Marvellous Mongooses
Starting with two mongooses, grow your pack, learn how to care for pups and avoid dangers that await. The more generations and mongooses your raise the bigger and stronger your pack will be, and the higher your score will be.
This game is based on the work of the Banded Mongoose Research Project studying mongoose behaviour in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. You can also play the version here to add your scores to the high scores list.
This game is open source and is made by Then Try This. Note: on Firefox you may need to reload the page if the progress bar stops.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Great game, love the visuals, it reminds me of water colour! And the overall concept is very fun :D (And the babies are so cute)
Having said that though I do have some constructive criticism. First of all I'm finding it very hard to click on each mongoose, I click several times before it seems to register, and if they're stacked on top of one another it's basically impossible to click the one behind. It makes it quite frustrating when I have ample time to babysit/escort to stop a snake/stork, but cannot just because I can't click a mongoose D:
I also have several questions:
- If a baby doesn't have an escort, is it impossible to feed them since you can't seem to unescort a different baby to free up an adult?
- When they're in the den can they not be fed?
- What does babysitting do, is it just protection against snakes or does that feed the pups??
- You can click for a babysitting mongoose to babysit, causing it to go out and back in the den, does this achieve babysitting twice or is it wasting energy?
- Do you need a babysitter for each pup, or will one do?
- When it says the baby gets a portion of the mothers energy, is that just at birth or is it a continuous energy feed?
Also the squeaks when they find a skull are a little loud (but understandable, I would also squeak loudly in that situation </3) And the notifications are a little flashy. Also a marker on the bar for when the breeding seasons are would be super helpful!
I hope this isn't discouraging, I really did enjoy this game a lot!! Generally games of this 'looking after an animal group' theme are very fun so I'm always very glad to find more in this genre, especially one so nice to look at :D The reason I say what I did is because I'd love to see the game get even better (if it's still being worked on of course, understandable if not!) Overall I did have fun, and am going to play it more as soon as I post this comment >:D
Edit to add: The other version in the description doesn't seem to have the multiple click issue :DD The mongoose being overlaid with one another is still a bit of a problem, but even that isn't as bad when it's so much easier to click them hehe. On the leaderboard under "SNO" btw!
Thankyou for the kind words and feedback. The clicking issue should now be fixed, we just did an update for that. I think I was having problems with it on itch and turned off the pixel detection temporarily, it seems to be working better now.
The way the mongooses behave is indeed based on the real creatures - so one adult tends to have a pup in its care when foraging (and not necessarily it's parent) so you need to restrict the number of pups so you have enough escorts. In the den they receive a portion of their mothers lifeforce because how healthy the mum is affects how healthy their pups are - so again its a balancing act. Just one babysitter is needed to take care of all the pups when they are in the den.
Thanks again for playing and taking the time for the feedback!
Also just to add - the artwork indeed was watercolour - we like to do as much as possible on paper for these games!