linecook
these busy birds will eat almost anything that falls into their gullet -- what will you feed them? they have their preferences, but people food beats bird food any day of the week!
a difficult, chaotic arcade game. now with local multiplayer support!
controls:
- left / right: move
- x / up: grab
- enter: pause menu (select "options" entry for volume controls)
- ESDF: movement keys for player 2
features
- 4 difficulty modes: "easy", medium, hard, and practice
- 3 different control schemes:
- solo
- local multiplayer
- two-handed singleplayer
- 4 challenging maps for 4 different flavors of gameplay
Recommended play order
The game modes combine into a whole mess of different options; here's a recommended playthrough order:
- Play through practice mode
- Check out the recipe book if you want to see the recipes
- Try
COOKS:1 MAP:NEST LEVEL:EASY
- Try
COOKS:2 MAP:NEST LEVEL:EASY
-- play with one hand on the arrow keys and one hand on ESDF - Try each of the 4 maps with whichever COOKS and LEVEL settings you prefer
- Try to beat
MAP:CANON LEVEL:MEDIUM
!
#ChainLetterJam
this was made for the #ChainLetterJam! Patrick nominated me; I had fun playing Arithmetic Bounce (my high score on hard mode is 24!), so I decided to try making a game that would feel similarly chaotic.
I took inspiration from the fact that none of the target numbers in Arithmetic Bounce were inherently good or bad; their value changed depending on the current goal. This became the ingredient/recipe idea in linecook: specific ingredients are sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the current recipe. I also liked the chaos and time pressure caused by gravity in Arithmetic Bounce; I've gone for a slightly different but still chaotic spin by giving the player two grabber-claws that are tricky to aim.
the continuation of this chain is: The Witch's Almanac
blog
I wrote about this game's design here. tl;dr: if you allow your game systems to play out as physical processes in the game world, there's a lot more opportunities for the player to interrupt and cause surprising interactions
thanks for playing!
Status | Released |
Platforms | HTML5, Windows, macOS, Linux |
Rating | Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars (4 total ratings) |
Author | pancelor |
Genre | Action |
Made with | PICO-8, Sublime Text |
Tags | 2D, Arcade, chainletterjam, Difficult, Food, Local multiplayer, PICO-8, Pixel Art, Short, Speedrun |
Average session | A few minutes |
Inputs | Keyboard, Touchscreen |
Accessibility | Color-blind friendly, High-contrast, One button |
Links | Blog, Lexaloffle BBS |
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- v2.1: practice mode, local multiplayer, and more!Jun 01, 2022
Comments
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Love what you did with the river and sieve maps :D
Wow, this is wild! Easy mode was pretty dang hard for me, but as you say, you were going for chaos--you achieved that for sure. Cool mechanical ideas with one button activating both claws, and having the claw that doesn't hit anything causing ingredients to stack up. Creative stuff!