The art for the critters and the planet really sets up the player for an otherworldly experience. The mechanics were simple but it was a fun puzzle to optimize food and avoid drama. Really cool and impressive game!
Play game
Critteria's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #11 | 4.455 | 4.455 |
| Graphics | #15 | 4.182 | 4.182 |
| Overall | #29 | 3.584 | 3.584 |
| Originality | #37 | 3.773 | 3.773 |
| Audio | #38 | 3.409 | 3.409 |
| Controls | #56 | 3.273 | 3.273 |
| Fun | #60 | 3.136 | 3.136 |
| Accessibility | #69 | 2.864 | 2.864 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4.1
Wildcards Used
Personalized Copy
Game Description
Herd critters, gain food, avoid drama! It's Critteria!
How does your game tie into the theme?
The game is all about herding unique Critters through a diverse landscape.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
LanysLirana, Foreezy, FlyingStupid
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
lanyslirana - 4, flyingstupid - 6, binjovi - 7, qtip - 8, foreezy - 3, ummsenna - 3, lizuyu - 1, Elle-Ivy - 1, Emolyptic - 1
Comments

My God... It's the creature that haunts my dreams!
Damn! That is an impressive character creator! Nice work everyone, such an insane amount of work to this!


First, I love the Spore esque creature creator! That's my little cutie Robin <3
Gameplay definitely had me confused until I read the other comments about purchasing land. I was beside myself on why the other creatures didn't want to spread out, then I was like, "Ooooh...," lol. Once I figured that out, I got the gist of it pretty quick. Really cool entry! Good job team (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧

I think I caused a bit of drama 😂
I really love this idea its a lot of fun trying to place the critters just at the right spot to get the most food and the least drama(as you see I am pretty bad at minimizing drama), it took me some time to figure out I could purchase land. at first I thought the biomes I did not purchase were just darker biome variations of the claimed ones.
overall the game was really fun and art, sounds and music were amazing. You've done an incredible job!
Really cool game! It's a lot of fun trying to position critters just right to maximize food gain and minimize drama. Not to mention all the art done for the game is incredible! The inclusion of a pre-game tutorial is much appreciated, though some mechanics weren't explained at all as has been pointed out by others here (I didn't know you could purchase tiles until looking through the comments here).
Besides that, really nice work!
This game is super cool! I love the random creatures, they look so cute/goofy :) I had a bit of trouble figuring out the gameplay (took me a bit to figure out which tiles were locked, and I bought my first tile expansion on accident lol), and I think the food counter bugged out at some point? It was stuck at 40 but I was buying legendary bugs with no change in the counter. The critter creator was a really cool addition, I might have to add something like that to my game to show off all the possible bug part combinations. Overall a really good entry!
Explaining our gameplay needs to be a higher priority for our next game. It's been the biggest critique we've received for this entry. We were too close to the project so didn't realize the details we had left out because we were just so used to them. 😞
I think with the food counter staying at 40, it's possible that you're generating 40 food each turn. The food is use it or lose it, so in theory if you have 40 food but don't spend it, the next round you'll have 40 food again. Also, we failed in explaining that only 4 creatures will sit in the spawn area per round, so if you bought 6 creatures, you'll have 2 in your "deck" that won't be placeable until the next round. So if you were buying legendary critters but not placing them because of the queue, then that might help explain it as well. I'm glad you were able to enjoy the critter creator though. Thanks for playing!
Understandable, my partner and I let a lot of stuff slip as well haha. I somehow didn't even clock that accessibility features were a voting criteria until after the submissions closed, and I think my game might be cruel and unusual punishment for colorblind people lol. People were confused about gameplay features as well, so I'm gonna make sure my post-jam update and future submissions have tutorials of some kind. It's hard to remember these things when you're just focused on making a game that works lol.
Ah that kinda makes sense. There were a few rounds I didn't buy anything just cuz I wasn't sure what to do strategically. I might play it a few more times to see if I can win, since I ended the game with a crap ton of drama lol.
Really cool! I love the variety of creatures and effects, and the visuals and story are brilliant! I found it a little hard to understand how I was supposed to manage drama, I realised how I could combo creatures to generate food but there were none that nullified drama or helped it in any way. I'm sure the mechanic makes sense I just missed how I'm supposed to navigate it. Anyway, this was a great entry :)
There's definitely a learning curve to our game. I had a problem with managing drama as well. After talking with the designers (I did env art), I found out a key part of the strategy is to not buy so many cheap creatures and instead save up for some of the bigger creatures early on. Quite a few of the more expensive creatures give high food but still have low drama. Thanks for playing!
I could spend forever making lil guys! They're so ugly-cute. This was a lot of fun.
Probably user error, but it took me way too long to figure out I needed to purchase the tiles before placing the critters on them.
Reminded me of Spore in someways especially with the critter creator. Art was neat and the gameplay had some fun strategy to it!
I think this turned out really fun. It's really hard to understand what's going on initially but once I saw the pause menu and played a round it made a lot of sense. Feels like a deckbuilder or euro board game. This adheres to the theme the best of all that I've seen and the audio is spot on too.

