salmonmoose 2023-01-08 21:03
Love the concept of the puzzle, and the ambient music is super chill - great work.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Squirrelativity
By cassowary
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 7 | 4.31 | 64 | |
| Fun | 18 | 4.17 | 64 | |
| Innovation | 3 | 4.52 | 63 | |
| Theme | 83 | 4.02 | 64 | |
| Graphics | 66 | 4.04 | 65 | |
| Audio | 41 | 3.91 | 63 | |
| Humor | 89 | 3.27 | 55 | |
| Mood | 26 | 4.05 | 62 |
Love the concept of the puzzle, and the ambient music is super chill - great work.
Love the theming, did get a bit stuck in the first section as the perspective made it look like it was under but it wasn't, otherwise after that game was fun!
Love it. Some really challenging puzzles.
Really fun and inventive! Love it!
@cassowary Cute art, pretty gameplay! Nice entry!
this is so cute!! really nice puzzles, havent seen a puzzle game quite like this before! the difficulty progression seems a bit non-linear to me, but either way the puzzles are really nice! the art is cute and the music is super nice, fits really well. also the secret at the end as a reward is so funny as a concept to me, heheh. very nice work!!
@torcado thank you!! to be honest, I kind of designed a lot of the puzzles by 'working backwards' from the solution, so I had a lot of trouble judging the difficulty of them haha. but very glad you enjoyed it!
Really cute, I just adore the graphics, and animations for the trees are great (was that lots of sprites, or something procedural?). Audio also is just perfect. Puzzle was really neat and not something I'd player before. Progression was really great, I both felt like I was getting significantly better, and the levels were getting harder =).
Had the most trouble on level 12. It also seemed that it produced the most flowers when I finished it, are those related or am I seeing connections where none exist O.o?
The only thing that sometimes bugged me was that I would try to start dragging while a previous growth was going on, and it wouldn't always work. I seemed to usually draw a line, release the mouse, then try to draw another line (instead of doing a full drag with a bend all at once), and some percentage of time I was too quick and it didn't work -_-.
@jimbly
Sprites: it is not procedural, but the leaves are separate sprites that get layered over the branch sprites in certain ways, so while each branch tile is a unique sprite animation, there's actually only 8 different leaf animations (four different directions for two tree types) that get combined in different ways for the corners/Y-pieces/etc, so it's not quite as crazy as it might seem. I did spend a lot of my time budget on drawing sprites though, lol.
ETA: oh yeah, the top tree sprites/leaves are also actually a flipped/reshaded version of the bottom tree sprites, so that saved some effort as well
Flowers: you're not imagining things, that's actually technically a bug in the game where branches that you draw and then undo will also produce flowers at the end, lol. Even though it's a bug, I might keep it because it's kind of cute that it makes a bigger reward for levels you struggled with, haha. (Though I might fix it after the rating period ends to prevent flowers from appearing on empty tiles...)
Drawing: you can't draw a new branch while a branch is growing out, but since the leaves are separate objects that are just cosmetic, you can draw new branches while the leaves are still appearing. If I make a post jam version, I'll probably fix it to let you draw new branches whenever you want.
Heheh, that's an awesome "bug" about the flowers! I did do a lot of undo/redo on that level, but I felt rewarded/soothed by seeing all of the flowers, though wasn't sure if the game was like "You spent so long on that level that the flowers had more time to grow..." ^_^. Also, fixing flowers showing up on empty tiles seems like it qualifies as a "bug fix" which can be done post-submission according to the rules, if you really want to fix it now.
hmm, fair point!
on this balloon, it says... Dr. G Rinch?
Very nice game! I enjoy this type of puzzle: is this based on an existing pen-and-paper ruleset you know of, or is it original? (It feels like the latter!) The levels were all quite nice and the difficulty was balanced well enough.
It would have been nice to have the usual bells and whistles for this kind of game, for example to be able to mark which tiles must definitely be red or blue, even if the exact tree shape is not yet clear.
The graphics and animations were cute. I also experienced the tiny spritesheet glitch: it feels like maybe a piece of the adjacent sprite is being shown, in which case just spacing out the sprites on the spritesheet could help?
It was fun to try to get as many squirrels moving on the screen at once, e.g. in level 9 where I could make three start moving with a single new branch. I realised after a couple of levels that I don't have to wait for the squirrel animations (only the branch ones) before I can make my next move, which is nice especially for the easier levels.
It was fun, I won't tell anyone the secret :zipper_mouth:
That was brilliant! The art is really cute, the puzzles were a nice mix of difficulty, and I love the "success" sound when you complete a level. A perfect combo of relaxing and head-scratching.
Fun and a challenging puzzle game.
@aurel300 thank you! The ruleset is in fact original. If I make a post jam version I'll definitely try and include some more quality of life features like marking squares and such. I think that might also let me make more complex puzzles, which would be cool.
All 5s! Beautiful puzzle concept. I was looking into playing it when I saw first gifs in the feed, I really enjoyed it but haven't finished yet, a bit tricky!
Great, interesting puzzle game. I haven't seen this mechanic before, so bonus points for innovation.
I could play this for hours! I absolutely adored this game! Really awesome vibe and really fun and challenging gameplay!
A very creative puzzle game, good job!
