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A jam submission

Familiar FindersView game page

Lewd adventure, roguelike exploration!
Submitted by Impy — 4 minutes, 2 seconds before the deadline
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Familiar Finders's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Novelty#103.6303.630
Ambition#123.7043.704
Play#153.6673.667
Sound#193.4443.444
Narrative#223.0373.037
Overall#233.2373.237
Aesthetic#253.6673.667
Stealth#282.8892.889
Horny#343.0003.000
Kink#422.7412.741
Harmony#562.5932.593

Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

i started early
Did a bit of sketching for characters and gameplay concepts.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

The art is gorgeous. I always love your character designs, Impy.

Developer

Thank you! I used a variety of my unused older sketches for character ideas. Piper's design was an alternative bodyguard concept for Secrets of the Bastion. Gwynn and Boa used to be mech pilot designs in a very old game that never got made. Hiffa was intended to be in a first-person dungeon crawler. I get a bit sentimental about my characters that don't make it into a game, so it was lots of fun to give them all a chance to shine beyond their old concept art!

Submitted(+1)

The pixel art is super charming! It's pretty fun to play as well.

Developer

Thank you for playing! I'm happy that you had a good time!

Submitted(+1)

Honestly this kind of puzzle/roguelike game is straight up fun and relaxing.  The mechanics took a second to learn, but as soon as I figured it out I started working out strategies for it.  Estimating how much energy I had left to squeeze out of the map, or how much I could do per scouting on a map was nice.
Also, it felt like a great accomplishment to find the door, and use the rest of my resources to stock up on items.

The sound design was great and matched the pixel art style. All in all, it felt very classic and classy.
There's also a lot to it for the amount of time you had to make a game. Which is awesome!

Developer(+1)

I sometimes make my games a bit too complicated, so I'm glad that a lot of players are able to get into the swing of things quickly this year! I'm very happy to hear that you enjoyed the gameplay and my art, thank you!

Submitted(+1)

I do like this grindy sort of little game. It's very soothing.

Developer

I think it's somewhat easy to get into a good rhythm. I want to offer more expeditions in the future so that there are options of varying length and difficulty available for every type of player.

Submitted(+1)

so i have a handful of like, small complaints i want to get out of the way first:

1. after seeing the text "welcome back" i was under the impression that the game was going to save my progress. from what i can tell this is not the case, which is not unexpected for a jam game, but it does mean i lost my progress after quitting after my first play session.

2. i watched the intro cutscene a few times as at first i did not even realize the two names were different because they're both orange and a very similar length. i think you should recolor piper's name as gwynn's name matches her hair color which is what made me think all the cutscene text belonged to her.

3. i personally have a kind of hard time dealing with the amount of progress that you lose when you mess up an expedition. this may be because i simply didn't play long enough to get more comfortable with the mechanics. but, i did find it a tiny bit stressful to play through knowing that if i mess something up i'll have to do it all over again.

but now for what i did like.

i think the core gameplay loop of scouting out different things is fun and has a surprising amount of depth. e.g., scouting plants to make scouting the animals more efficient, or scouting rocks to scout more rocks in the future. these little gameplay patterns were nice and i think there's a lot of room to add many more. (i only got through the first expedition so perhaps there were even more variations in the later ones already).

the general way that exploring dark tiles gives you energy which then must be expended on scouting is a cool way to handle this kind of system. it is the kind of thing that slightly stresses me out, due to the limited number of dark tiles, but i do think it is a very effective way to implement exploration gameplay. there's a lot of fun choices about where to go next, e.g. trying to reveal more tiles around something to use the companion versus just trying to scout something with a high energy cost to earn at least some xp before capping the energy bar.

i really like the fact that making room for your companion makes scouting more effective. it's a very natural way to make the companion an important part of the player's experience. it also makes the scouting feel more strategic, as e.g. when i scouted the familiar i made sure to clear out a nearby rock first so there was more room.

the way that the spell slots each correspond to a specific shape of potion is a fun little mechanic.

if i have time i do think i want to come back and try to do more expeditions. i think it is legitimately quite fun to go through the game, but just difficult to find the time to do it in one sitting.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing and the suggestions! 

Saving will be added at some point, but I'm still new to the Godot engine, so I need to figure out a good way to do it that will ensure compatibility with updated versions. I may just add a small warning that the current version does not save somewhere.

I was hoping that the speaking animations would help players understand who's talking at a glance, but unique dialogue name colors is a good idea to help with that.

I tried to keep the expeditions short enough not to feel like too much of a setback if you fail. I'd like to add more consolation prizes for partial completion. Right now you get xp for your shop to unlock new prisms and expedition options, but I'd like for to offer some permanent upgrades in the future too.

In the patched version that I'm working on right now, I'm introducing silhouettes for things that are just a bit beyond the range of vision to help players plan their exploration routes.

Sorry about the current lack of saves, but I'm happy that you had a pretty good time regardless!

Submitted(+1)

Oh wow, this game set off my nostalgia sensors something fierce. Getting serious classic DOS CRPG vibes playing this! Lovely pixel art and beautiful use of music. Really loved this and looking forward to seeing more in future updates!

