Inspirations

Evening! I thought I'd do a quick writeup of the games that I drew inspiration from, as part of creating Snake Snacks.

Om Nom Nom (2008)

"Om Nom Nom takes place in the Munching Grounds area of the Elevere Forest, which is the starting area for Canopy Elves. It features a grub who wasn't content on munching on leaves, so he ate, and he ate, and he grew, and he grew..."

Om Nom Nom is part of an interesting history - it was a minigame for the now-defunct Twin Skies, a planned MMORPG by the original creators of Neopets, and one of a few missteps that ended up with the company going bankrupt. That aside, the bite-sized (ha) minigames that came with their projects were always a lot of fun.

In this game you play as a hungry grub that can take a select few bites from the current level, trying to eat as much as possible. Every time you pass a level, you grow a little bigger and the scale of the things you eat also grows...

Inspiration:

• Taking bites out of things
• I really like how as you eat, you reveal "behind" or "inside" the object you're eating. This didn't end up surfacing anywhere in Snake Snacks though

Although the original full set of minigames has apparently been lost to time, a few (including Om Nom Nom) can be found on Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/469873

Push Me Pull You (2016)

"A videogame about friendship and wrestling."

I'll be honest - I've never actually played Push Me Pull You! But the trailer alone has always stuck in my head - the way the characters have been rendered isn't just a whole bunch of circles in a line, there's smoothness to the geometery. I've been wanting to create a similar effect for a long time, and on this project I finally got a chance to try something out with rendering a polygon instead of just working with sprites.

Inspiration:

• The squiggly bodies with smooth, clean art style

Find out more about the game from the official website: https://pmpygame.com/

Death Worm (2006)

"In this game you are an oversized worm that jumps above the ground and eatshumans, birds, dromedars and other animals. When you have eaten enough of them, the humans will start to guard the area."

Death Worm might have the most obvious connections to Snake Snacks - A long slithery creature hiding under the ground, bursting up and causing destruction on the surface.

I'm not sure how I know about this game... Om Nom Nom came from a trail leading from Neopets (a childhood game), and I most likely came across Push Me Pull You during the Untitled Goose Game hype (both games are by House House!). Death Worm comes from a time of sharing around USBs at school, so it might have done the rounds at some point then?

Inspiration:

• Move in the ground, build momentum, play above the ground

See: https://www.mobygames.com/game/28908/death-worm/

End

That's it! If anyone else has played these games, or even heard of them, I'd be keen to hear about it! For the older games in particular, it's been fun to revisit them and think back to... 20 years ago 😅 Til next time!