Praise The Snek by Preside
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A85XQHY80R4
In the ancient village of Snecohtitlán you can either be a worshipper of Achtla, goddess of the sun and fire, or a cultist of Ezqui, god of thunder and storms, deities known as the two faces of the Mighty Snek.
Bring offerings to your deity to protect the village from their wrath.
Each deity will ask for 3 offerings at a time (fruit, gold, hens and NEWBORNS!), pick them carefully and bring them to your temple's altar. Remember: bringing something unrequested to your altar will make the deity very sad.
The wrath of any god will affect the whole village: beware of Achtla's fire walls (they will ostruct your path) and Ezqui's electric fields (they'll destroy your offering if you step on them).
When your deity's satisfaction bar reaches zero, the other cult prevails and you lose.
We hope you enjoy the game and praise the Snek :)
Changelog [12/05] - Fixed the control screen where the pickup/blood sacrifice commands for keyboard were inverted (oops) - Added macOS build
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2 players
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keyboard / controller
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GAME DESIGN ◆ Marina Andreose, Demetrio Zachary Tagliapietra
3D ART & VFX ◆ Stefano Bertolin, Mattia Ceretta
PROGRAMMING ◆ Demetrio Zachary Tagliapietra
2D ART & UI ◆ Marina Andreose



| Windows | https://preside.itch.io/praise-the-snek |
| macOS | https://preside.itch.io/praise-the-snek |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/praise-the-snek |
Ratings
| Overall | 410th | 3.55⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 382th | 3.425⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 542th | 3.119⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 325th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 432th | 3.659⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 339th | 3.205⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 509th | 3.325⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 16🗨️ |
@svdvorak Unfortunately we ran out of time before we could take care of them, but we look forward to improving both those aspects. Thank you for playing! ;)
The music gave me the creeps
Thank you all for your feedback! The Mighty Snek is happy :)
Competitive multiplayer games should (in my opinion) generally be fair for both players. I found it strange that both players got different recipes, and one player spawned with fruit, whilst the other didn't. This particularly becomes a problem when one player requires two gold, as the slow respawn rate can put them at a serious loss, at no fault of their own. I would have generated a list of recipes, and given both players the same recipes at each stage of sacrifice. Also, one of the players has two baby huts, whilst the other only has one, making me think that p1 may have an advantage. Even if this advantage isn't huge, it limits the competitive prospects
I also found myself very lost at something seemingly simple; "Where do I place the sacrifices?" I tried placing it on the bowls and in the mouths of statues (all places that I expected sacrifices to go) and the items eventually disappeared, So I assumed that they were right. I understood that the 2D sprites represented the items required, but initially had no clue how to do the sacrifices. After a while, I eventually placed it on the order, which felt like a strange place to put sacrifices... Maybe could have had a huge 'Snek' shrine to place the sacrifices?
I liked the music intially, but it didn't really fit the multiplayer environment. The spooky vibes made it feel like more of a team game, where the players had to work together to beat some big, unseen evil. The music could have instead been a bit brighter and faster to indicate a competitve mood, which would be more suitable for a local vs game. I would recommend listening to some of the music in 'mario party', as this represents the sort of music that I believe suits multiplayer games, even with the morbid theme of sacrifice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCuKqhnct4M
I could also imagine the game becoming rather boring, even with a second player. Part of the fun of games such as 'mario party' is interacting with your friends to drive the gameplay. Whilst the gold could provide some 'lol get rekt' moments, it doesn't really invite too many exchanges between friends, as the game seems to separate the two players. It could be more interesting if the players shared a single, smaller space, each fulfilling their own agendas. This would give the opportunity to sabotage the other player as well as doing your own thing. Whilst you could sabotage in the current state, the players are so far apart, that the journey to the other side doesn't feel worthwhile. Multiplayer games should feed from this multiplayer chaos, wherein both players are performing complex interactions with each other to provide additional depth and strategy. As it stands, the players feel isolated, and so the game limits itself.
The game however, certainly has a lot of potential, and I particularly liked your graphics and UI. The UI felt very clean, and the tutorial gave me most of the things I needed to play the game. The graphics were also very nice, and the items required were expressed in a clear way. It is certainly a very ambitious project, and you did reasonably, but I believe it needs some work before it can achieve its fullest potential. Good luck with future game dev, and I hope this feedback helps! :thumbsup: