geraldfingburke 2026-04-20 23:55
This was absolutely adorable. Loved the fact that you got the point across without hitting the player over the head with it. Screenshot 2026-04-20 195418.png
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Love Caps
By wouter52
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 312 | 3.73 | 46 | |
| Fun | 271 | 3.61 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 167 | 3.80 | 46 | |
| Theme | 429 | 3.73 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 385 | 3.81 | 46 | |
| Audio | 310 | 3.57 | 45 | |
| Humor | 233 | 3.34 | 43 | |
| Mood | 463 | 3.57 | 45 |
This was absolutely adorable. Loved the fact that you got the point across without hitting the player over the head with it. Screenshot 2026-04-20 195418.png
Really cool game but I didn't understand how to get more stamina but I managed to find the mushroom in 95 seconds at best.
Well, seeing as I was the test person I have somewhat an advantage regarding understanding the game. But man, it is a signal overload with everything on the screen! I love how it is peaceful and dark when you 'check' the signal, the little hearts make it very cute. It is a short game, the music stopping... I know you are supposed to hear white noise but I do not hear something that soft while trying to run fast. Having both done shrooms... I enjoy seeing both our versions.
Interesting game. Loved the concept and the graphics. Bit confusing at first, but found my soulmate in ~110 seconds. Good work!
@geraldfingburke thank you! Glad you liked it! You've been running around for a while I see :smile:
@online-play there are little mushrooms all over the gameworld that give stamina, you can use that to not fall asleep all the time, costing precious seconds :smile:
@lizz thank you dear :heart:
@digital-bacon ayy great to see you here! What part was confusing to you? Maybe I could give some extra tips on the LD page above, so other players have an easier time :-)
Took me a bit to understand the stamina system (I thought it would recharge if I just stopped moving). I also did not expect the world to be as big as it is, which led me to thinking I wasn't using the mycellial network correctly.
@digital-bacon thank you! I will think of some ways to communicate that :) Did you figure out that the little shrooms give stamina?
nice, i could figure out the game mechanics fast enough despite there being no explanation. i think you made the right choice, even if in most games, this would have been an issue. The visuals for the "fungus sense" are also interesting, and conveyed what they meant effectively.
@mrchip thank you! I like the term "fungus sense", I wish I came up with that :smile: Glad you liked it!
Ah, no, I didn't :laughing:
Love Caps is a cute game about cute fungi discovering each other by way of the mushroom network (mushrooms are rad). I love the world here, its big and full of all kinds of mushrooms, over 3000 and approaching the ballpark of 4000 according to the game's description, it's a nice feature to head underground and sort out the signal to noise on the surface.
Just found everything overall chill and pleasant, I can get down to that. :purple_heart:
On a side-quest, I checked out your website and the Windows 7 era design brought glee to my soul (love the cats section btw great stuff). Glad to see someone out there is keepin' the dream alive.
The whole premise of finding your match using the mycelium network is genuinely charming. I love the idea of having that quiet, deep signal feel guiding you through the big forest. What a wonderfully cozy concept!
lovely Screenshot 2026-04-21 132853.png
@mavvy thank you! Glad you liked the game, and awesome that you checked out my website! Feel free to leave something in the guestbook
The cats section is in desperate need of fresh cat-art I found on the internet, I totally forgot that corner of the website haha, thanks for the reminder!
Edit: ofcourse, I did not create all those variants myself btw :grin: I made some caps, some faces, some bodies and feet and the computer generates them in runtime. But I think you already figured that :innocent:
@eugenik thank you so much!
@lizelive cute! Did you like the environment of the game? I see you've been exploring for three minutes in there :grin:
eating mushrooms while being a mushrooms seems wrong somehow hmmm
@kuviman thank you for playing! It was eye opening to see someone go in blind :smile:
Fun game! The mushrooms are real cute and the vibes are neat. Took me a few tries but I got there!
Great job!
@braktheman thank you! Glad you liked it once you got the hang of it :-)
Fun and very cute!
