Good Hamster — Dead Hamster by Sandy Marcius

[raw]
made by Sandy Marcius for LD 41 (JAM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ24OU7B3WU

Hamsters are born to eat, to sleep and to die. Build your hamster squad that can exterminate other hamster squads!

A mix of cellular automaton fun and strategy.

We plan to continue developing this game, so if you liked it then follow us on Twitter to know all the news :)

https://twitter.com/wise_hedgehog

UPD from April 24: - We've added an option to enable/disable sounds according to requests from our first players. - We unlocked Survival mode by default; you​ don't need to complete all Campaign levels.

Ratings

Overall 351th 3.663⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Fun 507th 3.38⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 189th 3.804⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Theme 658th 3.5⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 557th 3.522⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Audio 142th 3.822⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Humor 138th 3.793⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Mood 492th 3.398⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Given 85🗳️ 28🗨️

Feedback

23. Apr 2018 · 22:47 UTC
ITS SO CUTE 10/10 WOULD PLAY AGAIN
Tuteupaituamae
23. Apr 2018 · 23:01 UTC
I love this game bro, congratulations
Sargarious
24. Apr 2018 · 00:55 UTC
Very cute game, love the music!
Sargarious
24. Apr 2018 · 00:55 UTC
Very cute game, love the music!
Lamasaurus
24. Apr 2018 · 10:25 UTC
Fun game, cute graphics and very fitting music! Some levels take pretty long to complete though.
Darby Costello
24. Apr 2018 · 10:35 UTC
So, so silly. Love it.
24. Apr 2018 · 11:17 UTC
Nice music and art.
Lerg
24. Apr 2018 · 11:27 UTC
Quite challenging! Overall pretty fun.
meskaline
24. Apr 2018 · 14:02 UTC
I love multi-agent simulations, so i love your game. Good concept. :D
Bitten Toast Games
24. Apr 2018 · 15:26 UTC
I'm not really sure what just happened but will play again haha :D
wramp
24. Apr 2018 · 22:55 UTC
very nice simulation game, music is so crazy!! DIE HAMSTER DIE xD
Mowztouch
24. Apr 2018 · 22:58 UTC
i have had big lags within webplayer, could you please make a Windows build?
Gonz0
24. Apr 2018 · 22:59 UTC
aHAhaha awesome game awesome music! You rock!

Care to comment on mine?https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/spacescape
Roman Petrov
24. Apr 2018 · 22:59 UTC
@Lerg @wramp @meskaline @Sargarious @Lamasaurus @Tuteupaituamae Thank you all for the kind feedback! Do you want to have this game improved and built into something bigger? We've got tons of ideas, but we want to know, if people want it? :)
Roman Petrov
24. Apr 2018 · 23:01 UTC
@Mowztouch I'm on Mac, but I will ask one of our team members to prepare the Windows build. Will publish it on itch.io tomorrow. Thank you for request!
frostByte4k
24. Apr 2018 · 23:10 UTC
Oh my god I love cellular automata. The music was awesome too. but it was the voice over that caught me of guard It was so funny. I was also curious how the rules were set up for the cellular automata. Over all fun exiting game, good job. If you don't mind I'd love it if you could check out my game. If your interested here's the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/yum-some
Tikikala
24. Apr 2018 · 23:10 UTC
A fun little game
Roman Petrov
24. Apr 2018 · 23:11 UTC
@Gonz0 Thank you! I had tons of fun recording this song :) I checked out your game, it's really nice. I rated and left the comment. Thanks for the web build!
Gonz0
24. Apr 2018 · 23:14 UTC
is it a band or just yourself? VOcals and all?
Roman Petrov
24. Apr 2018 · 23:15 UTC
@frostByte4k The rules are based on the classical Life. But each cell-hamster has HP, attack, defence and "alive" parameters. "Alive" controls the maximum amount of neighbours (3 for classical Life) you can bear with. Instead of immediate death, hamster loses HP when there are too little or too many neighbours of its kind. When there are neighbours from other squads, hamsters attack and defend themselves. Terrain also affects hamsters: when they're on the grass, they eat and restore HP, when they're on water — they lose HP because they can't swim :) I'll check your game tomorrow (opened it in a tab to not forget). Thank you!
Roman Petrov
24. Apr 2018 · 23:16 UTC
@Gonz0 Only me. Live guitar, vocals, everything else is sampled.
frostByte4k
24. Apr 2018 · 23:20 UTC
Cool that's awesome i've never been able to implement "the game of life" into a game of my own so flawlessly before. Good job!
Gonz0
24. Apr 2018 · 23:24 UTC
Awesome dude(I assume youre a dude, haha) Beautiful singing!!
net3ton
24. Apr 2018 · 23:27 UTC
I haven't got the meaning of underlying map, hamsters move through mountains and water. But it's definitely fun to watch and even have voicing =)
Roman Petrov
25. Apr 2018 · 05:24 UTC
@net3ton Thanks for the feedback! Read the description above. Map does a lot. Hamsters don't move through mountains, but I agree it may look like they do :)
Felix Kern
25. Apr 2018 · 13:32 UTC
Only a dead hamster is a good hamster :D
Roman Petrov
25. Apr 2018 · 13:42 UTC
@felix-kern DIE HAMSTER DIE HAMSTER DIE DIE DIE! :)
SolsForest
25. Apr 2018 · 13:56 UTC
Haha nice theme song! It was fun to play around with this and see what worked best. Cute and funny haha!
radmccool
25. Apr 2018 · 14:26 UTC
The metal really brings this together. had fun slaughtering thousands of hamsters
kilosaurus
25. Apr 2018 · 14:27 UTC
Played for too long, nice one ! Maybe speed up things a bit ?
Alex13
25. Apr 2018 · 14:27 UTC
Nice music. I have found, that defence skill not so important as attack?
Roman Petrov
25. Apr 2018 · 14:32 UTC
@kilosaurus We have tons of ideas for improving the game (we're going to continue developing it) and finding a good way to have short game sessions is one of our priority tasks. Will you be interested to continue slaughtering hamsters? :)
Roman Petrov
25. Apr 2018 · 14:33 UTC
@Alex13 Yes, that's why it costs only 1 skill point. We'll be working on the game balance. It was pretty difficult to do in just 2 days, but I believe it's pretty good for the start.
Lakrits
25. Apr 2018 · 14:43 UTC
Kinda easy to get into a stalemate. Some kind of interaction during the simulation would improve gameplay and make it feel less random. An idea could be to have two crosshairs move randomly across the screen and if you press space you give food to the hamster below (buffing the surrounding hamsters). One crosshair would buff the enemy and the other your own hamsters, the trick then is to make sure you don't accidentally buff the enemy hamsters more than your own.
Roman Petrov
25. Apr 2018 · 14:48 UTC
@Lakrits Nice ideas! Thanks for your suggestion!
hhsaez
25. Apr 2018 · 14:51 UTC
Great game! It's very fun and replayability is very high and you can try different initial conditions. And the audio is perfect for the game.

