Snail away by Thomas_Bringer

Explore the wild through the tiny eyes of a snail! In this platformer adventure, stick to any surface, roll inside your shell and meet lovely ladybugs.
Play in browser!
https://youtu.be/9In9qdKG32Y



| Link | https://thomas-bringer.itch.io/snail-away |
| Link | https://github.com/ThomasBringer/LD56 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/snail-away |
Ratings
| Overall | 16th | 4.224⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 33th | 4.026⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 21th | 4.175⭐ | 116🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 28th | 4.209⭐ | 117🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 31th | 4.291⭐ | 117🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 29th | 4.022⭐ | 116🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 81th | 3.566⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 42th | 3.974⭐ | 116🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 80🗳️ | 116🗨️ |
@knipsch Thank you so much, appreciate it!
@historymaker118 Heyy, means a lot to me, thanks mate!
So complete and smart in terms of graphic (Of course for that vector-graphic damn-good-web-design guy), sound, and mostly gameplay itself! Mechanic-wise it's a very good plantformer. Love a lot of how that front layer of shadows works as visual guidance, this fancy trick only appears in good games where designers cares a LOT, and this is it!
(This time the itch page doesn't merge once game started, so a bezle-in-game could help)
@oldtoadpower Thanks! The whole snail coding is a bit involved haha. From a physics point of view it switches from a Character Body that tries to attach to surfaces to a Rigid Body when in the shell. From a graphics point of view the snail consists of a shell sprite and a line made of points to make the tail, all procedurally animated. The tail tries to attach to the surface using raycasts. Hope that makes some sense, not so easy to explain in such few words!
Now, Sonic the hedgehog has a true challenger here.
This definitely could turn into something Foddy-esque in the right (or wrong?) hands, though, incredible work!
@yanranranyan Thanks!
@smogobingo I appreciate it man, thank you!
@ccollider Yeaaah so true! After making the physics I considered turning it into a rage game honestly.
@tad-i-guess Heyyy thanks, means a lot!
@karamelika22 Thanks, appreciate it!
@harmadillo Thanks, glad you like it!
Very good game, nice graphics and audio, the snail controller is amazing, I was blown away :D
This game wins for me so far.
My only two caveats are the picking sfx being too loud/high pitch compared to the music, the control being reverse when you are upside down (if you stop moving and start again, you have to press what seems to me the wrong button... I have no correct interaction that would feel good to offer)

@shp Thanks! Yup, tried to find a balance between snails being slow and fun gameplay haha
@bromakesgames Wow thanks!
@noobman64 Haha thanks!
@dhim Yup, I experimented with another control scheme where it flips your input when you release a key and are upside down. In the end, it seemed more complicated than it should be, so I changed back to the current input scheme. But it's a matter of preference, and I think it would be great to have that as a setting.
@sudocoffee Yeah dunno either but I thought it gave a nice chill vibe. Thanks!
@dingbat Thanks, appreciate it!
@adam-konig I can't agree more, I wanted to make the game twice as long in the beginning! I feel like both the rolling mechanic and the mushrooms are underused. But you know what it's like to cut the scope of a game haha
@ricksquanchez Thanks for playing!
@smothbreen Thank you!
@mikeandtherest Hey thanks! Usually the 2 that people miss are actually quite near the start :)
@erasemenot Wow there's only 35 though haha, thanks!
@mortusnegati Thanks! Didn't know about Fancy Pants before but after looking at it I clearly see the similarity.
@pimeko Thanks a lot!
@pres2300 Thank you so much, yep wish I had time for more levels!
The overall feel is also very good with the music and the sound effect, well done!
Great job, thanks for making it!
@detectivelosos Thank you so much!
@ecaterina Hey that's super cool to hear... cause there was just me working on the game! :joy:
Overall very very impressed with the game and its polish, congratulations!
@vorovcka Thank you!
@magopian Oh I get you, will keep that in mind if I expand the game. Thanks for playing!
@brucezoom Thanks! Yup I had to cut that scope down obviously haha
The foreground objects were too big in my opinion and covered too much of the screen. Keeping it down or maybe make them transparent would solve this.
The overall graphics were simple, but stylish. Everything blended well together. Nice job! :)
I gotta say this is the most *cohesive* entry I've played, ranking you very very high..
Polish is superb and big congrats to doing something *different*.
> Go go, happy snail, you *spider-snail*, rock it all! XD
PS: you gotta do sth more with this. E.g. I felt like I wanted 35 levels, not one.. haha!
Cool idea, great implementation, loved it till it suddenly ended :cry: 5/5
Love the way the game plays. The blend of platforming and tactics to position the snail correctly before droping onto a mushroom and soaring into the air. Everything feels pretty intuitive (except maybe the webs, looks like sometimes they stop the snails and other times they don't ?)
Love the art, love the music. Love the way you tied the credits into the game and even the little ladybug counter.
Everything feels super polished, rien à redire, franchement bravo !!
@mibi88 Thanks! Agree it's so short, had to cut the scope to make it to the deadline!
@frostbeak Yeah, a hectic weekend it was! Thanks for playing!
@lereveur Merci beaucoup c'est super gentil en plus quel plaisir de voir un françaissss
@lllarso Thank you so much! Agree that the foreground needs a bit more work
@angelalb Yeah, I wish I had more time to exploit the rolling mechanic!
@stuckne1 Thanks!
@aweskybear Wow, that's awesome to hear! You made my day!
@firellon Thanks, yeaaah so short right I know
@nickhellquist Thanks, appreciate it!
@martonel Thank you!
@obidiix-minusinfinity Thanks, glad you like the game's simplicity!
@kerdelos Merciii ! les toiles d'araignées buggent pas mal en effet x)
@ziobob Thanks, appreciate it!
@aentro Thank you, glad you like it!
@fnelix Thank you!
@perrin Sure, agreed. Thanks for playing!
@alexascher Thanks a lot!

