You weren't the only one to think about pouring salt on slugs indeed, lol. Good job making this game in something new right from the get go, it's truly difficult following a challenge like that in a Ludum Dare.

Nice

Perfect difficulty level. Just hard enough to frustrate me into playing until I won. I've been wanting to learn clojurescript for awhile, glad to see it being used in the jam.

Glad you stretched your skills! Nice slug AI, simple and effective. I found the game very difficult to get to all the slugs, I think I managed about one before it ended each time. I also found that I was able to rotate the screen with a mouse drag.

Functional programming for the win!

@goadrich That's a hidden feature I left in because hey why not? You can also zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. BTW, It took my non-gamer wife about 10 tries before she mastered it =).

@micahcowan It is a sea of imperative OO code with a few islands of pure functions (paraphrasing Erik Meijer). It was a lot easier to manage my objects in Clojurescript than in pure Javascript. It is also easier to read and only about 800 lines of Clojurescript compared to my much simpler previous game at about 1100 lines of Javascript.

@jmborden yeah, as you can see I didn't go for an FPL. Might next time. I'm a little concerned about efficiency because most of the current offerings seem to sacrifice it in order to preserve immutability (where applicable).

But immutability would've saved me valuable debugging time with my first Ludum Dare (#30). I managed to avoid problems this time around, but I'd enjoy playing around with Elm or PureScript, or possibly ClojureScript, see where I get. I like ClojureScript because it's closer to the actual language I'll get errors in ;) ...but Elm and PureScript let me have ADTs and strict typing, which can help avoid certain kinds of mistakes. I'll have to play with them all.

Oh yeah, of course, the reason I didn't have problems this time around is probably that I made one of my key object types (points/vectors) immutable at instantiation, heh. :D ...knew I'd probably get into trouble otherwise. #LessonLearned

Interesting idea. Pretty difficult game. Nice work!

Not as easy as I thought it would be, lol. Took a few tries 'till I came up with a strategy, lol.

I loved how you really respected the idea behind the jam: unconventional weapon.

I wish the game was longer though

@Idds I wish it was longer too. I'm just glad I had an actual game.. I almost didn't!

Nice concept and execution. Gameplay wise I feel it would have been nice to lock the direction the farmer was facing when the user is salting. That way you can hold down the space bar and chase a slug without having the salt flip from one side to the other, but if you wanted to quickly turn around to salt a slug that's behind you, just let go of the space bar, turn around, and then salt away.

Nice and difficult game.

Simple mechanics and hilarious concept!
Couldn't pass the first level though :D

It's fairly basic to be honest. Though I did go in without reading the description and in my efforts to figure out the controls I found that you can rotate/move the flat plane by clicking and dragging the mouse haha. Not sure if that's the hidden feature you were mentioning before or just something you forgot to remove.

It's a tough little game at first. After a while I got the hang of it but there was one aspect that bothered me a bit. When you switch sides (ex: moving from right to left), the salt pourer's hitbox is also altered. This really threw me off to be honest and I wasn't a fan of it because it made it harder to determine the spot where you'd be able to hit the slugs.

I understand you were working in somewhat unfamiliar territory tool-wise, so I can understand the simplicity.

The game is fairly compact, but I like that you didn't resort to having endless waves of enemies or anything like that to extend the gameplay further. So in a way, even though it's short, I think that length matches the content you have and feels like a good move. It never felt tedious to me, by the time grew tired of playing it I had won already.

There's a lot of additional work that could be done art/animation wise to improve though of course. Movement animations for the character/slugs. Different animations for the mushroom/slugs being destroyed rather than just fading out.

I also wish there were some sounds to go along with it all... feels sort of empty without any. Some general garden ambiance, non-intrusive sounds for the salt pourer, mushrooms being damaged, and slug deaths.

http://www.freesound.org/ is a good resource.

it's hard to kill all the slugs, I keep losing with only 1 slugs left

@CriticalMammal Thanks for taking time to leave so much feedback.. it is appreciated. Adding audio to my games is on the list. I have a technical problem with this that I need to figure out a way to have browsers properly cache sound files. I know it can be done, just haven't figured it out yet.

I like the idea of this game - Salting snails- Seems original.
I like the fact that you made the effort to finish it as a jam, rather than giving up on the compo.
The objectives of the game are pretty straight forward, and I managed to beat it after 15-20 tries.

