Love Caps
A cozy game 💕
Everyone deserves love, and so do you! Play as one of many mushrooms and try to find your soulmate in the big forest (the one looking IDENTICAL to you). Once found, you can dig in to establish a love connection with them.
Use the underground mycelium network by digging in to receive signals to get a clue where they're located. Be mindful, though; you have limited stamina that needs regular replenishing.
Controls:
- WSDA / arrows: move- Spacebar: dig in
Tip:
- Find tiny mushrooms to replenish your staminaTrivia:
- There are 3840 diffrent kinds of mushrooms in this game. I did not name them all, sorry- A timelapse of the development will follow
Changelog:
- V1.1 (20260501):
- Highscore table shows that values are in seconds now
- Player needs to press "E" to start the game, instead of "ENTER". This fixes a nasty bug where the game would crash shortly after starting.
- Added "post-jam" version. You can activate it by pressing "P" in the main menu. ONLY THEN the following changes should activate:
- Post-jam version (20260501) DO NOT RATE THIS VERSION
- Stamina system is more clear now
- There are on-screen instructions just after spawning into the world
- Hint to find more stamina has been improved
- Hint to reload game has been improved
- Resolution of game is slightly higher
- Level has a sligh redesign, making it a bit more difficult
- Water slows player down
- Sand and mud make signal weak
- Soulmate should spawn around the edges of the map now
- NPC animations are smoother
Comments92
Glad you liked it!
Just found everything overall chill and pleasant, I can get down to that. 💜
On a side-quest, I checked out your website and the Windows 7 era design brought glee to my soul (love the cats section btw great stuff). Glad to see someone out there is keepin' the dream alive.
The cats section is in desperate need of fresh cat-art I found on the internet, I totally forgot that corner of the website haha, thanks for the reminder!
Edit: ofcourse, I did not create all those variants myself btw 😁 I made some caps, some faces, some bodies and feet and the computer generates them in runtime. But I think you already figured that 😇
Great job!
I had a bit of trouble with the stamina system at first, but maybe I should have just read the instructions first ;)
You could add to it if your mushroom becomes a matchmaker after finding your match. You could help the other mushrooms find theirs, haha.
First love of my life:
Fastest love of my life:
Got stuck on this piece of terrain in another playthrough, couldn't get out:
The highscore makes you want to play again and do it faster. That's really smart! And honestly the whole thing is impressive in my eyes. I love how cute they look when they dig into the earth, and the hint on the direction, the visuals of it and visuals overall! The concept itself also feels original to me, and it is fun! The only complaint I have is that stamina maybe depletes a little too fast? But all in all, loved the game, thank you for making sth cute!! x3
Might be a bit confusing at first but gets clearer. The shrooms are good cute buddies! : )))
I'm a big fan of random character generators, this is thematically a perfect use for one! ❤
Very well done!
Glad you had a good time. I see that you're new here, did you have fun past weekend?
It's very touching indeed , glad you had fun! Thanks for playing :-)
If you have any suggestions on how to make it more clear, then please get in touch! I'm looking for inspriration. I saw a streamer who thought the symbols in the top of the screen were tetris pieces. I was blind to that, because I intended that to be symbols indicating which keys could be used for instance 😅
That collision bug is new to me. I've never had that in development and nobody reported that yet. Thanks! I will look into it
Regarding the 3800+ characters 😁 I did not draw them all by hand as you can imagine. What I did was creating 24 hats, 5 faces, 4 types of shoes, 8 types of body (24 \* 5 \* 4 \* 8 = 3840). I had a little table that told the computer where to draw the 4 sprites per character, so it looked like one character with animations and stuff. I'm very proud of that
We've recently watched a documentary about mushrooms. I learned that these networks actually exists! Mushrooms can exchange information that way, crazy!
Damn that is fast! How did you do that?! 😆 I coded a forbidden zone directly around the player for the soulmate to spawn in, guess it spawned just outside of that area 😅
Glad you liked it! I think it's a big compliment when someone grinds for the highscore
I've attached a screenshot for the dialog-tree for that one. I swore after that never to make anything like that again 😅 Stil got PTSD from that one
Just now, I beat it. And I also got soft-locked ones into some wood :D a few times.
