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Take The Biscuit's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #7 | 4.238 | 4.238 |
| Enjoyment | #18 | 4.270 | 4.270 |
| Overall | #41 | 3.974 | 3.974 |
| Innovation | #73 | 3.905 | 3.905 |
| Theme | #111 | 3.952 | 3.952 |
| Audio | #196 | 3.619 | 3.619 |
| Visuals | #408 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
Ranked from 63 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
In this pursuit puzzler, you'll need to get the guard dogs attention and kite them around the map in order to get at their delicious biscuits. Staying out of sight alone will not win you the prize. You need to risk getting caught and cornered in your biscuit-bound chicanery.
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
All open source assets with a couple custom sprites and edits made during the jam period. Code from scratch.
Sprites:
-Dogs: https://opengameart.org/content/dog-spritesheets
-Base Tilings + Fences: https://kenmi-art.itch.io/cute-fantasy-rpg
-Walls: https://pine-druid.itch.io/dungeon-tileset-mega-pack
-Emotes: https://danieldiggle.itch.io/sunnyside
-UI: https://opengameart.org/content/pixel-ui-pack-750-assets
-Some UI: https://bdragon1727.itch.io/basic-pixel-gui-and-buttons-pack-1
Music: https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html (Pinball Spring, Pixellana, Salty Ditty)
Font: https://www.dafont.com/grapesoda-2.font
How many people worked on the game?1
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Comments
these were the hardest cookies i had to get, friend! game gets very hard very suddenly, but i got all cookies! no guard dogs can beat me!
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blanket
Great job! The tracking and puzzle planning was an interesting mechanic. We enjoyed playing, can't wait to see how you add to it after the jam :)
Very nice. Love the level design, very clever. The art is beautiful. I can see this becoming something
A really clever, fun, and cute game! The level design and puzzle ideas were amazing, and both the music and visuals fit perfectly. My only small critique is that I had to use the mouse to move to the next level—having space or enter as an option would make it feel even smoother. Other than that, it’s an incredibly polished game. Congrats!
Thanks for playing! 100% agree on the space to continue option. I was really noticing that problem too, but only after the submission window ended. I plan to release a post-jam version that tidies this up along with a few other things.
Impressive work. Clever, elaborate, stylish, humorous. Wish I had more time to explore more levels, but as is, it’s five stars already.
Awesome game and what banging music selection! The game mechanics worked nicely. Great job!
Very nice submission. Polished and clever game play. Very good job.
This is a really clever game, and the rouguelike movement makes it really satisfying to play
I love the idea on this! make a few more and some more mechanics and you can put it up on steam!
I completed all puzzles and I must say I am impressed. I think this is the most completed game of all the games I've played in this Game Jam.
As a game design student, how did you create those puzzles? I am really curious about your thinking process!
Although, there was only one thing that was a bit annoying: missclicking into a wall while holding a hotkey, thus decreasing 1 essential tile of distance from the guard dogs. If I already have the option to wait (by pressing Q), why I am able to walk into a wall and spend a tile of distance? Everytime I missclicked, I had to reset everything and restart from the beginning T_T
Please don't take this feedback as a negative review, because I really really liked your game and my sole purpose is to give a little more quality of life by giving this feedback!
Congratulations by making this awesome game!! :D
I glad you liked it! Not the most timely tip, but "z" will undo one step at a time rather than "r" which wipes the slate clean. In any case, the question stands. Why allow the player to accidentally bonk when there is a dedicated wait key? The reason is that there is a game mechanic that is in the code, but not used in any levels. I had wanted to include a suite of levels with this other mechanic, but getting the UI done ended up taking me right up to the final hour of the jam. Disabling movement for a bonk felt like too much risk to do at the last minute, and so it awkwardly stayed on into the final jam build.
The mechanic if you are curious (rot13): Lbh pna pbageby zhygvcyr qbtf. N ybg bs qrfvta fcnpr bcraf hc vs lbh nyybj bar qbt gb zbir juvyr nabgure fgnlf chg ol ohzcvat ntnvafg gur jnyyf.
