the game is confusing and not smooth

A very good concept with some major, yet easily fixable, flaws. I'd like to clarify I only played the web version so these might just be exclusive to the web version so take this with a grain of salt.
The biggest issues are that the game is too glitchy and the controls feel pretty off. This combination makes for an experience that can feel really uncontrollable at times. I even managed to get hardlocked at a screen transition because my snake got killed on loop. No matter what button I held I would just instantly die after respawning. I stopped playing the game after that.
But dont get me wrong. This is an insanely good concept for a game. I really want this game to be good and I'm sure with these bug fixes, this would be an incredible game especially for Ludum Dare standards.

@dinoraz Yeah I don't really like how glitchy it ended up still being. Especially the reverse/teleport skills. Other than those two skills, the glitchyness should be mainly just visual. Getting stuck on transitions (or more often just after death) was something I saw too but never got completely stuck on though. Usually this happens when frantically hitting keys right after death, more often than not in conjunction with the reverse skill. It should be technically impossible to spawn in a position where every direction would be fatal though.

I do get why you dislike the controls and think they feel off. But they are pretty much as I intended them to be. It's not really a real time game, you buffer in your next move(s) and they are executed on the next move step. And there are few features in place to make this feel better too like the pacmanish *"hit turn too early and we'll buffer it until you reach the junction"* and extra long move step delay when next colliding with a wall.

So dunno if fixing the transition death loop bug (hey at least it fits the theme! :wink:) would be considered totally game breaking and I'd be allowed to fix it. Well at least I'm going to fix it after the jam.

Thanks for giving it a go! :heart:

**edit**: Decided to do a post fix for the death loop hard lock. Or at least greatly decrease the chance of it... :thinking:

Very smart idea, very stylish and plays well!

It sounds like I had a bug that was similar but not identical to other people; after a while the performance cratered and I started getting the death effect (without dying) every couple of seconds. Possibly it was spawning multiple copies of the player character or something?

With a few iterations on the feel of the controls and a larger map this would totally be a game I would buy on Steam!

Cool take on the snake game. I only experienced three things that really stood out

first when you start the game i did not expect that you would start at the position that the snake is at that moment so that was as good as in instadie. In the end it does not really matter as you don't have a limited number of lives

When i died once sometimes died right after it again where i spawned in the level

The last you mentioned yourself already and that is i could not get the back to work correctly. This was for as far as i could see only when i was initially going up and pressed down, the head would witch for a moment and then go up again.

But very good idea and fun game to play

Great idea and exxecution, but I personally would prefer playing it turn based.

Really great game, for sure has it's bugs, but for a game jam this is an amazing game! I would love to see this as a full release! I only stopped because I encountered a soft lock bug ♥

Awesome concept! Visuals and music worked perfectly as well. But the controls, especially reverse felt really weird and hard to use.

@thecreator Thanks! Dunno really about extending the game any further but I will for sure fix the current issues with the controls and stuff like that after the rating period is over. How and where exactly did you soft lock?

@samuli Thanks! Yeah, I don't really like how wonky the reverse mechanic ended up still being. The biggest issue with that is when you try to reverse right after grabbing food/powerup since the snake gets kinda confused about the recently added tail bit and quite often thinks it's colliding with it. The basic controls are pretty much how I wanted them to be. Isn't that how snake games usually work? Do you have any more detailed feedback on how it felt bad/wrong and suggestions on how it could be better? But yeah, I kinda over scoped this time it seems. Well I did manage to squeeze in everything I had planned but few things were left too rough around the edges for my liking. Mainly the reverse, wormhole (another skill later on which I guess you didn't get to see) and the powerup getting dialog pause/resume awkwardness. Will fix these after the rating period is done for sure.

@aterlamia Yeah I did have a feeling that the intro changing straight to gameplay would catch quite a few players off guard and get them instantly killed. But as you said, the deaths have like zero repercussions so I thought it wouldn't really matter and would serve more as a funnyish "oh shit I'm playing already" moment.

I think your respawning death issue was just input buffered from right before (or during) the death. I will most likely add bit of a delay between death and respawn and clear the input buffer on respawn to make these at least less likely.

Oh and I explained what I think is going on with reverse (at least) in the previous post to Samuli. This is another thing I will fix for sure post jam.

Thanks for playing and leaving feedback! :heart:

This is an amazing game.
You take one classic idea and gave it some twist it make it much much better.
I love the art. Simply but extremely effective. Specially the animations are great (how everything explodes and shake)
The music fits perfectly with the gameplay.
Also, the special features or powers are very good idea and add a lot of fun to the game.
Overall, it's a 5 star.

Here's an amazing entry, good job! Extremely cool twist on the classic snake game, cool puzzles (how far can you take this simple concept?), twisted humor, cool art and music! Only thing I'd like to see is pause.

Torilla tavataan! :snake:

I'm back to report my experience after finishing the game. The puzzles were great and the forbidden tech was truly mindblowing. Unfortunately I started seeing serious bugs towards the end. Worst of them was that more blood made my computer scream in agony, dropped the framerate to less than 1 and made all kinds of weird stuff happen. Other things I encountered were broken reverse, snake doing a PLINK warp when turning and this:


For these bugs I had to reduce the FUN from 5.0 to 4.5. I still loved the game!

