A Bug's Wife by Aurailus

Wander around a garden as the cutest Poodle Moth ever, and reunite with your wife! Meet and betray all sorts of tiny creatures that live in the dirt! Solve Sokoban-like puzzles by drowning your friends, and go for 3 stars on all of the levels! A Bug's Wife is a short box-pushing game themed after all the small things that live in your garden. It's got 8 levels of somewhat escalating challenge, and a lot of character! Turn sound on for the best experience. 🐛❤️

Features
:package: Move things all over the place.
:snail: Meet strange little guys that get in your way!
:frog: Discover cute and horrifying interactions.
:star2: Try to get 100% completion!
:recycle: An actually-functioning undo system.
Play Game!

Controls
WASD / Arrow Keys - Move the Bug
R - Restart Level
Z - Undo
Esc - Return to Menu
Stuck?
If you re-open the page with the ?debug flag in the URL (or click this link), you can enter any level and press Enter to instantly beat it. Feel free to cheese the game if you're not having fun, I won't judge ya! The game will save your progress between page reloads.
Game not rendering right?
This is a web game that directly uses HTML elements to render. If you're having weird visual glitches, try turning off anything that alters the way that pages display, like DarkReader. If the game is too zoomed in, just zoom out using your browser! (Ctrl -) Let me know if you encounter any other weirdness that this doesn't solve.
A message from Auri (meeee))
Wow, it feels good to be back! I missed the last Ludum Dare, but I was able to fully participate in this one again, which is always a ton of fun. As always, this is a :sparkles: Compo :sparkles: entry, because I don't know how to teamwork. I worked for approximately 30 hours on-stream over the weekend, which you can see the VODs for on my YouTube, which it would be super cool if you checked out.
I also made a YouTube video about voxel meshing recently, which I spent almost 8 months making. If you're at all interested in game-dev (which I assume you are, otherwise you wouldn't be here), please check it out!
Play Game! (if you somehow missed it the first time)
Post Deadline Changelog
- Fixed missing apostrophe in the logo.
- Fixed stars showing before level completed.
- Fixed a few audio playback issues.
| Link | https://github.com/Aurailus/LD56 |
| Web | https://aurail.us/ld56/index.html |
| Web (No Tilt Effect) | https://aurail.us/ld56/index.html?notilt |
| Web (Reduced Motion) | https://aurail.us/ld56/index.html?nomotion |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/bugpush |
Ratings
| Overall | 33th | 4.09⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 29th | 4.064⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 179th | 3.256⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 89th | 3.897⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 45th | 4.205⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 55th | 3.808⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 55th | 3.676⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 38th | 4.026⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
Either way, it's really solid, especially for compo! Congrats!
Not to mention the absolutely gorgeous graphics.
Both of our team members decided to go for the full 3⭐ run :3
very cute game overall
Simple, but complete game, the graphics look good for its style, the sounds are nice. However, the music was extremely lacking, some “forest guitar theme”
Controls are nice

Great interpretation of a classic sokoban-style gameplay. It reminds me a lot Baba is You (especially the 2-frames animation style feels heavily inspired :D). That said this game absolutely stands own its own with its own charm and character.
The art direction is just fantastically executed! The artstyle matches gameplay perfectly and is consistent across all the game assets. Sprites have very clear distinctive shapes and are readable (you can tell exactly which animal each sprite represents). Even tilesets are not boring and repeatable, for example you can clearly see it by looking at the tiles especially when looking at the shape of the river or when new player-only tiles were introduced.
This game is also extremally polished! The UX is just great! Option to undo one move, option to restart, intuitive and responsive controls. On top of that there is just juice everywhere, especially proper visual (and audio) feedback that matches perfectly all possible actions player can do (for example by pushing things into the wall player gets audio-visual cue which informs that action cannot be done).
The gameplay is just great! I love all the unique ideas for the mechanics/animals (the snake was especially my favorite ^^). I can imagine that interactions between animals took most of the development time, you can tell they are extremally well implemented. So much possible interactions could cause a lot undefined behaviors yet I didn't spot a single bug when it comes to that. Well done with that one!
At the beginning I thought stars are for making as low possible moves as possible. I was surprised when I got 2 stars without 2nd one. In that moment it wasn't clear for me for what I exactly get 3 stars but I think you get each 1 for different things, 2nd seems to be for beating level without using undo, 3rd for using least possible amount of moves. If so I think it should be better mentioned somewhere in the game. But it's just a small issue ^^
The only thing that seems missing is a some kind of counter for moves. Not sure if you planned to add but here is a small tip just in case: if you want to avoid spoilers (how much should player get to get star) you could just display current number of moves and best achieved number so far (if level was already beaten). Maybe you will find it useful :D
Overall this game without a doubt has a jam-highest quality you could expect here. And the fact that it was all done as a compo entry is a huge achievement on its own. You made a fantastic job with that one and you should be proud of it. Thank you for making this. I had lots of fun! (AND I NEED MORE...)
Edit: Just got all the stars! I think the difficulty balance of the levels was really good and introduced new creatures well. The art is also really nice. Great entry!