Flotsam
Flotsam is a game about crossing a river with strewn debris. What awaits you on the other side?
A Game by Matt Lempitsky (Bokonon)
Most Art by Yossarian
Created for the 35th GM(48) 48 hour Game Jam. (Theme: Two Sides)
Controls:
- WASD to Move
- Space to Pick Up/Put Down
- Q/E to Rotate Objects Left/Right
- F to Untoggle/Toggle Fullscreen
- ESC to Quit
Gamepad:
- Left Thumbstick to move
- A to Pick Up/Put Down
- Left/Right Shoulders to Rotate
This game has an ending and can be completed in about 20 minutes
BG Music:
From FreeMusicArchive.org
King Imagine - Foot Mood and Wind
If you played and enjoyed please consider leaving a rating on the actual game jam page:
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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Hey! I'm here from octopus. I didn't finish the game. I have thoughts.
Good stuff!
I like how standing on the floating pieces of wood makes them sink a bit and am definitely a fan of the puzzly system you have here, of placing blocks in rushing water to use them as a bridge.
Holding a piece of wood above my head has a really neat feeling to it, I think because these sorts of games don't often have vertically stacked layers? That I've seen? It makes the world feel distinctly 'not flat'.
Bad stuff!
It all gets a little too repetitive and slow for me, and it does it really really fast! Walking over the same bridge with no chance of error and no opportunity for expression gets pretty dull after 10 times. This is the reason I did not finish the game.
Also, you gotta credit the musician, assuming you got his music from the same place I did & it had the same license!
Personal hangups:
A big problem I've had with making games like this is there's no default "fun" to moving around. Consider a platformer by constrast: Walking across a flat piece of land, I can jump whenever I want without interrupting my movement towards wherever I'm going. With a game like this, walking across a flat piece of land has no vectors of expression. The plainest platformer just has more "play" than the plainest grid-based-movement game, and in this game there is a pretty strong current (ha ha! a pun) of performing pretty repetitive, pretty slow tasks.
There's pretty much no chance for interesting failure, incidental expression, critical success, or any kind of surprise, along the way from a piece of wood to the end of my bridge.
To get it out of the way first, and so that there's no misconception here, the credit to the artist is in the credits at the end of the game. (and to prevent any future confusion, I've added it to the page itself)
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback. I really appreciate the thought and care you put into it.
I think your critique regarding repetition is absolutely valid; the loop of scavenging for a piece of debris and bringing it to the end of your bridge is monotonous. The line between relaxing and boring is a razor blade. There's nothing interesting that happens to the player between point A (finding debris) and B (placing it). In the back of my head, I had hoped that the ever increasing walk between pieces of debris to end of the bridge would force the player to consider the placement more carefully/most optimally, but admittedly, even that assumes the player would "dread" the long walks which is not "fun." I focused narrowly on the conceit that the player's expression was the bridge creation itself.
I understand what you're saying regarding the expression inherent in platformers vs top-down grid games. It's definitely something to consider going forward.
Again, this feedback has given me a lot to think about. I really appreciate it.
Oh! I'm very sorry about assuming w/r/t the credits. It didn't occur to me that I had missed out on the credits because I hadn't completed the game 😅 I feel a bit silly.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with and respond to my critique. I totally get the appeal of building up a sort of ponderous building dread, a cost if you will, around a process of creation. It's cool, and I hope to see where you go next! If you ever want some feedback on something you're working on, or want to talk out some game design concepts or something, feel free to hit me up. Email's on my website :)
No apologies, necessary!
The critique was extremely helpful and has made me think about the decisions I made in a new way, and new ideas of how the world can interact with the player (and vice versa) have already started forming, so for that alone, thank you.
And thank you for the follow! I'd definitely love to gather feedback on future projects/mechanics. That's a very generous offer.