itch.io

Hey, thanks for playing!

We've utilized threads lightly in past jams to help us work through more complex functions that were choking up the main thread, but they were definitely relied on too heavily for this entry. The amount of WorkerThreadPool tasks and thread functions seemed to hurt the quality of the web build, which definitely made this an important learning experience.

Threads did a lot of heavy lifting for the simulations on the map. We used one that ran a custom flowmap for navigation that encouraged the enemies to avoid burning regions on the map. We also had a separate thread do the procedural generation at the start of the game, since the tile operations were quite heavy and really held up the scene tree when loading in. Finally we had a big WorkerThreadPool group task that decodes the map data and generates a texture for the shader to draw the map. That also got us around using the built in TileMap entirely. Since images aren't thread-safe we instead wrote the decoded color to a PackedByteArray and then converted that to an Image at synchronization. The fire simulation runs surprisingly well on the main thread, so that was left as was. The best way to maintain performance was to use GpuParticles2D and write to a pointmap to communicate where the fire would emit from, letting us offload a huge chunk of the work to the GPU. So everything you see there when a big fire is going is one singular particles node!

Seems like using threads on web builds are best suited when deployed sparingly though, and where the performance gain really counts. In the future we'll certainly be more careful with how we utilize concurrency!

This was cool tech experiment! I think the actual controls need to be a bit more touched up though. Making sure the ship is selected, pressing D and then clicking somewhere to set a new direction felt a little over-engineered. I also didn't have the best conception of the space my ship was occupying, which became less of an issue through trial and error. Neat project overall, and cool seeing other people inspired by Sebastian Lague's fantastic projects :)

I enjoyed this! Liked the historical facts sprinkled around, though I wish there were some more geographical distinctions in the ice formations.

My only other suggestion would just be including a center line for the compass... when there were a lot of icons on the compass I had a hard time figuring out where the center was and what was ahead of of me or to the side. Not really a big deal though!

I also really enjoyed the aesthetics you made... It looks very cohesive, and like I'm playing an old educational game in the public library to learn historical facts. It's cozy. Nice work!

Great seeing it tie into a  biography, love the inspiration! I definitely wish I could put  a little more input into the trajectory of the crew's survival after the starting screen, however it was still an enjoyable story to sit through and conveys that you can only really work with what you planned for in advance.

Really neat game... I love how brutal and punishing the winter felt. My crew always died in desperation, be it from freezing or starving to death.... Although there was one summer where the rest of my crew starved to death after cannibalizing most of my crew during the winter lol.

I found the RNG elements were a bit out of tune... I had one summer where hunting was bountiful, about half of it spoiled over the winter, and then the next summer I found very little and starved. I'm sure it's realistic, but it feels unfair from a gaming standpoint.

I also found it frustrating reaching a dead end in the generated map and having to waste most of my summer turns backtracking. That usually guaranteed my crew would starve and I'm wondering if there's a way to get around this issue that I am missing.

I like the RNG for replayability, it just needs a bit more balancing imo, which is hard to do in 9 days!

Art is beautiful and the sound selection was well-picked. The winter transition audio reminded me of frostpunk, so points for that!

This inspired a couple replays from me, and they all felt unique enough to feel like each one was their own adventure. Really impressive what you got done in such a short period of time, nice job!

MAXIMUM LUNINANCE

Call it a tie? We gotta get milliseconds in here

Hey there, also coming from the finish your game jam.

I enjoyed the challenge the gameplay loop built up to in the last level and think this shows a fun depiction of the results we can get from disruptive protest! Cool game :)

Alright try beating that hosers:

I'm not very good at this lol:

Yup when you move it replaces the current pixel the player is at with the air colour, and then draws the player in the new position and checks if it just replaced an ore. There's a few gotchas in how the setup works but overall godot still has great tools for it.

Nice!

Updated with the highest I could get

Aw sweet, thanks! :)

Thanks for playing! If you're interested in other plant games there's also this one: https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2583332, although Mr. Rola already highlighted it so you may have already seen it ;)

Neat concept with the flying controls! One thing I might like to see in here is the control menu on the side and available for access while flying... and maybe the ability to queue up maneuvers. Otherwise the idea is pretty cool! I like that you took the gameplay inspiration from a book.

This had nice aesthetics and the gameplay got pretty intuitive. The buttons shrinking the more you press them weren't intentional judging from the last comment, right? I genuinely thought that was a feature haha. Which would actually be cool to experiment with more in its own right! Anyways, visuals are nice and it's an interesting concept!

