Mimic

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.24
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.02
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.02
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.88
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.29
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.58
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.81
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.16
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★77%
Mimic is a game inspired by the real life sea creature, the Mimic Octopus! The Mimic Octopus literally shape-shifts in real life to take on the appearance of other sea creatures.

Tools Used:

- Eclipse + Java
- My own Game Engine, Retrojump
- Photoshop
- Audacity

This game was made initially for the Compo, but I had technical difficulties at the last second. The file was initially 300 megabytes, and it wasn't playtested yet. Also, it wasn't the easiest to run. I've fixed those problems.

For the most part.

I haven't tested the game on OS/X or Linux. This is because I only have Windows computers, so had no way to test it on any other OS. Also, some Windows computers are having a problem where they're getting an exception.

Because of this, please, please tell me which OS you're on when commenting. If you have an error, please let me know.

Now on to everything else...

This game was made by one person, from scratch (except for a self-made game engine and fonts). The game itself took 40 hours to make, and it's proven to be incredibly difficult. I challenge you to play through the whole thing.

Good luck.

If you, for some reason, don't want to have the full incredibly incredible, awesomely awesome, amazingly amazing, stunningly stunning experience of Mimic, please, at least look at the soundtrack and skim through it. My better tracks were later in the game.

You can contact me through Twitter (@chaseplays_)

I hope you enjoy!

I have created a post-jam version now. Rate me based on the original, but if you're playing to have fun, the post-jam is much easier. If you've played the original, you've know that it had some difficulty issues.

Thanks to Mike Kasprzak for helping me with a problem I had!

Genres: platformer

Comments28

MajorLeagueBaker
MajorLeagueBaker18 Apr 2016, 20:29
I can't play it, i get the error "A Java Exception has occurred"
fairwolf games
fairwolf games18 Apr 2016, 20:37
not bad a little too hard for my taste tho :P
Arvydas
Arvydas18 Apr 2016, 20:40
Great submission, enjoyed the theme. Was not fast enough at some parts, and gave me vietnam style flashbacks with the eel (AKA flappy bird)
MeritLeave
MeritLeave19 Apr 2016, 05:48
When I try to run it I sadly get "A Java Exception has occurred".
shohs19 Apr 2016, 08:09
Pretty good, nice graphics and music. The shapeshifting mechanic was smooth and I think it worked out well. It would be cool if the different transforms weren't just reskins of each other though. But overall, good job!

(by the way, there seems to be a bug that if you're not running at 1080p, the buttons detection is off. This happened on Windows 10)
Somnium
Somnium19 Apr 2016, 09:30
Interesting game, although very hard :) It has a nice variety of different powers.

The soundtrack is excellent! I remember spending precious time listening to it, when you posted it on the main page during the LD ;) A pity you removed all the "extra" songs from the soundtrack :)
TheMeorch
TheMeorch20 Apr 2016, 04:09
Nice work -- the mood, art and music are all super charming. I found the difficulty a bit extreme and the resets a bit jarring, given the large size of the characters, the small spaces they had to fit in, and the speed at which I had to navigate. If you could ease the player into the difficulty more, I could really get into maneuvering the levels while enjoying the great tunes!
stefvanschie20 Apr 2016, 14:36
It was a little bit too hard.
stalker158620 Apr 2016, 15:23
An interesting approach, though even pass the first level is difficult. (for me)
Pontifex20 Apr 2016, 16:09
Great idea, but too difficult to be enjoyable.
teamross21 Apr 2016, 11:07
It was a bit difficult for me.
But great idea and concept overall!
w1n5t0n22 Apr 2016, 04:19
Good use of the shapeshifting theme!
fin_nolimit22 Apr 2016, 06:09
Very addicting game! I liked the art too... especially the floating planet! Excellent take on the endless runner-type! Nice job
rayman1900
rayman190022 Apr 2016, 16:54
I'm on Windows and I have 2 screens. The windows is really big, so I dunno if it was scalling properly to my width and height. Anyway, great game you have there, really ^^ I was soo confused at first because my character was going full speed and I was very wondering myself why the text was going so fast and all, so I tried the keys that I saw in the text passing blindly until I got the turtle and then it was really surprising that you added the tutorial as a gameplay element, so really inovative here ;)
NPException
NPException23 Apr 2016, 10:03
Very good work! Too hard for me to even beat the first level after the tutorial, but a lot of fun to try nontheless :D
nihilaleph23 Apr 2016, 14:00
Great game! Really liked the concept, the art and the music! The original version was really unforgiving and had some collision problems, and was reaaally difficult, couldn't finish the first world ^^; The post-jam version however seemed way easier (still some levels were hard, but over all was easy, some of them was basically keep using octopus power).

Btw the window was way too big for my monitor xp but still was able to play it. After finishing grassland the menu didn't go to fantasy world, I had to manually change the world, and Lava lake seemed impossible >.< had to skip it.

Anyways congrats for your entry!
abcdef65g
abcdef65g23 Apr 2016, 22:12
Yeah, the original version is definitely way too hard for me (which makes me depressed, since I'm a platforming nut and I enjoy unforgiving games like the SMT series)! And the resolution issue on my 720p screen makes it hard to select buttons too.

Other than that, this is definitely one of the strongest entries I've played so far in the jam. The mechanics are solid, graphics are cute, and the soundtrack is amazing. The take on the theme was clever too (Go mimic octopi!). I'm humbled by your time management skills to make this game on your own!

Definitely looking forward to your future work.
mooncalf24 Apr 2016, 07:42
The aesthetic was amazing. A great production overall.

Losing when I hit the top was a bit unexpected. It also raised the difficulty significantly.
blaclegi24 Apr 2016, 20:19
Good game, although it was quite difficult - the tutorial text also scrolled past quite quickly so was hard to read. An interesting concept though - it was fun!
Fabraz
Fabraz26 Apr 2016, 03:17
Definitely slow down that text next time! :)
CAT_IN_THE_DARK_WOOD26 Apr 2016, 03:24
Linux version works well. That is really nice take on theme, and graphics is pretty cool. Some flappy-eel gameplay is OK to, but a bit hard in my taste. Good entry overall, thank you!
Jupiter_Hadley
Jupiter_Hadley30 Apr 2016, 12:35
Really neat concept, though I didnt get why I was dying sometimes. I included it in my video compilation series of Ludum Dare games, if you&rsquo;d like to check them out :) https://youtu.be/1ovNEwCi_RI
puppetmaster
puppetmaster7 May 2016, 20:41
Very cool theme implementation.
My first thought was, I'm a snake why can i fly :-)
Keep up the good work!
Jungle
Jungle7 May 2016, 22:25
Nice concept, fits theme very well. Congrats!
Aaranos
Aaranos8 May 2016, 02:53
Well made. I think the game is very unforgiving in terms of smacking into walls but it has a nice set of mechanics. The movement being controlled by what form you are in is a bit of a gimmick but it fits the theme well.
TheCain8 May 2016, 04:58
Way too difficult. But interesting nonetheless. I didn't know about the mimic octopus.
Also, I wasn't hearing the music on the original.
But i'll rate you on the sound-cloud music.
It is pretty good, and no reason to let your efforts go to waste.
Sean9 May 2016, 06:15
The game was far too difficult for me to enjoy it (I was just getting frustrated), but I did listen to a few tracks from the soundtrack as you suggested, and they're great! It's really impressive how much quality music you managed to put together in such a short time.

Kudos for using your own engine btw! Although I didn't enjoy the game, it didn't seem to have any noticeable technical issues which is quite an accomplishment for custom engine games.

Other games by @chaserbrown

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