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A jam submission

Happy MiceView game page

A Game of Wild Animal Suffering
Submitted by dcshiller — 4 hours, 22 minutes before the deadline
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Happy Mice's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Engaging#14.2504.250
Overall#33.9003.900
Graphics#34.2504.250
Philosophy#64.0004.000
Cohesion#63.7503.750
Sound#73.2503.250

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

HostSubmitted

Well, I feel like a horrible person after hearing all of those mice dying. I love the ethical dilemma in the game. If you're goal is to maximize happiness you have to increase the mouse population and keep them all well fed. Of course, this is hard to sustain and failure results in an enormous amount of suffering. Is the risk associated with maximizing happiness worth it when the cost of failure is so high? Maybe by attempting to have a satisfactory amount of happiness in the world we are we are more likely to actually maximize happiness.

The art for the mice was great, as was the design of the ui. My only complaints are (i) I wish everything moved a little slower and (ii) the sfx for the eating got a little out of hand when there were a lot of mice.

Developer

Thanks for the suggestions! I intentionally set it to a fast pace to give players the sense of being overwhelmed. I wanted to produce a oh-sh$$-what-just-happened moment the first time you play.  Ultimately, making the mice happy requires getting a good feeding rhythm going, and the pace keeps it challenging. You're definitely right that the sound is flawed. It was a last minute addition and the first time I've ever put sound on a website, so I didn't think it through properly.