Peculiar Pickings

drludos 2024-10-06 23:22

Hi! I was eager to try your game as I noticed it on the feed during the compo. So yours is the first one I'm trying and I'm not dissapointed, you did a great job!

The mood is outstanding, it's very unsettling, but somehow we still want to keep playing more. The graphics are very good, and the audio is wonderful to set the tone. I really loved the uniqueness of the concept (very innovative), and it's a good implementation of the theme IMHO.

I had fun trying the various interactions in the game / playground. Is there a goal or state to reach? I think I got more than 500 deaths *(those damn spiders)* and I fed the head loads of time, but I didn't seem to trigger anything special. It's not a issue, as it's a fun & unique experience, but I was wondering if I missed something or not.

Regarding suggestions, here are a couple of things I noticed: - The drowned creatures generates a "green smoke", is there anything more to do with it? - The hammer is a great idea, but it's a bit hard to use, especially when you are defending your creatures against a spider invasion. In this case, I want to use it repeatedly, but it seems that there is a "cooldown" time and it doesn't trigger every time I click. Or maybe I need to be close enough to a spider for the hammer to strike? (in that case, maybe you could increase the spider detection area so it's easier to get them, as they move fast) - I was sometimes able to pick several creatures at the same time, by repeatedly clicking on them instead of picking them one by one. I don't know if it's intended, but I do enjoy it! (it's funny to have a hand full of creatures to do an action instead of just one).

Overall, it's a very good entry, and I hope you keep working on it!

dooskington 2024-10-06 23:24

Wow, I had no idea what was going on, but that was sure something. Had fun smashing the creatures and spiders to bits. Had fun feeding the weird guy. The interactions were a bit buggy. I liked the UI in the top left even though I wasn't sure what it was doing.

rynti 2024-10-06 23:53

Haha I loved the graphics. I also had no idea what was going on or what I should do, but I enjoyed the few minutes I spent on it :)

(had no idea what to do with the creatures I put in the water that suddenly grew greens)

custodi 2024-10-07 00:15

Strange (in good way) game where you need to hit everyone) You need to check controls, sometimes it is too heavy

alxje 2024-10-07 04:06

I am having a night mare playing this, creepy and cool!

jammygunns 2024-10-07 05:21

Well that was... an interesting snack.

While playing around I did take a break from eating the creatures to adjust where my eyes were and start eating spiders... any other game I might have thought it was a bug but it suited this weird and fun game to a tee.

sockenpuppe 2024-10-07 15:36

Nightmarish guy whacking spiders and eating creatures? (Or is it the other way round haha) Hell yeah, I'm in!

I always saw your blog posts on the feed and was very interested in seeing how this project would turn out.

Really unsettling music. But fitting!

No idea what was going on lol but it sure is a vibe!

I hope you continue working on this.

mavvy 2024-10-08 00:37

There's a lot of stuff to play with in this weird little playground.

I love that I can rearrange my friend's face, I love how the little guys can... sprout?? I love this aggressive squelchy pad thing in the music! This has such a weird and out there vibe that I am absolutely here for. :smile:

dis0rder 2024-10-08 06:56

@drludos Thank you for your detailed feedback, I appreciate it!

I had planned a variety of reachable goal/fail-states but had to scrap 'em due to time-constraints. The "green smoke" is actually the creatures "sprouting" :seedling: :smiley: I put the waterglass in the game fairly early on and later realized that it didn't really "serve a purpose" (other than obviously being fun to drop the lil' guys in there). srpout_concept.png

A friend of mine cultivates avocado seeds in a glass of water, so I guess that's where the idea of the creatures srouting came from. I drew the concept earlier but left implementing it _literally to the last minute._ @rynti was also wondering what to do with them, but sadly (as of yet) there are no flowerbuds to munch away!

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I was already aware of the issues with the hammer-mechanic you pointed out, but kept putting my mind on other tasks during the COMPO. I'm fairly confident that it wouldn't require much tweaking to be massively improved.

My intention was for you to be able to pick up only one creature at a time, but obviously it would make the experience more tedious. Also noticed that the pinching-mechanic messes up in other ways whenever there's new critters spawning down the drain. It most likely conflicts with the shoddy way I implemented their movement-attributes. I'm actually surprised the game is not even more broken! :sweat_smile: But as they say; if it's a bug you rely on, it's a feature! Don't think you missed anything important, besides the one thing folks seem to overlook; you can actually mix the BGM in realtime with the gadget on the top-left corner! It's something I implemented on a whim, even though I probably should've been fixing game-breaking bugs. Oh well...

hud.gif

@dooskington was also inquiring the purpose of the UI-screen. There's even a "noise-effect" you can toggle with the little square button over there too. I decided to switch it off by default since the graphic overlay can be surprisingly intensive on the browser-version with low-end hardware (such as I am using myself!).

@Sockenpuppe glad that you enjoyed the music! By using the aforementioned mixer you can modify the mood to even stranger horizons. :alien: :cd:

@jammygunns The adjusting of the face was put there partly as a joke :eye: :lips: :eye: I'm happy you enjoyed playing around with them!

