Gecko Crawl

I've just uploaded a new prototype, and I'm looking for feedback on the core idea. This one is a puzzle game, based on snake and yet quite different. Rather than control the snake, the snake moves on its own. The player's job is to place obstacles that will change the snake's path, leading him to the goal.

Along the way there will be hazards to avoid and pick-ups that change the snake's behaviour.

Play the game here.

The game is designed for touchscreen devices, as well as to be played on a PC with a mouse. There is an Android build, as well as builds for the major desktop platforms.

Feedback

At the moment, I'm interested in feedback on the core idea. I know its visually a bit ropey, and that the existing mechanics are quite limited; I have plans to address all of that. If you have any feedback on the core gameplay loop, good, bad or ugly, please let me know. Either leave a comment on the game's itch.io page, or message me on twitter.

Future plans

I have a ton of ideas for future improvements, and will probably address them in the following order:

Additional mechanics

The main thing the game lacks at the moment in my opinion is content. That's to be expected as its just a prototype. I have lots of ideas for additional mechanics that can be added into the game over time. These will keep the game fresh, and allow deeper more complex puzzles for the player to solve. Here are just a few examples:

• Powerups that change the snake's length, movement speed or turning direction
• Enemy characters that target the player
• Switches that open and close gates
• Portals

On their own, none of these changes is that big. But as they are combined, along with others, the space for level design really opens up and I hope there will plenty of interesting puzzles that come out of it.

Visual and audio overhaul

Obviously, the current game's visuals are pretty pathetic; it's just some basic artwork that I quickly knocked together in Inkscape, and there is currently no sound at all. Despite what it may look like, I actually have a pretty clear vision for the artistic direction of the game. As its name suggests, the snake should actually be a gecko. Kinda like this guy:

I want an Aztec sort of theme running through the levels. I imagine the Gecko exploring an abandoned multi-layered Mayan temple, descending further into its depths with each completed level.

Image Source

Whether I am personally able to achieve the visual effects I want remains to be seen. I'm not an artist, but we'll see where I can get to after a couple of Udemy courses. If I can't get results I'm happy with then I'll need to find an artist interested in working with me.

To go along with the visual overhaul, I imagine a fairly ambient soundtrack with some evocative sound effects: the quiet padding of the Gecko's footsteps, the echoing thunder of a stone sliding out of the way in response to player input. However, as with the visual art, I don't have any professional experience with this stuff. That's OK, hopefully it can be another opportunity for learning.

Badges

One of my favourite things in game design is optional difficulty. I don't mean the classic easy/normal/hard mode setting. Rather I mean the player can complete a level in a simple way, but the game encourages them to make it harder for themselves. To properly explain what I mean would require an entire post to itself. For this game, I want to have a system of badges for each level. So a player can complete a level in the most straightforward way and move onto the next. But each level will have 3 optional badges available, for the following achievements:

• Completing the level via the shortest possible path
• Completing the level by placing the fewest possible blocks
• Completing the level collecting all 3 fireflies.

At the moment the game calculates these scores (for the first two at least; the fireflies haven't been implemented yet). But the player is just presented with a number. There is no indication as to whether they did well or not.

It would be useful to have some in-game requirement for collecting badges, beyond just feeling good that you found the optimal solution. For example, it might be necessary to have collected a certain number of badges in order to unlock the next set of levels. But these requirements would be fairly minimal, just to encourage players to dip their toes into this kind of solution optimisation. Really its just for completionists and those who want to get more challenge out of the game.

Thanks for reading. I hope to update the game fairly regularly, and hopefully keep up with this development log. If you haven't already, please play the game and let me know what you think.