itch.io

So I revisited my approach (I'm not avoiding work, you're avoiding work), and it's certainly difficult enough to pull off: it took maybe 15 attempts to actually get 3 safe hens. I found that the main ways that I died while getting the strategy to work were starvation (due to not eating an egg while trying to turn it into a helmet or a hen), hen explosion (if the number of hens gets over 4 or 5, good luck preventing the entire board becoming an army of angry hens), or just being pecked to death (death comes for us all).

That being said, once I did get it to go off, the game didn't exactly become boring. It's a very different sort of game, but it's still fun. The challenge shifts from "don't get pecked to death or starve" to "how long do I want to let these eggs gestate to maximize my score and avoid a dangerous hen from spawning." I even had a few close calls where a dangerous hen spawned, I had to kill it, and when I was trying to get a helmet, another dangerous hen spawned! This combined with the fact that the only way to make the score increase at a reasonable pace is to get the eggs dangerously close to hatching means that this always threatened to happen.

Anyway, thanks for making this game! I've really enjoyed playing with it and I look forwards to seeing both what you do with it as well as what you make in the future!

I really enjoyed the game. Thinking a few steps ahead and trying to keep track of which moves were safer than others was a lot of fun.

However, you might want to implement a mechanic by which hens can move diagonally or only spawn on the diagonal. There are ways to manipulate the board so that the player can never be caught (as long as they don't let any new eggs hatch). 

To illustrate this: suppose there were only one hen on the board and it was right next to you:

[ ][ ]
[P][H]
P = Player   H = Hen

No matter how many times you moved however you like, that hen could never land on the same square as you. (If you colored the board with a checkerboard pattern, when the player is on black, the hen is on red and vice versa.) Conversely, if there is a hen on a diagonal to the player:

[ ][H] 
[P][ ]
P = Player   H = Hen

that hen could land on the same square as the player. Let's call these "safe" and "dangerous" hens, respectively.

Now, because of the way new hens spawn, a safe hen will always spawn a dangerous hen, and a dangerous hen will always spawn a safe hen. This is because the new hen appears in one of the four cardinal directions to the egg whence it hatched:

[ ][X][ ]
[X][O][X]
[ ][X][ ]
H = Old Hen/Egg Position   
X = possible spawn location

Combined with the fact that, if the player has collected a helmet, they can kill hens they collide with, the player can cull all the dangerous hens, leaving only safe hens. (I found that a good number of safe hens to keep around is 3)

The method I used for getting to 3 safe hens:

1. collect a helmet so that you can start to cull dangerous hens as soon as safe hens start to spawn
2. Let the 2 dangerous hens you start with spawn a safe hen
3. Cull one dangerous hen (you should have 1 safe and 1 dangerous hen at this point)
4. Follow the safe hen around and prevent it from spawning a dangerous hen. Get another helmet.
5. Let the dangerous hen spawn another 2 safe hens.
6. Cull the remaining dangerous hen. You are left with 3 safe hens and as many eggs as you care to eat.

All of which is to say, I liked your game enough to do math to it and write it all up. I love the mechanics and the aesthetics and it shows some real work. I know I wrote a lot and that this may seem like criticism, but please don't take it as being negative. I really did enjoy the game.

Cheers!