Ludum Dare 24
August 24th-27th 2012 :: Theme: Evolution
Trinity Labs - Gareth Jenkins - 48 Hour Compo Entry
Web | OS X | Win 32 | Win 64 | code
A game of evolutionary match 3. With a laboratory feel.
Simple ruleset, a limited number of things to build and a single objective per level... only, there are some intentionally fuzzy edges and all is not quite as you'd expect it in any other puzzle game.
See if you can find out what evolves at the end of level 5... and if you can keep things in order until you get there.
An experiment in rapid pipelining and physical puzzle mechanics by Gareth Jenkins -- garethjenkins.com
View Gareth Jenkins's journal. | View all entries by Gareth Jenkins
Ratings
![]() | Coolness | 89% |
| #114 | Mood | 3.21 |
| #120 | Innovation | 3.51 |
| #125 | Theme | 3.56 |
| #165 | Audio | 3.02 |
| #170 | Graphics | 3.49 |
| #193 | Humor | 2.66 |
| #233 | Overall | 3.22 |
| #401 | Fun | 2.73 |
Comments
Wasn't quite sure what I was doing, but it's got this great hypnotic feel.
Well this is an interesting one. It brings a very cold and mysterious mood, which I like. The music is much to monotonous to play for long. After the 3rd level I had no motivation to keep playing (I would have stopped earlier if I wasn't trying to review this). The gameplay is too simplistic, but has potential. I found the easiest way to play was to throw out the spawned animals until you get the ones you want. The "byproduct" spheres were very irritating and cluttered the cells, sometimes causing problems with fusing. I found myself constantly nudging the creates to get the game to fuse them.
Interesting concept for a puzzle game. However, I see two major flaws with it. One, as nicholi mentioned above, is that the little balls got in the way and prevented combinations from working. Two is that the lighting coming from behind the camera instead of overhead meant that I had trouble placing the animals in their cups. I would drop a dino and it would land in the wrong cup.
I liked the idea. It's reminded me to Triple Town, but with the ability to freely move the tokens.
Responsiveness, though, could be improved a bit. At times it was difficult to place the items in the board cells.
This is one of the most bizarre yet so weirdly addictive games I've played! It's so strange, yet I couldn't stop playing! Great game!
This somehow makes sense in my mind lol. The audio track really gets the mood down right.
Very cool idea, like playing with toys. Like others mentioned, a shadow directly beneath the items would have made placing them easier.
Interesting concept. I ran into issues getting it to work at time. but it was fun
arrgh, very addictive but when I finally got the thing at the end I picked it up and it floated off into space and I couldn't put it in the circle :( I had issues with placing things properly, as others have mentioned but overall, a really bizarrely compelling game. Well done :)
This is great because it is different. Unfortunately there is one or two bugs that really bothered me: Velocity on a object doesn't reset when I grab it. So it may float away while I am holding it. And (partly as a result) objects may float out of screen (I lost the final result in level 5 before I could put it onto the petri-dish due to unforeseeable velocity changes. Beside that it was a lot of fun. I changed strategies after level 3 (won't tell them as I think this exploratory part of the game is what makes it good). It's a bit tedious to get the higher level objects if you stick to the "match 3 to get 1 higher" concept. But one doesn't have to. A great puzzle game with really nice atmosphere.
I played this to the end, but it became a bit of a death march in the last level. I never quite figured out the rules for things evolving: It seemed like sometimes three items would evolve if they only matched in colour, but not in type. I could reproduce this consistently, but it was really hard to experiment because you had to place items *very carefully* in the cells for them to evolve. It was also frustrating how items would occasionally bounce off each other and float into space while you were moving them. Nice graphics though and some neat ideas. Would like to see it polished up.
Very addictive and cute, liked the fact that it doesn't always work that well. Fun game, bravo.
Great idea, I like that you've given physics to a match 3 game. I did have some trouble as it wouldn't always register that I had 3 objects of the same colour next to each other. Really interesting though and worth developing some more.
Nice moody audio! Was a bit hard to drop dinos into the sockets. Smaller dinos maybe? A good game for kids! Improve graphics and other stuff and make an iPad version and sell it as kids game -> profit. :D
The small flaws I saw are already pointed out in other comments, so I'm not going to repeat. I liked the overall feel and audio, but the last level was a real pain. Good entry though!
other then the items bouncing off each other and floating away especially the last giant robot, it's a pretty fun game.
nice. not sure the physics weren't more of a pain than a rewarding toy component. difficult to judge where objects would land. liked the music :)
Man, this game is messy! Its even worse than my desk! Sometimes the rules were not so clear. Some combinations I didn't expect. A lot of things were frustrating (your first spotted human bouncing out of reach, the music after 10 minutes) but you do keep on playing. Well I think I reached the end (it didn't fit so I dont know if anything else would come). Very original!
Nice idea and execution. It sucked me in for a while but "3 dotted robots equals?" was just too much for me :). I think this can be quite a good fun for children to match objects... and learn to clean after yourself (those side effect particles don't help :)
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It was good though it was kind of boring and didn`t a have a replayable aspect.
And I also got some lag of the web version (chrome)