The Burnt is an atmospheric first person game set in a nearly abandoned town. In The Burnt, you play as an ethereal specter with mere minutes before their surrounding area succumbs to ruin. If you so choose, follow one of the three warriors who have summoned you, aiding them along the way as their unseen, nudging helper. You’ll need energy from the surrounding area to touch much of anything, though, and for as much as you can scour, the clock is ticking…
Here’s a small ending guide (with separate sections)! Hopefully this helps if you (or anyone else) misses anything.
The Burnt’s Ending:
Doing nothing. If the timer runs out without another ending being reached, The Burnt arrives and the town is completely consumed.
The Knight’s Ending:
Assisting the Knight. Following her around to the bar (a white building on the treeline side of town), nudging a barrel there there, and then assisting her near and underneath the town’s windmill (it’s to the left of the hearth when you first exit it) achieves her ending. In more plain English, you activate the barrel with the tap, help her open the latched trapdoor, then fix the grandfather clock for her.
The Cleric’s Ending:
Assisting the Cleric. Following her to the mostly gutted library (on the treeline side of town. It’s a very broad, tall, light brown building) and assisting her inside is the first step. From there you follow the Cleric to the town’s barn on the opposite side of town (and make enough noise to spook what she’s looking for), and finally back to the Hearth where you start the game. In more plain English, you open a book she’s lingering beside, knock over a board to scare a sheep, and then provide enough energy for her final rite.
The Rogue’s Ending:
Assisting the Rogue. Following her to a locked general store (is behind the library building, which is a big beige cube) and fumbling with the lock begins the course for her ending. From there you follow the Rogue to a well (also near the library), help her with one of the game’s two sheep, and then help the rogue confront The Burnt with the contents of a conveniently placed bag. In more plain English, you help her open the general store, dislodge the sheep that’s trapped inside the well, and then pour energy into the bag of food she’s sitting beside.
Secret Ending:
Escaping for yourself. By collecting two thirds of all energies in the game (twenty to be exact), you break the ring of salt imprisoning you. The vessel needed to accomplish this task is north of town (the road on the way out of town, it’s a crack in the ring of salt) For this ending you mostly just need to scour the town for energy, a lot of which is found on the paths to other endings, and on-top of the town’s since abandoned guard towers. Some also are hiding in the pine-trees on The Burnt’s side of town.
Haven’t 100% verified yet, but I don’t think pausing the game stops the Burnt from growing. I’d say it was about maybe halfway full when I paused the game and alt-tabbed out. When I resumed the game, it was about 90%ish.
Also, I don’t know if I’d call it “slow paced”, minus the summoning intro part (pls add a skip button). The game pretty much requires you to fairly frantically-ish run around to nab the orbs in time, especially if you’re going to aim for ending #5.
Pretty neat game overall, though.
EDIT: about the skip button thing, I just found out that just hitting the E key doesn’t get you free, but I clicked my mouse a bunch while I hit E and it let me free early.
I really wanted to commend you on making such an interesting setting and a unique tone for, what is mostly, a fetish game. No irony, I think it’s really neat, and the game was enjoyable to play, it didn’t overstay it’s welcome or anything.
If I had any real criticisms, it would just be wanting some more ways to get information about the town, and also the monster. Maybe some kind of ending cg could be cool too, the Cleric’s ending leaves me wanting to know what that looked like.
Also, and this is more of a nitpick, I like the Burnt’s design overall! The jack’o lantern-esque face is fun, and I dig the imagination that the low poly nature leaves for interpreting some of it. But it really did not need what looks to be massive tits, I respect the possible intentions, implying it was once human, or even just adding more of a fetish element to the game, but it did clash a bit to me with it’s otherwise “spooky” design.
Great job, it was cool to see another 3D submission! It’s nice and concise, if you ever went back to this idea or even just wanted to do another project similar I’d love to see something more fleshed out.
A very interesting game! You have a really unique 3D art style. I think I got all 5 endings, each ranging from bleak to beyond hopeless. I think the warrior’s ending was the most “positive” which isn’t saying much given how dark all the other endings are.
The setting was interesting, leaving me wanting to know more about the world. The beginning section is a bit long to be unskipable, I only learned you could skip it after reading SRP’s post. Overall I really liked it, even without the fetish elements the setting and story were interesting enough for an enjoyable short experience.
Also it technically a bug but it made my life easier, running diagonally seems to make you run faster.
Really appreciating the response, everyone! As for the intro, I’m afraid some things might be ambiguous. For the cold open (“Spirits! Send your strongest warrior!”) you can press [E] to got start to the main menu fade in. For the opening of the game itself, while you can’t speed up the minute of chatter, there’s a single energy orb floating behind you that you need to face to collect. Then you can hit [E] while looking at the ring beneath you to get free and have some extra time to explore. This was meant to be a tutorial moment, but it seems I made it a little too obtuse.
Also, being that this game was indirectly inspired by Pathologic, I’ll say that diagonal running is a feature now. I appreciate everyone’s patience with this.
Very interesting game! The doomed atmosphere with the bittersweet endings really took me by surprise! In other words, I wasn’t used to it, but in a good way! All three characters were really neatly designed and very cool to watch them fight back against the monster in their own unique ways, I really felt for them.
All in all, awesome game. I managed to get every ending and each was fascinating in its own way.
Hm. WASD doesn’t respond for me. I can look around, but can’t move. And since there’s nothing in the first room to interact with, i can’t tell if I can do that, either.
There’s a white ball with black/orange particles floating around somewhere, it should get absorbed by you. Then you can look down, at the circle you’re in. There should be a white-ish transparent icon, which you can interact with. The absorbed particle will be used, allowing you to move.
Good day. Best game IMO because it does what I personally value most: it tells a story with a good balance of story <-> gameplay. (I am saying this after trying out all other games). Short and on point. Priest best waifu
Also, I agree with what was mentioned before: tis’ not slow-paced. I had to run around the village to collect the energy balls. Quickly
In order to skip the intro, you need to collect the orb that’s behind you then look at your feet to break free from the summoning circle. Doing that lets you freely roam the village without needing to listen to the villagers
Damn, not what I was expecting from the jam, but a good game nonetheless. The first run was definitely the most impactful, I didn’t even realize the monster was getting closer at first until I eventually stopped and just asked myself “Wait, did it get bigger?”, followed by panicking to finish up the current story line. If you wanted to expand on this it would be neat to have different endings possible by having the characters interact, so that you have to think about how far you want to progress each one with the limited resources you have instead of dumping everything into one.
i will say that they move a bit too slow for the priestess ending honestly the npcs are a little too slow in general maybe speed them up a bit or slow down the pumpkin gals aproach?
That’s supposed to happen. You have to wait until you absorb the ball and then use it’s power to interact with the salt circle imprisoning you (E by default).
What an interesting entry! I love the bold direction taken with the bleak premise of this doomed town and its last holdouts all taking matters into their own hands. The low poly look also worked for me in this regard.
I won’t retread what has already been said, but I feel that the premise has potential outside of the contest be more fleshed out in grander scope in an adventure game akin to a “Gods Will be Watching”, vignettes of heroes and villages pushed to the brink as to how to stop this unrelenting menace and the player needing to weigh up the desperate decisions and sacrifices needed to thwart its progress - futile though they may be.
