Ludum Dare #24compo

Evolution

by faijdherbe

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.21

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.79

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.63

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.74

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.68

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.84

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.93

Coolness★★★★★★★★★★41%

Didn't quite make the deadline (partly because i got beaten knock out by some kind of flu) but still feel pretty satisfied with the result.

The idea I had was that by capturing enemies you can choose 1 of 3 abilities to improve whenever you enter the next level. this improvement doesn't only affect the ability of your player but will also adjust you appearance of your player. for example by growing a longer tail and various antennas or so.

Unfortunately I didn't have the time to create the other abilities (speed and control), so you automatically grow a longer tail giving you the ability to drop more anchors whenever you reach the next level.

Starting the game
---------------
Double click the 'LD24Evolution.jar' file OR use some sort of terminal/commandline, enter the LD24Evolution folder and type: 'java -jar LD24Evolution.jar'

Playing
------
You play the game by using the arrow buttons to move around and pressing spacebar to drop anchors. after 3 (or more) anchors the capture area will be closed and enemies killed. levels consist of 5 waves of enemies. You gain a longer tail by clearing levels.

Note
----
I didn't get around to testing on anything other than OS/X, so i hope it works on other platforms as well.

Comments9

Bemmu27 Aug 2012, 05:34

Great peaceful mood in the game, there is something relaxing about the sequence and notes that are played when you complete a polygon. However in gameplay it doesn't really feel like you are improving when you get more vertices to use, as that just makes capturing enemies slower. Still, kept playing this a bit because it was soothing.

Ragzouken27 Aug 2012, 10:54

I like the concept a lot! The sounds/graphics of the shape being generated are really nice. It feels like evolving more vertices just slows you down though - maybe if the shape generated triangles as you go then more vertices would be better?

michax27 Aug 2012, 11:22

Great idea! Enjoyed playing it a lot!

surreal_whale27 Aug 2012, 11:29

I liked the audio. The concept is good but I'm pretty sure being able to drop any number more than 4 isn't helpful. Also if you drop them in the wrong order the area finding breaks a bit.

Citiral27 Aug 2012, 11:29

The concept was very good and innovative, but it got boring pretty fast, it didn't really get all that harder, and because the upgrades were linear, the game got pretty boring. I liked the serene graphics though.

vilya27 Aug 2012, 11:30

Nice concept, and the pacing is good too. Shame you didn't have time to implement those extra abilities - sounds like they would have helped keep it interesting for longer. BTW this is probably just me, but I thought the sound didn't fit the game too well - based on the graphics I was expecting something more ambient sounding.

rhysvdw29 Aug 2012, 01:40

Fails on Ubuntu:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:601)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.jarinjarloader.JarRsrcLoader.main(JarRsrcLoader.java:58)
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no lwjgl in java.library.path
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1860)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:845)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1084)
at org.lwjgl.Sys$1.run(Sys.java:73)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.lwjgl.Sys.doLoadLibrary(Sys.java:66)
at org.lwjgl.Sys.loadLibrary(Sys.java:95)
at org.lwjgl.Sys.<clinit>(Sys.java:112)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.<clinit>(Display.java:132)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppGameContainer$1.run(AppGameContainer.java:39)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppGameContainer.<clinit>(AppGameContainer.java:36)
at LD24Evolution.main(LD24Evolution.java:32)
... 5 more

wlad31 Aug 2012, 07:36

shame on that flu you had, with a little more time i guess this game would be perfect. audio misses some ambient, but graphics, the soundeffects and the gameplay convey a strong mood.