Amazing work!
arzi
25. Apr 2018 · 16:50 UTC
Best music in an LD game ever.

Couldn't get further than the second level though.
Roman Petrov
25. Apr 2018 · 20:46 UTC
@Mowztouch We've added the Windows build. Enjoy the game!
Jaime Paz Lopes
03. May 2018 · 14:06 UTC
I like this type of game, but I think yours was too easy, I put 40% points on attack and 60% on defense on the first level and it won every level. the levels could have some enemy variance or different scenery to force me to change strategy. some interaction would be nice, chance strategy or chance point distribution mid game. the win condition could change too, sometimes the enemy team has 30 hamster but they take 80% of the level time to die, they have no chance to win, but they keep resisting and making the level take more time to finish.
Roman Petrov
03. May 2018 · 14:08 UTC
@jaime-paz-lopes Thank you for the feedback! We're working on these improvements, and the post-jam version will definitely happen. It was pretty difficult to balance in the limited time we had. And it's interesting that for some people it's difficult to find a winning combination, but you're smart! :)
Alexander Borisov
03. May 2018 · 15:52 UTC
Very interesting idea! And the best sound of course :-)
Hisfantor
05. May 2018 · 11:51 UTC
that was quit interesting, reminds me of conway's game of life, just watching the groups fight is much more interesting than you'd think at first
Jupiter_Hadley
05. May 2018 · 11:59 UTC
Interesting game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=157gFcDgY28
Roman Petrov
05. May 2018 · 12:19 UTC
@Jupiter_Hadley Thank you for playing our game and including it in the video! We'll fix the problem with a ​player not understanding which hamster is yours :) And as for resetting Attack​ — the jam version always resets squad settings to default ones every level. We've fixed this bug already.
Roman Petrov
05. May 2018 · 12:20 UTC
@Hisfantor It is ​based on Game of Life, but extended — each cell (hamster) has HP and can attack cells of a ​different kind (other hamsters). Thank you for your feedback!
cristiano.m.garcia
07. May 2018 · 01:20 UTC
Good job! Cool game!

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
larzan
12. May 2018 · 10:06 UTC
I looooove the idea to make 'game of life' with cellular automatons. Very interesting concept, but to make it a full game you should add some way on top of the game to influence the outcome a bit.
Right now it is just setting the parameters and wait, not that thrilling.
But i see potential, you just have to put another rule system on top of the cellular automaton that is influencing cells on a wider scale over a larger distance.
That way you can also implement some user interactions with the running simulation.
Love the music, very fitting :D
bryyrt
15. May 2018 · 00:04 UTC
One of the best soundtrack games on ludem dare. Neat graphics, but it sort of hurts to look at because of all the moevments