FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → Gophergeddon

Gophergeddon

By ham-and-swiss

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3503.3653
Fun2753.4352
Innovation933.7452
Theme184.3251
Graphics5522.6952
Audio4122.6751
Humor1183.4351
Mood4142.9352

Comments

thomas-higgins 2017-12-04 03:27

haha saw this good fun

benhumphries 2017-12-04 03:36

This is definitely a weird one! It took me a while to figure out what to do (and I'm still not sure I completely understand) but good job!

P.S. Great name!

blackatlas 2017-12-04 03:37

Wow that was really great. I think this is so far the best use of the theme I've seen. Great work on the AI and everything!

eerongal 2017-12-04 03:38

Makes me think of the nursery rhyme "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly". Also, i love your ham and swiss logo!

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-04 03:42

The old lady who swallowed the fly was the inspiration!

@benhumphries - you just need to watch the populations in the top. If they are red, that needs to be corrected to progress!

silvervalegames 2017-12-04 03:47

This was pretty fun! Those angry dogs though!!! Good job

formalcloud 2017-12-04 04:12

This is a really cool idea! Nice work!

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-04 04:13

@FormalCloud - Thanks! Holiday Parking had me cracking up haha. Good job man.

dogsquad 2017-12-04 04:50

I love this game. I've gotten 200 ghophers and 60 dogs with no cats.

sovogirl 2017-12-04 07:33

My cats ate dogs at one point...

Really fun and cool idea!

jeremy-wolf 2017-12-04 08:01

Very clever.

gus-the-shark 2017-12-04 09:08

Very funny game! Couldn't finish it though, got into an endless cycle of cats, dogs and catchers haha

aciertz 2017-12-04 09:29

Really cute idea, cute graphics. Couldn't figure out how to solve the game ;-; (objective clear, just too hard for me to figure out). Reminds me of Conway's game of life

tomas-selmeci 2017-12-04 10:15

Wow, that idea! Really got me.

bewelge 2017-12-04 10:26

Very cool idea! :) A nice addition would be a nicer visual indicator of what types are needed/ overpopulated at each point. But great job for a jam ;)

badly-drawn-rod 2017-12-04 10:40

When you said "Things escalate!", you weren't kidding! I very much liked what you did with the theme and how it all escalated into that ending. Talk about unforeseen consequences.

peterthehe 2017-12-04 11:04

I can very much see the old lady who swallowed a fly coming in here :) Was really great to see it snowball out of control - were the dog catchers multiplying or am I just blind? Anyways, great game.

Oh yeah. The SFX were great too :P

tuism 2017-12-04 16:12

I like the idea but I have no idea what's actually going on, the initial goal of getting rid of gophers was easy because it was the only thing to do, then everything else feels like I'm bashing those buttons at random and seeing what comes out... Like for example, at what point does it not allow you to progress when you have all cats? I noticed that you can just click on the stuff on the board to clear them. Was that intentional or not? If so then why not just clear cats, drop cats, clear cats, etc?

I really like the theme and I wished it all played out in a way that's much more understandable, and making goals clearer would really help.

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-04 17:45

@tuism - ah crap, forgot to take out the click to kill mechanic. The game started out as a whack-a-mole but sort of morphed as I was making it.

Basically your goal is to get all the populations at the top below their threshold. If one population is above, the text will be red.

When every population is under threshold, the map will grow a bit, and more gophers will spawn.

There is no win condition, you only get as far as you can without causing Gophergeddon.

tuism 2017-12-04 17:51

What is "threshold"? Is that visible anywhere in the game? My point was that the game needs to give you feedback on what a player would need to know to play the game with purpose :) I understand it's a jam game and some stuff might not make the cut :) Hope you get to work further on this if you want to take the concept further :)

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-04 17:56

@tuism Threshold just means a limit. So your population has to be under the limits. At the top of the screen there are icons for each type of Animal, showing the current population over the limit. So 9/10 means you're safe, but 11/10 means you're over by 1.