I don't really have time to be as extensive as you in my comments, but here it goes: Great job! Really unique graphics and overall feeling from the game. It's very rhythmic, so it feels good to steer the snake. And the effects! Blissful.

awesome game! Could play for ages but had the same bug that @joonamo has shown just when I was getting a decent way through. absolutely amazing job well done!

@joonamo Oh cool, didn't think anyone would actually beat it after noticing how easy it seems to be to completely break it with the reverse skill. I've actually already fixed that but gotta wait until the rating period is over until I can release it along with other misc fixes. What sort of setup do you have and was it the web version or standalone? I've made and played it with a not too new macbook and it has ran with this without any hiccups really even when I had some outrageous internal bugs during the development with way too many explosions going on at once. And at least it should recover from those frame drops once the blood starts despawning (10-30 seconds if I remember correctly). Thanks a lot for playing and sticking with it till the end despite all the horrible bugs! :heart:

And @joonamo and @oshawatt123 do you have any steps how you managed to end up in such a spot? Did it happen when respawning? That shouldn't even be a normal spawn spot, did it have something to do with reverse skill and maybe even changing rooms with it? It looks like it's either constantly reversing the direction or stuck in a teleport loop without actually teleporting anywhere. Any ideas on how I might be able to reproduce the issue would be greatly appreciated since I'm currently slowly working on fixing the issues with the game.

I'm running an antique 2013 Windows 10 gaming desktop and playing in the latest Firefox. This is not super fast machine, but plays newer games like Sekiro just fine... I managed to break out of the bug in the gif by furiously pushing all the directions :joy: I also used the map to pause and clean up the game in certain later screens. Despite the bugs I was just having so much fun, I just had to see the end!

I think I managed to make myself a weird spawn spot with the reverse skill.

It's by the rules to release the fixed version if you disclose the fixes and still provide a link to the original game.

> Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline. You are asked to highlight the changes you make in your submission (a short change log). You probably wont get a 2nd chance with some players, but at least it wont be a problem for future players.

@antti-haavikko I just respawned after using the wormhole skill and dying and couldn't get out. I however was stuck in a normal spawn position. nothing i tried could get me out. Hope that helps!

@antti-haavikko I don't remember the exact set up, but I soft locked after reversing then dying, and I was stuck at the entrance to the room, no matter which direction I tried to turn I always died every update, the room was the room where you unlock the wormhole, also I managed to bug that out as well, after I picked it up I died right after (from natural causes), but this meant the next time I went to pick it up the wormhole never appeared again no matter how many times I grabbed the power up the spot where you can go through never showed up

@thecreator Thanks for the clarification! :heart: It seems like it is most likely the same issue that I already have under wraps (I hope). And I was already aware of the wormhole helper picture not appearing again after dying. Planning on fixing that one post results too!

A really enjoyable game, full of new additions to the original snake, loved the complex mechanics, ran well in browser, has few bugs but nothing too serious. Also for someone who claims to be a novice sound designer and composer, you've done a real good job. The textures were pretty and I felt like I was stuck in a loop :thumbsup:

Wow this is incredible.

So many good ideas in this game, it manages to never get repetitive even with so many rooms. The art is clean, the color choice is great, the animations are really well done, the sound is nice. The visual and audio feedbacks are really clean.
Close to the end, I encountered many bugs, especially when doing too many input too fast. This has to be expected for such a packed compo game I guess.

Awesome work, great job, and thanks for the game I really had a good time 💕

Graphics are super, loved the explosion and the vibration and all, super entretaining gameplay as well

Also super nice touch the 1-second-wait before the whole thing explodes :p

Didn't have time to finish it rn but I will definitily come back to check it again a try to finish this game in some days!

This game was AWESOME ! I loved the unique premise on the snake trying to escape his never ending gameplay loop, and escaping to new levels is a really creative take on the theme. I loved the explosions when you die, the music change to really set the mood, and the puzzles where you had to use the snake’s body to open doors or gain new abilities like reversing around. The game looked really nice and polished, well done !

Holy crap this is a 5 star game. Presentaiton is #1 Concept is #1 controls are #1 I love how fluid the added controls are like pushing forward to pause is perfect. For feedback ideally there should be a separate button to switch directions since in this case its backwards which ever way the front of your snake is going and that means theres never a button for that function theres always a calculation in the brain which is confusing. The presentation of your page here is top notch too (especially with that timelapse: classy!)

### Mac Version works great ###
All I had to do is the usual `Double click -> Cancel -> Right Click -> Open -> Open` to get around the security of the mac gatekeeper. I've had to do that with every other jam game and after that it worked great!

@fabdynamic Thanks! :heart: Yeah I knew it works fine with mac, I too dev and test (also play other jam games) on one. That right click and open hassle has been a classic maneuver for all mac users for several years now so I'm guessing everyone already knows it. Yeah the reverse would have probably been better on its own key. Although, I do like the small amount of added complexity coming from the "calculation" you mentioned. Reversing might be a complicated procedure for a snake... :thinking: