Child of Winter

[kesac]

Information
The picture above captures my new game quite well. Child of Winter is a small puzzle-adventure game where you play as a little boy trying to find his way home. The game revolves around navigational puzzles where you must maneuver through underground caves and icy terrain. This is a short and simple game, and can be completed in roughly 10-15 minutes. It has two endings, of which you are randomly assigned when playing.

This is the first game that I've come close to finishing using LÖVE. On top of programming the game and composing the music, I also drew the art for the first time in my life (as you might be able to tell from the picture). The last thing this game needs to jump from 0.9 to 1.0 is some community feedback and testing. Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

Controls

• Movement: Arrow Keys OR WASD
• Action: Spacebar OR Enter
• Exit: Escape

Translations

• v1.0 Deutsch, Italiano, Polski are hosted on the project page
• v0.9 Deutsch by YGOFreak1997
• v0.9 Italiano by Nixola

Updates (April 2012)

• Added version 1.0
• Added version 0.9x which is compatible with the new 0.8.0 release of LÖVE. German and Italian translations are directly included with this distribution but are not toggleable in-game yet (change line 30 in main.lua for other languages). This is a minor update to fix game crash issue in LÖVE 0.8.0.

[jradich]

This is pretty good...
But it's got me thinking... Could I use your code to make a pokemon clone?

[Ensayia]

Wow, pretty much all 15 minutes were spent on that last puzzle, that one was crazy.

Pretty well put together, not entirely sure what the ending means though... I guess it could imply the kid actually died from the fall.

[Davidobot]

Can you plz explain the ending where he dies?

[kesac]

This is pretty good...
But it's got me thinking... Could I use your code to make a pokemon clone?

If you can read my code and pull out the necessary parts, by all means! I've been planning to slap the MIT license on the code. Or does the community prefer zlib license?

Can you plz explain the ending where he dies?

Spoilers ahead

The "child of winter" the title of the game references is not actually the boy you play as, but the mysterious girl you have a chance of encountering after you finish the puzzles. Whether she is real or the boy's hallucination (a possible side effect from his fall) is unknown.

If she is real, then she is clearly a supernatural being and the boy's presence has angered her somehow. If she is a hallucination, then the boy may be merely succumbing to his injuries (Ensayia's interpretation is bang on with this assumption).

I suppose whether the boy actually dies is up for interpretation too, but in the ending where you meet the girl the boy will never make it back home, so in my mind he does.

For those of you who got the girl ending, the alternate ending shows the boy never encountering the girl and making it out the caves safely.

[Jasoco]

I got the alternate ending. How do you get the normal one?

[coffee]

I opened the game and said "poor guy, no money for a color lcd"
You fooled me with your game start. I thought was to be a gb rpg adventure style. Not a fan of puzzle style but I liked. Things are smooth and have a proper atmosphere. Your code seems well too. So congratulations!

[DumpOnIt]

This game is pretty slick. You made it look so pro. Rock on and make more games!

[Nixola]

Great game, I luckily managed to get both endings easily... I don't like the one in which the boy comes home, it's too... (damn, I can't remember the adjective >.<)
I LÖVEd it also because it didn't make me feel sick due to the PO2 Syndrome

[Larsii30]

I know a game on a palm handheld with a similier gameplay
You've done a well rounded feeling in the game. The story(s) is(are) cool, the graphics are good
and everything seems to falls into place.