@illiteratelexicon thank you :smile:
Loved it! 31 seconds ish is my best at the moment. Lovely style, really enjoyed the chill nature too. <3
I love the art. The mushrooms are too cute. This little love story it made me cry... Good game!
highscore.png That turned out really cute! I might have played it a little too much :D
I had a bit of trouble with the stamina system at first, but maybe I should have just read the instructions first ;)
I think my best was around 50 seconds! Great job on this, it's a cute idea and it's really easy to understand and play. I like the sound effects and the music.
You could add to it if your mushroom becomes a matchmaker after finding your match. You could help the other mushrooms find theirs, haha.
This is so cute! :3 Happy to see a cozy game here, and with such adorable mushrooms too. It's crazy there are 3840 of them???
First love of my life:
love.jpg
Fastest love of my life:
love2.jpg
Got stuck on this piece of terrain in another playthrough, couldn't get out:
stuckMush.jpg
The highscore makes you want to play again and do it faster. That's really smart! And honestly the whole thing is impressive in my eyes. I love how cute they look when they dig into the earth, and the hint on the direction, the visuals of it and visuals overall! The concept itself also feels original to me, and it is fun! The only complaint I have is that stamina maybe depletes a little too fast? But all in all, loved the game, thank you for making sth cute!! x3
So cute! I love a good mushroom game. Great work on the variety of mushrooms to look through!
This was really fun! I liked when you dug down, it was a network to follow
Hey! We both made mushroom games for the jam! The mushroom variety is great and very cute! I grinded it out for a bit and ended up with a sub 4 second time! 🍄 CURRENT RECORD! 🍄 Screenshot_20260423_014346.png
Very mushroomy! :smile:
Might be a bit confusing at first but gets clearer. The shrooms are good cute buddies! : )))
This is so incredibly cute. I already love the idea, the graphics are super nice, the soundtrack is so soothing and it all just feels so cozy! My record was 24.something seconds :)
I'm a big fan of random character generators, this is thematically a perfect use for one! :heart:
Very well done!
@chkntikka congratz on that score! It's faster than my runs to be honest :grin: And I made the damn thing! Glad you had a good time. I see that you're new here, did you have fun past weekend?
@memoloop ahww It's very touching indeed , glad you had fun! Thanks for playing :-)
@yoko-san oh damn you smashed that highscore table haha! That's an honor, thanks for sharing! The stamina system needs to be updated somehow. *One should not need instructions to understand a mechanic*
If you have any suggestions on how to make it more clear, then please get in touch! I'm looking for inspriration. I saw a streamer who thought the symbols in the top of the screen were tetris pieces. I was blind to that, because I intended that to be symbols indicating which keys could be used for instance :sweat_smile:
@shanzpro ooeeehh that sounds like a fun idea <3 There are 500 shrooms in the level, so there could in theory be 250 pairs :thinking: Maybe I'll add such feature in a post-jam version. I will let you know if I managed to do that
@kanity ayyy great to see you here! And thanks for the kind words! Glad you liked it That collision bug is new to me. I've never had that in development and nobody reported that yet. Thanks! I will look into it
Regarding the 3800+ characters :grin: I did not draw them all by hand as you can imagine. What I did was creating 24 hats, 5 faces, 4 types of shoes, 8 types of body (24 \* 5 \* 4 \* 8 = 3840). I had a little table that told the computer where to draw the 4 sprites per character, so it looked like one character with animations and stuff. I'm very proud of that
@wormkingboo thank you for your kind words!
@evycl thank you! It was the best I could do with "signal" haha We've recently watched a documentary about mushrooms. I learned that these networks actually exists! Mushrooms can exchange information that way, crazy!