@Mavvy Cool to know that the experience works as a sandbox of sorts, since that was one of my intensions.

BTW I checked out your tunes and I like what I'm hearing. :ear: :musical_note: I've been looping **"Universal Save Point"** for a while now. It has this melancholic undertone which I particularly enjoy. :headphones:

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I usually lose motivation to develop my jam-games further. Your encouragement somewhat convinced me that I should probably consider it for real this time!

:pray:

beeb-gamecodecompany 2024-10-09 04:29

I bookmarked your page, seeing your posts got me interested and I just checked back to see the game. Would've liked to see what it would've been as you envisioned at the beginning but time of course. The only real thing I wanna use to summarize this game experience would be...Eraserhead lol

peachee-lychee 2024-10-09 06:43

overall really enjoy the aesthetics of this game! your art has a surreal quality to it that really highlights the absurdity of the scenario, and the audio does a great job of contributing to the mood. won't add on criticisms because you're already well aware of what you didn't have time to add or refine, but you should be proud of what you built

dgspitzer 2024-10-10 08:09

The game has such a magical atmosphere! I love the small interactive elements, and the ability to change the music speed is an incredibly cool detail. The attention to these little features really enhances the experience!

mrspeaker 2024-10-10 08:18

My favorite entry of LD56 so far. I'm getting "salad fingers, but more positive" vibes. The audio shenanigans are great! I really wish you had have been able to do the growing avocado mechanics: I hope you keep working on this post-comp.

chuckeles 2024-10-10 08:19

Haha, the most random game I played in this jam. :laughing:

shreemp 2024-10-10 08:23

oddly cozy with the music, fsr the face staring at me just reminds me of salad fingers

semi-related I was germinating tomato seeds at the start of october and they finally sprouted on the last day of jam ImportedPhoto.750240450.020728 (1).jpeg

ansible 2024-10-10 08:40

Bizarre but great fun. I ended up saving the hammer to defend my little guys / snacks from the spiders! I don't know if my seed grows past the long shoot, but it was cool and I wanted to experiment putting them in other stuff if you wanted to expand on it. The music is really great, the slider brings out some disturbing sounds that really suit the the weird setting. Nice!

wouter52 2024-10-10 18:19

This... euh... this was an expience... And I thank you for it! When I saw the GIF's and screenshots I was like "Yeahhh... I gonna give it a shot". But it was accutually fun! Even the tape recorder gave the whole thing a new kind of surreal feeling.

The graphics are fun in their own way. I'm going to rate them high as everything fits together and in my opinion that is an indicator of well executed graphics

velvetlobster 2024-10-11 12:46

Hey, I really enjoyed the soundtrack here. It has an atmosphere that leans towards psychological horror, which I found quite intriguing. The artwork of the face is particularly interesting.

I think I found a bug though. When you grab more than one creature at the same time, it seems like one of them gets stuck in your hand, and you can't capture any others or release the extra one that's in your hand.

Screenshot 2024-10-11 094400.png

And it remains right there even when you pick up the hammer. If you look behind, you can see the little ball.

Screenshot 2024-10-11 094808.png

mibi88 2024-10-11 13:00

The graphics fit the atmosphere well, and the music is great.

wendel-scardua 2024-10-12 06:13

It's 3am. I should be sleeping. Why am playing this nightmare inducing game? (affectionate)

It may not have a win/lose condition or anything, but it's still an intriguing toy...

BTW other than the bug mentioned above where a creature gets stuck in the hand, I had also a bug where, after I moved the mouth, I couldn't move it back anymore.

misaravensoul 2024-10-13 05:41

The art was absolutely horrifying, but I think that was the goal! I felt the fingers were a bit hard to use to grab some of the tiny creatures, and it was slightly odd that I could place them in the water from below.

satless 2024-10-14 04:26

the art for the person is disturbing and having them eat the creatures is kinda morbid. Rly experimental and i think the game excels the most at being an experience, something that pass a bizarre vibe: and the art and the audio do just that

silkworm-sweatshop 2024-10-16 14:17

I liked it! Without the music, I would've probably stopped way sooner but it kinda put me in a zen state while messing with the creatures. Pretty cool messing around with the music too.

ex3d0 2024-10-17 16:21

Your game caught my eye from the posts you had made on the feed while developing it due to its *unique* art style, and you definitely nailed it out of the park. The graphics and audio both combined really well into creating a really unsettling atmosphere.

The gameplay is fairly simple, but messing around and smashing or eating all of the little creatures was definitely entertaining.

In my opinion it feels a lot more like a surrealist horror art piece than a fully fledged game, but it also seems like that's largely what you were going for and it was a great experience!

sami822 2024-10-18 15:03

I liked eating tiny tasty guys. Other guys wasn't tasty tho.

lelulagames 2024-10-20 18:54

This is odd, but I can see lots of possibilities for future upgrades, like progress of the sprouts, or what happens when the face gets full, or different reactions when you feed it a spider. The music could use volume control, and some goals for the play, but its definitely an interesting concept.

h1de0 2024-10-21 11:55

Very good game ! I love it, the track and the fact taht you can change the speed of the music. Very goods ideas and unique mood. Like your work!

Hope to see your future work.