We are free!

After years of cramped quarters in that genetics lab, we can finally see sunshine once again.

But we are different. They did something to us. We can no longer stand by scraping the bottom of the sea for scraps, as we have for eons. Our eyes are open to the truth of the world, and it is not to be given up.

We will colonize the land that was once our prison and demand a place amongst the oppressors!


Octopus Dating Simulator is a tower defense game in which the towers are mainly produced via breeding. Each octopus has a genome that determines its unique characteristics.

Consulates may be built in the water to convert wild octopi into allies, increasing precious genetic diversity. If octopi find the land too unreasonable, they might return to the wild.


Objective: Reach Culture level 10

Controls: Mouse. Right click dialogue to skip.

Features:

  • Genetics
  • Legs
  • Hats
  • 100% science based

Music: FL Studio. Script used: typewriter dialogue example.

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  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    Pretty cool game but there's too many things happening at once and too many thing to learn with no real tutorial.

    Also it sent me back to the menu after a while, I don't even think I was at 25/25 pollution; but I guess I was (too many things on the UI too!).

    • Cajoled
      Lv. 20
      Cajoled Developer of Octopus Dating Simulator

      5yrs ago

      Thank you for the feedback! My original plan for this was a more long-term, incremental kind of game, but of course that wasn't feasible for a game jam.

      You might have won the game then, since that does the same thing aside from different dialog, which I know becomes way too cluttered to read.

  • Kyon
    Lv. 25

    Can't believe I played this till I won haha. Had the whole screen full with buildings and octopi haha. Loved the little texts on what was happening in the world. Nice entree, felt a bit random though, haven't really noticed the theme in it or anything.

    Desolation
    Submitted

    Desolation

    • Cajoled
      Lv. 20
      Cajoled Developer of Octopus Dating Simulator

      5yrs ago

      Thank you! It was a bit unrelated to the theme. I was really struggling for ideas this time, and I always want to do something that's at least a bit weird and experimental.

  • Tero Hannula
    Patron

    It was interesting jam game :D Tower defense coupled up with Civilization was nice, but I didn't manage to get them to make love, only hearts :I Music was good and it felt pretty solid game otherwise.

    By the way, game crashed before it opened at first time?

    Edit. Yeah, I dunno either what the crash was, so it didn't affect your rating ;)

    Reload
    Submitted

    Reload

    • Cajoled
      Lv. 20
      Cajoled Developer of Octopus Dating Simulator

      5yrs ago

      They have to finish the round with hearts to have babies. Also there is a chance the starting octos had bad genes for fertility, which is a thing.

      I'm not sure about that crash you're talking about. Thank you for letting me know!

  • Linkyu
    Lv. 3

    Unfortunately, it gets very laggy once half the sea is covered in octopi, and eventually it crashed before I could reach level 7 (same error as WangleLine; Octopi Overload). Also, the baby notifications were cute at first but once I started getting 5+ per round, I stopped reading them and simply skipped them all.

    Other than that, a very charming game with really nice humour! I liked it while it lasted.

    • Cajoled
      Lv. 20
      Cajoled Developer of Octopus Dating Simulator

      5yrs ago

      Yeah, I didn't get to test much at the end, so I didn't know about the lag until after the time was up. Ditto everything else you said. Thank you!

  • Mohamed_DKD
    Lv. 2

    This game is amazing! truly wonderful job! I was initially skeptic when I saw the art and thought that the game might be over ambitious, but I take it all back! I honestly enjoyed the game. I lost the first time I played, but won the second time, and nothing brought me more happiness than hearing the "pew pew" sounds, while the dirty humans are running back to the land!. I also found the messages provided by the adviser to be hilarious. If I wanted to provide a critique, I would say the beginning of the game is a little bit harder, while the late game is way too easy, but this tweaking can definitely be ignored in a game jam ^__^ good job!

    • Cajoled
      Lv. 20
      Cajoled Developer of Octopus Dating Simulator

      5yrs ago

      Thank you so much for the kind words!

      I wish that the difficulty curve made the dna stuff an actually important mechanic, but it's really overshadowed by moving octopi around.

  • WangleLine 🌸
    Patron

    The game sadly crashed after a while o:

    https://imgur.com/dHcEtlR

  • Ivanbje
    Patron

    Got carried away in this game so definitely good immersion. But I had little reason to look at the stats, I just stacked octopi (I know it's correct to say octupuses/octopodes but it shouldn't be) wherever there was food to be found.

    It did get a bit laggy towards the end though, and because I had so many breeding octopuses (fine... i'll use the correct term) I found myself mashing space between turns, to the point that I missed the end screen and suddenly the game reset itself, it took me a minute to figure out what happened.

    but fun concept and an enjoyable little experience

    Oproto
    Submitted

    Oproto

  • damnscout
    Lv. 3

    Wow! There is a lot going on here. Let's start with the mix between a tower defense and a civilization and octopus dating sim all rolled into one. Awesome! While there was a lot to take in, and I'm sure all the stats mattered, I found I could mostly just place ocotpi next to one another for the most part to take down the attackers and keep them dating. I got the culture win, mostly by stacking the culture buildings (I forget what they were called) but I got 3 of them up, and just filled them up, and it worked well. All together, a lot going on, and really interesting idea to mix all these elements together. Would love to see what more time would bring.

    One thing that was annoying was the text box at the bottom. There was a lot of info, and it would block sight as things were happening. Still, awesome work!

    • Cajoled
      Lv. 20
      Cajoled Developer of Octopus Dating Simulator

      5yrs ago

      Thank you! I really needed to spend more time balancing the game. Stats end up not mattering at all, since food is relatively easy to come by so breeding is always good.

      I hadn't put controls in the description at the time that you played, but you can right click to kill the text box.