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
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The game was so much fun, it took me a couple times to get to the end but it was super fun and kept me playing till i beat it. I will 100% keep playing and trying to beat my score
ok I played the game a bit and found it quite fun but a bit simple , it had fun mechanics and also some questionable ones. The artstyle is great with a sprinkle of cuteness .
Overall the game is worth but there isn't perfect.So I'll count some annoyances I found while playing the game:The foraging is completely luck based and any skill involved does not exist . You could get 3 protein rich egg drops on some runs and then some runs you just lose because the first thing you get is a snake that eats your only female ...
The snake attacks on the den are ok as keeping only 1 adult (Most likely a male) is reasonable to keep the pups safe but the snake attacks while foraging is just unfair . What's the point of sending your only females to forage in early game if she's just going to get yanked by a snake? 90% of people's runs will end because of a random snake attack killing their only female.And sometimes you are forced to send your female to forage when your pups are old enough and if your rolled a 1 in your d20 then tough luck buddy guess you lose try again! It makes the game a bit insufferable.
The second tick that itches me is the way you keep your pups alive ...to keep the little buggers alive is by escorting AND only by escorting . You have no other choice other then to escort the pups because keeping them in the den is pointless. Apparently these mongooses in game , mammals I say don't have breast milk to feed the pups ? There's no point of keeping the original mother to babysit or even a female in the matter as their life force just doesn't go up other then going escorts and as I said before going foraging is too risky for you females so actually raising pups is slow and dangerous.
But overall I think the game is a nice treat that makes you learn a bit about wild life and a fun time waster if you don't mind the snakes [: 9/10Lovely game! I really like the concept of growing and taking care of a pack of animals. I think there should be some sort of marker or indicator on the female mongooses that tells you what generation they belong to so that you can find young adult females to make new generations with.
this is super fun! i wish there was an unlimited mode where it progressivly gets harder and you can keep going until you die or somthing like that :3
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!