Bee, leave it or knot by Hanra

[raw]
made by Hanra for Ludum Dare 47 (COMPO)

You and the last of your hive are lost!

You're in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by strange and dangerous plants, when you stumble upon some surprisingly neat gardens in increasingly twisted loops. It appears we have discovered a garderner with a penchant for knot theory!

You plan to head back into the undergrowth in search of this elusive geeky gardener; where there's geeks there's organic beekeepers with lovely safe hives to live in.

Find new bees for your swarm on flowers as they open in the safe, if strangely, maintained parts of the garden. If you take too long the plants will close their petals but there'll always be one open somewhere.

Don't stray from the cleared loop the gardener has left us. The undergrowth is dangerous, avoid it all costs until we have enough for at least some of the swarm to survive the journey. Until then, you're stuck!

And finally, I'm sure this is obvious but if you bump into any of the other bees they'll sting you and you'll die. They can't help it if you're going to startle them like that!

Notes

Works best on keyboard. Built with phaser3 and packaged with parcel.

I know it's just snake with different maps but I was stuck for ideas, my girlfriend was sick etc. so I'm just happy to have made something and looking forward to reviewing everyone else's games.

Patch Notes

2001262a60: Fixed an issue with pausing where the user could easily get pause-locked.

POST LD Fixes

7df8a05dae: More significant fix to death and respawning, now you keep your bees when you die. Level thresholds have also been reduced to do-able levels. In other words: the game might actually be playable now!

Other games I've loved and you should try out

Because while I appreciate your time looking at my garbage, some other people have made some awesome stuff. - Synthaetica - Crazy Running Cow - Loopmotive - Among Stars and Robots - Chromen - Aztec Ride - (I'll add more as I play more)

Ratings

Overall 626th 2.132⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 586th 2.342⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 628th 1.553⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 599th 2.395⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 606th 1.921⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 360th 2.294⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 576th 1.889⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 16🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

🎤 Hanra
05. Oct 2020 · 08:43 UTC
Question for anyone reading this: should I (if allowed) tweak a variable (the number of bees needed to get to the next screen) just to make the game easier to review?
Vollfeiw
05. Oct 2020 · 08:55 UTC
Hey, nice little game you have here ! You could had have the classic teleportation when going out of screen if you wanted to go full "stuck in a loop" :P

For your question, no, feature are not allowed, only some bugs fixes are. Somehow, you can realease a second version, and give a link to that "No rating" version, as long as you keep your REAL entry, even if some would consider that cheating.

Sadly, balancing is part of game development, so yeah, it's about fairness.

One thing you can do when working with levels is to put a button to load next / previous level. On a real game, it's bad, but in a game jam, that allow people to try out more without having to deal with every level.
🎤 Hanra
05. Oct 2020 · 08:57 UTC
Thanks for that, and fair enough should have picked that up in playtesting. Such is life :)
Linus Lindberg
05. Oct 2020 · 20:03 UTC
Played so many times, and really got sucked into the gameplay, but I still couldn't beat level one! As you said the 60 bees are a bit steep for level 1.
I'll have to come back and play more later, because I really liked the game! the round shape of the map was a fun twist on the snake gameplay!
a4x8e6
06. Oct 2020 · 22:14 UTC
Tried a few times but the 60 bees is a bit tricky to get past the first level! Liked the idea though :)
Noah Kuhn
07. Oct 2020 · 22:47 UTC
This was a fun idea, and it was well executed! Good job :smile:
Wendel Scardua
08. Oct 2020 · 18:11 UTC
Maybe the issue isn't much that 60 bees are too much, but that we lose all of them on the smallest mistake.

I liked the pun in the game name, sometimes my game jam ideas come from puns :)
drprettypatty
08. Oct 2020 · 23:33 UTC
5 stars on marketing, I was really engaged through the description and then laughed when I realized it was just snake haha. Not too bad considering your challenges, and I didn't see any bugs (except for the intended ones). Got a great humor score from me :)
🎤 Hanra
09. Oct 2020 · 16:45 UTC
That's a cool suggestion Wendel, maybe backing up a number of bees, losing those in the process, would make a long run recoverable
jd557
10. Oct 2020 · 08:26 UTC
As others said, 60 bees on the first level was a big mistake :(

I really wanted to see the other levels with enemy bees, but it's taking me way too long to get past the first level... and it's really frustrating to have to try again from the start if you mess up.

I think you should release a "no rating" version with some slightly tweaks. Even if it doesn't help your rating, it's nice to let people see what your full vision for the game was :)
🎤 Hanra
11. Oct 2020 · 08:31 UTC
Hey @jd557, I'll definitely be releasing a tweaked version after the competition with the goal set a lot lower, I'm thinking just 10 so people can get all the way through, but there's no enemy bees, just increasingly difficult maps.

I kind of think even a no-rating version while the ratings are going on would be unfair.. and I live in hope that someone manages to get to level 2 one day (it doesn't reset to level 1 when you die on level 2 at least)
GettingRekt
13. Oct 2020 · 19:54 UTC
The game mechanics were good enough for me to play through level 1 but holy moley that was alot of time playing snake!
The biggest improvement for me would have been to not being able to run into yourself by doing a quit 180 turn (and the level requirements was too steep).
However, it was a really good game and the levels seemed to be getting more and more interesting.
FadrikAlexander
16. Oct 2020 · 06:53 UTC
it's a good snake game but you missed the main "looping" mechanic of snake games when you exit the screen it loops to the other side.
The game is fun, the flowers spawning in the corner are nearly impossible to get with how fast the game is going, and no bugs found.
🎤 Hanra
24. Nov 2020 · 23:32 UTC
If anyone is still interested: I've released a tweaked version with the goals set lower and bees being kept on death.