@wouter52 Ohh, that's an interesting approach! Mathematics are crazy sometimes xD It's like when I do combinations in my game then I realize wait, there will be too many combinations with only like 5-6 items already for me to draw a separate CG for each combination, ESPECIALLY if I allow items to repeat xD
@logan-core ayy! Mushroom-buddy!! Damn that is fast! How did you do that?! :laughing: I coded a forbidden zone directly around the player for the soulmate to spawn in, guess it spawned just outside of that area :sweat_smile: Glad you liked it! I think it's a big compliment when someone grinds for the highscore
@aweskybear thank you! If you have any suggestions how to make it more clear at the beginning then feel free to contact me! I'm looking for inspiration :innocent:
@purrseus thank you for the kind words and the compliments! I'm glad you had a good time looking at all the variations of characters :smile:
@kanity yeah it can get out of hand real quick like that if you don't look out :sweat_smile: I've developed a sense for that danger in the last couple of years luckily. In LD48 I made a text-adventure with many outcomes. I think there were hundreds of story-bits and questions/answers I needed to write. When I realized I was already in too deep (hehe, the theme was 'deeper and deeper')
I've attached a screenshot for the dialog-tree for that one. I swore after that never to make anything like that again :sweat_smile: Stil got PTSD from that one
Selection_017.png
@wouter52 Oh my god XD Yeah I did overscope a few times but managed to reel it in enough in the end. Mostly. Honestly the jams teach us how to properly pace ourselves and be realistic about what we can do in 2-3 days :D
Got to 35 seconds. But I think there are some bugs. Sometimes I was finding my identical copy but the game did not end when I was digging in. Then I was wondering what was going on. These were my first tries.
Just now, I beat it. And I also got soft-locked ones into some wood :D a few times.
Just sharing. BTW I noticed your dev-log video... and I was totally amazed to see you code in NPP++ :D . You are hardcore...
Great game and a really cool interpretation of the theme. The best part is the huge variety of mushrooms and how charming they are. At one point, I found my soulmate, but I had no stamina left to dig and no mushrooms nearby… despair :D
Now this is classic Wouter52 style - create a big gorgeous world that I want to immerse myself in, and then torment me with a gameplay challenge on every step :sweat_smile: In this case the demon's name is Stamina, the unforgiving punisher of straggling drifters. Its only remedy, the tiny mushrooms, are hard to see and barely ever where I want them to be. Yet I have managed to get into the top 5 yesterday, so it can't be that bad. Though it would be more up my alley if time was not a factor but rather the distance travelled, that's just me getting too old for fast games.
An exquisite entry in most aspects, it leaves me with questions. How long did it take to associate "signal" with mycelium network? How much research did go into this? Who drew this adorable graphics? Are there any shrooms left?
Congrats on making yet another oddity of gaming within the jam's time limit.
Loved it! Mycelium network is a very cool take on the theme and I really liked the effect of time passing / music playing only when moving. Maybe the size of the bar and the drain could've been tweaked to give less of a stop start experience (maybe some varieties of stamina boost size to offset) but it was part of the experience and skilled playing already handles it. Really nice stuff!
@aweskybear ooh that softlock I really need to reproduce :open_mouth: And thanks! I like to develop like that, I honestly don't know if there are any lightweight no-nonsense javascript IDE's out there :innocent:
Thanks for watching btw! I started doing timelapses last year and it felt so cool that I wanted to do it again this time
@liquid ahwww that's sad :( A workaround is to walk around your soulmate until you get tired and go to sleep. After that you can dig in to be with them :two_hearts:
@liam thanks! I agree that the stamina system is a bit unbalanced , maybe I'll release a post-jam version where that is addressed. This is the first time for me implementing such system
@kr4ft3r ahww thanks mate I feel humbled! And yeah, I always like to do one think I haven't done before and it always become a big lesson :grin: But hey, that's why we do this, right? To learn and to grow as a developer :smile:
Congratz on the top 5 score! I don't really know if 'speedrun' was the best option indeed. I almost left out the scoreboard entirely, but then it would loose it's magic I thought. Distance traveled sounds like a better option, thanks for the suggestion! Maybe even two scoreboards: "least distance traveled" and "most distance traveled". Does that sound like a good idea?
**Regarding your question:** it took looong to come to this idea. Like... I had an entirely different idea when I started programming. When I started the idea was to play as a character who was using some advanced version of [reCAPTCHA](https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/) where you needed to walk to someone else to prove that you were human and that you were where you said to were (location). Then @lizz was talking about mushroom-people for her game and I somehow decided that the main character would also be a mushroom and that the office I was imagining would be a forest instead. The mycelium network would work differently, although I really had no idea how yet.
