Wrangler

My submission for the 2025 GMTK Game Jam!

Have fun, yeehaw!

How to Play
Your cows get out each evening, bring them home before they run away at night!
You have a debt to pay by the end of the week. You make money each time you bring a cow home, and can buy more before each day. Walk into the pen and hold E to end the day early if you've brought all your cows home.

Controls
WASD - Movement
Shift - Sprint
Left Click - Lasso/Throw (draw clockwise circles around the player to charge)
E - End night

Dev Thoughts
This game is definitely underbaked lol. I'm still really happy with what I managed to do alone in the time frame, the only other game jam I've done is the Inbound Shovel Jam from  a few weeks ago.
Most of my effort went into making some kind of gameplay loop. Had fun learning about navigation paths and tile sets, I've never touched those before lol. Not to mention the level generation algorithm I made, it probably would've been way easier to have a consistent map but that wouldn't have been as much fun to learn.
This game needs a lot more polish before it's really "fun", it's like I baked a cake but didn't have any time to ice it - it needs animations, sounds, music, particles, screen transitions, maybe even some squash and stretch for fun.
I definitely want to continue developing this, adding more kinds of cattle with different behaviors, adding upgrades you can buy over the run, and spawning wolves that will attack you and the cows once night falls instead of it just booting you straight into the shop screen.
I hope you can enjoy what I have for you, and see where it could go. Have fun!