August 24th-27th 2012 :: Theme: Evolution
This is a sandbox evolution sim. There is no objective except to mess with the critters' destiny :-)
At the start a single critter is born, with genes shown on the right-hand Genome panel. You can play with the gene values & click on the map to spawn new species. You can interact with the map using the mouse: editing the terrain, smiting critters or editing their DNA.
Critters' survival is affected by a number of factors: genome (which influences behaviour & characteristics); environment (terrain, overpopulation & attacks from rival species) and YOU (if you so choose...)
I posted a lot more info on my compo blog: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/27/critterlab-play-guide-dynamics/. Have a look at that for a getting started guide, tips & tricks and details about the mechanics: what the genes do, the critters biology, how they interact with the environment and rival species.
Have fun!! ~berkano
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 59% |
| #12 | Theme | 4.29 |
| #115 | Innovation | 3.52 |
| #199 | Audio | 2.90 |
| #349 | Overall | 3.03 |
| #399 | Mood | 2.58 |
| #414 | Humor | 1.95 |
| #476 | Fun | 2.60 |
| #570 | Graphics | 2.37 |
Comments
I couldn't get this running on OSX. Error from my Java Console is:
org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Could not get the JAWT interface
It's a well documented error so hopefully it's a quick fix and I can try this later.
Oh no! I had a google, and tried one of the suggested fixes. I also noticed an error in the Mac startup script. New build uploaded, please can you try again and let me know how you get on? (same link as above). If you still see the problem, would be great to get a full copy of the error you're seeing.
cheers!
@Crushenator, also, if you have any kind of customised Java setup, would be great to find out the details (e.g. which JDK). thanks!
Quite interesting, but maybe too many options doesn't make the gameplay really understandable :)
Really ambitious, and really faithful to the competition theme. I love dynamic sandbox games like this where you just watch to see what happens to the world. Nice one!
Nice concept, but I think that I ran out of things to do rather fast. Nice music, btw.
Cool little thing to play with. I'd have loved to have seen random terrain generation, though.
I managed to generate a guy that thrived in the water, didn't move but reproduced enough ;)
I think you managed to do what a lot of people tried to this competition, good stuff!
@FrozenFractal they might have gone extinct very quickly :-) Try clicking the map to re-spawn a few times!!
@mappum that sounds just like the game I made, Ninjural Selection. :P
Quite an impressive god simulator system considering it was made in 48 hours! Matches the theme very well, and the NUKE option is good fun when you are done playing :)
:D Another slick game! That's 3 (including me) so far! Pretty fun to mess around with. Not sure what I was doing, but it still was pretty cool. Great work!
Great simulator! Relates well to the theme. Well done! PS Appreciate your comments
Pretty cool game! I really like how the idea fits the theme. It was fun to fiddle with different settings and see what happened. It had a good "sim" feel to it and I liked the music. I max'd out around 1350 population and 50 or so species! :)
Very nice sandbox game. It took me a bit to familiarize myself with the controls, but then it was pretty fun. :)
I like that you did a sandbox game. haven't seen much up until now. I do find it a bit hard to keep on caring about the creatures in the long run and an itch to nuke starts to creep in much to quickly. Maybe if you had more time they could have had more visual personalities.
Oh by the way: I liked the music. It a bit of an X-COM 2 atmosphere.
Great.
It can get out of hand rather quickly! By the time I had read the in-game help my screen was already covered with creatures! The simulation goes a bit fast for me to follow properly, but I did love to try to kill all other lifeforms with my army of pink monsters. I never succeded though.
Interesting- it's fun to spawn a population and watch them drift into a few different species. I enjoyed reading the description of the stats in particular, though, since our projects were so similar it was super interesting reading how you approached it.
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This is close to what mine was going to be, but with you in the same world as a controllable character shooting them :P