Then I got a massive headache and needed to lie down for a bit (you can see that in the timelapse at around 1:52 where I took a big break.) I had some time to think and decided *how* the mycelium network would work and how I could limit its usage with stamina. You can see in the video that I pivoted right away after the break, creating the little shrooms and the stamina indicator.
Lizz and I had seen a documentary about these networks and were intrigued. I did not do a lot of research to be honest, Lizz did more research about different kind of shrooms for her game
Lovely little game! I quite like the idea of the overworld/underworld split. Must have been a blast making all the different :mushroom: sprites! Or did it get tiring after a while?
@pastry-chef thanks for playing! I'm glad you had a good time :smile:
Regarding the 3800+ characters :grin: I did not draw them all by hand as you can imagine. What I did was creating 24 hats, 5 faces, 4 types of shoes, 8 types of body (24 \* 5 \* 4 \* 8 = 3840). I had a little table in memory that told the computer where to draw the 4 sprites per character, so it looked like one character with animations and stuff. I’m very proud of that
@wouter52 aha, that makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
> Regarding the 3800+ characters grin I did not draw them all by hand as you can imagine. What I did was creating 24 hats, 5 faces, 4 types of shoes, 8 types of body (24 * 5 * 4 * 8 = 3840).
This is very cool indeed :)) . One similar idea [that I've loved to use in other games/creations] - use some sort of CSRNG to sort of achieve the same thing, but with infinitely many combinations. Although... that could make the finding of *your twin* a bit more D: challenging..
Thank you for submitting the game to the stream. As far as game jam games go, I think this is one of the best designed games for that. Not being able to die, short sessions, replayability. As far as theme goes I also love that you chose mushrooms and their vast "root" networks as the basis. It is hard to read the gamestate/environment easily. A lot of colors are similar, so especially when moving quickyl it kinda becomes a bit of a mush. Especially the stamina mushrooms got lost very easily. I do love though that when you run out of stamina everything fades away expect stamina mushrooms, which is a great touch. The biggest design gripe I have is that it is a bit too simplistic, digging down and following a direction is very straight forward. So disconnecting the "root vision" with the "overworld vision" a bit and adding obstacles could be an interesting way to further develop the idea. Another potential feature could be that different ground types have a different traversal cost and less "root vision", like sand costing more and barely giving a direction.
Overall I did enjoy it a lot though and would be interested in seeing how the idea get further explored.
@poweranze Ayy, thanks again for playing on stream! It's very cool to see someone play it live
I will take your feedback into a count when/if I release a post-jam version. Those are all fair points and I appreciate your detailed feedback :smile:
Very cute game! The stamina system was a bit unintuitive to me and felt a bit harsh. Maybe the stamina items can be made stand out a bit more visually, because it was a bit hard to understand what is decoration and what is an item. But after figuring that out it was a quite nice play! Tried to get on the leader board and accidentally ended up first :smile:
I'm not sure if I fully understood the stamina mechanic even after a few plays but I really like the theme of your game and the fungus root network screen is hypnotizing, it seems both procedural and hand-made, I really like it!
@oadt woaw I didn't even know those kind of times were possible haha!
The stamina system needs an update indeed. I'll take your feedback into a count, thanks!
@rend Glad you had a good time! I also like how all the little shrooms turned out, the world feels so alive!
We made surprisingly similar games, even if the overall theme was very different. The fungus-network signal screen looked really cool and I loved how it added "noise" to the direction.
It took me reading the hints in your description to understand the stamina mechanic. Still, it didn't affect my enjoyment negatively. These are the hardest kind of submissions for me to review, as it is so competent and clearly skilled in every way it is hard to give any feedback on how to push it to the next level, especially without veering into personal preference territory. Great job!
@lohii hey, great to see you here! You're absolutely right, I didn't see that when I played yours. But now that you brought it up; they are eerily similar indeed :smile:
Thank you for the big compliments! I'm very proud of this one. The stamina system is new to me and I can see that in people's feedback. I'm glad that people speak up about that
Please tell me your personal preferences btw, I'm very curious about that!