Developer

Thank you, I'm very happy that you enjoyed the art style! I was looking at some classic adventure games for inspiration. The music isn't my own, but I always try to match my art to the soundtracks that I pick.

I've got plans to make at least a couple of updates for this game this year, and I'm already working on a fairly substantial patch.

Submitted(+1)

Quite the fund game, Took a little bit to wrap my head around but once I did, it was a lot of fun, planning out my moves and strategizing scouting and movement. The graphics and music were quite nice . I did encounter an unfortunate bug which prevented me to load into new levels, but what I played, I very much enjoyed. Fun mechanic and fun atmosphere, I would be keen to see more. ~

Developer

Glad you liked it! I have been looking for the bug that locks up the level selection screen all week, but still can't get it to occur, I hope it's not just Godot behaving differently on different computers.

Submitted(+1)

Solid presentation all around, although it took me quite a bit of time to actually get the hang of what was going on and how to play. It felt like exploring encounters were a bit high cost and a little more visual or audio feedback to tell players that their actions were progressing that may help. That said, the premise of the story was funny and the game looks and sounds good.

Developer(+1)

I had the encounter scouting costs lower in older versions, but the game felt like I was clicking too much and I also don't want for players to be able to clear half of the map. It's more meant to be about choosing what to interact with from a limited selection which grows as you explore. Better feedback for what you're doing is something I'd like to work towards, the text-only menu was easy to make so that's what I did for now, but I would love to show more visual cues and progress bars in the future. Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

I got into this game a lot, and enjoyed it the whole time I was playing. It reminded me of a cross between a dungeon crawler and a resource optimization thing, where you have to explore the map and spend your energy optimally in order to progress. In that way, failing a stage didn’t feel frustrating because you can discover more efficient strategies each time, and enjoy the feeling of figuring out how to use the mechanics to your advantage. There’s a sense of purpose to its initial complexity, and I was even disappointed when it ended so soon.

The eroticism of the game didn’t do much for me because the characters and narrative weren’t fleshed out in this demo, and the nudity was more casual than sexual. I will also say the game is a bit buggy and I think I was in a state where I didn’t have all the familiars unlocked in the main menu despite having completed them all, but the bugs only affected that one instance.

I don’t have much more to say. The mechanics are well done and I really liked playing it.

Developer(+1)

The gameplay seems to click for a lot of players this year, which it didn't for my last two submissions on release, so I'm very happy that I've been able to hit the mark this time! I definitely want to add more mechanics in the future like more map locations, new spells, and gods to worship. If you liked my game, you may enjoy Desktop Dungeons which it was heavily inspired by (I recommend the original over the remake).

The erotic content unfortunately took longer to make than I thought it would, so I ended up with about half of the events that I was aiming to make. They are not presented how I wanted them to occur either, you're supposed to get split up and find your partner getting it on with one of the rival characters directly on the adventure map.

Submitted(+1)

I’ve had the same issue as InvisibleBit, but after completing the 3rd expedition and unlocking the 4th. Still, I managed to get deep enough into the game (after several failed tries in the 1st expedition, trying to get a hang of the mechanics) and it’s quite enjoyable and challenging! Very fun with great visuals and music!

Developer(+1)

Thank you, I'll definitely figure out what the bug is all about. I'm just happy that I caught some of the even worse ones before the deadline. There's a lot of original code in this thing so there's been too many things it does that weren't meant to happen. I'm very glad that you have enjoyed the gameplay!

Submitted(+1)

Wonderful new game from you. I found it quite fun to play more and more of it. Managing your energy to research stuff to gain items is an interesting concept. And the map is randomly generated, so each try you get something new to explore and solve. The sound design is stellar as well, fits very well with the game. 

You keep making these characters looks so lively and cute and full of detail. I enjoy the short interactions they make together. Well done indeed.

Developer(+1)

Thank you, I still feel new to animating the sprites, but I'm really happy to hear that you liked how lively they are! There will be a bit of shop management in the future, the research levels are just there to give players a sense of progress even on failed expeditions. I can't write music so I usually buy an album early into development and adapt some of my art and setting to fit with the audio, I'm glad that you liked it!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I think I found a bug that stops you from progressing to the next expedition. In the first expedition, in the level with Boa, I went through the door without fully completing Boa's encounter since I ran out of energy, and after finishing the rest of the level, getting the 1st familiar, and seeing the 2nd expedition unlock, I instead replayed the first expedition wanting to fully scout Boa's encounter and hoping to see a new event. No new event, but then after completing the expedition again, the 3rd expedition unlocked, but at this point, the menu was playing multiple songs, and while I could select any of the three expeditions, I couldn't start any of them. I had to restart the game.

I really like the game though! I ended up spending much longer than I thought figuring out how to manage my energy and what to scout for. I'll definitely be replaying this to get to the expeditions I missed.

Developer(+1)

I got a similar bug report from a different player who grinded the first level to increase the shop level. I'll need to look into what makes this happen, I mostly just went through all of the four levels in sequence when I tested them. Thank you for reporting this, now I know that it's unfortunately not too rare of an occurrence.

