RedditLudum Dare 24
August 24th-27th 2012 :: Theme: Evolution
FOR THE darWIN - TravisChen - Jam Entry
Web | Kongregate | Source
Charles Darwin must dig the soils of a Galapagos island looking for fossil evidence to prove his theory of evolution. Search for sequences of skulls and avoid your pundits. The more evidence of evolution you uncover, the bigger the points!
GO FOR THE darWIN!
CONTROLS:
- Move / Jump / Dig: WASD
- Sequence Fossils: NUM PAD
HINT! Here are the correct skull sequences for both skull types:
http://cl.ly/image/392f371m1S3g
Programming / Design / Sound: Travis Chen (@travischen)
Art / Animation: Nolan Fabricius (@shiftlesshobo)
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View TravisChen's journal. | View all entries by TravisChen
Ratings
 | Coolness | 100% |
| #6 | Theme(Jam) | 4.06 |
| #6 | Humor(Jam) | 4.05 |
| #6 | Graphics(Jam) | 4.60 |
| #7 | Overall(Jam) | 3.99 |
| #15 | Fun(Jam) | 3.70 |
| #27 | Mood(Jam) | 3.59 |
| #32 | Innovation(Jam) | 3.59 |
| #41 | Audio(Jam) | 3.55 |
Comments
Love the name! Love the graphics even more! Hate the preacher!
Awesome game!
My only critic would be that the scoring system isn't very exciting. I don't know what could replace it though.
Everything else is excellent!
Awesome! The graphics, audio, and playstyle were all pretty awesome/adorable!
Would love to see more! Multiple rounds with new evolutions would be awesome! Great job!
Loved the graphics and the Numpad Inventory that was smart!
This is my favorite so far! Loooove it. The sound effect when the bible thumper catches you is so great.
Pretty fun. Couldn't figure out what the right sequence was for the bird. Tried it as though it was dinosaur to bird, got nothing, tried it backward, got nothing.
Awesome game, fit the theme well and was quite fun once I figured out the correct sequences (I was going backwards on the bird thinking there was some strange continuation from bird to human).
Also, you get the award for the first time I activated the overlaid num lock on my laptop since I've bought it two years ago. It also caused me to write half this review bef6re 5 rea35zed n40 36c2 was st533 6n!
Great game. Really enjoyed playing. Graphics are very good and the characters funny. Numpad ordering clever. Good job!!!
Great art style. Interesting gameplay. It would be nice if there was some build up so that things got more challenging and required more thought as the player progresses.
Very pretty, and quite fun for a while. Would benefit a lot from some level progression / additional skulls series as the game goes on.
yeah I keep coming back to this one. Got 31050 without a numpad (go go gadget apple mini keyboard -.-) I might have to bust out ye old logitech keyboard collecting dust in a box so I can improve my score and win all the things.
This is probably one of the best, most funny takes on the theme I've seen so far. The gameplay feels nice, the controls are responsive, and the characters are just really lively.
Cool retro sprites and sounds! It reminds me of those old bitmap bros games on the amiga :) I couldn't quite figure out the sequences though.
Best graphics I have seen so far in this Ludum Dare - very nice! Game is pretty fun too - would love some more visibility of my scoring, and how it was calculated. It felt random to me.
wow, that was tremendous fun!
very polished indeed - loved it
if you add one or two more gameplay mechanics (like for example sacrificing some fossils for a little fossil wall that blocks out the priest for a short time (of course this ability should have a cooldown)
but man, very well done
Rated all 5 stars because this is my winer so far. The game is fun, the graphics are great, the music and sounds fit well, there is a lot of humor in the game's name and GOD THAD DIGGING ANIMATION xD for me it looks like Darwin is humping the ground xD
Great game it deserves to win!
This is so fun!
Religion vs Science, i'm not a partidary of no one but this game help us to not be so serious with stuff that does not matter at all :D thanks for your work ,art and time!
i'm laughting at the screen, good graphics!
The amount of detail and character in the sprites is incredible.
Darwin Runs like a ninja, digs like a ninja, and publishes controversial ideas like a ninja.
So... how would you order the skulls on a laptop that DOESN'T have an overlay numpad? Like, I don't know, anything Mac? Supporting the regular number keys as well as the numpad surely isn't that much of a problem.
