nerdyherbivore 2022-09-26 13:54
Very excited to dip back into Ludum Dare! It has been a while! Working with a lot of first-time jammers and doing it 100% virtual, so fingers crossed we get something complete!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Natural Snek-lection!
By nerdyherbivore, hammerfrenzy, falk-hoeppner and Eric Nguyen
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 403 | 3.68 | 60 | |
| Fun | 556 | 3.41 | 61 | |
| Innovation | 118 | 3.93 | 59 | |
| Theme | 490 | 3.75 | 60 | |
| Graphics | 283 | 4.05 | 61 | |
| Audio | 298 | 3.62 | 60 | |
| Humor | 51 | 4.16 | 60 | |
| Mood | 344 | 3.70 | 58 |
Very excited to dip back into Ludum Dare! It has been a while! Working with a lot of first-time jammers and doing it 100% virtual, so fingers crossed we get something complete!
Really love the art, the doodly aesthetic was great.
Brilliant! loved the doodles and the sounds and the dialog. I was going to say that it was kinda hard to tell what the point was but then I just tried to build the wildest coolest looking snek and got given and award for it so turns out I knew what the point was all along!
The art style and the sound effects / voice acting are excellent! The art style is done so well. Very cool idea of trying to get certain traits through breeding. Had a lot of fun :) Great work!
Thanks! Would love to see some of your creations in the comments!!! And good luck finding the secret endings!
snek.png
Thanks for playing our game!
I have been prolifering for 15minutes without being able to finish the game. Is there a secret tip to know which snake choose ? 10 sec is too fast to choose the right snake ! Beside complaining, I really enjoyed the graphics and the atmosphere. We smell the fun you had while making the game! GG !
Really fun game! Loved playing it
Oh god this is a darwinian game, i like the pencil graphics and the voices are veri hilarious
@sdelay There's biology and luck at play here. Hitting tab while playing will open up the Phenotype/Genotype breakdown, which may give you a clue as to what traits it is you are looking for. The Punnetts menu at the beginning will help out as well (and will fill in as you play!)
THIS IS SO GOOD!! Such a good idea, fun to play, and I love the sound effects! Amazing work!!!
Super cool idea for the visual style, it's really unique!
snek.JPG
I did it!?
Gotta love me a wing-a-ling snek.
Very funny game concept. Love the pencil sketch art aesthetic. Got a laugh out of me. Good job!
This was an entertaining game with a nice cohesive visual style that tied it all together. Admittedly, I wasn't quite sure what my "goal" was, but I enjoyed "interacting" with the other sneks and seeing what result I would get , fun game!
Haha totally an educational game. Love the hand written text for everything.
@caerul Sssshhhh! Don't tell anyone! :wink:
Very good visual style. The Trogdor notepad style really ties the game together. I love all the details like the ridiculous alternatives to the standard Trogor look (the propeller hat was my favorite) and the doodles on the title screen.
I feel like the complicated mechanics mixes poorly with the ten second timer. The timer doesn't add any difficulty to the game as far as surviving to the next wave (since there's always eligible mates nearby). But the timer makes it so I can't sit down and plan out. "Okay, if I have these traits and this one is recessive, I need to find a mate with this trait but not that trait". The punnet squares are too complex to figure out in ten seconds, especially since I haven't taken a biology class in several years.
Maybe that's not the point and you're just supposed to go around looking for mates with beefy arms (for good measure.) But with all of the charts this game provides, it feels like I *should* be trying to get the most out of the mechanics.
So mechanically, it was a neat concept but poorly executed if the point was that the player was supposed to actually pay any heed to the Tab menu.
@zungryware Thank you so much for the feedback! I think you are spot on on all fronts. The 4x4 Punnett adds a lot of complexity as the game runs, especially in the first couple of run throughs. We added a Punnett reference on the main menu that fills out as you play so that players who had gone through the core game loop a couple of times would have unlocked those phenotypes and see them mapped to the genotypes in a static, not time bound place so that, should the player want to target a specific look for one of the secret endings, they could plan or get a feel for what the potential risk/reward balance is of any given mating pair. After that, the in-game tab was intended to both give you a list of traits you have or have not unlocked and to give you a cheat-sheet for in game reference.
During the jam we also considered pausing the game while the cheat-sheet is open. Do you think that would address the problem?
I felt pretty lost, and with no time to figure it out (a casualty of the theme this year, of course) I devolved into just hitting space on anything around me. It seemed to... work? Though? I wasn't sure. Love the trogdors and the silly sfx! Btw, pretty low frame rate on a mac, not sure about other devices.
I don't even know what to write. This game is great, bitbox soundtrack, brilliant mechanics and simple yet nice graphics. It's brilliant how you show how gene inheritance works in a simple and accessible way.
cool game you got here, plays nice. graphics are minimal and nice to look at. Well done!
The art style on this is brilliant - minimal, but super effective!
Thanks everyone! If we do something post jam we may make your health the timer and give ways to lengthen or shorten it. Thanks for the feedback, we had a blast making it!
I loved it. Simple but effective, with a very funny humor. The art and the sounds fit very good. Great job!
The visuals and sound design are super funny, love it! But I felt a bit lost and I was feeling the time pressure all the time. Maybe pausing the timer while the tab menu is open would help.
Omg this was so fun. The art is adorable, and some of the combinations are hilarious! Very well done. I wasn't sure how the traits selection worked and it seemed random. I just tried to avoid the vanilla looking snakes and got many of the achievements, but I'm not sure if there was a better strategy. With the timer running down it was hard to wait for better mates anyway and a first-see first-mate approach seemed to be the favored one :D Anyway absolutely loved it. So charming! Brilliant humor too. Great work and good amount of polish. Well done!