Always happy to play your games! Had a great time puzzling this in the early morning. The graphics were clean, and pretty, did exactly what they had to do. The different colour contrast in squirrels felt really soothing. The highlighting system on paths was impeccable as well. The audio, soothing, chill, especially with the little bird chirping sounds combined (they were in the game right? Or were they in real life? :D). The puzzles themselves, I loved them! I felt like they were slightly easier than your last game's puzzles, and therefore right at my level haha. I was able to solve up to level 14 without breaking my head; looking forward to continuing later on!
Thanks for your submission!
Very nice puzzle game. Loved it! Puzzles were quite interesting, and I found the ones were the grid is completely filled at the end very satisfying. Very peaceful.
My only concern it that, I think, during the game, nothing tells you that branches cannot go backward (i.e. blue can only go up and red can only go down). When I discovered it it made me restart the level.
@loig Yeah, the text on level 3 was supposed to explain that, but I gather it didn't do a very good job because a lot of people were confused by this... whoops 😅
Very nice puzzle game
I went full zen mode playing this. Very impressed with coming up with a clever puzzle idea and the number of puzzles you created - and making it all look nice too!
Fun puzzle game. The best puzzles are imo simple mechanics at the core
Interesting puzzle mechanic I haven't seen before :)
amazing puzzle game! no idea how to come up with such a great working mechanic in just one weekend. i love the visual and the theme. even more impressive that you made it in your own game engine! :)
This game is why we need to keep the game jam open. Brilliant game!
It was a very enjoyable game! The gameplay mechanics were innovative, and the puzzles was neither too simple nor too complex! And the chill ausio helps to stay calm ^^ Very Great entry !
And i will keep what you know for me ;)
Capture d’écran 2023-01-14 180149.png
Clever and cute! And gets quite difficult very fast, but still an excellent puzzle game, great work!
Really fun and cute!! Big fan of the kalimba audio, I used a kalimba in my SFX too lol, though much less wholesomely. The music in general was very calming, as were the Birds In Park starring as themselves. [I'm probably like at least $1 happier after hearing the birds, lol.](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/birds-make-you-as-happy-as-money-study-finds)
Level 5 was super hard, but thank God for the random walkthrough in the itch.io comments, lol. I didn't think I was gonna get past that level without it. Didn't need a walkthrough on the other levels though a few of them tempted me.
Bugs-wise, I can confirm from a separate computer the Firefox visual glitch. Also, it doesn't work on Chrome, at least for me. After "Click to Start", it fades to black and never comes back, on both regular and incognito versions of Chrome.
I don't know if it's also a bug, but I like that click to continue is still functional on the post-game screen, but it just fades to black and goes back to the same post-game screen lol. Looping back to the beginning to replay or unlocking a post-game level select would be a nice touch.
Overall, really great job!
@papabirb Thanks! I think I've now fixed the Chrome bug -- if you have cookies disabled in your browser, it was failing when it tried to load the save file because Chrome blocks use of `localStorage` if you have cookies disabled. Now, it will work, though if you have cookies disabled the game won't save.
Also yeah, I didn't realize how hard level 5 was until it was too late lol. Will definitely have to reorder the levels in any kind of post jam version haha.
@cassowary I can confirm it now works in Chrome, both regular and incognito. I didn't do a full replay, but it appears that the visual glitch does not occur on Chrome. :smile_cat: I didn't remember I had cookies disabled lol. Or at least third-party ones when I check the settings. Sucks to have your own cookies labeled as third-party, lol.
Very good, but I'm so bad at it
Thank you for this adorable little title. I had a good relaxed time with it :)
Last puzzle was pretty hard but I got all of them. I won't reveal your little squirrel secret, don't worry ;)
Only thing I could wish for would be some new mechanic so there is some more variety.
Really neat puzzle with adorable pixel art :D Managed to get through them all- there were definitely more than I was expecting for a compo entry! Were they hand-designed or was the puzzle setting tool-assisted in any way?
@meep I did design them by hand. Actually, I've since noticed a couple alternate solutions which I didn't catch when making the levels... whoops, haha
Really loved this one. Great art and sound for a puzzle game with just the right amount difficulty. One of the best games of the jam I've played so far. Awesome work!
this was an excellent puzzle game!! i loved playing it!
there was a bit of discontinuity within the first levels to me (e.g. level 3 seemed way harder than level 4 and level 6 seemed easier than 5, at least in my opinion), but after that, the curve is really good. the last puzzle is really hard but i finally did it!
excellent work on everything: idea is great, art is beautiful and animations are cool, i loved sound (but it seemed like it stopped at some point?)…
if only there were like hundreds of levels… hahaha
This was really fun! Everything worked really well together—the gameplay, the sounds, the visuals—to make a lovely, relaxed experience.
Gorgeous :) Really fun puzzling
Excellent puzzle game! This is extremely polished and fun to play. @amarokczukay recommended this one [here](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/$313769/what-are-some-of-your-best-games-so-far) and it did not disappoint!
The animation and level design is great, and the sound design and calming music is perfect. You've got a great mixture of mechanics that steadily build up the difficulty at a good pace, and keep you learning new things each level. Very, very good work on this one!
Brilliantly designed puzzle game. I am very impressed that you were able to come up with and implement this so quickly. The sound design is very pleasant and I love the graphics for the tree. The animations are beautiful.
This is a really cool puzzle game, I really love the concept. It was very challenging at times, which is good :) Very calming, which helps with solving the puzzles.
Hi! Happy to share that Squirrelativity is featured on the GitHub Blog in our [Ludum Dare 52 wrap up post](https://github.blog/2023-02-03-ludum-dare-52-staff-picks/).