Ho boy, what a rush to finish my first game jam entry! This is my second jam altogether, and I'm very happy with the result. It needs polish, admittedly, but the concept came together organically from the idea.

I woke up one morning, feeling very much 'meh' about my usual pursuits, and looking for a creative outlet. I ended up looking for jams here on itch, and found this one which was starting later the same day - and was about roguelikes - serendipity! Well, the theme hadn't been announced yet, but I really wanted to do something with hydras, for some reason. I waited patiently, keeping the jam's page open and checking the countdown every few hours, watched tutorials on scene transitions in preparation (cough-didn't use any in the end-cough), until... at last... the time of the announcement. The theme was... "evolve"! Yes, yes thank you that will work with hydras don't mind if I do.

This is the second jam I joined, as I mentioned. The first one taught me a lot about cutting back on features when they were going to take too much time, and judging when something seems like it's out of scope in the first place. Of the original PLAN.txt, several things ended up changing. Originally I had one attack for each of the "physical" stats (I called them Somas) and the combat would be turn-based. Every time I tried to find some numbers to put to this scheme, however, I found that whatever the given resource distribution, one attack would always be optimal to use over the others. What to do - add cooldowns, add diminishing returns, add this, add that? I decided, with a pang of guilt for making my game "less cool" by abandoning this idea, to instead go for one attack, to which all upgrades apply.

In hindsight, it's interesting how there was an emotional component to this feature planning: I want to make something I like, and I get attached to the "plan" when all these ideas branch out and start connecting into a canopy over my head. Cutting off limbs from that plan then feels like moving backward, even when there's nothing of it that exists yet. I can say now that this impression, while rooted in a moment of appreciation and care for expression, is not helpful to keeping deadlines. And with some branches gone, it's nice to get some sunlight.

That veered into some wordy territory so I'll leave on this. I had tremendous fun making this, despite moments of frustration that are bound to arise. This is the third thing I've ever gotten to a playable state and I hope people enjoy it.

Thank you for reading, and play on!