Love the pen and paper visuals! It taught me I know little or nothing about genetics (:
This was pretty cool, neat art style. These brows have great power.
Capture.PNG
I love the art and sound! Gameplay could be more interesting with some modifiers based off the genes! It'd be nice to pause when you open the achievements so you can figure out what you should go find.
i said consumate V's! CONSUMATE! CONSUMATE! Guy wouldn't know majesty if it bit him in the face!
This was a great game, and looks like it was probably incredibly fun to make. Nice job, but when I submitted to this ludum dare, i didn't think i'd be facing off against mutated burninators!
@eerongal I like to think of them as "burninators in the making". We had a absolute blast making this game, and we're glad you had fun playing it!
Man, what a hilarious game, I love this so much. First of all the art style is just great, love the sketched drawings on paper background. The title screen and tutorial screen are phenomenal! The audio is also top notch (snek snek snek snek!) and the gameplay itself is such a clever and unique idea, I never would've thought of something like this! Awesome job!
I fell in love with the drawings! Not to mention that mouth-track, and the fact that it is about GENETICS. <3 I truly think I have bred the most fabulous snake there can be.
(I did try to disable Math)
Screenshot 2022-10-05 231535.png
@jmad Gon' GIT! :laughing: Thanks for playing and exploring our game! We're thrilled you had a good time!
@ryan-dotsikas Snek Snek Snek Snek! :snake: Thank you for the high praise!
@saxops1 Thanks for the feedback! We really really wanted to add stat modifiers in for things like speed and attractiveness, but time was not on our side for LD. We do intend to get that and the pause when opening the tab menu into the game soon.
Love the concept, and the aesthetic you chose to go with it. I agree with the commenter above that the mechanic is too complicated for a 10 second cycle, also agree with your reply that a pause option would go a long way towards solving that. Alternatively I wonder whether having the traits controlled by a single locus (ie a 2x2 punnet square) could be a better fit with the 10s rule (or be used as a tutorial/intro level). I would have liked to have a picture of the ideal snake (ie. phenotype that I am aiming for) so I could then work on building it, but I appreciate that the open exploration is a stylistic choice that you made and respect that. Game runs great, controls work great, really good jam submission - well done!
@khadia I think you're right about the 2x2 probably being more fitting for the time window. We had considered the 2x2 initially, but wanted more variation of traits in the game than a 2x2 would offer. Using that for an intro level sounds like a phenomenal idea though, and the feedback that "the target is unclear" is a running theme for the next iteration. Thanks again for the feedback!
What a beauty
Screenshot 2022-10-06 201745.png
Fun idea, also this was quite a lot harder than I thought it would be :smile: Good job!
Great and unique style!
I really like the graphics and idea for this game. As someone has never studied biology, I had no clue what was going on or how genes work and what the punnett square is. So I ended up googling stuff for a while and trying to figure out how this all works. I think the idea was great but I would have liked a bit more explanation so I could play the game better and maybe learn how this all works as a I play because it is interesting. The 10 second timer just it a little too hard
Thanks for the feedback @rawb ! Someone previously suggested doing an easier tutorial level to introduce the mechanics. Sounds like it might be a good idea to use that space to introduce the biology concepts we are utilizing as well?
Great humour and fun concept! I love that pressure of searching for a mate as time closes in - works great with the theme too. Art style fits it perfectly and great humour throughout :)
Came for the gameplay, stayed for the aestethics! I LOVE the graphics, please do more :D Really good entry overall, maybe a bit difficult, but hey it's a jam game, so no worries here. Congrats!
A fun little game, and love the art style. Well done.
The art is absolutely amazing
snek snek snek snek snek snek snek
Wow! que da hora muito top o estilo gráfico
snek snek snek snek snek snek snek snek snek snek snek
As an average snek enjoyer this game speaks to me. The sketchy notebook style is very fitting, almost like doodling in a biology class to learn about genotypes and phenotypes. Sound effects and music were hilarious as well, didn't manage to beat the game since I'm a complete dummy but managed to collect all the traits at least :D Would have been fun to have something to do with the traits but you obviously have a post-jam plan for that already!
Snek Snek Snek Snek Snek Snek Snek Snek Snek Snek
@bqq YES! You got the vibe we were going for exactly! We had even planned to add in a droning biology lecture as background noise, but just didn't get around to it. Well done!
This game will leave a very deep impression on me. The graphics and audio have their own styles, and the gameplay is also very fun. What's more interesting, I feel like the theme of "every 10 seconds" limits the play of the gameplay instead. Due to the low frequency of dominant genes in the population as a whole, 10-seconds would hardly be enough to choose a good, suitable mate before we die. (But maybe that's just life!) 30 seconds may increase the operability of the game. Overall, I like this game very much!QQ图片20221014211328.png
@lsy Thanks for your feedback! I hadn't considered the philosophical implications this game might portray. 10 seconds does make it more chaotic for sure. We had some grand ideas to implement stat changes with each trait like speed, attractiveness, etc, that might allow you to make more effective use of the short time each snek has in the world. Longevity might be another one we talk about if we do more work on this post jam.
Very nice game, I like the graphics you went with, and I loved the voice on the "how to play" section. I enjoyed playing your game, good job.
Wow, amazing presentation, unexpected and interesting idea, with really cool design of Sneks too! Nice work!
snek snek snek thanks everyone! And thanks for the suggestions. I had a blast drawing everything and so happy to hear people liked the style. It makes the hours spent stressing on readability and individually editing letters worth it :laughing: :snake:
We need more SEGS