tremendous amount of help through advice, emotional and moral support, and debugging and playtesting when I could no longer look at my own project. So I wanted to take some time to thank you all.

Thanks to Brynn for all of the help throughout the projects for whenever I needed coding advice, or to panic at someone. Without your help this game would likely look very different on the back end! You were extremely helpful- and thanks Liz for introducing us. You can check out Brynn's stuff here.

Thanks to Adam for being gracious in answering my Yarn Spinner questions, and putting up with random pings of me having a problem and only for me to solve it myself minutes later. I appreciate you. You can check out Adam's stuff here.

Thank you to folks on the Yarn Spinner Discord, and especially Jon and Tim for helping diagnose and fix my breaking your system trying to get variables to pass through scenes. You answering my late night panicked posting saved me hours and likely the project. You can learn more about Yarn Spinner here.

Thank you Liz for playing through and giving me feedback on almost every build. Being able to know more across so many builds was extremely helpful, and it's always a joy to hang out in voice chat. You can find Liz @lizrrdbreath on all socials.

To Ian, Pippin, Hazel, Kaelan, and Evan- thank you so much for running through the game and giving me feedback.

And to kit- thanks for putting up with me doing a game jam for two week straight.

Thanks to folks for creating space and being inspiring, both on and offline. You're rad!

More information

Status	Released
Platforms	Windows, macOS
Rating	Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 total ratings)
Author	theshepherdshound
Made with	Unity
Tags	2D, Atmospheric, Game Jam, Meaningful Choices, Monsters, recursive-narrative, Short
Average session	About a half-hour
Languages	English
Inputs	Keyboard

Download

Wonscotonach 1.7.zip 139 MB

Development log

Thinking About The Future
66 days ago
Visiting Garrison
87 days ago
Day 1 Boarding
90 days ago
Post Jam Vis Dev
91 days ago

Comments

@ColtonPhillips89 days ago

Your itch.io page looks incredible, you're really talented at design. It feels like I'm looking at a custom website haha, and definitely sets itself apart from the rest. I'll need to try to learn some of the tricks I'm seeing here! All of the trinkets in the banner and the raccoon gif are sublime.

The game art style is really fantastic, I think my partner would really enjoy this game, as it fits her sense of aesthetic. I think it's awesome that you made your own font for this game, that's super. I enjoyed the sort of fractal paw/river appearances of the Don's fur, it's a really nice effect, and all of the theming and characterization is so en pointe. The main character is cool, and goofy looking. The walk animation is great too. Oh, and the scene transitions :O

This game could only benefit with more interaction with these great characters, additional locations, and all that fun stuff. The looping mechanic works well, and I liked how this lead to the players sort of rushing to collect items, and returning more thoughtfully after an initial failure. I think the idea of an underground river is very sad and captivating. This game reminds me of a gothic Ghibli picture, and that game Night in the Woods, though I've never actually tried it.

My critical feedback would be super minimal. I would like the space bar to have the same effect as the enter button in your game. I'd also like the left mouse button and Enter key to advance dialog. In a nice story game like this, you don't mind really zipping through the dialog and enjoying it at your own pace, and I liked (a lot) how your dialog choices always made the most neutral default answer answerable to the enter key. It's a nice small introduction of player choice. Adding hover states to the message selections would be good. I might even suggest moving the interact button to be achievable with the space bar too. I feel like this game rewards simplistic and accessible controls. On the repeating time, it might be interesting to move characters in different locations or put them in situations requiring further loops. The river/loop theme is so good! The music gets repetive, as you said you whipped it up yourself. The tone and feel of the loop is really nice, it needs to be expanded with some more ups and downs, tensions and reliefs. It does the trick though. The game tells you to talk to Clarence to leave, but that doesn't do the trick. I did have to hot-swap to the final scene to enjoy the ending.

Please excuse me rattling off all the bugs I'm sure you're aware of XD

This is wonderful.

theshepherdshound89 days ago

All very valid points!

Since I was so new to Yarn Spinner, I was a bit ham stringed on my knowledge of how to make it as a manager work better for me. I looked into Speech Bubbles after purchasing it to try it out, but ran into enough snags I dropped working on it in favour of progress in other areas. Looks very cool and I intend to try it out more, but time limitations on the solo project just meant I just needed the time to focus on the other stuff. I also really wish I had time to do the speaking stuff I had been looking into, but both seemed like they'd take significant time either up front or later. So it goes.

I wish I could've done more with the music, and in terms of all of my skills is definitely the most lacking. I had made about 1-3 crescendoing tracks that added to each other, as well as an audio drone which was removed due to testing feedback on it making the game nauseating to play. But coming into implementation my knowledge of audio programming got hit and also got cut (I am really fast to cut if I spend more than an hour or so without progress. It was a cool idea, but my knowledge wasn't there yet).

Definitely wish I had had more time for longer character interactions. I like them all a lot, and learning about the specific histories of each creek was nice. There's someone who gives guided tours for walks of Toronto rivers, and I only learned about Lost River Walks while making this and I think it would be nice to go and see them. I like to think they like to be visited.

Going to Clarence was added in the last few builds, so it is definitely buggy. I think in certain situations you can talk to him to return to Don, but in others it doesn't. It likely has to do with my mismanagement of the passing variables through scenes, which is DEFINITELY hacky as heck and not how you're supposed to do it. I got good advice via Tim about setting up Yarn Spinner stuff better, but at that point it would've required me rearranging the whole project on the second week. So- system shipped with bugs!

Moving the characters would've been a very good choice, I didn't actually think about it at all! Likely wouldn't have been that hard, but I also likely would've just copied the scene entirely (which I did for the Conclusion cause I thought that made sense, in both hindsight and writing this now it doesn't, literally nothing changes!)

Thanks for taking the time to write a comment <3