Gettin' Squirrely! by Cliff Coffee
Play the Download version or Itch.io web version (visual artifacts in this web player version)
Made solo, yay!
Be the squirrel - Gettin' Squirrely!
Climb trees, collect nuts and avoid the dog!
Run around as a little squirrel and grab nuts out of the tress and a few on the ground. Watch out for the dog, you only have so much health and time to grab all the nuts you can. You can hold up to 5 nuts in your squirrel's cute little cheeks, so you need to drop them off at your stash to score.
Controls - Gamepad (Recommended)
Move - Left Stick
X/West - Drop Nuts from your cheeks into your stash.
A/South - Jump shooting forward in whatever direction you are facing - charge up to 2 seconds for faster and longer jump.
Controls - Keyboard
Move - WASD / Arrows
Click - Drop nuts from your cheeks into your stash.
Space - Jump, shooting forward in whatever direction you are facing - charge up to 2 seconds for faster and longer jump.
Basic Strategy
- Most of the nuts are at the top of the tree.
- Using jump constantly is the best way to get around quickly
- Recharge your jump while in mid air immediately after your last jump to get around quickly
- When climbing in trees, your best bet is still probably to jump quickly to the top - and if you miss and fall down and try to hit another branch
Made this solo, and my first game in 3D - it currently has no sound, and no final score screen! Likely requires a pretty decent GPU.
No Sound - didn't get to it, sleep came first.
All assets and programming made by hand, textures are from URP Essentials pack, including tree bark/leaves - but edited to look more basic and old-school. I applied custom LUTs and post procs since I have never messed with that. Everything else is built-in unity feature (even the proceedural tree itself).
Notes
UI Size didn't scale, should have read the embedding requirements earlier Currently an annoying graphical bug with one of the shaders only present in LD Page Embedded version (the dog house flashes white).
The version on Itch.io linked below will be updated to fix the minor bugs, but the LD version here will remain the originally submitted version.
Updates
10/10/2024 Bug fixes for terrain collision as raised in comments - download the "BugFix" version or play on itch.io. 10/12/2024 Linux build is now working - too large for LD page - its on Itch.io
Known Issues
- Camera can be "squirrely" when on trees. I will be experimenting with better camera methods to resolve this.
- Tree collision is a bit jumpy due to the complexity of the tree mesh, simplifying trees will make this smoother.
- Its possible to sometimes clip through climbable objects (particularly the rocks) when moving near the ground at a parallel angle
| Link | https://coffeemakergames.itch.io/get-squirrely |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/get-squirrelly |
Ratings
| Overall | 1001th | 2.908⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 895th | 2.921⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 749th | 3.039⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 587th | 3.632⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 764th | 3.263⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 603th | 2.931⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 979th | 2.797⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 52🗨️ |
Update: Ah, I just remembered after I uploaded that screenshot that I had did have Firefox Nightly installed because I was testing out some WebGPU stuff: and it worked in that! (Not sure why the WebGL2 version is using WebGPU as well though: you might need to investigate)
Annnyhooo - I loved the game! It took a while to get a handle on the controls: the turning speed it really fast, but after I got used to it was ok. The climbing mechanic was kind of hilarious and fun how you snap vertically to the tree - I loved running up the side of the building wall too.
My main complaint is that it's too hard to see the nuts! The blended in too well - making it hard to tell I'd missed one in the trees or on the ground. Though, that did become part of the fun once I got the hang of it. My secondary complaint is that I shouldn't need to click on the platform when I return them: I demand auto-harvest.
(Also, the first time I encountered the dog, I nearly jumped out of my chair: very effective)
Great work!
The game itself was pretty fun. I loved the movement mechanics and climbing trees. It felt very polished and well made. I also had a hard time finding the nuts and my playthrough ended after I climbed a fence and tried to get back down by jumping towards the ground which clipped me through the floor lol
Overall good job putting this together solo. Just try to fix the build or upload a desktop version for better compatibility
I encountered an issue in which there was what seemed like an invisible restart button, so when I clicked in a certain area the game would restart :cry:. I also had issues getting it to run in the browser- on Firefox it simply wouldn't load, and on Chrome it would load into a white screen, so I played the desktop version.
However, not a big fan on how disorienting the camera can be when climbing up the tree.
I did get some super jumps that were a lot of fun!
For your first Ludum Dare game and working solo, this is really good!
@joshua-reumann thanks, definitely something I want to improve in the future.
@mhorth thanks for your feedback. glad you enjoyed it, the jump charge-up UI and jump arc visualization was planned but I couldn't get it in, but really wanted to.
@cloudya thanks for the kind words!
@malibaturhan thanks for your feedback! yeah I spent very little time on the dog and needs some work on behavior for sure. Camera fixes are also on the roadmap.
Overall it looks great, great UI and art! Good job!
I think you could expand on this and turn it into a silly squirrel simulator type thing. That sounds like it would fun.
Great entry!
@ale thanks for the feedback! Rain gutter initially "worked" but was super buggy so I had to turn climbing off for it (for now). Definitely will be improving this game and releasing!