Wolf and Kid is a small game made for the 1#McBacon gamejam, a small game in which you gather and hunt in order to survive and save your wolfy friend Biggs.

The premise of this game, a family bond between man and animal is a wonderful idea.
We know more cheerful forms such as the good old jungle book, but I expected a more serious direction seeing how this kid is out to learn the proper way to hunt.
The atmosphere of the writing as well portrays loneliness and comraderie, but no fairytale.

Yet at the same time the boy's behaviour and dialogue does not suit his upbringing. Wolfs communicate a lot more with body language than we do, and living with one, let alone being raised by one would means that you use this feature and adapt. Despite that our boy communicates as though the wolf itself could speak - using language only. Using language when in fact he did not have a chance to actually learn the human language!
I realize this is fiction and fantasy, but if a boy is raised by a wolf since young age, it would be ridiculous for him to be as talkactive as he is (nevermind on the hunt! remember the deer).
It is also pointed out that other wolfs attacked our little kid, while Biggs for some special reason did not, which does not make much sense whatsoever. Wolfs are not really known for attacking humans unless starving, too.
Cases of being raised by animals did take place, so perhaps I just expected something more realistic.
As it is, it is .. semi-realistic. It is somewhere inbetween not knowing what exactly it is supposed to be. The expressionless face actually suits the situation, but not in company with the emotion-filled, reminiscing dialogue.


Jungle Book-feeling, go!

With that in mind, the dialogue/monologue passages felt .. awkward. I assume this is just me and will not bother other people, but it is a simple story that did not need the explanations that were given, but did not have actual meaning behind it.
Our kid was saved and has found a new family .. as we know from the opening paragraph.
I felt half of the monologue was not adding anything new or important. It felt a little bit redundant. I realize the bond is the focus, but what does a life in the wild entail? What sacrifices do have to be made if you are not living in a pack of wolves but instead on your own?
A brawl with other wolves brought you to the dire situation you are in, why did that happen and is it the first time?
There are so many areas I would loved to have heard about, but did not.


Which then leaves the gameplay ..

It is a little bit of a harvest moon-esque game.
I did not feel a bit of difficulty, danger or the need to survive. You just gather and farm until you are rich. But unlike harves moon, there is no sense of progression just as there is very little to do.
There is plenty of food, plenty of ways to heal yourself in the rare case you do get hurt by the almost-never-attacking animals. The only really dangerous animal is the snake, and only if you do not have herbs on you to cure the poison with.

While there is a variety of materials, there is barely any need for them.


A stone fountain! ..and I don't even need them.

Crafting is obsolete, and gathering very simple.
You can upgrade your knife ... and that is about all I ever did.
You can build arrows .. well, could, if you were able to find the items for it. And a larger quiver .. except you cannot build that one, either.
You can grill meat to be able to use it for your barely needed health-recovery.

While you can add a passive bonus to a day's worth of a hunt by using rarer items, the only crucial part is feeding Biggs with lots of raw meat. Done.
Perhaps the herbs you can feed him helped as well .. but there is no way to know.

I stopped gathering most of the materials because it was frankly a mere waste of time. And I even had the maximum amount of most of them, too.
I killed animals who could not really fight back and brought meat home.
I realize cuts had to be made and I hope that this can see some expansion.
The walking speed is fairly low and so is the actual procedure.

Where does the survival factor lie? If food is so abundant, so easy to obtain, why, then, are we listening to how hard it is to survive in the wild? A faster movement speed with scarce areas would already help to emphasise the need to search and hunt.

Waiting for prey, trapping or chasing it would be interesting, but I can see how difficult it is to make that work. It is not bad to go hunting in A-RPG style, but it is too easy right now. This is no hunt, this is slaughter.
Add to this the fact that animals respawn (herbs and so do not) - the only important resource is the only one in complete abundance.

The gameplay is a huge contrast to the theme, the scarcity of food and the general plot-line of our kid making first real steps alone. It diminished the impact of it all. If you had given me the ending right phrases right after the written opening paragraph, it would have made a bigger impact on me than playing through the actual game.


The core values are wonderful - the graphics are nice, cute, with a darker tone mixed into it (at least at your campsite, the sparkling hunting grounds seem a little bit too light for my taste). The mapping, too, does not disappoint.
The sounds are well-chosen, although I dislike the lack of music. It fits the natural surroundings, but just listening to some animal noises over and over is making the repetitious nature of the game more apparant than need be.
And the complete lack of sound diminished the impact of the opening passage greatly.

There are a few bugs and typos here and there , such as a few resources being endless and you having the bow in your inventory before you picked it up.
One minor complaint I have is that you have are brought back to your camp instantly once the nights comes - without it being stated anywhere. It is just a little annoying for the first day as I backtracked, but it could at the very least be part of the manual you have.
Considering this is a short jam game it is fairly polished.

This game is overall .. a cute and fairly well-crafted game with a few conflicting story points. I give my kudos for making it with so little time, but I myself could not enjoy it as it is.