Crabs on the Island by Ydindamin

[raw]
made by Ydindamin for Ludum Dare 56 (JAM)

Collect resources, replicate yourself, claim supremacy for you and your line of robot crabs! Inspired by the short story "Crabs on the Island" by Anatoly Dneprov (1958).

PLAY THE BROWSER VERSION HERE

Controls:
WASD - Movement
Shift - Dash
Spacebar - Harvest
HOLD Q - Replicate
Tab + A/D - Swap control to other crabs in your line
Mouse wheel - Zoom view

BEWARE: Crabs that collect sufficient quantities of cobalt become hostile, and can "harvest" other crabs!

This was our first ever game jam, so we hope you enjoy our game!

Known Issues:
- HTML5 VERSION TENDS TO HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES AT HIGHER POPULATIONS. Recommend running the win/mac versions if you encounter this!
- ~~Game end states do not trigger~~ FIXED! (refresh the page to start a new game)
- ~~Death of your controlled crab causes a soft-lock (requires game restart)~~ FIXED!

Planned Features:
- Dash attack (once cobalt is obtained)
- Sufficiently large/strong crabs can pick up and carry ingots or even smaller crabs
- Wrestle for items held by other crabs
- Choose one of a few random mutation options on replication
- New/procedural maps with togglable sandbox settings

Changelog:
- v.0.1 - Initial upload
- v.0.2 - Fixed soft-lock on player crab death. Fixed win/loss condition triggers.

Ratings

Overall 852th 3.211⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 647th 3.275⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 355th 3.525⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 255th 4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 899th 2.895⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 730th 2.684⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 850th 3.132⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 44🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

sirblazealot
07. Oct 2024 · 23:12 UTC
I really like the fact the the crabs I made carried on with their lives and made new crabs for me to choose while I went around trying to wipe out the enemy teams!
francoisvn
07. Oct 2024 · 23:49 UTC
Interesting idea! I struggled to figure out how to play, but there are some cool concepts here
BroHeartTTV
08. Oct 2024 · 00:07 UTC
Excellent representation of needs to the player, I grew a whole bunch of crabs and it was super satisfying to see the lines build up to green checkmark. Nice work!
Sviborg
08. Oct 2024 · 07:25 UTC
I loved this game so much! It's so nice to see your crabs working hard and creating new ones! 😄💚 Even though it was hard to figure out some things, the game left a great impression. Great job, team! 👏🎉
mackain
11. Oct 2024 · 21:28 UTC
not the most intuitive game but I really like the concept :) given a few more days of polish this would become a great game! well done
bacalear
12. Oct 2024 · 11:10 UTC
Great idea with cute characters
qwertyuiop
13. Oct 2024 · 03:46 UTC
good
HCS_Hades
13. Oct 2024 · 03:51 UTC
Was pretty easy to figure out what to do which was nice - cloned myself until the web browser died haha
someone
18. Oct 2024 · 23:25 UTC
Some really neat mechanics here.
I tried my best to purge the island of the non-believers but the game really started to chug after day 24.
Some goals other than just 'replicate until it becomes unstable' would have been nice to give some direction.
LDJam user 243193
19. Oct 2024 · 11:10 UTC
Nice crab game. Feels more like gathering resources game. Had to stop playing cause it gets too slow with many crabs.
Empyreans
23. Oct 2024 · 19:22 UTC
Cool sandbox experience :crab: :crab: :crab: :crab:
It will be interesting to see where you will take this game further!

Thank you for bringing crabs to the stream :)

https://youtu.be/of1DzapgRS8
~XpMonster