August 24th-27th 2012 :: Theme: Evolution
I have no right to call this game my own. This game is your game. It evolves into what you want it to become.
That is, assuming you want it to be one of four distinct and pre-chosen genres.
Yes, that's right. This game is four games in one, although they all branch off the same beginning. Depending on how you try and control the game, the game will adapt to, in a way, fit that control scheme, mimicking how evolution is in direct response to the surroundings the subject is dealing with. In other words, the game is a creature, and you are its environment.
I suppose the goal is to try and find all the evolutionary paths, some harder to find or beat then others, and win at them. So do that. (Hopefully, you can beat all of them this time. Don't worry, I've tested it more than Empty. Meaning I've tested it.)
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 100% |
| #46 | Innovation(Jam) | 3.41 |
| #89 | Theme(Jam) | 3.00 |
| #174 | Audio(Jam) | 2.24 |
| #197 | Humor(Jam) | 1.72 |
| #207 | Mood(Jam) | 2.23 |
| #207 | Overall(Jam) | 2.63 |
| #215 | Fun(Jam) | 2.27 |
| #266 | Graphics(Jam) | 1.70 |
Comments
There are four. The fourth is what I like to call "hidden." Hint: it requires the mouse.
Can you give me another hint? I don't get it how to play the 2nd, 3rd or 4th game xD
Hint 2: All of them besides the fourth are reached by pressing the arrow keys for different amounts of time. Which one did you get, Jeremias?
So I got the one where I can move step by step in all 4 directions. And the one which you get after leaving the screen to the right. ^^
Some feedback:
- Good, that you indicate the unlocking of a secret with playing the music.
- In the mode where you can fly around, there should be moving possible without pressing an arrow multiple times (especially by the distances you must travel in one direction).
- Add tips into the game.
- Try to make a post-compo-version where you change the rectangles with sprites of animated characters and ground; make a background
- In my opinion, the jump and run part needs more speed (in moving and falling of the character).
Some returnback:
-Yeah, I'm glad I added that myself. It definitely gives it some more gratification to the player.
-That "flying around" you're talking about is actually meant to resemble a turn-based RPG. So, it was meant to be like that. Of course, it wouldn't be as annoying if the map were smaller and it took less work to traverse.
-This is the one thing I don't quite agree with. When I first thought of the idea, the vision was leaving the player all alone to figure it out, thus making the experience more pure. Although, I do think making them a bit more obvious to locate would help.
-I was going to include a background of star-scrolling in the shmup part (which it doesn't seem like you've found yet) but time was against me. The main purpose of leaving it as rectangles was to make the identity of what you were looking at more ambiguous, as to make it easier to turn it into other games. Of course, this was decided upon in very early stages, when the rectangle was not even always going to be a player (I was planning to have a point-and-click adventure where clicking the rectangle would show it was actually a keycard) but at this point, it doesn't make as much sense. Perhaps I could have the rectangles stay in the beginning, but upon changing the game, the graphics would "glitch" into that genre? That would be cool.
-I know, and 'tis a burden I must carry. It's a long story as to why I couldn't fix that, but it's a dumb one, too, so I'll see what I can do.
Well, this is intense. Also, I think I need a new keybaord!!
Music is IN-YOUR-FACE!!
Nice!
Crashed on Mac OS X Lion :(
Dyld Error Message:
Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/mpg123.framework/mpg123
Referenced from: /Users/USER/Downloads/*/Placeholder.app/Contents/MacOS/love
Reason: no suitable image found. Did find:
.../Adaption for Mac/Placeholder.app/Contents/MacOS/../Frameworks/mpg123.framework/mpg123: file too short
@Turnip: Alright, stand by. I thought I might have done the mac build wrong. Either that, or you are one of the people who they dropped support for, but I don't think that's the case.
Oh, and to VAMFlax, thanks. Music was admittedly mixed together in Otomata, which makes music from random clicks, but it took some work to get it to sound good.
I'm not sure what about it is intense, but heck, I'll take it!
Great concept. I felt all the movement in the game to be a bit slow.
Alright, a guy Love2D forums helped me *hopefully* fix the mac port. Turnip, try it now.
Also, it turns out I accidentally kept the name of it "Placeholder.app" like my last game. That's also fixed now.
This is a really neat concept! However, the first mode that I discovered was the "turn based movement" and the speed of the controls made me so annoyed I almost stopped playing. Then I read the comments, and discovered some other stuff too. And I found a sword. Neat. I think overall if the game was a little snappier control-wise it would be more enjoyable. Seriously good idea though :)
Yeah, movement is definitely way too slow. I just had the initial variables set up so early that I was afraid making it faster would cause too many things to go wrong.
