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Cart #thecubs-2 | 2025-06-10 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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What's this?

The Cubs is a top-down food hunting / care-giving game set in a wet landscape. You are some type of animal with a nest of cubs and you must learn to balance the art of taking and giving in order to provide optimal conditions for your young ones' survival.

How does it work?

• Controls are mostly explained in-game.
• Interact with [x] and [z]
• You can move around with the [arrow keys]
• left and right steers your character, forward pushes you in the direction you're in

Your cubs need food, warmth, and rest. You can feed them by hunting for food, but be careful as they will become restless and cool down and require more food. Your ability to manage this determines the game's difficulty.

Features

Thick foliage

Watery wetness

Heavy fur

Hungry fish

Chonkiness

Dinner

Snuggles

And many more of life's daunting challenges!

Development

The vector field's fluidity had me convinced it would be straightforward to render it watery without using refraction.

I was wrong. Here's why:

I was hoping patterns would be watery enough for the game I had in mind.

I tried a few spritemaps and configurations and these got whacky. (I came back to another version of this after trying a few)

Too solid

Has something but no

Too blocky.

Might look like reflection with varying width maybe but it's supposed to be top down

Seemed like it had underwater potential.

Mirroring and turning looked much better on paper.

I continued with small environment maps but they looked less appealing the more I tried.
This was not straightforward at all!

Finally settled for a mapping of sprites, separating lows, mediums and highs into dark, none and light. Without the need for refraction, but nothing to refract..

Lesson: I didn't need the x y values, but just the depth for rendering above. Underwater, the x y values do the work.

Lesson: Sinking the critters' tummy should have been step 1!

Credits

This game was made by me, skipperd

Tips:

  • You can ball up to sleep.
  • Getting your young to sleep requires snuggling up good and well.
  • Make sure they all eat and try to give them as much rest as possible.
  • Underwater sounds aren't heard.
  • If your tail gets eaten, sleep to regrow it. It means everything to your cubs.
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cool effect with the trees!
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Thanks! They started out as a collision test, here's them before they were trees:

They no longer intercollide to save cpu and prevent grid-edge glitches which makes the effect more subtle as well.

These games you've made are amazing. You're a true artist!

I commented on Gorpslosh with some criticism. But both of these games are really works of art.

I hope it helps with the development of more amazing games!

Thank you very much and believe me it does!

This is so unique and innovative.
I do like the aesthetics, atmosphere, setting and gameplay a lot.
Thank you so much for this beautiful experience, kudos!



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