This was a nice take on the theme. The critters were cute, and the customization was a nice feature.
It would be nice if you blocked placing on areas you have not unlocked, like you do for other conditions. I placed some in other areas and everything looked good as I ended the turn. Then I'd end up with fewer points than expected and the critters returned to be placed again. I experimented a bit with different placements before thinking to try buying the vouchers. Since I was not blocked from placing in all visible areas, I had assumed the new/unlocked areas would be shown when purchased, rather than being the areas you could already see and place into.
Interesting game concept with really charming art :) I also really appreciate whoever did the volume sliders for setting a reasonable default volume and starting the sliders off at 50%, too many games add a settings menu that have unreasonably loud/quiet minimum/maximum values.
Look at him

Such a great art style! The critter maker is so well done it even stands out from the game itself. The game is also good, but I felt it lacked a bit of purpose — half of the time I wasn’t sure if I was playing it right, yet I was somehow surviving. It ended up feeling a bit repetitive, but overall it’s very well made and cute. Congrats!
Did you... yes, you actually did. You made the creature maker from Spore in nine days. I can't even. Congratulations.
As for the game itself, I'm afraid I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to do, so I just did what I do in real life: amass as much food as possible while keeping drama to a minimum.
The presentation here is fantastic, on both an art and music standpoint - I'm listening to the "place critters on the island" music right now and I genuinely want to buy this album on Bandcamp. Also. from looking at the island model, I suspect someone on the team is well-versed in colour theory - please let me know who it is so I can steal their brains.
"amass as much food as possible while keeping drama to a minimum"
That is pretty much the method for playing the game.
This music came from here: https://pixabay.com/music/comedy-comic-humor-silly-background-music-288059/
And I did all of the island art. Hello! 👋🏼
Very cute design!
I was hoping, that critter I made will be in the game. It was fun to create your unique critter (So many settings! )
The game itself has a nice concept, but I had a little struggle. It doesn't matter what I do and how many critters i add to the habitat - I always enup in the shop with 7 food. Like in the game scene it tells me I will have 31 food but later in shop it 7 again :( Maybe I did something wrong.
Anyway, very good job guys!
I love your critter! I just played our game real quick and I'm not getting the same bug you are. Are you playing on windows or another platform?
On second thought, it's possible you're placing creatures on areas you haven't unlocked yet. That's totally on us. We ran out of time to fix it so that you couldn't do that. 😞
The creature maker is very fun!
But I was missing a way to save the critters we made (or I just couldn't find the option).
The puzzle game is also fun, but I felt it was a bit repetitive and lacked purpose.
Or maybe it was just that there were so many critters to choose from from the beginning. It might have felt like there was more progression, if the critters were revealed slower - I'm not sure.
Thank you so much for playing! That's great feedback in terms of progression. We were originally modelling the Dominion with all available cards (critters) up front, asking that player choose which ones they want with available food. The idea of revealing them throughout the game is a good one. Thanks again!
neat concept that creature maker is impressive on top of an entire game loop in 9 days so props to yall :p









Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.