Design-wise, levels are coming from one of the following:
1: Show some relevant rule or behavior that is important to the puzzles in isolation.
2: Build some complications around a central theme.
3: Stumble into something interesting completely by accident while building and playtesting another design.
So for #1 I'm a big believer in "show don't tell" wherever possible. I wanted to have some number of tutorial levels simple enough to show one thing at a time (ex: get all biscuits to win, lose a biscuit to a guard and lose, get seen only with a biscuit, etc.). This is pretty critical to build up the players toolkit so that solutions to later puzzles feel deliberate and not arbitrary.
For #2, you kind of have to mess around with your own system to get a sense for how things work and what constraints can be enforced. Discoveries here might be stuff like: "I can punish the player for losing a guard at this specific spot by putting down multiple biscuits in different directions" or "once a guard is one tile behind me, I can never lose it" or "if I put a biscuit on the shortest path from the player to a guard, I can force them to collect the biscuits in a certain order". You can then build up a little arsenal of building blocks to start going for bigger ideas.
Finally, #3 is just going to happen from time to time in a way that I'm not clever enough to intuit from the start. The snake level kind of came together this way. I figured out how to build up the snake in the usual way, but then I wanted the user to have to lose it all again in order to make it to the final biscuit. Running around in test showed that you can loop back and squash down the length of the snake one square at a time by looping back repeatedly.
There was an undo movement!! Damn, I feel stupid for not seeing it :B
I am trying to decipher the mechanic, but I quite didn't understand it yet.
I am taking notes here, these are really good tips! Thanks for your time explaining it!
You can copy + paste at https://rot13.com/ to unscramble. I just didn't want to put it in plain text since I plan to ship a post-jam update which includes the mechanic. Telegraphing exactly what it is would detract from the reveal.
Dude I love the puzzles in the game and the redo and undo mechanic also.
dawg this is lit literally such a good game!!!!!!
Really cool puzzle game! Very well polished for something made in a week. The level design is great as well. Great job!
what a clever and fun puzzle game!
the visuals and audio are really good, and overall the game feels pretty polished.
But the cherry on top is the level design, the difficulty scales perfectly, its super easy to restart the level (plus you can skip levels), so it doesn't get frustrating, and the eureka moment after solving a hard level feels really nice.
bravo!
Incredibly well fleshed out levels for a game jam. The puzzles were super satisfying to solve and had a bunch of the classic 'aha' moments. Puzzle mechanics were tight and well-refined, and the state of things was pretty well telegraphed. Minor nitpick, but the last puzzle was probably my least favourite, purely as its scale meant it was faster to just guess-and-check the routes instead of solving it in my head. Really solid puzzle game, great work
Thanks for playing! There is a 'why' to that final level but it definitely has some problems. I think this could be mitigated by slotting in a few more levels that lean on the relevant pattern/resource on a smaller scale. I'd also like to do something to decouple the screen size from the map size so that a level like that one can unfold into a more natural configuration for the solve. As is, it all has to kind of smush together to fit everything on screen.
Completely fair, I'm sure if the concepts for it were teased out I wouldn't have to guess-and-check solve. It's definitely a nit pick it's all really solid. Just to throw in my two cents, I do prefer smaller puzzles and fitting all on one screen is a bonus. But that's definitely personal preference, I'm sure decoupling will open up for so many more interesting ideas.
This game is crazy addictive. I'll need rehab.
Very clever puzzle! The mechanics were simple but allowed for some challenging designs. I’m looking forward to seeing more levels
Awesome stuff!! Its a very good mechanic i love the pathtracking and having to lose the dogs! i got mega stumped at the face level, had to skip it... Congrats on making this!!
Incredibly clever use of the theme! The levels are really well thought out. I like how complex they get really fast! The last 3 took me a long while to figure out
Very enjoyable game with lovely music and artstyle. Fantastic job