The graphics were nice, good job on making the sprites yourself.
The slugs sometimes became invisible, making me think I killed them- Maybe because they were behind some hitbox or something?

All in all a simple game, that could benefit from some sound and some polish (Most Ludum Dare games can I suppose :) ) - But well done considering you went into unknown territory.

Ok. We have the theme winner here!

Nice little game! You could have expanded more on the features, but since you used a framework which was new to you, this is not bad. I didn't notice any bugs, control glitches or performance issues, so that's great! :)

hehe. I was really bad in this game. Hence, I didnt understand the idea of turning ground :S but cute little game anyway! :)

Very fun idea but you have to be very quick to get all the slugs!

Fun, and it would have been neat if you used the mouse-click-rotate-plane thing to add another game mechanic, but good job!

The rotating screen thing alone was worth the entry ;D Congrats on submitting it!

Cool game.

Nice interpretation of the unconventional weapon. The sprites were pretty fun too. Gameplay was a bit unclear, there was a lot of z-fighting going on so I couldn't tell if I actually killed a slug, or it was just fading behind another sprite. The 3D camera manipulation was a nice touch; it made feel like, "woah, I am in a GAME inside a Game"

Great game! Had a really great time playing it

Game got me salty for more! (im sorry) :D

@PushmePullyu It needs lots more levels =). I had an idea to make it more of a Puzzle/Action game where you can create salt paths the slugs can't cross, but they dissolve over time. The slugs would be able to create slime paths that you couldn't cross.

Cool that you tried out something new this time! The game didn't have much to it, but it was still pretty cute and provided some challenge. I also liked how you could rotate the camera around despite the game being 2D XD definitely got you some extra points on graphics there.

On a side note, I notice you left a comment on my game saying that it crashed before you were able to play it. Just a reminder that it is against the rules to score unplayable entries. I'm not sure if you left a review or not, but I'll mention it just in case ;)

@superpokeunicorn Umm... thanks for the reminder dude?

Nice take on the theme, and good onya for trying a new library for LD, no small feat!

You were not the only one with this idea XD. The gnome though, that is new for me and is a great character for the theme.
I wish there was a tutorial screen or something similar, had trouble even though the controls were described on the description. (I know it was my bad, but I dont think Im the only one hoping for a tutorial in game)
Would appreciate more feedback on the actions.
Good job on the compo entry, mad respect.

@Plustech

|I wish there was a tutorial screen or something similar, had trouble even though the controls were described on the description. (I know it was my bad, but I dont think Im the only one hoping for a tutorial in game)

Actually, if you have problem figuring out how to play the game, it's my bad not yours. Games should be something easy to fall into and start playing without reading instruction manuals.

In game tutorials was a lesson I learned this time seeing many other games that had stuff written directly in the beginning of their games.. such a simple idea can dramatically improve playability. The more playable a game is, the more people will play it!

I think the difficulty's just right for this. First few tries, it's impossible, then it's almost there, then you win!

Great take on the theme.
I also agree that the salt-pourer's hitbox flip should be improved and the difficulty curve is great. Feels good to win.

Good stuff, surprisingly strategic!
Would be nice to get some feedback when hurting the slugs.

Okay and simple idea.

Nice idea! I really liked it ^_^

Whoa, 800 lines of clojure in a single weekend - that's in itself an accomplishment. I have no idea how you best write applications like these in clojure - games tend to have a lot of state in them that changes every frame; as you say, you have a bit of mutability here and there :P

As for the slugs, I had no feelings towards them until I played your game; if they are anything IRL like in your game then I absolutely hate them

@madflame991 As you've seen, Clojure doesn't get rid of mutability. It just makes it very explicit where you are using it. Being a fellow Clojurian, I would love to game jam with you sometime!

Good thing the game is very short, I was getting really frustrated and was about to quit when I finally made it. I don't thing I would have played another level.

What make it especially hard/furstrating is the lack of feedback on the damage you deal : there is no way to know if you are properly placed.

@PapyPilgrim Thanks for the feedback. I agree, I should have made some kind of slug reaction to let the user know that the slugs were being salted. Thanks for playing it till the very short end!

Interesting! It's pretty short and simple, but the asymmetry of the slugs adds a bit of interest.

I took a look at the code since 800 lines sounded like a lot - looks like you overshot a bit with the WebGL, but if you learned something sounds like a win-win. :D

Nice game! you could add more feedback!

Great little game, awesome for a first try! Nice job.

i win!