Nothing big, but here are some thoughts that I remember having:
Since this is a high score game, I'm not sure if running out of stamina should just restart the game, since the timesink is so big that runs with and without are basically in their own categories. However, I can see why you can't really "fail" since the message is that there is someone for everyone, and it does keep the game more lighthearted.
Even more in the preference territory, from the runs I tried the location of the shrooms is static, so the best runs tend to end up as memorization, and even more importantly for me, sort of devalues the signaling mechanic since you can end up less meaningful. However, there were so many shrooms that I'm not even sure if there is shuffling or not, and it needs quite the dedication to actually start remembering where everything is. And is a player that dedicated even bothered by it at that point.
Similarly, I was not sure whether the stamina cost on the signal seeking should be lowered, since it is the mechanic connecting to the theme and does take some time to use. Even here I'm not sure of the second point, since the timer seems to pause on some screens, maybe. Could just be the stamina that gets stopped.
@lohii thanks for sharing your views!
I LMAO'd when I saw my little guy dragging his butt on the ground while the music played NSDNJDSNJ your comedic timing is always top notch.
This was a really fun simple game! I like how when I lose my stamina, the UI subtly tells me what items to look for to replenish it. The different mushrooms are all very cute, I'm sure you had a blast designing all their shapes and accessories! I also really like the mycelium network graph when you dig into the ground, very cool effect.
For some reason many times when I reload the page the game goes black after I input my name and press enter. I had to reload like 10 times to try again :sweat_smile: Also those high scores are a little sus, maybe they just got lucky and spawned right next to their lover, but anyway! I'm definitely not beating that x3
A very cute game! My best time was around 9 seconds, but that is no longer enough to make it onto the leaderboard. 😊
Super cute and nicely done game.
@fupi thanks for playing and for your wonderful comment! That's heartwarming
I always had fun testing it and seeing the little shrooms playing, walking and sleeping all over the place. It made me happy :smile:
Regarding the bug, veeeery strange! Can you reproduce it now? I reproduced it this morning very consistently and that was strange, because I have never seen that bug before! I tried it a few minutes ago again, and now it does not happen anymore. Very strange :thinking:
@turbolaser I'm still impressed! My best time is 15 seconds, I have no idea how people are doing that :sweat_smile: Thanks for playing!
@venomousmouse thaks for playing! Glad you liked it! Any additional feedback is appreciated :smile:
A small but enjoyable game. The visuals and audio are excellent, and the leaderboards are a great feature too—though it’s a shame that only the top players are visible. All in all, great work!
Oh my goodness, I thought I did well at this game, but then I saw the high score board 😅😅😅😅 Very well done! Really cute idea, great art, great mechanics and UI (I especially love the edible mushrooms become highlighted when you rest). I also loved how replayable the high score board made it, and how much randomization went into each replay.
@mekuire thank you! Glad you liked it :smile: Also, totally forgot: congratz with your first LD entry btw! Hope you have a wonderful time over here during the feedbackround :-)
@cataclysmicknight ayyy great to see you here! Thanks for playing and for your feedback :smile: Glad you had a great time :-)
My best is 32s with few tries, I could retry until I get my mate just aside, like probably those who fill the leaderboard with scores under 5s, but… what's the point? :sweat_smile: The idea is simple (to play and understand), the global design is cute, and it was a little challenging to manage the search of both my mate and little mushrooms (and I bounced twice into the I-found-my-mate-but-I-m-low-on-stamina-and-there-s-no-mushrooms-in-the-neighborhood-:scream: situation :rofl:), it was fun to play, good job!
Ayy great to see you here! Thanks for the feedback @lereveur ! I coded something that the soulmate should not spawn next to the player, appearantly there was a bug. Whoopsie haha
Based on all of your feedback. Which is awesome and I thank you all :hearts:
If you want to try it: load up the game and press **"P"** in the main menu. It should tell you that "post-jam" version is activated. Below you can find the changes. I also added a changelog in the submission-page. Ofcourse, these changes are only activated when you press P. The original version is not touched (mostly).
