Tiny Creature Support Group

I'm not sure I fully grasped the strategy of buying, but I really liked your music!

haha yah it's a mess XD

The music scared me at first because I didn’t understand where it was coming from. I had to restart the game twice to calm down :D. It was a little difficult, because... I don't know English very well. But it was interesting, I made it to the end

@epifai yo your game is insane haha

Thanks to that damn tune, I spent way longer playing this that I thought I would (though, part of it was actively TRYING to run out of health, but I failed).

It should be easier to die (like, you lose 10 points for a wrong letter or something) so you'd be more careful with your choices. But, I do think there really is something fun in there: it's satisfying to solve it - a hangman RPG/puzzle game could be awesome. Plus, more terminal apps should have a soundtrack.

(Also, made a Mac build if you want it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-creature-support-group/help-needed-macrust)

That's so funny I recorded it in a panic 15 minutes before the jam ended lmao

the tune makes this game! haha

The music is absolutely amazing - it really sets the mood! 🎧 It was fun to play, even when I didn't immediately understand the buying strategy. 😄 Overall, the atmosphere of the game is captivating and it was a pleasure to get to the end. Great job! 👍

The music is great, I guess I should lean more into beatboxing acapella in my own musical endeavours too! The game... If you actually think about any of it none of it makes sense lol, why are you guessing species in a support group? Are you blind? But why hangman style? What is this world??? :P
- I played this like wordle - start with vowels. Figure out the shape of the word, go from there.
- The clues may or may not help, very red herring-y lol
- Could benefit from a layout like wordle, where you change the colours of letters alreaedy picked, rather than having to interpret a list. A keyboard layout would also be nice (like wordle)
- Number of letters could be easier to read, underscores just become one long stick and hard to count.
- I guess the numbers are supposed to be completely forgiving? I can't see losing unless you're guessing everything. My guess is you just wanted people to be able to get through the whole game, which I guess is fine for a jam, but really sucks all the tension out.
- A cute text adventure!

Totally fair critical feedback. I definitely tuned it on easier side because, yah, my hints are intentionally vague, but it sounds like I pulled the dial back too far. I wasn't certain how hard it was because I knew all the answer haha

I'm guessing a good way to increase the tension would be to double the health cost of wrong answers, or make it a random amount, sort of like taking damage from an rpg character, between 1 and 4

I made it through as well, I got some funny names in there, the movie reference one (I won't spoil) made me laugh. Same with the music, I love that one, it's great, I still have it on in the background while writing this.
Very fun with the framework of the tiny creature support group too, I had a good time playing this. Very well done!

hell yeah great game! ^^

He posts proof lol XD

re: buying

soooo
bisection is dividing a set of things by half (e.g. removing 26 cards from a deck)

soooo BUY-section is dividing the problem set in a half (mo money = mo problems, therefore less money = fewer problems!)

Mac build updated just in time! Thanks to (@mrspeaker)

liked the idea, maybe could've been more expanded by having the characters talk and hint their species type, since past the first level I couldn't rally get much use out the hints. The lack of graphics also has a gameplay purpose which is good (and saves time lol), though what caught my eye for this entry was the artwork for it.

@satless Yeah for sure. Alas, It went out with a lot of rough edges, partially because I misunderstood the time frame window lol. Partly yeah expansion on features like the way you say, but also more iteration on hint design, because there are a few good ones that really sell the idea but most of them are just not doing it. Gotta love terminal games!

Thanks about the art work. I just picked up inking with a bamboo brush and knew I needed SOME graphics!

Some of the riddles are not very good, and I do not see a purpose with the buying system and realistically it is impossible to lose this game. But despite that, I really enjoyed it and the overall vibe of this game was very charming, also the fact that this was all made in rust is really based.

Music is fire asf

baba. ba ba ba. doodoo do doodoo do do.

I love the music! But graphics could be better.

I love it! The sound is hilarious. Always great to see a fellow Rustacean here. Gj!

@nazariglez hi!! Yes I'm very excited to be working in Rust. This was a great learning experience but if you see my source you'll definitely see room to improve haha

Really fun, given that it's basically just hangman? The "buy" mechanic, along with the hints, made this quite fun to figure out - felt like solving a crossword!

Good stuff.

@untitled-studios thanks for the kind words. Definitely wanted to get that wordle / Scrabble / crossword vibe going!

_You won the game!_ I had a fantastic time! Honestly, I didn't expect to get so hooked and have so much fun. It's like Hangman but with lives, the option to make purchases, well-themed, and very well executed. I missed text-based games; it reminded me of my days playing on MS-DOS. A truly excellent game!

@milq I love those days too. I used to play multi user dungeons online because I lived out in the sticks where I had a 56k modem and damn it was fun.

As other people have said, the music is great. The game is super forgiving, but I had lots of fun trying to figure out the names with the tips. Good job!

(I also had a hit of nostalgia by seeing a text-based game haha)

The next build should be found on itchio in the coming weeks. With it the difficulty will be spiked about 3x harder.

I recommend that you opt out of Graphics and Music because, as a text-based game presumably made with QB64, this doesn't have both. Otherwise, good game.

@moonlightbomber this game has music but it doesn't seem to work on Linux. This game was made in Rust btw. Idk exactly the rules, but I wanted to place in the compo so I made sure to choose each category. I'm not sure why you're making this suggestion, precisely. More details would be appreciated.

Loved it! Keep up the good work.

Funny music! I like the idea of guessing at words like hangman but with a theme and tips to narrow it down a bit so it's not just totally random guessing.

I suppose I personally would have liked it more if it was just actual animals for most of it rather than pop culture references as I didn't know all of them. The way the hints were written, they mostly also didn't seem to help me much at all. But since it was balanced so generously, I managed to get through it anyway. Without even realizing that there's a buy mechanic so I was just hoarding money :P

At the end of the day it's just not that satisfying though if I'm basically just exhausing all the letters one by one until I happen to press the right one. It often felt less like guessing at the creature and more like just using my knowledge of what are the more common letters in the English language.

By the way, not turning off graphics rating will simply mean that you're getting lots of 1s for the graphics rating. And that can influence peoples' overall ratings.

@yaen great feedback! I think people will rate the graphics fairly. I'm not scared of that. Thanks for the head up anyway.

I really wanted to include pop culture references but I see your point. With a bit more time I'm sure I'll find a better balance.

You're the man for making a game in 3MB! Also every console app should have awesome music like this! Just think about it! Linux would be a joy to use! I'm bad at such word games, but even me ilitrate dumbo made it to the end of the game loop, so kudos to great balancing! Well done and cheers!

Too hard, epsecially for non-native speaker. I think giving additional tips after some wrong guesses, instead of "buyng letters" could work better.

You're right. Some of the changed I'm making will save non native speakers some time by knowing if it's worth the time investment to start playing

Console game. Props for that. enjoyed the music, and did pretty good. Wish there had been more clue-like clues of trivianess that would steer me into more points if i got it early or guessed it outright. xD

@commanderstitch well said. The current implementation supports multiple hints per entry so we were thinking the same

The music definitely added a lot of character to the game :D The clues didn't help me much, but going for the vowels first seemed to be an effective strategy. I would have liked to see some additional clues or something to give you more chances to guess the word instead of just trying every letter if you have no idea.

Cute, don't think I've ever played a text based jam game before

Hey all, if anyone is in this chat and wants to follow the game development, there is a new build available (and all future builds) at https://coltonphillips.itch.io/tiny-creature-support-group

And for live dev, follow me on twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/coltonphillips

Source code: https://github.com/ColtonPhillips/ludum-dare-56