I had so many limbs lol, that was pretty fun! Performance was gradually tanking more and more on each level though, and it was also really easy to avoid taking damage. It all looked really good, and nice job on the enemy animation. Simple rules made for some interesting gameplay!

Cool concept, I find the visuals really suit it. Is there anything after wave 1? It may have actually said somewhere but I don't think anything happens after wave 1 ends and I still had 2 health. I see a lot of potential for iteration, variety, and increased complexity just with the set of rules you have here. Nice job!

The graphics look quite good. I like the effort that was put into showing reflections and the character body when you look down.

I'm not entirely sure if it's a browser issue on my end but the movement is super wonky. I kept getting stuck on walls and corners, and I accelerated really fast and could not seem to change the direction I was moving in. That made it incredibly difficult to move through doorways (which there is lots of) and fight enemies.

Otherwise cool stuff!

Damn! That's way more than anything I got

haha thanks it's definitely playable-ish!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This is pretty unique simulation experiment, awesome how performant it is! I really like how meaty it all looks as well. Cool that there's an indication of different sections of the body.

Collision handling makes the movement a little janky, making it too easy to get separated from my other cell masses and too challenging for the Neutrofils to pose a significant threat in large crowds.. I was expecting the physics to run a little more like a fluid simulation. Gameplay also mostly feels like it's just rubbing up against other cells until I absorb them or they kill me. This is, however, a lot of work for a 2-week jam... definitely something to be proud of :)

Best part has to be the song, although I wish there was some more music after it. Cool direction to take the theme in!

This game looks distinctly neat and the platforming mechanics are pretty fun. I'm also a fan of the ridiculously cheesy dialogue.

I would like if I was more incentivized to use the other combat options, but they didn't feel effective or worth using compared to just aggressively petting the animals and getting bit two or three times.

Overall it's a pretty neat experience!

This game has an aesthetics very strongly evocative of Stalker, from the player character's fatigues to the ambience, the old-school graphics techniques, and the drab colour pallette enhanced with dithering. Nice job on that.

The enemies are pretty interesting but I kept getting into spots where I was quite helpless. The entities appeared to move when I used the scanner but I managed to hack around that by rapidly tappping the right mouse button. I think if that was a little more strict the entities would have been much more challenging.

Otherwise, I personally find the entities really intruiging.

Having the text cover some narative at the start tutorial, between levels, and at the end made sense, but I felt like they interrupted the tension sometimes during the gameplay. Level 2 would be a good example... you introduce the entity through its unnatural noises, and then you see it on a cliff. When you try scanning it, it starts moving towards you. Super cool, but I found that the text popping in and explaining what I was already about to uncover really impeded the uneasy sense of discovery I was feeling. It felt like you were telling before showing, and I would have liked it more if I wasn't told... just left to figure it out and be surprised at how it behaves :)

With the shader effect you do with the scanner I can't quite tell whether it is from the camera perspective or the character perspective and it threw me off occasionally, but it looks frigging cool and I like the mechanic.

This is a really neat concept overall, I'm glad I saw you sharing it in the discord server.

The crab just needs to do a little more stretching before it goes cannibalizing younglings for the day ; )

Cheers!

Fun use of a glitch to facilitate a gameplay mechanic! You took turning bugs into features to the right place.

Like a few other commentors have noted, controls are a tad touchy, and I felt like I was sliding around too much... often into things that hurt me. The last house I was at didn't have tables like this.

Really impressive that you designed so much of this from scratch!

The aesthetic and sounds are really nice. The overall atmosphere felt very cohesive.

I feel like teleportation as a mechanic is a neat idea to work with. Some of the ideas you incorporate make for good depth and complexity as the player progresses.

The clunky controls and the lack of feedback/sound really hurt the experience, however. The teleporation mechanic feels chaotic and I'm not really sure what its limitations are. The visuals are kinda jarring and the player blends into the background on my monitor a little.

I might be repeating some of the other comments in here when I say the potential for a really interesting teleportation puzzle game is at your fingertips, but it still feels like a prototype.

I think I just played a crab eugenics game. I also had fun, which might be even more concerning.

The "losing to progress" aspect is pretty interesting in regards to upgrades. I also really like where you took inspiration from. It's funny and weird and great when thrown into a short game.

Some sounds + beach ambience would really improve the experience. There's a bit of an "Oh, come on" zone right next to the crab where I felt like it could have moved its arm back just a little bit to catch a mutated crab that I didn't want going through. I think my crab has a mindset problem. it just needs to believe in itself a little more.

Visuals are cute, I like them especially on the baby crabs.

