Soil Surfer by bentglasstube
Soil Surfer
An earthworm's adventure.
How to Play
Guide your worm around the underground looking for food. Use left and right (or A and D) to turn the worm, enter to pause.
You need to collect food to keep yourself healthy. Your health is indicated by your length. Longer worms are happier worms after all. You will die if you get too short. This can happen by starvation or other means. You will also take damage if you get stuck. Worms are like sharks that way. They need to keep "swimming". I know earthworms don't have eyes. But some worms do. Maybe the main character of this game is a next step in the evolution of earthworms, okay? At least it doesn't have a tongue.
Try to get as deep as you can. Or, try to get as long as you can. Why not both? The game keeps track of the longest and deepest you achieve so share some screenshots of your world records.
How the Sausage is Made
The game is written in C++ using SDL2 and my game framework gam.
The art is drawn in Aseprite with a Wacom Bamboo tablet and sometimes a mouse.
The music is made with my modular synthesizer. It's a lot of fun. You should build one of your own.
The sound effects are made with the venerable sfxr because I was a little too lazy to make them on my synth. Maybe next time.
Earthworm Facts
- Earthworms do not have eyes (although some worms do).
- They have specialized photosensitive cells called "light cells of Hess".
- Food enters at the mouth.
- The gut of the earthworm is a straight tube which extends from the worm's mouth to its anus.
- Earthworm mating occurs on the surface, most often at night.
Ratings
| Overall | 359th | 3.577⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 393th | 3.407⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 292th | 3.5⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 219th | 3.926⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 496th | 3.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 321th | 3.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 252th | 2.977⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 446th | 3.25⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 31🗨️ |
I think the only slightly negative thing that stands out to me in the current version is that the camera movement feels very chunky depending on your speed. I don't think this would be bad if it were matched a bit more into the gameplay, such as Keppersnapper's suggestion to make it in sync with music, but in its current form I think having it always smoothed out would just feel a little better.
Overall though I think this was pretty solid, especially as a compo game. We should totally have a way to add extra cool factor points for using your own framework too, that's fantastic!
Overall, a very cool entry and a great use of the theme. Great job!
Also, the game doesn't quite fit on my 1080p screen, but the scaling feature didn't seem to work (just got a black screen).
The gameplay is neat and pretty unique, and fits well with the theme. I was so mad at myself for managing to just barely dodge out of the way of the food, by accident, over and over again! The music is solid, the centipede sound effect is appropriately scary, and the sprites are simple but effective. The color palette in particular gives me an "DOS / early Windows game" vibe, which is not a bad thing at all.
Food definitely seems to become more scarce further down. I guess that and the hard rock are the limiting factors on how deep you can go. And it's kind of hard to avoid the centipedes sometimes (the audio cue helps but it's not clear what height they'll come in at, and once I had it spawn almost on top of me so it was impossible to get out of the way). Certainly seems like better living to stay in the fertile topsoil and collect all the goodies there. I guess that's the life of an earthworm alright!
Well done!
As others have mentioned above, using the HTML5 version fullscreen mode didn't seem to work and by default it seemed to have resized the canvas in a way that chopped off the bottom of the screen. Other than that though worked a charm.
I found the controls took a bit to get used to, especially with the hexagonal tiles. Centipedes were very difficult to anticipate. Felt almost random whether I would get hit or not. Not sure what strategy to use when I hear them coming.
I also wasn't quite sure of the advantages of getting longer were.
Cool game. Great work in 48h!
Your game takes a good spin on the snake formula (hexagon, different tiles/speeds, you have to go deeper, centepede which can cut your length) which is quite an accomplishment so I will give it a 4.5 in innovation. It is also pretty polished, has fitting sound and consistent good graphic style. The centepede kinda scared me^^ well done!
Also I think the level is kinda random generated - If that's the case, good job there. I feel like the length of the worm is just an addon, that does not prove skill very much (which is okay), cause you can't evade the centepede well enough. The depth you get to in the other hand requires skill, butI really enjoy the beginning of the level more, cause you move much faster and seem to have more choices where to go (or I missed a path, i don't know, but it seemed to me that after a certain point you only encounter dirt-rock). Wish that pacing would continue throughout the level. The game has good potential for such a simple concept. Very well done!
Oh and here my score: 
Early... Fall mechanic.. that's new...
Mid... Different soil types, and impassible ones... that's unique.
Then... WTF... OMG... My TAIL noooooo.
Simple, and yet not. Wonderful Jam Entry.
(A little more warning on the centipede perhaps...)