Nom's Evolvathlon, an LD24 entry by Boris van Schooten. Time taken: about 20 hours. Based on Java and JGame.
Nom the Onmiphage wants to eat everything. To succeed, he needs to evolve the right abilities: walking, jumping, swimming, flying, breathing, and shooting. The more he eats, the more abilities he can evolve, and the more easily he gets around.
This game includes procedurally generated caves, 8 types of organism, and 15 difficulty levels.
If you get stuck, press "Q" to commit suicide. You can also start at any level you like by selecting the level in the title screen.
To play the Android version, you probably need a big screen (tablet) to be able to point accurately enough.
The Jar runs as 640x480 by default. You can pass x and y size as command line parameters. Pass 0,0 to get full screen. Example:
java -jar NomsEvolvathlon.jar 1024 768
Known bugs: the player sometimes floats around uncontrollably in thin air (but eventually lands on his feet again).
I have also recorded screengrabs for a timelapse, but I will upload it later.
Ha that was cool. It took me a while to figure out the walking system but the gameplay was actually pretty awesome. Liked the jumping mechanic. Looks pretty nifty as well. Good use of the theme.
I like the overall idea and i really like the game! I didn't get through the first level though. I took breath instead of jump that made it impossible.
I'm impressed by how sophisticated the game is -- very nice. I have a bit of trouble with the controls though. Also, when you get a new ability, sometimes I'm already clicking when the ability menu pops up so I click on something before I can read it -- and I can't figure out what ability I picked!
Brilliant! While the controls are at bit annoying at times (but I get that you has to adapt them to make the game work on mobiles), the game ideas and overall gameplay are very interesting.
There's some kind of strategy when choosing which power-up to choose, so it's not just a basic platformer. I'm pretty sure that with some effort (refined controls, bigger and nicer sprites, more precise indications on what powerups can actually combine - since some seem to replace others), this could really make a sellable product.
J
Jiggawatt27 Aug 2012, 11:56
Great concept and execution, like some sort of procedural Metroidvania puzzle monster. You have to think about which upgrades to buy to not get stuck. Lots of content too, it feels like a very complete game.
At first I thought you'd proceed by going beyond the level boundaries, but it turned out you just have to collect everything, meaning you have to kill the enemies too. While there's attention to detail like trajectories turning into parabolas above the surface, the mouse-only controls seem a bit awkward when trying to move small distances.
Nonetheless, this is clearly a 4- or 5-star entry.
Really very good. The procedural level generation is awesome, but I think making the first few levels hand-made would be better at teaching the mechanics. This could make an excellent puzzle game with more work!
Pretty neat so far. The controls are extremely rough (jump conflicts with movement, movement fails to respond a lot, etc), but they can definitely be fixed. The overall concept is great, and the puzzle element of needing to carefully decide on an upgrade is cool.
Took a while to get my head around the mechanics but once it clicked I really enjoyed it. It was good having to think about which trait was needed and when too.
I
IgorLopes27 Aug 2012, 23:56
Very cool, but take a my doubts, the same programming code, you generated for apple and android? in what program? = O
I found the controls a bit odd. Would have enjoyed it more if it used keyboard instead of mouse. Once I got the hang of the controls I really enjoyed it though.
Really nicely done and very addictive. Was a bit sad when I noticed that every level resetted the evolution, but then I found out it was a puzzle game. Nice!
Really awesome gameplay mechanic. The only thing I didn't like so much was the levels where you start with the jump ability, because it can be so finicky trying to get anywhere with it.
This really is a great idea. But with the current implementation it's quite easy to get stuck. Did I miss it or do the levels lack any goal? I didn't reach a new stage without refreshing the page.
Quite cool! Controls were a little clunky on a mouse. I liked the puzzle-solving aspect of it. It'd be nice if there were some ordering of evolutions so that you, say, couldn't get "fly" before getting "breathe", and if there were a way to restart the level without restarting the game.
I really enjoyed this game, however the controls (on a laptop at least) felt buggy and made it difficult to play. Other than that, I thought it was great. The procedurally generated levels worked really well too.
Great work. I actually wanted to get every evolutionary trait, as they were fun to use and you felt more powerful with each. The generated levels worked, but they didn't get harder at all with the increasing difficulty setting. The only challenge was shooting enemies that sit in cave like positions. It was quite frustrating that you could walk right next to them and were unable to shoot. Maybe a melee trait would have been nice?
This was a really neat concept and it felt reasonably polished. I found the controls a little bit unintuitive with the mouse on desktop, but they were great with a touchscreen on Android. I liked that there was a puzzle element to picking the correct evolutions in the right order on each level (although it was annoying you had to completely start over if you got one wrong) and enjoyed the very different styles of play that came with each evolution. The graphics were quite cute too.
Comments31
I'd love to see a more polished version sometime.
There's some kind of strategy when choosing which power-up to choose, so it's not just a basic platformer. I'm pretty sure that with some effort (refined controls, bigger and nicer sprites, more precise indications on what powerups can actually combine - since some seem to replace others), this could really make a sellable product.
At first I thought you'd proceed by going beyond the level boundaries, but it turned out you just have to collect everything, meaning you have to kill the enemies too. While there's attention to detail like trajectories turning into parabolas above the surface, the mouse-only controls seem a bit awkward when trying to move small distances.
Nonetheless, this is clearly a 4- or 5-star entry.
The generated levels worked, but they didn't get harder at all with the increasing difficulty setting. The only challenge was shooting enemies that sit in cave like positions. It was quite frustrating that you could walk right next to them and were unable to shoot. Maybe a melee trait would have been nice?