Hey, thanks for trying!
NightKawata wrote:It took me about 10 minutes to realize you couldn't dig anywhere, moreover adjacent to an already dug tile (which I didn't realize at the time was black), then I don't even know what goes on after that.
Sorry about that. I didn't have time to make it more obvious.
It says so in the instructions. Maybe I should have repeated it instead of mentioning it only on the controls section.
NightKawata wrote:What do the slugs do? Do Mushrooms spawn randomly? The world may never know.
It is also described in the instructions: slugs get created from tiles with more than 1 food and less than 10. They move in straight lines until they collide with a tile. If the tile they collide with has at least 1 food, they transfer the food they have to it. Then they choose a random direction and move again in a straight line. When they get hungry, if they pass near a cell with food, they "absorb" some of the food from the cell, regenerating hp. Otherwise their hp goes to 0 and they die. They generate a mushroom if they had food when they died. Mushrooms increase the food of the solid cells around them until they die. If they have food left when they die, they spawn two slugs.
So the whole point of the slugs and the mushrooms is moving food around, and creating more food (which you can't do directly). You need to move food around to create more advanced units. Since slugs more in straight lines, and a mushroom that dies in an "open space" is wasted, you want to make narrow passages instead of big empty rooms - but this gets more difficult with time, as you are removing more and more cells. Also, unfortunately, I did not have time to implement much behaviour on the more advanced units, so it's more like a toy than a game :/
NightKawata wrote:
Things die randomly as well, not when they run out of food. Plus... Negative food? Interesting...Yeah, that's the word.
If you have seen that happening, that's a bug. I didn't see negative food. But thanks.
NightKawata wrote:A post-compo version of this would be cool. I'd definitely recommend expanding upon this, as it does feel noticcably incomplete.
I agree, it's an incomplete thing. My consolation is that it's more complete than the last LD I tried. I am a slow programmer, I don't do fast very well. Several people have requested a post-compo version, so I might give it a try.