Squish
Overview
Squish was built as part of the 2011 Global Game Jam. It was developed in Flash and Actionscript 3 in a team of three — two programmers and one artist. We had 48 hours to create the game from scratch, and it was the first time any of us has participated in a game jam.
Play The Game
Controls: Click to use the current tool.
- Remove tool
- Plant Dropper
- Monkey Dropper
- Elephant Dropper
- Giraffe Dropper
- Manbearpig Dropper
Project Breakdown
The simulation is tile based, and has a number of components that interact. The base is soil. Each tile has a nutrient value, defining its color from light green (low nutrients) to dark green (high nutrients). Flowers can be planted, and they pull nutrients from the soil around them. Once they have enough nutrients, they generate new flowers. The speed at which the flowers grow is directly related to how many nutrients there are on the ground tile.
Flowers are then eaten by the monkeys, elephants, and giraffes. Each of these animals have different values that determine how much food they need to survive and how quickly they reproduce. If they run out of food to eat, they will die, depositing nutrients back into the soil. Animals reproduce through mitosis, as we didn't want to tackle the challenge of pathfinding in order to find mates.
The manbearpig was created as a joke, and was our attempt to create a carnivorous creature. Because they survive off of other animals, they use a limited form of pathfinding, but it unfortunately isn't very efficient.