Note: Okay, I may have been a bit hasty to upload this new Mac version. If it works even worse then the first port, please don't sue, I'm trying to get it sorted out.
What I should really being doing is porting it to web...
Had some fun, but the controls annoyed me to death. Jumping over enemies was extremely annoying because you had to wait 3 seconds for your player to get back on the ground. Haven't seen any of the different playing modes because the jumping just murders me every time. Having to restart at the beginning doesn't really help there either.
I just played 3 of the modes, and in all 3 the movement seems to be the biggest issue with the game. In all those 3 modes (couldn't figure out the mouse one) it felt slow and unnatural.
Apart from that I love the concept of playing different types of games depending on how you make your first move. Could provide for some very interesting gameplay.
Yeah, movement is bad, I know. We have a saying here at Puzzlem00n development. Great and wonderful concepts, and admittedly horrible execution. It's a pattern with my games.
Hooray it works on Mac now!
Nice concept. I especially liked the discrete movement branch where you flipped the mechanic on it's head after getting the weapon. I think that idea actually fit the name/theme better because it was one environment but finding the weapon totally changed the way you approached it and you suddenly had to adapt.
I agreed with Aceria at first about the slow controls in the platformer branch, but actually if the controls were more 'normal' it would have just been another platformer. As it is I found myself actually having to learn something new and think about what I was doing.
The other two were ok but not quite as fun. Good job overall :)
You found all four! Congrats! I don't think any one else has done that yet besides me and my family! Good job, and glad it works!
Pretty cool idea! I found the roguelike and the shooter. A bit rough and slow to control, but I liked exploring the gameplay. Your enticing secrets definitely kept me intrigued for a while.
I'm not sure if it wasn't working properly or if I just didn't understand what to do, but not much seemed to happen.
You probably didn't get it. Start from the beginning, and try to press the controls for different amounts of time.
The award: I noticed you doing good stuff here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/29/something-tells-me-i-need-someone-older-than-i-to-help-this-kid/ and on the guy's game page also. I thought that was really nice of you, so I decided to draw you a poorly pixelated trophy. :)
I like the concept of your game - one of the first I've seen where the game itself evolves. Cool. I wish you wouldn't have to press the arrow keys constantly in the mode where you go kill all the things though. I get that's part of the evolution I suppose, but it kinda hurts my fingers. The platformer was cool - one of the times when the slow gameplay almost works in your favor since you can time the jumps really well and be pixels away from death. :D The shooter seemed to need a little work though, the bullets the ships were shooting went backwards ;) Couldn't find the mouse level though. Any tips?
I wish that you would have speed up movement speed a lot, like it's already been mentioned. That could make your game a lot better. Better graphics may also help, hehe.
Really? Shooting backwards? That glitch hasn't been reported before. Did it only happen once, or did all the ships keep doing it?
Mouse level hint - Try moving around a bit before clicking.
All the ships keep doing it. I'm on OSX, maybe that makes a difference?
(Got the mouse level. Cool!)
Also got the ships shooting backwards (on windows). Just the enemy ships, and it looks like the bullets actually have zero velocity while the ships are moving forward (so it looks like they're going backwards). Player bullets are fine.
Great concept though; it's a really unique idea. Could be interesting if you could switch between modes during gameplay maybe...
Sorry, I should have been clearer. Not the player's ship, just the enemy ships.
I LOVE this idea! It would be awesome to see what other directions you could take it in too, like maybe the very beginning move you make doesn't determine everything about the game. You could have power ups that evolve the game, say, based on (in the platformer) whether you press x to get a gun so you can get past a boss, or space twice so that you get a double jump to make it up to a ledge you couldn't reach before. If I was to do this theme again, I would totally steal this idea :) I managed to find three of the possible modes
Hmm... @Jeremy Nikolai or johnfn or anyone who gets this bug, could I maybe get a screen capture or something of the ships shooting backwards? I really wanna crack this. For a post-compo fix, of course. The one thing I'm thinking: do either of you have very slow or very fast computers?
And @BrothersT: That is flattering, considering your game's idea is already so epic!
Hey, no problem thanks for checking out our game!
I got the same problem:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y10/Treborguy/adaptionscreen.png
This is so bizarre. I wonder why it's happening to everyone now, it seems...
So, from that screenshot, it looks like they start rapid firing without velocity as? The weird thing is, you'd think the pattern of shots like that would continue all the way up the screen... Do they fire normal shots first or something?
It's that pattern because the bullets *are* travelling downwards, but not quite at the velocity of the ships. They don't fire any normal shots. I tried to open CamStudio to take a video but my computer is rendering so there's not enough memory right now. But I'll make one later if it'll help.