Just sharing. BTW I noticed your dev-log video... and I was totally amazed to see you code in NPP++ :D . You are hardcore...
In this case the demon's name is Stamina, the unforgiving punisher of straggling drifters. Its only remedy, the tiny mushrooms, are hard to see and barely ever where I want them to be. Yet I have managed to get into the top 5 yesterday, so it can't be that bad. Though it would be more up my alley if time was not a factor but rather the distance travelled, that's just me getting too old for fast games.
An exquisite entry in most aspects, it leaves me with questions. How long did it take to associate "signal" with mycelium network? How much research did go into this? Who drew this adorable graphics? Are there any shrooms left?
Congrats on making yet another oddity of gaming within the jam's time limit.
Thanks for watching btw! I started doing timelapses last year and it felt so cool that I wanted to do it again this time
Congratz on the top 5 score! I don't really know if 'speedrun' was the best option indeed. I almost left out the scoreboard entirely, but then it would loose it's magic I thought. Distance traveled sounds like a better option, thanks for the suggestion! Maybe even two scoreboards: "least distance traveled" and "most distance traveled". Does that sound like a good idea?
Regarding your question: it took looong to come to this idea. Like... I had an entirely different idea when I started programming. When I started the idea was to play as a character who was using some advanced version of reCAPTCHA where you needed to walk to someone else to prove that you were human and that you were where you said to were (location). Then @lizz was talking about mushroom-people for her game and I somehow decided that the main character would also be a mushroom and that the office I was imagining would be a forest instead. The mycelium network would work differently, although I really had no idea how yet.
Then I got a massive headache and needed to lie down for a bit (you can see that in the timelapse at around 1:52 where I took a big break.) I had some time to think and decided *how* the mycelium network would work and how I could limit its usage with stamina. You can see in the video that I pivoted right away after the break, creating the little shrooms and the stamina indicator.
Lizz and I had seen a documentary about these networks and were intrigued.
I did not do a lot of research to be honest, Lizz did more research about different kind of shrooms for her game
Regarding the 3800+ characters 😁 I did not draw them all by hand as you can imagine. What I did was creating 24 hats, 5 faces, 4 types of shoes, 8 types of body (24 \* 5 \* 4 \* 8 = 3840). I had a little table in memory that told the computer where to draw the 4 sprites per character, so it looked like one character with animations and stuff. I’m very proud of that
This is very cool indeed :)) . One similar idea [that I've loved to use in other games/creations] - use some sort of CSRNG to sort of achieve the same thing, but with infinitely many combinations. Although... that could make the finding of *your twin* a bit more D: challenging..
Overall I did enjoy it a lot though and would be interested in seeing how the idea get further explored.
Ayy, thanks again for playing on stream! It's very cool to see someone play it live
I will take your feedback into a count when/if I release a post-jam version. Those are all fair points and I appreciate your detailed feedback 😄
The stamina system needs an update indeed. I'll take your feedback into a count, thanks!
It took me reading the hints in your description to understand the stamina mechanic. Still, it didn't affect my enjoyment negatively. These are the hardest kind of submissions for me to review, as it is so competent and clearly skilled in every way it is hard to give any feedback on how to push it to the next level, especially without veering into personal preference territory. Great job!
Thank you for the big compliments! I'm very proud of this one. The stamina system is new to me and I can see that in people's feedback. I'm glad that people speak up about that
Please tell me your personal preferences btw, I'm very curious about that!
Since this is a high score game, I'm not sure if running out of stamina should just restart the game, since the timesink is so big that runs with and without are basically in their own categories. However, I can see why you can't really "fail" since the message is that there is someone for everyone, and it does keep the game more lighthearted.
Even more in the preference territory, from the runs I tried the location of the shrooms is static, so the best runs tend to end up as memorization, and even more importantly for me, sort of devalues the signaling mechanic since you can end up less meaningful. However, there were so many shrooms that I'm not even sure if there is shuffling or not, and it needs quite the dedication to actually start remembering where everything is. And is a player that dedicated even bothered by it at that point.
