FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD31 → The Aardvark and the Manatee

The Aardvark and the Manatee

By sanguine

View on Wayback Machine

CategoryRankScoreCount
Graphics24.80
Mood94.28
Audio274.07
Overall703.90
Theme814.13
Innovation1443.68
Humor3622.86
Fun3973.19
Coolness138549

Comments

ossi 2014-12-09 02:34

What an absolutely beautiful game! The artwork in combination with the music was perfect. The controls were easy to grasp and translated well between the two characters. Now the story at first seemed a bit odd, but after noticing that the manatee was protecting the food for the aardvark it all made sense and really sold me on the love they both have (or at least the manatee haha). Great way to represent time as well, with the little notches for each moment.

Simple, beautiful, and well designed. Fantastic job!

xenosns 2014-12-09 02:38

lovely little game

badpaul34 2014-12-09 02:42

Just, wow ! So beautiful !

anachron 2014-12-09 02:47

This is so cute it hurts! Didn't quite get the protecting the food mechanic until I read the comment above, but then it all made sense. Very adorable :)

gokuhd 2014-12-09 02:53

Beautiful art, great soundtrack and suitable sound, very well done!

antworks 2014-12-09 02:54

Beautiful!!! *-*

madameberry 2014-12-09 02:59

This game made me so sad.
SO MANY FISH.

That said, it was really fun and cute and beautiful.

gread72 2014-12-09 03:30

Well crafted ... I would keep building on this game ... Very fun and Fantastic.

valandre 2014-12-09 11:17

Great mood, graphics and sound fit very well!

tijmentio 2014-12-09 11:21

So aesthetically pleasing! The mood is super mellow and along with the supposed story creates a feeling of melancholy which makes me fall in love with this beautiful dreamy experience.

daveloper 2014-12-09 12:17

Very relaxing and fun. The protect and feed phases of the game complement each other well.

sirdorius 2014-12-09 12:28

Relaxing and fun game with great aesthetics!

diamonde 2014-12-09 12:43

This is so adorable!
The theme interpretation is the best I've seen so far as well.

plonkydonkey 2014-12-09 13:13

This is by far the best game I've played this LD, Well done this is an amazing achievement.

gungnir 2014-12-09 14:13

Lovely experience.

Thank you.

alexrose 2014-12-09 14:40

Absolutely beautiful, Lizzy's art is always amazingly good.

I got to a point where I could defeat all the fish by just spinning on the spot between two of the.. pear seeds? So I let my ardvark die. :(

But yeah, game's fun, music's great, visuals are absolutely exceptional. Also, do you have some kind of obsession with Aardvarks? :P

sergilazaro 2014-12-09 16:35

This is the cutest thing ever :3

rubna 2014-12-09 17:09

woah nice style!! loved the unnoticed work the manatee does for the aardvark :3
v/ cute game!

rainshapes 2014-12-09 17:30

So, so, beautiful. This completely blew me away.

rozaxe 2014-12-09 18:26

Very nice concept ! I love the graphics !
Great idea

maniulo 2014-12-09 20:59

The world needs more games like this.

poupi 2014-12-09 21:50

Amazing game!

designernap 2014-12-09 22:12

Great work. Love the style and tone. Awesome.

wertle 2014-12-09 22:26

Super cute! I thought it did a good job of conveying a very sad state in a subtle fashion through the gameplay. Once I figured out what was going on, and that I could never be with the aardvark, it made the whole thing really moody. It did take me a bit to understand what I was doing as the manatee. I liked how everything changed with the day/night cycle, it did great work to convey the mode shift (it would be cool if the sound also changed) Nice job!

ruerob 2014-12-10 01:19

A very impressive game. I really like all of it. The music, the sounds and the visuals create an atmosphere that is really wonderful. Thank you for that pearl.

slarrimer 2014-12-10 02:56

Very lovely game. And sad, so very sad. But I guess fish need to eat too.

kaa 2014-12-10 07:06

Beautiful and cute! Great graphics

sheepolution 2014-12-10 10:01

Looks really nice, but I was rather bored by the gameplay. There is no challenge in picking up the apples, so it rather feels like a waste of time. The mood and audio were good though.

louis-denizet 2014-12-10 10:40

Really great entry, we loved the graphics and really enjoyed it ;)

gins 2014-12-10 13:21

So beautiful and artsy. I like the idea of having it be 2 different mechanics for day and night but both are in the same screen. A bit repetitive though after a few cycles.