Interesting game, reminds me a bit of LD23's keynote...
Some parts are veryy slow though, I'm kinda playing it out of obligation, not for fun... :C Everything in this game should be sped up by about 5 times faster I think. Also, as people pointed out, the ships fire bullets too slow.
I did find all four mode though!
Still, it's a good idea. I think though it should be more obvious what the player has to do to get to each of the different game modes, like, what things to person could possibly do. Generally, just chucking the player into a random situation and making them figure out what to do isn't really that great.
@Jezzamon: Ah, I was wondering if anyone would see that. Yeah, the keynote was definitely the inspiration for the rougelike part, though I didn't really look at his source, if that's what you're thinking.
The "make it obvious" thing is debatable. I sort of wanted to give the player nothing to work with. It may not appeal to everyone, but I thought that it would make it more "this is your game, it does what you want it to do" rather than "great, now you did that, so do this." Probably the most experimental part of it is that the game won't help you, but hey, it's experimental gameplay, it's not supposed to work all the time.
Sorry, I almost forgot to do this:
http://www.herosh.com/download/10943585/adaption2.7z.html
Also I found the last mode!
Q: What does the game "Adaption" and my girlfriend have in common?
A: Both call me a 'failure' every 30 seconds.
(In all seriousness, nice work)
I have played all 4 modes but I think I may have find a bug.
In the side-scroller, enemies were sliding off the platforms and out of the screen even.
In the top-down scroller shmup the ships was faster then the bullets.
I don't know about the last one but the RPG was the only what seemed to play right.
Nice idea, not really related to evolution sadly... and it should be a little faster.
@RawBits: Of course it is! The game evolves. That was the entire conception of the game! Evolution doesn't have to be "offspring get better," there's the evolution of thought and things like that, too.
And the ship bug has been reported, but not the platformer. *sigh* This just keeps gettin' weirder.
I'm thinking it must have to do with how I timestep things. I thought it would help the game, but it could just be unevenly distributing the delta time on certain systems.
The theme is a little stretched here IMHO, but I like it anyway. Well, everything besides music, which got irritating pretty fast. However, I figured out all the levels and I like the idea very much. I even won in the mouse-controlled level, which btw. was the hardest to find (and easiest to win at). Overall, a very good entry.
Puzzlem00n, the game was good, but...I don't really know. When I grabbed the sword, All it did was put a 0/10? Was that part of the game? And the game is MUCH to slow at the beginning (If there's anything after it...) Either this was a glitch, Or part of the Gameplay...I just didn't know what was going on... Still, I saw what you were going for... :D
The idea is to kill the enemies with the sword in that mode. The count is how many enemies you have to kill. Did you find the other modes?
Actually, I couldn't. The maze had no exit when I tried to get the other modes...And how am I supposed to kill them?
I'm so confused. :(
Can you release a walkthough? Ill try playing it again!
You have to do different things in the beginning. Freebie: Try pressing the up arrow really long.
JUST PLAYED IT AGAIN AND WAS BLOWEN!
Puzzlem00n, you know well how to deliver a game...
BY MAKING THE GAME A GAME!
I dont know what I just said...
Controls were slow. the idea of it changing based on user input is genius, however tedious in the sense that there seemed to be no clues on how to activate the different game modes. :) (that was the point though. :D )
@commanderstitch: Ah, glad you caught that that was the point before ranting on it. To be honest, going into it I had no idea whether or not it would work. Now I guess I know it doesn't. Noted!
Neat idea, but I found all the games very slow and dull. Trying to figure out how to get to each game was more fun than playing them.
I Found all of them! I got confused as to what was happening at first and only played the first game for the first three times, then I eventually found all of them, great job!
Totally need checkpointing and better jumping for the platform version.. But is a good start!
I really like the concept you've got here, a game that adapts based on how the player assumes you're supposed to control it. But man, I nearly quit playing because I felt like I was slogging through molasses in all of them. I didn't, but I came close especially in the turn-based one.
A game that adapts to players and the way they play... Really nice!
Yeah... Schools back up and I really don't think I have time anymore with gamemaking. I feel too "Rushed" and now ill have to skip out on a few things from now. I guess Ill have to "Quit" for now. Gamemaking isn't as fun anymore.
~Signing off for those who care, Mohammad M.
PS: Just for connivance, I'm "Quitting" 2 minutes after the ratings have ended. Funny huh?
Alright, thanks for the heads up, man. I totally get it, it's been hard for me to keep checking the site since my own school started up. See you around. Sometime in the future, anyway.
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