Made in the space of a week for GBJam10

Semi-online experience. You'll need a connection to play.


Theme: PLANT - To hide something secretly.

WASD + Space

or

Arrow Keys + Z



Somewhere across the 4 realms, another player has planted and hidden the fabled artifact. 

 As one of four kinsman, track down and unearth the artifact and bury it somewhere secret and safe, to prevent further prying hands. 

There's a handful of things going on in the game (plot and mechanics) that I didn't have time to telegraph very well. Points to anyone who catches them.
StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.4 out of 5 stars
(14 total ratings)
AuthorDean
GenreAdventure
Made withUnity
Tagsasynchronous, Atmospheric, Fantasy, GBJam, Multiplayer, Pixel Art, Retro, Story Rich, Unity, weird
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
MultiplayerAd-hoc networked multiplayer

Comments

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Found on the first try and I planted it in the worst possible place

Played four or five times. This was sublime, and although I never achieved the stated goal of the game I’ll be thinking about this for a while. Although it’s pretty obtuse in its messaging and hard to know what to do without reading the comments, there’s a lot about it that was really evocative after spending a bit of time with the game.

  • The feeling of not knowing whether I was exploring a dead online game—was I just following my own trails?
  • The sudden death of the protagonist, with no prompt to play again, giving you time to sit with the journey you just took them on.
  • The merchants selling things I could probably never hope to afford within one lifetime.
  • The cues on where to hide/find the artefact based on the different cultures’ superstitions, creating a sort of meta-roleplaying-game that you can choose to participate in and you can only hope the previous bearer was playing too.
  • The time I played as a farmer—the only time that when I died my body and possessions dissolved and returned to the earth. That really struck me.

Thank you for this!

Found and replanted the stuff on first try

Slapped a few zomboids while doing that, unfortunately, I ran out of time so I didn't really hide it somewhere very safe.

Foinaly got round to playing this, and wow! What a great mysterious experience. Amazing vibe and sound. Love the little bit of online human trails that you love to do :). Fantastic stuff ^_^

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I love everything about it so much.

The concept and visuals are amazing! Easily one of my favourite games on itch 0:

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Fantastic concept!  :)

I must have made half a dozen attempts, grumbling "Where'd you hide it, you (so-and-so)?!" to myself before finally finding success.  lol

One thing I'm curious about, does the day/night cycle progress in real time, or only when your character is moving?

I also had a stray thought that it might be cool if there was some kind of leaderboard that keeps track of either the players whose hiding spots have gone undiscovered for the longest number of IRL hours/days, or who's had the most people try and fail to find said hiding spot.

Again, love this idea.  I can't think of any other game that's done this, and I've played a LOT of video games over the last three decades or so.  Kudos!

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Thank you so much! I actually do have a leaderboard ready to implement, I just never got round to it.

Having said that, it's telling me that the longest a given artifact has been hidden is only 5 days / 133 hours. Which sounds short considering how little people are playing it. I honestly though it would have been lying dormant for weeks by now, although I guess it only takes one guy a week to find it.

Rock on!  I'm actually fairly giddy wondering how long it will take someone to find my hiding spot.  First thing I did after waking up today was check on its status.  Don't imagine it will take long for someone to guess where it is, considering in my excitement after finally finding it, I then proceeded to panic-bury it.  lol

Shame more people aren't playing it.  One would think the insanely simple but novel idea of "find where the last pirate re-buried the treasure" would have players dedicating a considerable amount of time studying your map and scrambling to out-hideandseek each other.  

(+1)

incredibly beautiful

Do you have to find the artifact to be able to hide it again?

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Yis

(+1)

Beautiful game. Very novel concept and incredibly well done. Hats off to you!

Tried the game 4 times. I'm unable to understand what to do.

Looks like I need to follow previous players footprints, but every time I start playing, there is no footprint on my screen. So the goal is to guess where the artifact is, without any hint?

I will try more runs tonight. Maybe at some point my game will start showing some footprints to follow?

Each player starts in one of 4 different spawn points, so you'll probably have to track down the footprints by exploring the map a little bit first.

I noticed that. You can pick where to start at the beginning, but I never seen any footprint. Also I tried to explore other zones without luck.

:(

Beautiful game.

I was not able to understand the main objective and how can I achieve it. I was just walking around and killing zombies but I didn’t know if I was doing any progress.

After 2 rounds I started to understand the options of the beginning for the character creation but I don’t know what are the consequences of choosing each option so at the end I choose them randomly. Also, I see that doesn’t matter which character I ended up in the same scenario with the same mechanics, I see the objective was different but still I was not able to find the artifact :/

After 3 or 4 rounds I started to understand the fact that there are other players also playing and that they can find the artifact as well and find it even if I was able to hide it… very interesting! :)

Great project.. thanks for the creation!

I realise it's slow, so thank you for sticking it out and trying it out - more than once!

Keeping things obtuse works well with some stuff, but I agree certain mechanics need to be telegraphed more clearly.

WebGL version please :)

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Sadly the WebGL build doesn't mix well with the server-side stuff.

(+2)

Scratch that. Got it working.

Great!! :)

(+5)

Hot tips, because the game doesn't make it terribly clear:

  • The trails are actual previous players. Follow in their footsteps.
  • There's a day and night cycle. You'll have about 3 days to do everything.
  • Approach/attack zombies when they're not moving
  • Guys in the black cloaks are pointing at something
  • Dig 2/3 times to unearth something
  • When you can, hold Space/Z  to plant something
    • You'll only get one shot at it

Thank you!  The tip about hitting my action button at least two or three times in a row was especially helpful.  Don't think I would have successfully found the artifact without it.  :)