2014-12-10 13:50

PLaying this game is relaxing.. I might've get stuck sometimes in the corner of the screen but overall it's good and has nice BGM

makes me want to stay there and hear it all day

leaden 2014-12-10 14:36

Beauty screensaver. I passed few day, but see no evolution of relationship between main characters.

cmayhem 2014-12-10 15:07

Very beautiful game! Expertly done.

vulture-tamer 2014-12-10 15:11

this is absolutely amazingly beautiful!

you have got some skills!

hypnoticbytes 2014-12-10 15:22

Beautiful game. Great art, sound and concept. Fantastic job!

christopf 2014-12-10 16:21

I had a delay with my mouse, maybe it's pc caused.
The game looked promising but it felt later on not really challenging. The idea behind i like a lot also the graphic style looks neat. Good luck!

manou 2014-12-10 17:03

Loved it.

mathmadlen 2014-12-10 17:31

So cute! I love the design of the two creatures, the music fits in nicely into the overall mood

daraziel 2014-12-10 17:40

Really lovely and absolutely beatiful game! Very well done!
(Although it get`s a little bit repetitive once you get down to 2 or 3 nobs..)

elvaq 2014-12-10 20:06

Really lovely stuff! Not sure if I got the gameplay or the story completely but I just wanted to spend time listening and staring!!

endesga 2014-12-11 00:43

These graphics are stellar! I love them!

caliberproject89 2014-12-12 03:51

This is such a cute game. I definitely like the day/night mechanics that complement the visuals as well.

nkling 2014-12-12 04:08

Great idea and graphics. It was really wonderful to play. Took me a few rounds to figure out what the fish did though.

night 2014-12-12 08:06

music is suit to mood very well. but this game is too slow for me ^__^

maurogik 2014-12-12 10:59

What a lovely and beautiful game. Relaxing to play yet still entertaining. Great job.

exoddinary 2014-12-12 14:40

beautiful, though i dont quite understand how to play this xD

kddekadenz 2014-12-13 16:33

Couldn't emulate the executable using Wine & Linux Mint.
You used Game Maker right? ('Cabinet not valid')
I think I could emulate it if you include the related dll, had the issue with other gamemaker games before.

abdurrahmankh 2014-12-13 21:00

I liked the theme, the art, and the Idea. I got bored playing because because you are basically doing the same thing, I had to let them finish at wave 4.

I can't say I didn't enjoy it, its really calming experience, I wish there were more stuff/skills to use, for example playing with the whale was much more enjoyable since you are actually doing something and not just clicking on the apples.

franklins-ghost 2014-12-14 03:44

Beautiful looking game that's calming to play. Loved the character designs and think with a bit more variety in the gameplay this could be something really special. Liked the movement of the sun and moon and the way it transitioned between the players.

hoqjed 2014-12-15 02:17

A pleasant experience overall. Sort of funny how the aardvark just takes advantage of the manatee's hard work.

It's simple, easy enough to pick up and understand (though it took me a minute to learn the manatee was defending the food). It's also very beautiful in regards to the artwork and visuals. It works well overall, but I feel like there's something lacking and I grew discouraged after a while when I realized it was a seemingly endless cycle. So my manatee lost its will to continue defending the fruit and the aardvark ran out of food :(

barryrowe 2014-12-17 00:20

This is a nice relaxing game. Until you get to the later waves! The mood and visuals are great. It's a pretty adorable game. Very nicely done.

monos 2014-12-17 18:21

Artistically speaking, is a really little gem.
The art is superb [but a little lacking in the animations] and the music is really relaxing.
The gameplay is the lacking part on this game.

drgeraud 2014-12-17 18:39

So cute !

lion 2014-12-18 11:26

Very beautiful and nice to play !

davidb 2014-12-18 12:33

Like a poem.

sputnik 2014-12-18 16:52

Abolutely beautiful graphics!

hazard 2014-12-19 13:10

The art is so cute and beautiful. Incredible! The art, the relaxing music and the smooth animations create a very unique atmosphere. Playing the Aardvark by day and the Manatee by night is a nice idea to do something special with the theme. I wish the gameplay had more depths, though. More exciting mechanics or an actively told little story would enrich the experience. For example, giving the Aardvark some task that benefits the Manatee would create a nice symbiosis between the two. Overall, very lovely entry.

solifuge 2014-12-22 05:11

This is really pretty and reminds me of the old Orsinal games in look and feel, so great job for that. I do wish that there were a little bit more challenge of some sort... it didn't make sense to have me collecting apples as the Aardvark and then lose the game if there wasn't any fruit left, when I could just sit there not eating anything and the game would keep going fine. A slightly steeper difficulty curve would have helped too, I think. Still, the graphics and audio are really lovely and work together to establish a mood, and I liked the way you split the gameplay segments in such a natural way. Thank you for the game!

akhilnivarthi 2014-12-22 21:38

Incredibly cool art, i loved it

el_kloklo 2014-12-23 12:36

Believe or not, when I was playing, my cat stopped wandering around and watched the screen, and when it came to the turn of the Manatee, he chased it, and stop when daytime came. He did it for 3 turn. So I guess he understood that it was some kind of fish.

nicepenguins 2014-12-26 18:44

Very cute, beautiful and restful ! But maybe this need more story and mystery, you only have to protect your food and you know that one day it will be over :( (this became a little bit boring at the 5th time)