Bug to the Footstep

2017-04-27 19:09

This seemed like a really strong contender for a game that you could easily expand to be an educational game for young kids. I think a lot of kids go through a stage where they're really interested in bugs and insects in general, and combining a fun/simple puzzle game with some bug facts would be really cool.

The game itself is pretty basic. Fits the theme decently by being the literal small world of bugs. It just lacks a certain amount of depth in it's current form. I feel like you could give more information in the footprint image itself that guides the player with visual hints as to how to arrange the bugs. Then it gets progressively more vague as you go along. Then you could pair it with some other types of puzzles and you'd be golden.

Overall nice work. I like the basic concept and I think you could do a lot with it if you really wanted to. Though swapping the controls to port to a platform like mobile might be tricky.

This was also featured in my Second Larry Does Ludum 38 video. Which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3nGcfVUsso

2017-04-28 13:18

Neat game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation [video series](https://youtu.be/KYlBGlHp4vY), if you’d like to take a look :)

slimabob 2017-05-01 05:54

I agree completely with @larrychupacabra. I would seriously consider polishing this up and marketing it as a puzzle game for kids! (Maybe make it a tad easier early on because my dumb brain couldn't make it past level 2 :p)

Excellent work!

abhimonk 2017-05-02 00:32

Incredibly engaging puzzle game. I agree with the other commenters, this game could be polished into a great puzzle game. I can see myself buying something like this on mobile. I love how simple the main concept is, but it got complex very quickly. Flipping and rotating adds a ton of potential depth to the core puzzle system.

ilseroth 2017-05-02 00:37

Fun simple puzzle game; I knocked through in a few minutes. Looks nice and the more complicated grids and bugs would let you make this into a full game. All seriousness, really quality design work here. <3

I am a picker of nits, so I will say some audio would help a lot to add to the game, and introducing the idea of double clicking in the tutorial (to release) would help, I just hit the restart button a couple times when I made mistakes.

Thanks for the game <3

eddynardo 2017-05-02 00:56

Thank you everybody for the feedback @ilseroth I actually introduced the double click in the tutorial, but from playtesting with some friends of mine, I found out that nobody reads the text on that level, they just pass it fast to finish the tutorial. I should have done a better job introducing the double click mechanic because it makes life easier

spaceman 2017-05-02 00:58

The game opened in a reallllyy small window for me. Otherwise pretty cool.

**Edit:** The maximize button did the trick, lol. My bad. Had a fun time playing through a bit of it again!

szczebel1995 2017-05-02 06:58

Great game, I love the dev art ;), the puzzles sometimes were quite tricky but I really like it, nice idea and good execution.

sebastian-lague 2017-05-02 11:03

I'm on a mac, so was only able to experience the game through Larry and Jupiter's videos. Still, I thought it was a very neat idea -- grabbing and placing the little bugs makes it a lot more compelling than simply placing abstract blocks. The graphical style fits the game very nicely, and that the puzzles were well designed in terms of difficulty progression. Very nice work!

By the way, I added an option to invert the y axis in my game, if you're still interested in taking on the leaderboards ;)

diknows 2017-05-02 20:52

When I read that you did this game in just 14 hours I did not expect much but got a pleasant surprise. It is a little easy and some music would really add to the experience, but I actually liked it.

Thanks for this cute little puzzle game :)

skippuku 2017-05-02 23:51

Neat little puzzle game. Although after a while with the same bugs popping up every time, nothing seemed to changed and I got tired. with a little more variety, it would have been better.

burgee 2017-05-03 01:16

Cool game! I got stuck until I started putting the worms into the footsteps first, they seemed to be the toughest to find a fit for. After that I was able to visualize things more easily and I finished the game (assuming level 6 was the last level, it didn't load a new one when I finished it)

Your take on 'a small world' works on so many levels here - a small world as in the place you put the bugs, or the bugs being small - they both fit! Nice job on sticking with the theme and thinking outside of the box.

I'm going to make my wife play now so I can watch her struggle! Thanks for the game!

eddynardo 2017-05-03 01:53

OMG @burgee, your comment saved me. I realised that I had uploaded the old/wrong/broken version of the game on Newgrounds that had 2 worms on level 6 instead of 2 snails. Now it's fixed and you can play all 10 levels if you want, thanks a lot !!!

somnium 2017-05-03 04:58

A fun and challenging puzzle game!

I like the cute graphics, they add some context to what would otherwise be a rather abstract puzzle game. The fact that you actually have to "hunt" your wiggling game pieces was a nice touch! Some music and sound would have added even further to the mood.

The difficulty progression worked well, with the later puzzles being just challenging enough to be interesting, without becoming frustrating. I also like how the "flip"-mechanic added even more variety to the mechanics.

It is impressive that you made this in only 14 hours!

> Ladybugs and snails, > fit nicely in the footstep. > Oh no, it's a worm!

shaolin-dave 2017-05-03 06:16

Tutorial is a must, once the controls are figured out it's a good little puzzle game. I really think you should expand on this. I will say that you really shouldn't have used the Unity Web Player as it's going away and is already unplayable on many computers. If you're going to build for web, use WebGL

brothers-arcade 2017-05-08 20:04

Great little puzzle game... would like to be able to pick up and move bugs after i have placed them, would negate the need of a "reset" button. I just have one question, why are we putting the bugs under the foot? Seems a little macabre... poor bugs.

lukezaz 2017-05-09 09:06

Despite the lack of audio and simple design, this game actually holds itself up really well. You managed good length for an LD entry, and the puzzles gave pause, but weren't too difficult. All in all, this was a surprisingly enjoyable entry, well done!

zirrrus 2017-05-10 07:44

This is a really cool little puzzle game. I found it fairly easy but very fun. The bugs are very cute, I didn't really want to put them in harm's way. :P The way they move about makes the whole game a lot more charming too.

I agree with the others: with a larger variety of bugs and a lot more levels this can easily be made into a full game.

urfbound 2017-05-16 03:25

Hey fun game! I really liked the use of the theme and the puzzley/perfection vibe of it. The ability to flip asymmetric bugs was a great thought and added a lot of depth. I liked the graphics a lot too, especially the use of colour to help you tell bugs apart right away. The UI was strong all over in my opinion, from colour, line weight and location right down to choice of font. I was a fan of your UI for sure and it felt really professional.

I think some sound and especially BGM would go a long way to wind up the polish on the game, and that would be a great target for a future iteration. Some more variety would also spice things up down the road.

The best part about your game was the tutorial. It was really well thought out and demonstrated a clear knowledge of teaching gameplay to your players without pandering to them. I thought that was really professional too, and the UI through the tutorial was really intuitive. It was also a great length. Fantastic job there.

Thanks for your submission, I hope you had fun making it and are enjoying this LD! Good luck and I hope we see you back again in the future. :D

nbilyk 2017-05-20 16:48

***************Contains spoilers***************

The last level is missing the boot, does that mean the bugs escape? Do they live after all? I hope they're ok...