Goobers: Escape from Lab 8 by maymay
Goobers: Escape from Lab 8
Lead the Goobers (a mysterious species of tiny creatures) in a daring escape from a sinister laboratory. The goobers must scavenge for food while breeding to create new types with different abilities. Balance risk and reward as you guide your goobers to freedom.
- * 8 rooms to explore! *
- * 15 different varieties of Goober to discover! *
Each day, a random group of goobers is randomly drawn from your population and it’s up to you to assign them to adventure for food, advance your escape, or reproduce. Experiment with different combinations of goober types to create new species with unique abilities—key to your success. But don’t forget, you’ll lose if you don’t have enough food to sustain your entire population each day. Adventure all the way through the lab to find the exit and win.
If you're getting stuck, Here (Spoilers!!!) is a chart of all Goober reproduction combos.
Credits
- Maymay - Art, Programming, Sound/Music
- Rufenerd - Programming
- Lacunahag - Art
Software and Assets used
- Game Engine: React.js project made with create-react-app. Source Code
- Sound Effects: Recorded in audacity
- Font: Patrick Hand
- Music: Made in Beepbox
- Art: Made in Procreate on iPad and in GIMP
Devlog
- 10/7 9pm - deployed minor UI fix and balance tweak for one location that had too little food
- 10/10 3pm - deployed UI fix preventing progress when goobers overflow the screen, and win condition bug where food was eaten before win was checked
- 10/13 4pm - fixed bug wherein areas can never be unlocked if a game is loaded from save
| Link | https://m4ym4y.itch.io/goobers-escape-from-lab-8 |
| Link | https://github.com/rufenerd/ludum56 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/goobers-escape-from-lab-8 |
Ratings
| Overall | 254th | 3.861⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 280th | 3.703⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 173th | 3.784⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 169th | 4.135⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 447th | 3.806⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 469th | 3.284⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 208th | 3.649⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 509th | 3.554⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 58🗨️ |
I only tried once, but sadly, the five goobers I had sent to the exit door had failed and died and I was kinda hoping on that working. So close.
Really good job, though! It was fun!
The different areas are awesome! We wanted to explore everything. The nice little details (I won't spoil anything) are great. We really got addicted to find every possible combination of the Goobers.
We didn't look at your sprite sheet till the end, because we wanted to discover everything by ourselves. We thought that loosing a "red Goober" would dead lock us. We think it would be nice in the introduction to at least show that you can always produce the basic three Goobers with the blue Goobers as shown in this elaborate Paint picture. ;)
One question regarding the winning screen: Did you run out of time, because the picture does not match the graphics and quality of the whole game or did you chose it on purpose?
The "poison area" was a good mechanic, to get rid of unwanted Goobers. I felt a little bit bad killing them. :D
The graphics were great and we like the style of the little Goobers. Really good job!
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback, it’s a good idea. It is very difficult to discover a way back into the game if things go wrong and your idea or similar would help.
The win screen being a photo as well as the slightly different art style in the view you get of the outdoors from inside the lobby are different styles on purpose. We wanted to contrast the dark, oppressing corporate/lab environment with the freedom of the outdoors. We also we were short time. :)
Are you planning to develop this game any further or designing new levels/areas?
If you do, I'll check it out in the future. :)
I just didn't understand how to get the ending screen. There was the exit door which expected 5 goobers. I send all the troops I had in my hand, but it failed. Anyway, I loved the progressive exploration, the food management and all the reproductions.
That would have been nice to show somewhere the reproduction combinations, while I discover them one by one. I had a hard time finding the opener, because I was trying combinations, forgetting I tried them, retrying them, etc.
The poison seemed useless, but it was really useful to get rid of some stupid goobers.
I loved all the "narrative environment" too: the posters, the notes, etc.
The ending requires five goobers to survive the lobby door. So if you send that many but some of them die due to the danger of the door, you don't succeed. you need either a very big hand, or some of the protective goobers to prevent death. We definitely could have communicated it more clearly though; the win was just one of the last things we completed.
Agreed on showing breeding combinations once they've been discovered! We may release a post-jam version with some features like that we couldn't fit :)