Back 2 Nature

Back 2 Nature

Help the hungry frog eat bugs by guiding his tongue.

Photosensitivity warning: The border flashes when the player wins or loses the game.

Controls

Action	Keyboard	Xbox controller
Move	WASD/Arrow keys	D-Pad
Retract	R	A
Pause	P	Menu
Fullscreen	F
CRT filter	C

How to play

Guide the tip of the frog's tongue so it touches the bugs to eat them.

As the tongue moves the frog uses up calories. They start off with 100 calories and gain 10 for each bug they eat. If they run out of calories it is game over!

If the tip touches another part of the tongue or the border of the play area it will automatically retract and you will have to try the current level again.

Eat all the bugs on the current level to progress to the next one. In each successive level the tongue moves a bit faster and there are more bugs.

There are 10 levels and two difficulties; Easy where the bugs do not move and Hard where the bugs do move.

Background

I have recently been playing around with PETSCII graphics, which is the character set based graphics system that was used on Commodore computers from the PET up until the C128.

While looking for PETSCII based games I found Back To Nature for the C64 from 1982 by Bob Carr, which was based on his earlier game Frog! for the PET from 1980. I had never played it before and from the screenshots I assumed it was similar to Snake. When I watched a video I discovered the gameplay was much simpler. The player uses the numeric keypad to select the height (based on which row the key they pressed is in) and the distance (based on which column the key they pressed is in) where the frog aims their tongue.

I had recently answered someone's question on the Godot Cafe Discord about how to impliment a Snake type game where you move the snake on a grid placing the relevant tiles for its body to show the direction it has moved and also have the ability to undo or rewind the movement. I thought it would be fun to take a break from the more complex game I have been working on and make a simple PETSCII unofficial sequil / homage to Back To Nature but using the Snake game mechanic.

It has taken me a few days working in my spare time to produce Back 2 Nature. I tried to keep it as authentic to a C64 PETSCII art game as I could and I think something very similar could be produced for the original hardware.

It was refreshing to make a simple game so fast and I may do the same in the future. I already have a mockup of another idea for the upcoming spooky season!