Similarly, I was not sure whether the stamina cost on the signal seeking should be lowered, since it is the mechanic connecting to the theme and does take some time to use. Even here I'm not sure of the second point, since the timer seems to pause on some screens, maybe. Could just be the stamina that gets stopped.
This was a really fun simple game! I like how when I lose my stamina, the UI subtly tells me what items to look for to replenish it. The different mushrooms are all very cute, I'm sure you had a blast designing all their shapes and accessories! I also really like the mycelium network graph when you dig into the ground, very cool effect.
For some reason many times when I reload the page the game goes black after I input my name and press enter. I had to reload like 10 times to try again 😅 Also those high scores are a little sus, maybe they just got lucky and spawned right next to their lover, but anyway! I'm definitely not beating that x3
😊
I always had fun testing it and seeing the little shrooms playing, walking and sleeping all over the place. It made me happy 😄
Regarding the bug, veeeery strange! Can you reproduce it now? I reproduced it this morning very consistently and that was strange, because I have never seen that bug before! I tried it a few minutes ago again, and now it does not happen anymore. Very strange 🤔
Thanks for the feedback @lereveur ! I coded something that the soulmate should not spawn next to the player, appearantly there was a bug. Whoopsie haha
I made a post-jam version
Based on all of your feedback. Which is awesome and I thank you all ♥If you want to try it: load up the game and press "P" in the main menu. It should tell you that "post-jam" version is activated. Below you can find the changes. I also added a changelog in the submission-page. Ofcourse, these changes are only activated when you press P. The original version is not touched (mostly).
@OnlinE-Play @digital-bacon @yoko-san @aweskybear @liquid @kr4ft3r @liam @oadt @rend @lohii
- Stamina should be less of a headache. The bar itself is a bit more clear and less intrusive (smaller footprint and icons don't look like tetris shapes anymore). The bar also reacts more quickly to changes and it recharges when standing still for a moment. That is especially nice if you found your soulmate while not having enough stamina.
- Also, there are instructions for basic controls at the start of the game now.
@poweranze
Thanks again for the awesome feedback! In this postjam version I added the following things:
- Level is a bit less streightforward, as there are more obstacles now to walk around
- Water slows you down
- Sand and mud make the signal very weak, making it harder for the player
- The resolution is a bit higher
I didn't address the lack of contrast, as that was kinda by design 😁
@lereveur
The center of the map should be off-limits now for the soulmate to spawn in (I increased the area, the soulmate should only spawn around the edges)
@fupi
I tried to address the black-screen-bug by making the player hit "E" instead of "ENTER" to start the game, as it sometimes goes streight from "enter-name-mode" into the game without displaying the options menu. By tweaking that keybind, this should not happen and the assets get a liiiiitle more time to load in. (black screen appeared when the game failed to play an audio clip)
@kuviman
- The highscore table is more clear now, it shows that the values are in seconds.
- The message to press F5 to play again has been redesigned to be more clear.
- I did not change the font, that is a limitation in my custom code base that is too big to tackle at the moment.
@shanzpro
I liked your match-maker idea, but for this post-jam version I decided to only tackle the low haning fruits instead of writing new features.
@aweskybear @kanity
I tried to reproduce the colission issue you found, but could not find anything. So I didn't fix that, as I see it as an incident for now. Thanks again for letting me know though!
1. First start up the game: https://www.wouter52.com/PROJECTS/LD59/PLAY/
2. Enter your name / alias
3. Press P in the main menu (there is a blue text indicating the new post-jam version)
If you don't see that version, then maybe your browser kept the old version in cache. You can press CTRL+F5 to force a reload :-)
Here's what you should see when you need to Press P
Maybe the feedback of the distance between connection could be improved to help the player with the direction where to move.
Also tried the post-jam that fixes most of the problem that the entry has, so nice job overall.
Still, once the jam is over (very soon now!), I’ll definitely be curious to see what you do with it afterward.
Great job! 🍄
I like the semi-random map, had some fun exploring it, the map sides have a bit of uniqueness. I ran into the great brick wall that I thought was an interesting pair with the mushroom foraging mechanic.
Very clever how the mushrooms are highlighted if the player fails to find any, works not only as a tutorial but as help to recover stamina.
Amazing work, the music makes it feel like a very chill game!