There are 2 sexy events in the game right now, the first of which occurs at the end of the second expedition and it does feature Boa. I hope you'll get another chance to see it!

Submitted(+1)

Another banger title. I find myself looking forward to  your entries each year, even though NTR isn't my cup of tea, because they always have rock-solid game design. (This one reminds me of Desktop Dungeons a little.) Plus of course the characters are cute. 

In fact, it feels like I've written this exact comment before, because your work is just that consistent. Nice job.

Thanks for including a Linux build, too!

Developer

Desktop Dungeons was my main source of inspiration, though I did make some key design changes. No recovery for encounters makes the game less about finding the one that gives optimal experience points, and more about choosing which ones you want to scout the most. I'm happy that you enjoyed the game, thank you!

Submitted(+1)

The game mechanics were a bit obtuse for me at first, but once I understood what I was doing they turned out to be interesting and intriguing.

I also like the character design. The girls all look adorable, and the environmental art also does its job.

Developer

A lot of my games end up a bit mechanically obtuse on release, I just have too many things I want to add and no time to explain them in tutorials. I'm glad that you had fun with it in the end!

Submitted(+1)

Okay, so, first, I gave myself 20 minutes to check this out and played for more than an hour, and am only stopping because I have to make dinner. I got two of the familiars and am going to have to come back to it in a bit. I love it! Took me a good while to understand the systems and the way they work together, but once I did it all clicked and I was breezing through areas and having a good time strategizing which things to scout to be more effective at scouting the others. I did struggle a bit at first with remembering to see if I had any items I could use, and I think maybe having a little notification near your cursor when you have something that would be helpful would be a nice addition, at least for me.

Really fun to explore, and even though it was a bit tricky to get the hang of, it was really rewarding once I did. Great work!

Developer

I always end up misjudging how long it will take for new players to adjust to my games. I can breeze through all four expeditions myself in 20-30 minutes, but I'm glad that you had a good time as you learning the various mechanics! I'd have loved to make a short tutorial if I had a bit more time to spare. Notifications at the cursor could be a good idea, the tiles are fairly small, but I may still be able to outline the selected one in different ways to indicate what the result of your action will be.

(+1)

Incredible stuff as always. Impy's games are always so innovative that i came for the scenes and stayed for the gameplay.

Developer(+1)

Thank you, I'm very happy to hear that the gameplay already feels fun! My previous two jam entries were a lot more clunky in that aspect until they got upgraded to v3 or so. I wish I got more scenes done, but I'm trying to switch to animated events and those are always a lot more time consuming that I expect.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Interesting concept.  I had trouble learning the how the systems worked, but once I figured them out, it was more fun than I thought it would be, calculating energy and scouting levels and stuff.  Maybe if I had read the hints section earlier I would have saved myself some time :3  Also cute and lively characters.  Can I have a Boa the Hermit to take home?  Thanks

Developer

I'm really happy that you liked it! Sorry about the lack of a tutorial, it sadly ended up outside of my time budget. Since you want your own Boa to take home, you can have this original Boa with a bonus Gwynn as they were sketched back in 2018 for a game that has long since been abandoned. I wonder if giving 6 year old character designs new homes count as starting early?

Submitted(+1)

Yay!  Short(er) hair Boa!  And I don't think that really counts as starting early.  I used a song I'd started thinking of in my head a month earlier in my game.  I'd say as long as everything actually used in the game was made in February, you don't need to bother reporting it.  Bringing ideas into reality is much more work than coming up with the ideas in the first place.

Submitted(+1)

A lovely game! NTR themes always have a special place in my heart... and perhaps my pants! or is it my partner's pants? I don't know, you know what I mean, probably!

It took me a bit to understand how to play, the tips on the game page definitely helped but an in-game tutorial or guide could've been really helpful too. That's really my only comment, the game is fairly challenging but not unfair, and it's fun to try and optimize using my energy and gathering what I think I might need later. The deer with the apron thingy was so cute! All in all it's a fun experience with pretty pixel graphics, lovely characters, fun themes, and interesting gameplay.

I wish I had tried this one earlier to have more time with it, I really enjoyed it ^^ I might keep playing it even after the judging period ends though, I'm hooked on it and I wanna see what happens next! Amazing game, loved it <3

Developer(+2)

Thank you! The NTR aspect is sadly a bit unfinished, my party splitting system was too far away from working, so I reworked the events into cutscenes. In future versions, Gwynn or Piper will go missing after you interact with one of the rival characters and you'll need to find a hidden section on the map to see what they're up to. That's the whole reason why both of the events have a wall, you're supposed to be interacting with a map location to see them.

I had plans to add a brief tutorial, but there was way too much to fix on the last day. I fixed a bug that broke both of the sexy events entirely just 30 minutes before the deadline.

I can certainly promise that there will be updates to this game! Every game (except my first) that I've made for previous Strawberry Jams got extended in a big way after release.

Submitted(+1)

Awesome to hear! I can't wait to see how this ine gets extended, the premise is the right blend of fun, challenging and horny.