itch.io

Agoraphobia feels like claustrophobia - the walls are closing in, but where physical walls don't exist, it's a wall of sound, sense, threat, a formless field of pain that requires physical obstruction to alleviate. Fields don't work that way. They are too honest. Nowhere to hide but nothing to hide from. Exposed, largely, only to yourself.

it's so easy for a bedroom to become a prison cell

Strangely upsetting object, a game that superficially resembles the kind of ice-physics-puzzle whose perfect movements and precise solutions feel like solving a beautiful equation when finished, but full of imprecision and redundancy and DIAGONALS. I think it hates me, ever so slightly.

you picked the wrong itch page fool

all you had to do was play the damn game cj

Just come hang out with me

thank you so much!!

Here's a link to our press kit with a good amount of the important art in there: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PYHvgd69jbbtpKNVoPaMpQEHfUNvZaS2?usp=sha...

And just for you, here's the sprite sheet with all the paintings in it :)

IF YOU DRAW JENNY YOU NEED TO SEND IT TO ME. I will have made it as a storyteller when i see horny fanart of her

hahahaha unfortunately i didn't end up making it to sxsw this year so i'm curious who my impostor is!!!

I'm so glad to hear that!!! I was a little worried about how I'm depicting what isn't explicitly plurality (as in, based on research or personal depictions of did/osdd) but is definitely evoking it, and resonates with my experience maybe sorta having alters (working on it with my therapist lol). I'm so glad you enjoyed!!!

I don't know how long it'll take, but he was with me for 6 years before this first part came out! Johnny is patient! The entire story is planned out hahaga

AAAAHHHH <3333 i wont forget yawhen i hit da big leagues kiddo 😌🚬 

Ahhhhhhh salem its so cool to be in a place where i get to be excited to hear what someone's gonna say about my next big thing.... Thank you as always for the thoughful message and for recognising that percy and twig are CRACKED!! I promise you it's gonna go some weird fuckin places, and I can only hope that I get to arrive at those places before I'm geriatric :) johnny is a bit of an ongoing side project alongside a big game i've gotten off the ground. Gotta figure out how to let y'all know about that one, huh?

Genuinely so awesome to see you take this on board so enthusiastically :)Awesome work

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

I'm really fond of taking a game that is fairly methodical and full of downtime and making it absolutely chaos by tacking an entire new gameplay mode with its own controls on top. It's a cool idea to apply to snake, especially with the comedic framing of not being able to control where you're going to actually digest food at the same time! Nice work!!!

Hi, I'm Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

So, fun fact about me, I'm a huge Pokemon fan, and this style of puzzle is in a bunch of them. I absolutely adore these puzzles, they're one of my favourite kind, so a theoretically endless little game full of them is right up my alley :) Sign me up!! Clever to recontextualise them as a riff on the snake theme.

Great work!

Hi, I'm Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

I'm king of the jungle! Cool idea to mix the always-moving-forward controls with a survival game where enemies are coming from every corner, it makes the whole  thing very frantic. I kinda wish the attack mode and movement mode were one thing, because having to manage all of that at the same time would make things even more tense! Good work, and your snake character is so charming :)

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

What a fun game! Nice work :) I appreciate how you've upped the ante with all the new challenges that appear as you play. I wonder if there's a way to integrate the growing tail length that's so iconic in classic snake?

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge from the jam :)

I really love this one, it's super sentimental and slow and understated in a way I super appreciate. There's an animal crossing-esque kind of fantasy here: a calm community where nothing happens fast and everyone is friendly. The character portraits in particular are absolutely ADORABLE and I would love to be able to download them !!!!!!!!! 

One thing I'll note just in future is that, because you're telling a story about Australian animals on Australian soil, especially with some spiritual elements and the iconography of opal/boomerang/didgeridoo, you're pretty heavily invoking imagery that's directly borrowed from aboriginal cultures. It's not inherently bad to do so, but the history this country has with how we treat aboriginal people and their culture is rancid, and so it's really important to be careful and at least pay respect to the legacy that you're invoking, because it means more to other people than an item in a videogame. I put acknowledgements of country in all my games these days maybe think of doing the same, especially if you revisit similar ideas!

