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A number of students from Johan Winter's Academy in Alaska have decided to spend the winter break on the university campus instead of returning home for the holidays. Christmas is at hand and the remaining students and faculty members are making preparations for the celebration.

You play as Alistair Morgan, the Resident Advisor to the other students and an heir to a sizeable fortune. He has a strained relationship with his father, who disapproves of his choice to study at a less prestigious school far away instead of following the family tradition. Alistair hopes to simply spend some time with his girlfriend, Natalia, as well as his friends instead of suffering another Christmas celebration with his demanding family. And as everyone joins in the celebrations, he does too. Unfortunaly, it won't be as simple as he hopes. And as everything goes wrong at once, it will be up to him to rescue his friends, while monsters stalk the hallways.

The game features monsters patrolling the different areas of the school, triggering a chase if they spot the player. Monsters have a different detection radius depending on whether the player character is currently running, walking or standing as well as depending on the direction the monster is facing. There
are also the keelut, whose sighting brings only trouble. And of course, the
great wolf Amarok starts its hunt soon enough...

There is also a cold weather system, which triggers a game over if Alistair spends too long outside in the freezing cold. The positions of the different characters you need to rescue are also random, adding some replayability. If you trigger a Game Over, you can press Enter to skip the long Game Over animation.

Credits are additionally available as a separate download.

Plugins Used:

HUD Maker Ultra by SRDude - Website: http://sumrndm.site/

Thanks to SRDude for his amazing plugin!

Instructions:

Move with Arrow Keys.

Hold shift to Dash (If Always Dash is on, holding shift will make you walk instead).

Press Esc to access the Menu.

Interact with NPCs and objects by pressing Enter.

Holding W allows you to turn in place using the Arrow Keys, without moving.

Press Q to jump (Has a cooldown of 5 seconds, useful to jump over a monster if it catches you in a narrow space with no way out).

Monsters can detect the player character within up to two spaces if they are stationary, up to 3 spaces if they are Moving and up to 4 spaces if they are Dashing. Their detection range is further increased by 1 space if they are facing towards the player.

Use the Book of Survival Tips item in the Key Items category if you need more instructions.

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5, Windows
Rating
Rated 4.0 out of 5 stars
(8 total ratings)
AuthorBeregon
GenreSurvival
Made withRPG Maker
Tags2D, Horror, mythology, Pixel Art, RPG Maker, Spooky, Survival Horror
Average sessionA few hours
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard

Download

Download
Amarok's Howl 1.6 For Windows.zip 115 MB
Download
Credits.zip 607 kB

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

I'm glad I finally sat down to play this! It was so fun, very hard haha. But very well designed. I liked how much sense all the interiors made. Like, I could picture where they fit into the bigger world and their size often felt like it fit with the exterior size and shape. I liked that I could picture where I was on the big map even when I was inside of buildings. 

The play aspect of it functioned really well. I can only think of a few moments where I felt like it wasn't responding to me and I think that was mostly me panicking and the delay hadn't rolled over yet haha. It was very hard! It took me a while to get a better feel for the area around the baddies but it was very satisfying to slowly get better at it as I went along. 

I DO think there are too many people to rescue. It felt like a slog after like the fourth person. I no longer felt scared, I just felt kind of like "in too deep now just get it done". I think, either less people or have more in pairs. I know this is an older game and it's not deeply helpful feedback but I felt it would be disingenuous not to say it. 

But I really REALLY liked that she only told us about the locations of who was left. That's SUCH a small detail and such, such, SUCH a game changer. I remember a panic of realizing I thought I had to keep track of names on different screens and was really relieved that I could just ask her and it was an updated list of who was left. 

The after credits scene is so sad!! I thought it was cool it existed but man!!! Wtf B!!! wtf!!! 

Really fun!

(+1)

This game has a lot of cool features. I really liked the jumping over the wolves and the detection system that the enemies have is really exciting. The game has a very scary vibe to it and reminds me of some of the older horror games of search and explore. A nice mix of visual novel and spy horror.