Nice pixelart there! Great concept and mechanics! Good job :)
Neat idea :) I couldn't figure out the correct sequences, wasn't sure if I even had all the right skulls. I think it might just be me, but I find it really annoying when games put the jump key in the same place as the movement ones - I find it hard to coordinate :(
Brilliant! Love the graphics they really suit the humour and the idea is really good. Really loads of fun really enjoyed it
The design of this game is flawless. The art is also exceptional, and the animations are hilarious (Darwin's running animation is probably my favorite!). Nice job.
Delightful and complete graphics, competent audio department.
It is a shame that the gameplay doesn't quite match these strong suits.
But still definitely one of the most awesome looking things around in this jam.
I like it - nicely done everything, especially the priest's nagging sound. I couldn't really figure out what sequences gave scores, but I enjoyed the game.
Ahahah! How it addictive and fun! Really nice game! But so far from evolution IMHO.
Great visuals. Cool concept but I feel like it was a bit underdeveloped.
What a wonderful and approriate use of the numpad. Nice work!
Great game- very solid for a game jam. Art looks great- animations look great and game feels complete. 5/5 from me
best game by far. everything about it was awesome. the animations were so funny and the whole gameplay was just great!! i hope you do more with it!
Fun little game, can see how the num pad would be really useful, but trying to work out the link between the normal number keys and the grid was tricky. If you added to ability to click the boxes instead to sequence the fossils that would be really helpful for keyboards without num pads.
Still if that is the only criticism I can find that means that everything else was all pretty amazing!
Really awesome! A bit more explanation would have been nice, but after putting in the bird skulls backwards the first time I caught on pretty quick.
Really fun mechanics meet really solid controls. Great work! :)
Really strong entry. Amazing graphics. In fact incredible graphics. Still trying to get through it but gameplay seems fun so far. Feels like a classic arcade game. Fantastic job!
This is great. I had trouble figuring out what to do with the skulls, but this idea is wonderful and I'd love to see it expanded into a full game. Great job for 72 hours!
Thanks everybody for playing our game! Nolan and I have had a blast reading through the awesome comments you all have left. We're going to be posting a developer post-mortem sometime tonight. Stay tuned!
Also, for people stuck figuring out the skulls, here's the correct sequences for each skull type:
http://cl.ly/image/392f371m1S3g
Go for a high score! I'd love to see what scores people are getting. I've been able to get over 90k.
Cheers,
Travis
It all fits, sounds and graphics style and theme. It looks funny and it IS funny.
There's just one thing: on my browser (Chrome on XP), not everything was visible. Only after seeing the screenshots I saw that there were THREE sequence positions. Maybe some autoscaling is possible or a notice telling people that its widescreen?
Heh, very nice game. Really beautiful visuals. Some of the best looking clouds I've ever seen. :D But yeah really nice! I want to be able to throw the skulls at the preacher. haha.
BTW, I managed to get the game to crash! I didn't collect skulls for a while and then boom stack overflow at:
at SkullSpawner/addSkull()[/Users/travischen/Flash/Evolution/src/SkullSpawner.as:44]
(lol yup, I was using the flash debugger at the time, so now I know the contents of your computer! haha! ha! ha!)
Anyway, I checked your source code and it looks like you're using recursion to choose the location of the new skull, but you don't take into account what would happen if there was no good place to put the skull. You may want to fix that ;-)
The preacher thing was just annoying... interesting idea though. Great graphics and audio.
Fantastic I really like it ! I think the preacher freezing time is not a big handicap for the player, but make it longer would be frustrating. Maybe it could steal one of your skull ?
For the scoring system 1000/200/50 pts for skulls instead of 50 could add strategy : hunting only the valuable older skulls or focus on combo.
Great graphics and sounds ! I like the preacher voice :)
Awesome entry, but everyone already said everything that is to say about it. :) Very playable. Great job!
This was really nice and a great example of a good ld game: Short, looks great, sound and music, hits the theme and is fun to play!
This is such a well-presented entry!
It looks like it would be right at home on the Super-Nintendo. :) 5*'s Overall, Graphics and Mood. 4* everything else.
I would have liked to see it more goal-oriented and less about trying to get the high-score. Otherwise, it's short, sweet and to the point. The perfect Jam entry!
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Really cute graphics I love all the skulls, and even the preach/admonish sound effect. I could see adding some more enemies and a larger map or a non-time-based goal adding to the fun.