Anyway, that isn't to accuse you of anything or say you should feel bad. It's just an important thing to keep in mind and try and be considerate about when we make games in Australia :)

Thank you for your work! <3

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

Super cool! There are two things that I find especially fun here:

- You've taken the most iconic emotional part of snake, the moment when you go "oh shit" because you realise you've boxed yourself in or otherwise totally screwed yourself over, and turned that from a split-second mistake to an agonising point of failed strategy. I think that's super cool, and really thoughtful.

- There's a sort of automation game appeal to this game that isn't necessarily common in deckbuilders - it feels a bit like programming one of those kids robots in a good way, I think that's really compelling!

Great work :)

Hi, I'm Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

Snakeoban! I think what really makes this for me is that last step, having to perfectly wrap yourself around the nest. It's both a really cute and heartwarming way to end a level, going mama mode, and an interesting way to engage the challenge of being a snake in another way. You're using the core premise of the original snake - the long, trailing body that you can't loop back in on - with depth that very few games in the jam come close to. I love how it makes me think about the complexity of such a simple kind of character! Well done. 

I'm a doctor

Hi, I'm Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

Cuuuute! The wiggly rope sim-y controllers come naturally for snake games, but none have been as elastic and wriggly as yours. I love a good two-player silly platformer, with lots of screaming to be had, and I appreciate you made the game accessible for both co-op and solo! The little munch effects and sound really make the personality of the project for me, big fan, great work :)

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

Astonished at how many interesting riffs on snake there are in this jam! I really wasn't expecting to be as entertained as I am. What a brilliant idea to combine the exact cadence of snake's gameplay with the overcooked, papa's pizzeria, diner dash style frantic order up! rhythm, and the visual affect of inventory tetris. It really captures my imagination, and is one of the games that I most feel has potential to be something much bigger (not that you have to do that to make it worth it!). You should be so proud :)

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

Cute game! I really enjoy the character controller and the way the snake evolves, the simple art style really highlights how much of a blank slate the snake is, lending itself to wings and such as it grows into some freakish reptile chimera. Nice work :)

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

You've managed to make the cloying fair dinkum crap totally enchanting by focusing on the most relatable part of it all - being absolutely terrified of walking anywhere in nature when it's warm. My heart was racing throughout this because nobody is more paranoid about stepping on a critter than me HAHAHAHA. I adore the mixed media presentation you've got going on here, the way you've presented the 3D in particular is almost impressionistic in how the brush and dirt and shit all blend into each other. The few times I've encountered a snake in real life it has just kind of appeared out of nothing, a blade of grass that is simply too animated. The sprites and sense of humour is wonderful, I'm such a huge fan :))

Really excellent, clean, poppy and charming presentation!! Wild to think this is the first time I'm seeing a game from y'all at Pixel Pasture, absolutely full of personality. I only wish I could see snake doing all these little tasks in each scene coz they stole my heart immediately, and I think broadly the theme does start to grow distant in the kinda normal not-super-snakey minigames (although I think there is really something to the way signature signing feels like drawing serpents loll). I'm really curious how so many games in Snake Jam have a wagie-core sort of theme to them, there's a clear interpretation I'm missing! Awesome work

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam!

This is my first time actually playing a "survivors-like" sort of game, and wow, I mean, yeah, turns out I do love big numbers and lots of bullets on the screen. The constant crawl of the snake controller is a fun way to spin that, and since all of your weapons are added on the back of your character as additional length, it doesn't necessarily mean you become infinitely more powerful, since you can't concentrate all your firepower in the one spot.

I think the idea has potential still to be unlocked - for one, the threat of wrapping around and eating yourself isn't really present in this game like it is in classic snake thanks to the spacious and infinite environments. If the arena was also limited in size, and you had to manage your length vs. the strength of your weapons, that could be really interesting! That's unsolicited game design advice, though, which is evil. I really like your game, and had a lot of fun with it :)

Cute! I like the idea of taking both games to its maximalist extreme. I'm not usually keen on TV filters, but the CRT screen bulge here does something really neat by emphasizing the size of the map, making it feel like you're crawling over an entire globe bit by bit. Nice work!

