B.A. in Animal Psychology by Frogravity
You're a student for Animal Psychology, the groundbreaking new field. In order to get your B.A., you must find animals, talk to them about their problems, and help them overcome those problems by riding on them.
However, the animals you find are slightly unstable - both mentally and physically. Overcome their instabilities to fly!
Controls
I didn't have time to add them in-game, so here they are: - Conversation mode: mouse. - Ride mode: left and right arrows to rotate, up arrow to go forward.
Tools
- Unity
- Blender
- RealWorld Paint
- BeepBox
- Audacity
- Visual Studio
Changelog
V. 1.1:
-Fixed minimap camera orientation
V. 1.0:
-Initial release (compo)
Ratings
| Overall | 211th | 3.609⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 259th | 3.413⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 259th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 220th | 3.717⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 133th | 3.833⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 102th | 3.688⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 24th | 4.068⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 138th | 3.568⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
@theviraldragon - Thanks! Glad you liked it!
@varundevs - Thanks!
@erikengineengineer - Thank you! I hope your keyboard is okay now :)
@guine - Thanks!
@maluskhan - Thank you! Yes, I might have made the penguin a bit too unstable.
@brads-space - Thank you so much for playing it on stream! I was indeed watching it! Yes, the minimap orientation was accidentally different from the game, I just never noticed. The controls are janky on purpose, to mimic riding an unstable animal - I should've probably made it clearer. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to add riding on the wolf... Thanks again for playing, and I'm glad you liked it!
@lakrits - Thank you! The idea of the questions actually came first, although they are a bit disconnected from the gameplay. Yes, the conversation part is heavily inspired by old Flash games like The Impossible Quiz and the Henry Stickmin series.
@xlambein - Thank you! Glad you liked the voice acting and humor! I was afraid that making the hard controls predictable wouldn't be Unstable enough, but I agree that it would've probably been more fun and less frustrating...
Dialogue trees were trial and error but you kept them short so it was alright.
Very impressive graphics given the time limit.
@bougiebirdie - Thank you! I wanted the Ostrich to be more mentally unstable (and thus harder to talk to), as it was the second level. Hopefully it wasn't too frustrating. Happy to hear it was funny!
@laurenceogden - Thank you! I try adding checkpoints to most of my games to prevent frustration - I'm glad it worked! Yes, the dialogues were indeed trial and error, partly because I hoped people will find the fail messages I wrote for most funny. Glad you liked the graphics - I spent most of my time on those & the dialogues.
Anyway, great job making this game! I had lots of fun playing the levels and meeting those quirky animals. :)
In my opinion, the conversations worked pretty well. The correct answer was always obvious for me at least; the main reason I clicked the other options was to see what game over message I would get, as those were usually quite funny.
The ending test was also a great use of the conversation mechanic; it was super cool to be able to recall that the ostrich was wearing three green hats, and therefore be able to answer the hat question and have a good idea about the color question.
The walking gameplay was fine, although I think it could possibly be more interesting. In particular, it seemed like the way the penguin moved was somewhat random, and I think it might be a more satisfying game if the penguin has a predictable movement pattern where the correct sequence of lefts and rights can be learned; in that way, the player learning how to control the penguin would sort of be the way that the game expresses the penguin learning their own motion.
The minimap was a pretty neat addition, though. It made it pretty clear for me at least what the checkpoint system was, and that the walruses were hazards.
One small point is that sometimes I confused the shadows in the penguin level for water.
Overall, pretty fun entry. Definitely one of the funnier ones I've played.
@pbg - Thank you! I wanted people to be able to view all the fail options, which is why I made the conversations restart, hoping their short length and the consistent right answer would prevent it from being too frustrating. I originally thought about making branching conversations, but was afraid it would take too much time, so I discarded the idea. I'm happy you liked the sound!
@honey-pony - Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'm glad you liked the conversations! I'm happy you noticed the Ostrich's hat color - most of my playtesters didn't. You're right about the walking - I focused too much on making it unstable (thus random) instead of fun, and I really liked your idea of learning how to control the penguin expressing the penguin learning their own motion. I learned the importance of minimaps the hard way, after my first Ludum Dare game had a ton of requests for one. Yes, the shadows looking like water is a problem I've been unable to solve - disabling shadows made the level look really bad, while keeping them has the aforementioned problem. I'm happy you liked the humor, and thanks again for all the feedback!
Minimap (good job making it) was confusing to me on the first level but I got it on the 2nd. Perhaps a more obvious indicator for the player or a shape that points in the direction they are facing? I would have to reference other games but yeah.
I love the artstyle of the 2nd level with the vast space carved out. I'm surprised you managed to do so much in a short time - but it does have some decent pacing in level design aesthetic. If the first level was just a bit shorter I think you're golden.
The pacing/downtime with the conversations was interesting and I don't think I've ever been quizzed before after collecting stuff in an adventure game so... gj.
The art is cute, and the music fits the tone of the game.
The voice acting really enhances the humor.
Overall I have no complaints.
It's a short, fun, and kind of weird experience.
*Thank you for the Linux build by the way.*
@ldjq - Thank you! I'm glad you liked so many aspects! Somebody once asked me for a Linux build during LD46, and I try to always supply one ever since.