Definitely could be clearer! I appreciate the feedback, just wanted to clarify.

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-04 18:58

@peterthehe Ya the dog catchers multiply. Once they see their buddies making bank catching all those dogs they all start doing it. Of course they start getting a little too rowdy and taking people's pets, so the police need to get involved.

camcam-s5 2017-12-04 20:51

The Idea is very good, and the game is funny ( i like the sound of the police)

evan-polekoff 2017-12-05 02:43

Meowmeowmeowmeowmeow. I can still hear them calling to me!

mrleeperry 2017-12-05 04:10

HAH! This was awesome, REALLY well done :) Love the theme use so much, and the whole thing was clever and witty and humorous. Nice stuff :)

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-05 04:31

@MrLeePerry lol thanks! Your game Booty Looter was fantastic.

geraldfingburke 2017-12-05 04:56

Took me a minute to figure out what was going on. An interesting concept.

bridgs 2017-12-05 06:26

A cool little balancing act, would love to see it go past dog catchers... or maybe it does and I just didn't get there?

sinci1 2017-12-05 08:31

The game is very interesting and unique, and it follows the theme. This is awesome :D

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-05 09:23

@bridgs it does actually, i think i need to tweak the balancing a bit. if you build enough dog catchers you can build police to stop the dog catchers.

marcosm10 2017-12-05 09:47

Great idea! So hard to find equilibrium. Cat audio made me laugh. Good job!

gwolf86 2017-12-05 13:26

Great work, kind of reminds me of Conways game of life but with more layers. I thought the gameplay was really well balanced and the art was great.

meskaline 2017-12-05 14:35

Nice concept. Good balance in a balancing game.:) Audio gets annoying after a while but not to bad. GJ!

ionthas 2017-12-05 14:54

Didn't got how the game mechanics worked, some kind of tutorial/explanation would've been great. Couldn't place any cat in the field :/

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-05 15:34

@Ionthas sorry about that, there is a button at the bottom to spawn cats. Maybe it was off screen?

ionthas 2017-12-05 15:41

@ham-and-swiss I was playing with my browser and the bar with the buttons was off screen. Now I can see the beauty of this game! I love the population balance mechanics, quite unique! Keep up the good work!

lillybyte 2017-12-05 18:36

This is a really interesting take on that old tale of swallowing animals :D. The HTML5 app went off my screen and didn't fit into my window, however. I had to scroll up and down to access the buttons, etc. But other than that, an interesting concept!

ham-and-swiss 2017-12-05 20:15

@lillyByte sorry for the awkward resolution! 800x800 is too tall.

valkyrie 2017-12-05 21:42

One of the best takes on the theme I've seen. I made it to the nuclear war. This would make a really interesting cookie clicker type game if you wanted to expand on it.

ahintoflime 2017-12-05 22:16

Hehe, I like the turn it takes at the end. Definitely fun to play with the balance of the 'ecosystem'. Neat game!

fangzhangmnm 2017-12-06 05:27

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly

togis 2017-12-06 17:38

I uploaded my gameplay of this game on youtube, you can find it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHTY-lHz5v8

Thanks for being part of the stream :)

codechomper 2017-12-08 18:52

This game had me smiling. I had fun trying to keep the populations under control. I liked the ending when you fail, I am guessing you can't win? Good job and solidly put together.

cerno-b 2017-12-18 09:57

Fun and chaotic variant of the foxes and rabbits simulation. I liked how everything escalates after you simply try to get rid of some gophers. I was genuinely surprised when the dogs were converted. Great job!

For my taste, I think motion of the characters could have had a bit more range. It seems you chose an RNG to make everyone move a step in either direction randomly. However, by using a velocity variable I think you can make the game more dynamic and prevent all characters from bunching up in a corner of the playfield.

behenate 2017-12-27 18:07

Nice game! Pretty unusual gameplay idea, good-enough graphics and engaging gameplay!