Night Critter by MateusBoga

Eat insects and navigate using only your echolocation skills. Will you make it through 12 random levels?
INSTRUCTIONS:
Change flying direction to avoid obstacles and collect insects. You can't see the map, only get a glimpse of it when you use your echolocation ability (activated at the start of the level and again every time you collect an insect)
Collect all necessairy insects to pass the level. If you collide with anything, you have to restart the level. Good luck!

CONTROLS:
- WASD / Arrow Keys : Navigate Menus, Change Settings, Change Flying Direction
- Spacebar : Accept, Next Level, Restart Level
- Escape : Back to Main Menu (WARNING: lose progress)
CREDITS
Code, Art, SFX, Music: Mateus Boga

BUGFIXES
The original jam version had a bug where in some devices the game was too fast and was unfairly difficult due to the framerate not being static. The current browser version is a post-jam version that fixes ONLY this issue. If you want to play the original jam version, (again the game is exactly the same otherwise) you can download and play the sourcecode below.
| Link | https://mateusboga.itch.io/night-critter |
| Link | https://mateusboga.itch.io/night-critter |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/night-critter |
Ratings
| Overall | 14th | 4.291⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 27th | 4.068⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 12th | 4.322⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 114th | 3.818⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 36th | 4.25⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 15th | 4.151⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 31th | 4.073⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
It did feel a little unresponsive when trying to move around. Though it is nice to have the grid movement be in little bursts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ediGEZmMLpE
Cheers!
Yes, the levels are procedurally generated. And no, it's not infinite, it's supposed to be 12 levels.
I chose 12 because I noticed after that it starts to create those inaccessible places you mentioned. I had safeguards for those in place but they aren't guaranteed.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Amazing art (the bat is soo cute <3), great music and very fun (and quite challenging) gameplay.
Sometimes i have to clear all field, cuz at first time i forget to remember where flies are.

Props for recording the soundtrack on guitar - very cool!
@historymaker118 it's supposed to be snake controls, which I'm not used to coding, but I don't exactly know how to make it more responsive, it detects and changes direction in the same frame you press the button, so idk
Really I don't have much to say. It's impressive work, congratulations !
Only nitpick would be that keypresses aren't in a last-pressed queue, so when I release a key the movement doesn't switch to the one I was pressing before that. I was easily able to change the way I was pressing keys to fix that though.
Minor bug: It looks like you have the bat do a scan when it enters a new area, but I never see anything on the map when it does, so I go in blind whenever I enter a new area. I'm on Firefox/Linux
@lone-wolf Wow, I didn't think of that queue thing, that might be what I was missing this whole time! (Can't reproduce the echo bug unfortuantely, might be a linux thing?) Thanks for the feedback!
@ferricsbo @kerdelos @cortez @thatfirey Thanks so much ^^
Although there were moments when I raged a bit, it was only because I was LOCKED IN tryin' to get those bugs. I could feel my third eye opening near the end. :smile:
Great job on this one!
@satless Thanks! Yea that's a common criticism, I should rethink the controls a bit
Music is just awesome!

The game is really impressively polished! Music is great and fits perfectly. I didn't really encounter any bugs (except for those I was eating :wink:), although sometimes the game placed the tasty bugs in a purely 'unfair' way. Like here:

A better player than me could probably get those, no problem :grin: I had most trouble with turning on the area wrap-around. It was hard for me to tell, when exactly I should turn. Again, that's most probably on me. I was also thinking, maybe it would be good to make the bugs in a different color than everything else. I know it would sort of screw with the black-n-white aesthetics you have going on there, but it would make the easier to locate in the split second, especially on levels 11 and 12. And after all, Sin City did it :grin: I do realize that it might make the game too easy, though. So might not be the best of ideas.
Aesthetics of the game is great, by the way. Overall, a very cool entry!