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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
Fantastic entry! Would love the see this idea fully explored, lots of potential.
Great fun ! The mind design reminds me of the old gambit system in FFXII which I loved :) Game is a little overwhelming at first, you don't really have time to study where to give points, I ended up haphazardly putting muscles into things that I wanted to find and skin in the others, also it's not immediately obvious that the more points you put in a creature the longer it will take to build, more points feels like a reward at first but you can't always put in all the points available. The stat system may be a overly complicated for the purpose of the game All in all it's a pretty nice, creative game with great art, congrats !
oh man you're the FIRST person to mention the system I based it on! Yes, the system is too complex for the time you get at the start. I had a vision for the game applying pressure at the start, but ultimately that was the wrong I think. In v2.0 which will be live post jam there is a menu pause and enemies don't spawn until you have at least one critter.
Thanks for playing, the FFXII callout has made my weekend haha
This is done really well !
Thanks for playing :)
so good this game is!!! love this game idea so much ,wish for more content to play, want to see what will be in the end
Thanks for playing! There is an ending, if you encounter a bug where you can't complete a run, you can always watch a full playthrough here
Super fucking cool game lots of fun my only feedback is that it could use some balancing it was too easy for my tastes.
Thanks for playing! Difficulty got scaled back a lot towards then end, with more reliable combat, I can bump up that difficulty again :)
Really well made game! I love the animations and the game play was fun! Great job, super polished experience!
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 ;)