(1 edit)

Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed the game! Did you manage to finish it?

Also, could you give the game a rating? :)

(+1)

so far love it, 1 thing tho in the very start with thee (what i'm presuming are) bookshelfs i hate how it's not the same on both sides, my ocd kicked in when i saw it so i had 2 comment about it lmfao 

You mean in the dorm room you start in, right? Yeah, I guess that would've looked a bit better :D

Hope you enjoyed playing the game!

(1 edit) (+1)

oh ya the game was great i just like postin whtvr i can about whtvr games i play, thank you for puttin ur time into a game for us all 2 enjoy and i hope u continue 2 make more, gonna be honest i never finished bc i have a short attention span lol but i played a good 20 or 30 mins of it

(+1)

When escaping Amarok, where do I go after exiting the library? I can't pass the two keeluts

(+1)

Hi, thanks for playing my game! When you exit the library, there's a path leading to the Gym area. Here's the path marked on a picture:

(+1)

thanks!

No problem! Hope you enjoyed the game and the ending!

(+1)

I most certainly did! In a way, I'm sad that the ending wasn't happy, but I also enjoy sad endings. Thank you for this!

(+1)

First Impression. Follow and subscribe if you like the channel. Inbox and subscribe if you want your game played :D?

Wow, thanks for making a video on my game, I did not expect that! Feel free to check out my two other RPG Maker games if you want, they are both much shorter than this one (like, 30-45 minutes each), you might be able to do both of them in one video :D One is an action RPG , the other is a SHMUP platformer I made for a week-long no-plugin game jam.

Also, feel free to rate the game here if you want :D

Endurance actually does regenerate while inside a building, but slowly, so you probably didn't notice it (it's 1 point of Endurance recovered per 10 seconds spent in an indoor map). 

In the original version, it was 1 point of Endurance per second, but I changed it because Cold Weather ended being basically a non-factor that way. This way, you can actually run out of it, though mainly on Hard. Nevertheless, thanks for the 9/10 score for gameplay (maybe 10/10 now since Endurance does regenerate? :D Nevertheless, if it's too slow, I can boost it a bit, atleast on easy and medium.)

I made the intro like a week ago while the rest of the game is almost a year old, so if you've noticed any improvement, maybe that's why. Tbh, you are kinda right about the tutorial, but better safe then sorry :D I did include an option to skip right to the Doctor's Office part. The locations of each person change per game, so there's some degree of replayability there.

The wolves do have random patrol routes, but the destination is randomized only once they reach one of the Destination Points, so that's probably why some of the wolves were walking in the same direction where you were switching maps. it's possible to avoid them if you hug the walls or stand still and wait them out. Also, there's always multiple routes to get to an area, so you can bypass the wolves.

This game was originally made for a game jam in two weeks, except it was more like a week due to lack of time. It was also the second game I ever made and I had trouble getting the chase system to work on my own, so I never really got to finish some of the maps, as you've noticed. :D Something to keep in mind for future games.

The reason why the maps are big is for gameplay reasons. The wolves used to have a larger detection range in the original version. and there also needed to be a good amount of space so you could  avoid them. I could probably get away with 4 tile wide hallways in the dorms, but oh well, hindsight. And yeah, asi I said, some of the maps are unfinished and I never got around to remaking them (well, I changed the beds in the Dorms, but that's it). Like the Tunnels and the first floor of Dorms and Main Building. I'll definitely make sure that mapping quality isn't so variable in my future games, glad you've enjoyed some of the maps atleast. :) Which ones did you like, btw? 6/10 for mapping is a fair score, maybe a bit generous, but I won't complain :D

Anyway, thanks a lot for playing my game. You were actually near the end there, maybe 5-10 more minutes and it would've been the end credits :D

(+1)

Ohhhh maaan, if i knew that i wasn't far from finishing the game I would have finished it xD.

It's fine, hope you check out some of my other games in the future :D