I made a Dark Souls clone!

I haven't actually played Dark Souls, but based on the gifs I'm pretty sure I got it right.

~ OK BUT FOR REALZ ~

I'm a neuroscientist-turned-game-designer and I'm making a game about my research on neural circuits: Crescent Loom.

BASICALLY, you put together floppy creatures and weave their brains with real neuroscience to explore a player-populated ocean ecosystem.

This is a player-created creature; by LunarPixel. There's something super satisfying about how it squeezes itself through those gaps. You can check it out in the online alpha : http://wick.works/demo2/?kraken

(if that link doesn't work, you can go here and just manually load "kraken")
http://wick.works/crescent-loom-demo/

I just added this hookshot yesterday! I was going for making something like a frogs' tongue but turns out it's also useful to move around.

The brain over there on the left has quite a pleasing symmetry.

Another player-created creature; by rroach. He's *crazy* good at making fish: here's another one that he spent 8+ hours on: http://imgur.com/o90ozRp)

 (there's a bunch more creatures over at the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/crescentloom/ )

Here's the process of weaving a simple brain, step by step:

( ONE )
I stitch a few muscles, each of which creates a corresponding motor neuron.

( TWO )
I plop down a pair of pacemaker cells, which flip themselves on and off on an internal timer.

( THREE )
I connect the two pacemaker neurons and toggle their connections to inhibit (silence) one another (represented by the small circles instead of triangles). This causes the two cells to alternate.

This arrangement is called RECIPROCAL INHIBITION and it is the COOLEST. (I'll get back to it in a second)

( FOUR )
I connect the pacemakers to the muscles -- and watch the creature to which I just gave life promptly smack its face against the ground. Sigh. I am a patient god and I love 'em.

So, I really really like reciprocal inhibition. It's a small, simple microcircuit that has emergent properties and you see it ALL OVER the place in nature. Whenever you have two opposing muscle groups it's a good bet that it's involved (e.g. the extensors and flexors your arms -- it's why you don't have to think about tensing one half and relaxing the other in order to bend your elbow) .

Plus, it makes for an elegant circuit diagram tattoo. Science is flippin' beautiful.

This guy is brought to you by a video of a C. elegans roundworm getting latched onto and sucked dry to the soundtrack of a mournful violin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT8bms2RHe8

And here's the hookshot being used for predation. I was gonna connect it up to an eye instead of keyboard control but couldn't quite figure out a good way to do it. GIT ON IT.

Thanks for reading! It's been my dream to make this game for a long time and I'm really happy to be able to share it + some kickass neuroscience with y'all.

ALSO HEY GUESS WHAT there's a Kickstarter >>>>>>>>>
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/crescent-loom-stitch-muscles-weave-neurons-create

peaceeeeeee ~

Edit: d'oh, forgot to add the greenlight link >>>>>>
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=855730767