@jiri-hysek Thank you, appreciate it!
@roroto-sic Thank you!
@lunaria-rava Wow thanks, glad you like it!
@bzoo345 Thanks for playing!
@thebooksnail Hey thanks, means a lot!
I came here because of your post, btw.
I had a bug (that's the concept of the game) like an infinite loop a little before the end (in the fork), the game was not responding. I restarted it and I could play to the end without any issue (it was on the last Firefox).
The multiple mechanics you made with the concept (and their progressive introduction) are very interesting, the art is well polished and the animations are cool !
Good game, feels very finished and polished. The music sets the vibes *just right*
It was obvious I was in capable hands!
@lelulagames Yup, ending was totally rushed, but you know: game jams haha
@andruid Thank you very much!
@shoppncart Thanks for the kind words, appreciate it!
@sebbernery Yeah, discovered that bug after the end, and the game will just freeze-I think it's an infinite while loop. Fortunately it does not happen *too* often, so sorry it fell on you!
@iroroi Haha thanks!
@holysparks Thank you, glad you liked the music!
@aviv-levy Thank you so much!
@enderswype Classic haha, half people miss the 2 at the beginning lol
@mrspeaker Thanks! Well the game has its lots of bugs, but by some miracle, they are quite rare. Seen from my developer perspective (and witnessed the buggy mess it used to be), it truly is a miracle that it plays without so many bugs in the end haha
@tinykidtoo Glad you liked the overall mood!
@brusi Thanks a lot!
@kultuk Thanks!
@petr-vejchoda Nice, haven't played Rain World yet, but it is on my list of games to play!
@magus77 Yep it is, experimented with other control schemes, but ended up picking the upside-down scheme. Some people are cool with it, some aren't, in the future a setting would probably be handy!
@silkworm-sweatshop Thanks! Yep it's definitely too short :')
@she-wrote Thank you very much!
@ex3d0 Thanks, glad you liked it!
@satless Thank you, appreciate it a lot!
Thanks so much for your postmortem and animation article, that's what we want to read here 👍
C'est vraiment la classe, tu as le niveau de skill que je rêverais d'avoir en game jam 😉

@patbgames Merci trop gentil !
This feels so good to play!
I rolled around a bit more than was necessary simply because the animation is so cute haha
Also: in two days??? How?! This feels so polished!
The tail of the snail sometimes wiggle weirdly when you move thought convex corners. Also the foreground elements are sometimes distracting - they cover the view a bit too much.
@turturi Thanks, appreciate your attention to detail! I agree about the foreground, with more time I could fix it maybe!
@bradur Thanks! The snail itself indeed took like, half of development time, if not more haha
Seemed like the snail was at least partly a procedural mesh so that you could stretch it easily, and that you extended the same kind of vectorised graphics to everything else which made it all very nice and cohesive and scaled up to look great even on my 4K monitor in fullscreen mode.
The music is nice and the snail sounds are good. I especially like the shell sound when you drop.
Moving around at any angle without falling off (except at will!) is a lot of fun. It does get a little confusing at times pressing the opposite key to the direction you're actually going, but having to change keys would've been even worse so this is probably the best solution. Because you don't have to be fast, it's not really a problem. Just chilling out and collecting all those ladybugs (which is kind of a bizarre thing to do now that I really think about it, haha).
I don't really have any complaints except that it would've been fun to see more levels with more challenges but for a jam that's always a struggle of course. And this is a compo game too, so wow. Great job!!