Snail Mail by MartensCedric
Snail Mail
Are you ready to get slimy?
The friends from the garden love to stay in touch. Thankfully, the moist mailmen are on duty. Slimy snails can effectively traverse the terrain bringing letters from and to any loved ones.
Can you solve the traveling snailsman problem?
Traversing the garden is no easy task! The moist mailmen are disgusted by their own slime and will never consider touching their own bodily fluids. Yet, they thoroughly enjoy navigating in slime from other mailmen.
Instructions
Snail Mail is a real-time puzzle game. Each puzzle takes place on a (mathematical) graph. You must control your snails to deliver letters to the indicated kawaii animals on time then return them all to post offices.
Be careful! It's easy to get your snails stuck as they simply refuse to slither on slime of their own color. Snails leave colored slime as they traverse paths. Coordinate your different snails to solve the puzzles (Snails can walk on paths slimed with different colors than their own)!
The Friends
Our slippery mucus mollusks must deliver letters to The Friends. Let's introduce them:
Lily The Ladybug
Lily is a dainty little creature. She's an old soul with a thing for flower pressing and post-modern art. She loves to flit from flower to flower in search of sweet nectar.
Mimi The Mouse
Mimi the mouse is a curious little creature who loves to nibble on cheese and explore new places. She speaks in a quiet high pitched squeak which is lovable to most, annoying to none!
Coco The Chick
Coco is a fluffy little ball of sunshine who a bit of a stoner and a loner. But once you get her out of her shell, she loves a good game of peek-a-boo!
Blossom The Bee
Blossom is a hardworking little insect with the thickest thorax around. Her favourite drink are Starbucks vanilla lattés infused with flower nectar.
Fizzy The Frog
Fizzy is a jolly little girl who loves to sing and leap through the lily pads, and she has the brightest big black eyes you've ever seen. Fizzy plays drums in an all amphibian jazz band on the weekends!
Amber The Ant
Amber the ant may be small, but she's a hard worker; always busy carrying crumbs to the colony. Her hobbies include weightlifting, leafcutting, and nude yoga. Here's a secret she's got crush on Blossom the bee!
Audio track (Snaily's Song) by a modern bard
The legendary lyricist @adrien-tremblay has composed a great gastropod soundtrack on his acoustic guitar for the title screen.
Lyrics:
[verse 1] (Cmaj Emin Cmaj Emin Gmaj Fmaj Cmaj Emaj Fmaj Cmaj Emaj)
In this world of misery
His only mission is delivery
He’s got no home, only a shell to call own
Delivering mail so we don’t feel so damn alone
[chorus] G Am F C Snail mail, he will never fail
Writing my feeling down on this here paper trail
Snail mail, solid from tentacle to tail
Delivering messages on small scale
[verse 2] (Cmaj Emin Cmaj Emin Gmaj Fmaj Cmaj Emaj Fmaj Cmaj Emaj)
Snaily don’t slither away from me
Softly leaving trails across the land and sea
His antenni twerk to the rhythm of his tail
Sliding moist and slimey as he carries your mail
[chorus] G Am F C
Snail mail, he will never fail
Writing my feeling down on this here paper trail
Snail mail, solid from tentacle to tail
This is how we deliver messages on a small scale
| Source Code (C++) | https://github.com/WheezyWiseWizards/SnailMail |
| Linux | https://winteralexander.itch.io/snail-mail |
| Windows | https://winteralexander.itch.io/snail-mail |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/snail-mail-2 |
Ratings
| Overall | 211th | 3.958⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 209th | 3.854⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 69th | 4.104⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 67th | 4.435⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 469th | 3.875⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 309th | 3.674⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 214th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 335th | 3.813⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WheezyWiseWizards/SnailMail/master/client/res/music/snailys_song_v2.mp3
I kinda felt a bit confused with all the timers tho.
The "don't backtrack" mechanic is pretty common for puzzle games, but the neat twist on the formula was managing the different colors of snails which could affect the possible paths of the other. The game is full of personality with the various mail recipients and the title song with actual live singing.
This is subjective, but I think this kind of game often works better without a timer. The hard part of puzzle games usually comes from evaluating your choices and making the correct decision, rather than clicking buttons quickly. It also can be hard to get your bearings at the start of a level if there's immediately a timer counting down.
I drew the snailman and added him to the pixel fan art compilation on [my profile.](https://ldjam.com/users/jeremy-ryan/)
Nice work for 72 hours!
Still faster than our local snailmail haha :D
Finished all 12 Levels. The difficulty curve was very well designed :)
From our post-mortem analysis, we do think the timers were unecessary. What happened is that we had two different visions for the game, from different team members. The first one, being a more pure puzzle game without timers where the game would be chill and the player would need to think through the moves. Levels would need to exploit the snail mechanics neatly. The second vision was a hectic game with a lot of snails to manage in parallel. The 12 levels provided with the game were mostly designed to be good puzzles instead of being hectic. We don't think that these two visions are necessarily mutually exclusive but there was not a single good level designed with the second vision, making the timers a pain point for anyone wanting a chill experience.
I would even say you ppl
SNAILED it
:grinning_squinting_face:
but seriously tho loved the implementation of color trace path element
The errors indicated it was most likely trying to load an audio device hard-coded by name or layout and because it failed to load the audio device it wanted it just crashed because it kept attempting to play audio on a device it failed to open.