@OnlinE-Play @digital-bacon @yoko-san @aweskybear @liquid @kr4ft3r @liam @oadt @rend @lohii - Stamina should be less of a headache. The bar itself is a bit more clear and less intrusive (smaller footprint and icons don't look like tetris shapes anymore). The bar also reacts more quickly to changes and it recharges when standing still for a moment. That is especially nice if you found your soulmate while not having enough stamina. - Also, there are instructions for basic controls at the start of the game now.
@poweranze Thanks again for the awesome feedback! In this postjam version I added the following things: - Level is a bit less streightforward, as there are more obstacles now to walk around - Water slows you down - Sand and mud make the signal very weak, making it harder for the player - The resolution is a bit higher
I didn't address the lack of contrast, as that was kinda by design :grin:
@lereveur The center of the map should be off-limits now for the soulmate to spawn in (I increased the area, the soulmate should only spawn around the edges)
@fupi I tried to address the black-screen-bug by making the player hit "E" instead of "ENTER" to start the game, as it sometimes goes streight from "enter-name-mode" into the game without displaying the options menu. By tweaking that keybind, this should not happen and the assets get a liiiiitle more time to load in. (black screen appeared when the game failed to play an audio clip)
@kuviman - The highscore table is more clear now, it shows that the values are in seconds. - The message to press F5 to play again has been redesigned to be more clear. - I did not change the font, that is a limitation in my custom code base that is too big to tackle at the moment.
@shanzpro I liked your match-maker idea, but for this post-jam version I decided to only tackle the low haning fruits instead of writing new features.
@aweskybear @kanity I tried to reproduce the colission issue you found, but could not find anything. So I didn't fix that, as I see it as an incident for now. Thanks again for letting me know though!
When exactly am I supposed to press `P`? I suppose I'm being a bit daft here :sweat_smile: But very cool idea to incorparate a post jam version in this way!
@oadt thanks for trying!
1. First start up the game: https://www.wouter52.com/PROJECTS/LD59/PLAY/ 2. Enter your name / alias 3. Press P in the main menu (there is a blue text indicating the new post-jam version)
If you don't see that version, then maybe your browser kept the old version in cache. You can press CTRL+F5 to force a reload :-)
Here's what you should see when you need to Press P Screenshot from 2026-05-02 13.13.16.png
Ah yes, it was an cache issue, thanks! I like the additional notes when you run out of stamina and overall imrpovements to the interface :thumbsup:
2026-05-04 11_03_18-W52_ Projects _ Ld59 _ Play.png
This was much easier once I realised how the stamina mechanic worked. Fun little game! I'm impressed with the variety of mushrooms you were able to come up with, and I like how the music and artwork changes depending on what you're doing.
Cute idea, graphic is nice, music is a bit repetitive.
Maybe the feedback of the distance between connection could be improved to help the player with the direction where to move.
Also tried the post-jam that fixes most of the problem that the entry has, so nice job overall.
@f1krazy Thank you for playing and the wonderful feedback :smile:
@r4ndomthunder Thank you! Awesome that you also tried the post-jam version and that you think it is an improvement :smile:
An interesting idea! I really liked the feeling of burrowing underground. As a minigame, I think it’s very promising and could become really fun with some extra features and maybe a bit of lore. Of course, that’s not the kind of thing you usually have time for during a game jam, so I’ve judged it as a jam version.
Still, once the jam is over (very soon now!), I’ll definitely be curious to see what you do with it afterward.
Great job! :mushroom:
Fun minigame! I found it really cool how the signal is displayed as a mushroom network, looks really amazing!
I like the semi-random map, had some fun exploring it, the map sides have a bit of uniqueness. I ran into the great brick wall that I thought was an interesting pair with the mushroom foraging mechanic.
Very clever how the mushrooms are highlighted if the player fails to find any, works not only as a tutorial but as help to recover stamina.
Amazing work, the music makes it feel like a very chill game!