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Neuromother's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #577 | 3.842 | 3.842 |
| Creativity | #593 | 3.958 | 3.958 |
| Style | #698 | 4.033 | 4.033 |
| Enjoyment | #1021 | 3.533 | 3.533 |
Ranked from 120 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Build/Design critters to scale yourself and return to the stars
Development Time
96 hours
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Comments
Like Kaster, I also loved the game! It was pretty creative, and enjoyable to play! May I suggest more colors to the aliens to more easily see what they are? Congratualtion for making this, it was fun :D
Thanks for playing! Feedback noted ;)
I loved the art and gameplay, but the bug of the game not pausing while you make new creatures made it a bit harder to play. I would love to see this game expanded more, especially with more types of behavior to choose from.
Thanks for playing :) I've already got a build ready to go with a bunch of improvements, that being one of them!
Everything seemed very cohesive and I loved the art. I with it was possible to see the attributes of my created creatures so I know which ones I should remake.
Thanks for playing! Feedback noted!
We played this on stream and finally circled back to rate and say thanks for coming by! The art is really fantastic. As we mentioned, it'd be nice to have had a few moments to wrap one's head around the game before getting attacked by enemies. Maybe if the enemies didn't start spawning until after the first growth phase? That said, still a very solid entry.
Thanks for playing! I've implemented that now in the Post Jam build so hopefully people will get to play a much more well rounded game if they come back to it. Enemies now don't spawn until you have at least one unit, and in menu the game runs at 0.05x speed
Game inspired me, thanks!
Well that comment made my weekend :) Thanks for playing!
I really like your thumbnail, the images, and the way you told the story. In terms of gameplay, it seems quite complicated to create units, and the enemies were quite easy to beat.
I liked building different critters for different strategies and the art is great! Fits the theme well with the Mother getting bigger as she levels. If you choose to develop it more it would be cool to see some different types of enemies/critters like maybe flying or ranged.
I did get an issue with damaging/collisions around halfway through - the enemies stopped hurting the Mother at some point (accidentally invincible) and my critters were stuck trying to attack enemies they couldn't damage (not able to return to the harvest behaviour I had given them).
Overall a fun game, nice job! :)
Thanks for playing!
I've completely reworked the combat for the post-jam build, they actually have projectiles now, attack speed is replaced by projectile speed that actually collide etc. Give the build a go if you're still interested Post-jam :)
Great game, great art, numbers go up, very addictive! I love the programming part of it, if you have more time after the jam it could be great to see more complex behaviour implemented (like if statements and states)
Some UX suggestion I wish you had implemented:
- I wish there was a way to know what are the settings on each critter I have in production (I had to remember that, to make sure I don't delete the ones I need)
- I wish there was a way to zoom out the camera or move it around a little (sometimes the mother was too big to see the screen)
Other than that I enjoyed this very much, bravo!
Thanks for playing! Love the feedback, in the post jam build I'm working on you can see your units stats much better through their visuals, but I might just straight up add an onhover stats panel, it's a very requested feature.
I wanted the camera to feel cramped JUST before the transition to a new form, but maybe they are juuuust a bit too close
Nice art
Music is nice too
I like management games, and this one had a nice mechanic (very similar to Spore)
Too bad I couldn't get the ending haha
Great aesthetic, I really love how the critters change their shape depending on the values you create them with!
Also amazing juice: everything feels really weel coordinated.
Thanks for playing! They are much more customisable in the post-jam build, whats in the game now got broken by last minute balancing and is like 1/5th of the forms we had :(
But I'm happy the intention made it through!
Really cool, I really like the visuals, the game, the polish is good !
Long live the zerg <3
Thank you for playing!
Returned to stars!
Really intuitive optimization proces, clever behavior system, art was amazing and the music felt so well fitted for the game!
I wish there was an option to see what current critters do tho
Great entry!
Thanks for playing to the end! In the build I have waiting for post jam your units should look visually very different depending on stat so that's one way, I also want to add the ability to name them, but I think that will be after a complete overhaul of the game
Neat stuff! I wish my already created creatures could be edited instead of having to delete and make new ones, cause I forget what kind of behaviors I assigned them. Aside from that it's fun to see these lil critters move around. The animations for The Mother are gross so you nailed that perfectly I'd say!
Mother is beautiful! Thanks for playing :)
This is an absolutely lovely game, loved the music and the art, especially how the aliens have these cuttlefish vibes. i really liked the perspective shift in the last stage of the game, i wish that was also a more obvious thing in the earlier stages. aside from that some more visual feedback would have been nice, such as what minions did what, and that fighting looked more reactive.
Other than that the only things id really want is just, more content haha, which id say is definitely a sign of a really good jam game!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed. Honestly I have a build right now with everything you've asked for, I just ran out of time! Be sure to check in after the voting period and I'll have added some cool stuff ;)
One of the best games ive played so far. Wish you all the best. Artwork and gameplay so freacking polished. I feel bad for what ive uploaded
Thank you so much :) We worked really hard! Don't feel bad though, delivering on a jam game at all is an achievement AND you did it in 48hr!
This is amazing for a game jam. The programming concept is very interesting, and the visual to go along are really polished.
Thanks for playing!
This is really cool! Our games do have very similar concepts, as you said but we focused more on the combat. I really liked the idea behind the critters' behavior. Though it was a bit unclear which stats were best to upgrade and why
YES! Programmable critters! I really like that idea. Bummer that the visual customization didn't make it to the release build, but the game's already very pleasant to look thanks to the art style and animations. I also liked the sound effects for the animations and the soundtrack fits the gameplay flow nicely.
Maybe I messed something up, but towards the end the biomass acquisition slowed down by a lot for me and redoing critter configurations meant a ton of clicking. Wish I could save templates or cache the most recent config and subtract from there.
I hope the critters will thrive after we left...
Man, really tried to get saving templates in but the game was already way over scope. It's a fantastic idea and the game will have it some day!
solid game, my biggest issue is how it's kinda hard to understand what is going on with the critters, the player can't tell which one does what and visually they don't seem to be different(at least outside of the ui)
the creature designs are interesting but some of them can kinda look like alien genitalia or something, not sure if that was the intention, but it does work in it's own weird way kinda similar to a lot of rick and morty monster designs
Haha that was not the intention and is primarily the fault of an animation bug. But I hope it got a giggle at least. The UX overhaul will happen, we've learned so much from all the comments. Thanks for playing!
Great execution and very interesting concept !
Thanks for playing!