Darwin's Odyssey is a top-down survival combat game built in 48 hours. It's educational because it teaches you about evolution with 100% scientific accuracy and also zombies.
To play: W, A, S and D to move. Point and click to attack. Press H for help at any time. Objective: kill zombies until you die.
I coded it all from scratch using Ruby and some help from the Gosu library[1]. I suck at pixel art, yet I managed to produce some not-bad sprites in Photoshop. I used bfxr[2] for the sound effects, and composed what little music there is myself in GarageBand.
There's even an online high scores table!
Please feel free to browse the source code and other downloads at GitHub[3].
I love Ludum Dare. It's so much work, but at the end of it I come out with something I'm tremendously proud of. Working hard on something and then seeing the fruits of your labour is profoundly beneficial for your self esteem.
I loved the 'extra' evolutionary stages, but stopped playing because the second stage after Modern Man (don't want to spoil other players) dragged on for too long. Still had a lot of fun, though, and I hope I didn't miss out on too much content by quitting early.
Pretty nice, but as I said in the blog post comments, it felt a tad disappointing when I got "demoted" back to a mele sword when I evolved to the 3rd stage. :(
The object of the game at the end is to just obliterate zombies and accumulate that high score until you inevitably die. Maybe I made the final stage too easy.
great backstory, funny he had large feet wasnt sure how many dna's i had to collect and the progress bar didnt help, because i wasnt sure how big it had to get
great backstory, funny he had large feet wouldve liked to see the zombies as neanderthals and evolve with you wasnt sure how many dna's i had to collect and the progress bar didnt help, because i wasnt sure how big it had to get
Mmm... I get it... The ninjas are an evolution of Darwin... Ok... And, SUPERMAN ARE AN EVOLUTION OF A NINJA!!!????? Funny, funny! I get 636550 points! Yeah!
Very funny game :) A bit more polishing and a more difficult "endgame" would have been nice. Protip: Read the funfacts on the help page frequently. Gave me some good laughs :)
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The game is really fun, I liked how the sound reminded me a lot of atari, and even the art sometimes :) Good humor too!
great job man, very fun!
Loved the Science fact about kittens, by the way! :D
he had large feet
wasnt sure how many dna's i had to collect and the progress bar didnt help, because i wasnt sure how big it had to get
he had large feet
wouldve liked to see the zombies as neanderthals and evolve with you
wasnt sure how many dna's i had to collect and the progress bar didnt help, because i wasnt sure how big it had to get
Funny, funny!
I get 636550 points! Yeah!