Loop by Papaver
Have fun toggling between constantly turning right and going straight in this challenging one-button game.
There are 5 levels for you to enjoy. Can you master them all?
Please share your thoughts, comments and highscores! :)
Tools: * Code: HTML5 & JavaScript with the CraftyJS library, and a bit of python * Graphics: InkScape and drawing directly on the canvas element itself ;) * Audio: A piano & Audacity
P.s. for the speedrunners amongst you: use R to restart the game and the number keys 1-6 to go a specific level. :)

| Youtube | http://anneroos.home.fmf.nl/ld47 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loop-6 |
Ratings
| Overall | 644th | 3.607⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 406th | 3.679⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 193th | 3.926⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 78th | 4.315⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1109th | 3.214⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 565th | 3.442⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 794th | 2.714⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 903th | 3.288⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 28🗨️ |
My score:

(I *may* have accumulated an extra hundred loops or so while I was putting some dinner in the oven...)

@petturtle & @cwazywierdo: Thanks! Yup, I tend to make hard games. Every time again, I fail to remember that the game is hard without 3 days of playing/debugging :wink:
@jimbly: Thanks for your comment! :blush: And thanks for sharing your scores. Yes, it's a bit funny that you can see that you will not have enough room to turn around, but can't do anything about it. Oh well :wink: With two buttons, of course, the game would be trivial. :wink: (Or maybe with a cooldown on the direction switch? Hmmm :thinking:)
@connormck: Thanks for playing! In what broswer were you playing? I only tested Chrome so far.
@bananabobbert: Thanks, nice score!
I was indeed also thinking of inverting the controls, because we are used to take action when we want to turn right or left, instead of stopping doing something, but indeed for the sake of the theme (and because I like funny mechanics) I opted for this version. I just tried it the other way around, it might be a bit more intuitive. Maybe I'll make a shadow version ;)
I didn't expect you to lean into the narrow path idea that much. I also didn't expect the idle-looping element to cause me that much trouble. The combination of those 2 elements made this game very tricky, in a good way. It made each press of the spacebar delicate and important. Sometimes my brain would spaz out and just drive into a wall for no reason lol, because it was probably trying to figure out how to rotate my way out of the situation.
Very very enjoyable. 1-button games are challenging to do really interesting stuff with but you pulled it off. Obviously the game mechanics/levels are quite extendable as well.
PS. have you ever played Clu Clu land? Very much reminded me of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QitNp1YjmPk
The challenge of minimizing your loop count also makes it a puzzle game, though I'm no where near good enough to optimize playthroughs of the levels hehe.
The directional change pickups provided a nice twist to the mechanics, it was satisfying picking one up, almost hitting a wall, getting tense anticipating a collision, then winding the other way.
There was very little that I grew frustrated with, other than my own abilty to accurately predict/execute the correct timing to exit my loops. On the last level, I did want an adjustment to camera movement, the camera moves up and down with my head, I would be curious to know how it would feel with a slight left/right follow as well.
Adding some effects, sound and or visual, to entering/exiting loops might feel nice/further reward the one mechanic.
Overall it looked good, played good, sounded good, created a cute atmosphere. Well Done!
One thing I noticed in particular was that I would often realise that I was on a bad trajectory and stop to correct it, not noticing that there was a wall to my right, which I would then collide with. That also led to some situations that I couldn't possibly recover from because I would either keep going and hit a wall or turn to the right and hit a wall. One possible solution for this would be to have the snake rotate in place without moving when you're holding space. I feel like that would keep the game roughly the same, but get rid of frustrating moments like that.
Although overall, I still had fun. Good job!
