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Sporangium's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Community's Voice | #129 | 2.881 | 3.067 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Creative Vision / Rationale / How Did You Incorporate the Theme
Connection, guidance, giving and accepting are some of the key aspects that we used from the Theme. Our protagonist, Young Beetle, is tasked with mold management in order to keep the local Bog in healthy condition. Each Bog is visited by The Mold One, who disperses essential resources and collects sporesouls as Tribute. These sporesouls are essential to mold growth in Boglam; The Mold One carefully distributes them into the moist environment where they are most beneficial, resulting in various beautiful growths that the mold managers can facilitate in their operations. The bright blue and glowing white tones of the thematic image inspired our palette of luscious colors reflecting life, health, decay and loss. The Bogs that Young Beetle manages have a relationship of obligate mutualism with The Mold One, and their cooperation might be the only thing that keeps Boglam afloat in the endless watery horizon.
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Comments
A rather interesting game; I liked the retro theme, and I also loved the atmosphere. The only thing is that I had trouble understanding the mechanics at first; I spent a while figuring out what each thing did. Also, the character design is super cool, I really liked it. The fact that everything had a retro aesthetic, including the music, made everything fit together really well.
A very unique take on the theme. Honestly, it took me quite some time to figure out what was going on and how the systems worked. I usually try to play a game without reading the long description first, just to see how much I can understand from the experience alone, and in this case I struggled to grasp what each element represented—even after watching long enough to understand how the individual parts function.
The overall vibe reminded me of Sim Ant. I think the core idea is very interesting, but I wish the game were more readable. Introducing the elements more gradually, perhaps across even levels, maybe, could really help players build understanding over time.
A fellow Sim Ant fan! We were joking that it felt like a Windows 98 game and maybe there was more influence from that than we thought. There's definitely an 'indirect' management approach to the game like Sim Ant.
Thanks for giving the game a whirl and the feedback!
Love the pixel style art and 8bit music, the gameplay is a bit hard to guess, maybe i need to use those colorful block to build a road for those creatures?Maybe i need a simplest prototype at the beginning lol.
Glad you enjoyed the aesthetic :D
That's a fair strategy! Building a road with the green blocks that grow food for the souls to follow is one way to get the souls to the mossy hand!
like the art style and sound, tho it is quite hard to understand how to play at the current state. with unclear instructions. Otherwise, I think the technical side is quite complex and want to give credits for that.
Since the submission is locked, I would suggest updating the itch page description to include the objective in bullet point form so at least people can reference there if stuck. I know you have it written already, but it was a bit hard to find the info I need through the paragraphs with a lot of proper nouns.
Thank you for the comments!
Ya - that's quality feedback. We're going to see what we can do to give a little more guidance. Tossed up a quick visual guide and TLDR gameplay instructions now.
This game seems really neat, but it might need some more of a tutorial? It was unclear to me exactly what I was doing. I love the artwork, though!
Totally fair observation! The goal is to ensure the souls (blue floaty things) reach the WellShroom (moldy hand thing) before they dissipate. Thanks for giving the game a run :D