Huge fan of this project! Conceptually, doing snake in the form of a first-person traditional dungeon crawler sort of game is really clever, and makes the dread of heading towards any obstacle, maneuvering through yourself, and being chased by your own tail genuinely quite terrifying. The self-indulgent list of characters you meet, both vessels for stories and characters you've met in your own time working and silly little references that serve to either lift yourself up or hammer in the nightmare absurdity are great, I was working real hard just to meet more of them :) I'm such a huge advocate for making art in a self-indulgent way and the enthusiasm is infectious. I'm looking forward to asking about who some of these freaks are in person haha

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam :)

There are a lot of games in this jam focusing on the elegance and length of snakes, but few about how awkward and floppy they are like this one. It's another facet of their personality that's really fun to explore! All of my real life encounters with a snake involve them flopping out of nowhere and frantically zipping around in a panic, much more in line with the destructive critter in your game.

If I have a bit of criticism, it's that I think the turn count is a bit superfluous, and if I were you, I'd just let players lean into the chaos without being strategic.

Awesome work!

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam!

What an interesting game! I really appreciate you elaborating on your goals/inspirations for the game on the page. You've done something really interesting here, using the unique locomotion/physicality of the snake to both make a neat physics puzzle game and something more emergent/creative. I love any game that lets me create some kind of a mess, and then let me see that mess in its entirety when I'm finished. Lovely work!

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam!

I keep being impressed by how well y'all have been interrogating, riffing on, reconstructing the basic idea of a snake game. In your case, the simple premise of adapting the gameplay into a more contemporary kind of character controller, with moving targets and imperfect visibility, makes the entire thing feel brand new, fresh, and begging to be expanded upon even more. I also love the re-interpretation of that unstoppable momentum that defines snake as the music-fuelled march into oblivion that is the pied piper! I wish it was easier to see how long my snake trail was, hahaha. Awesome work!

Hi, this is Shiv, the guest judge for Snake Jam!

It's not often a game jam gets an entry that's truly firing on all cylinders. Animated cutscenes, overworld and multiple levels, ensemble cast, fucking POP PUNK ANTHEM. I can tell y'all aren't coming as much from a game design background, and that's not to criticise - your team has decided to flex where you all uniquely can, and it makes your game shine brightly as its own entry into the world of shitpost fanime alongside beloved classics like Nyan Neko Sugar Girls and Sugoi Quest for Kokoro. I love that shit. From a former tumblr teen to (presumed) former tumblr teens, I hope you keep whipping ass, and if you receive passes to SXSW, I'd love to hang out!

In love with this project. It's almost hard to say anything about it because it's so clearly one-of-a-kind that it's sort of axiomatic, self justifying. I'll try though! You've captured a real, intimate but understated moment so elegantly, with the biblical gravitas to make it feel like the most important thing happening in the world. The weird, playful controls and arcane hints are delightful, the writing is hot, and everything is just so HEAVY. I can't think of a better way to describe it than crushing weight. I need to text him back before he talks himself out of continuing to deliver me the hottest texts of my life. You've riffed on the snake theme in a way that is as hilarious as it is thoughtful. I wouldn't expect anything less from this group of people.

Hi! This is Shiv, the guest judge for the jam.

I'll admit, I haven't nearly beaten this one yet haha but I don't need to in order to see how cool this project is. A riff on snake is a natural thing to make for this jam, but you've somehow managed to both riff on snake (the game), snake (the animal) and make something entirely unique all at once. This is an incredibly cool game, one I could see being blown up to a huge game on the level of your Stephens Sausage Roll and whatnot, zooming out at the very end to show you a snake the size of a 20 hour world map. It's clever, it's super friendly and approachable, and the presentation is super relaxing and crisp, just right for some brain teasing. Awesome work.

hahaha yeah? Tell me more

Coolio! Yeah it's a tough one, I guess I just have complicated feelings on how idle games are like. number go up manipulation at its purest, and that always feels a little icky, even when it's not trying to get your money or anything? But don't worry, I'm not judging you for it or anything haha (either as a jam judge or as a person lmao) I thought I'd just share my thoughts

ily (i love you)