Biggest question I currently have is how on earth do those toilets fit through such narrow pipes? Why is nobody else wondering this? Are those how speak up and question the wonders of the assmbly line getting silenced? What shadowy deals with the devil are these bigwigs making behind closed doors!? There must be something aberrant afoot... Open your third eye sheeple! /s

This game is pretty fun. I like that the complexity of your job ramps up and more random crap gets thrown in your way of making money... what sick prick in the assembly line thought it was funny to start sending me ducks and bombs! Felt like there were unusually hard days and then unusually easy days.

I'll also echo the spotty grab mechanics. There were a couple times that made the sound like I grabbed it and then it stayed in place.

I also felt like I kind of optimized the fun out of the game after I found out you can duplicate the bombs in the repair machine and quickly throw it in the trash for cash. I ended up packaging no toilets for days straight after I figured that out. Felt like I was cheating the system... which felt kinda good. Screw those corporate fat cats! I'll make my living entirely off of bonuses instead of packaging toilets. That'll show em.

Generic elevator music for ambience in the menus + silence in-game where only the sound of drudgery and toil can be heard worked nicely I thought.

This game has a pretty neat atmosphere and aesthetic. Everything about it has a bit of haunting feeling to it.

I had a bit of a hard time with the movement, I'm not a huge fan of the inability to strafe in diagional directions. I got into a few spots where I felt like that would have been handy.

The fact that you are always moving makes some spots challenging but still feels fair.

Cannons also felt reasonably responsive... it still took some time to adjust to how the rotating works. I might have liked it more if it was tied to horizontal mouse motion, but I'm also aware that I have some weird preferences for controls sometimes.

I've had a couple good suggestions on how to improve player agency. I think giving the  ability to weigh genetic traits and introducing some kind of biomass currency like in your game might help offer more control while reducing button-spamming (I think in your game the ability to weigh genes might work against the experimental feeling you get in the early stages though). 

The levels are also procedurally generated, which isn't bad necessarily, but I think my levels just need more diversity and content, especially for worldbuilding purposes.

Thanks for giving it a try!

This was a cool idea... Communist Crackhead tetris is wild.

I second the previous comment, I randomly died occasionally or would get in ruts where all my blocks get wiped out every 30 seconds, and it felt a bit frustrating.

The puzzles are really fun to solve and I love how the spin mechanic + the falling blocks and different map shapes spin things up.

The procedural generation looks pretty cool. It looks like there's a few variations I ended up not getting in my playthrough. Super cool how big you can make the plant.

Doesn't really seem like there's much to the gameplay, however. It's also a bit of a bother that certain things like the sun turn off every time the simulation menu reopens.

Cool stuff!

Thanks for playing it! I like how complex the mutation system is, but if I continue building on this concept I would like to go deeper and the only way to accomplish that would be to make the game much more comprehensive to players at the start. It's definitely a lot to take in as it is.

I'm glad you gave it a shot! Yes, a tutorial would make this game feel far less sink-or-swim for getting into.

Hey another jam submission that does stuff with plant mutations!

Once I got a hang of how the mechanics work, it started to feel more like a comfy idle sim. The Aesthetics suit it quite well.

I wouldn't mind having somewhere to dispose of seeds I don't want anymore. I had a bit of a hard time navigating with the camera angle. I also was not able to select individual plants very easily, only one or two to the right side of the dome. Double-clicking selected all... sometimes. That didn't work too great for me either, but it was the best way to actually do stuff with my plants.

I enjoyed selectively breeding the plants I wanted, and emphasizing different traits over others. I think it's nice how the traits you have control over are all shown visually.

Overall a neat game idea!

Letting you hold the left-mouse button and drag to select a region and control everything from one panel would be worth exploring and really help avoid people from feeling like they're spamming the clone button. Lack of tutorial is easily one of the biggest hurdles to this game's enjoyment.

Thanks for playing and providing feedback!

This is such a cool concept... The tutorial was very appreciated as I was quite lost at first, but got pretty blown away when I understood how the mechanics work. Atmosphere fits quite nicely.

Dash is broken in my browser (could be the doing of the omnipotent shared array buffer), although I don't think that really hurts the experience too much. Not a lot of places where I felt like I needed to dash.

The switching bullets for different enemies was good and made things a little more complex. I do however hope you develop this idea further after the jam into a bigger experience and narrative. I'd be interested in seeing where you're able to take this!

My favorite thing about this game is just violently swinging these little rat corpses around while they egg me on to gamble them away. Amazing game. No criticism. Literally perfect.