Pleistocene by Tomassino

[raw]
made by Tomassino for LD26 (COMPO)
Pleistocene is a survival game set during The Pleistocene, approximately 2 million years ago. Your name is Amrok, atleast that's what you can make out from the gruntings everyone makes...

The environment is your main enemy, requiring you to manage your energy, maintaining enough to spend searching for food and avoiding the megafauna that roams the lands.

Fight or flight are your "weapons", weighing up whether it's worth expending valuable energy to battle an enemy that might just run away or running from an enemy that might catch you are the main focus of the game.

Complete with sleeping cave and warming nighttime fire, Pleistocene takes a subtle, 2013, sat in a warm house with the kettle on view of what it was like to live two million years ago.

Feedback

SuperlevelSebastian
29. Apr 2013 · 12:14 UTC
Will you give out a compiled version?
kreddor
29. Apr 2013 · 14:42 UTC
Wanted to play this, but don't have pygame installed. You should include it with the game at least...
Stiju
29. Apr 2013 · 15:42 UTC
A compiled version would be great
stqn
29. Apr 2013 · 15:54 UTC
Crashes when I die:
Enemy wins by -79.29
False
0
Dead
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "main.py", line 15, in <module>
game.update()
File "/tmp/tomassino_ld48/gameObj.py", line 249, in update
self.updateHUD()
File "/tmp/tomassino_ld48/gameObj.py", line 193, in updateHUD
self.hudName = self.fontObj.render(str(self.player.name),True,glbs.colBlack)
pygame.error: Text has zero width

Also please let players use the arrow keys next time! Not everyone is using qwerty and having to change keymaps to try each game kinda sucks.
stqn
29. Apr 2013 · 16:16 UTC
The game is really slow! Also it looks like there is no goal or reason to move at all?
howieV (binarygirl)
29. Apr 2013 · 17:27 UTC
i cant play it either :(
🎤 Tomassino
30. Apr 2013 · 16:13 UTC
Hi guys, thanks for the comments. I will admit I'm a bit green when it comes to distribution. I am working on a compiled version as I type this, for Windows and OS X.

@stqn Thanks for the heads up on the bug, I will get on it. Also thanks for pointing out about the arrow keys/WASD, too much coffee and not enough sleep meant I didn't think about non-QWERTY keyboards.

Everything is intentionally slow by design, the goal is just to survive and there is a hunger mechanic in there - the longer you leave it between eating (i.e. if you sit at the cave and sleep all the time) you will become weak and end up using more energy to move. This is an area that took quite a bit of tweaking to get right, maybe a bit too ambitious?
plash
30. Apr 2013 · 22:54 UTC
Notes:

- Eat berries. Hide in cave. Choose battles wisely. Makes sense.
- Continue the human race?! Hero seat, taken.
- Berries. Running out of energy! Need more berries!
- FITE! FITE! FITE!
- Oops. I got mauled. Too gung ho for my own good.
- Night never came! Do you have to kill everything first, or is the timer just very long?

Things I would change:

- The zoom is too far out. Consider changing the scale so movement isn't so grueling.
- Add tribal music. ADD TRIBAL MUSIC.
netmute
03. May 2013 · 06:40 UTC
Looks nice, but why won't you let me play it? :'(
Jim Haslett
04. May 2013 · 00:43 UTC
I can't compile it :(
Cybearg
05. May 2013 · 04:26 UTC
Looks brilliant, but I need a binary to play.
🎤 Tomassino
13. May 2013 · 21:06 UTC
Thanks for the feedback everyone. LD has been a great learning curve for me, especially with distributing Python. I have implemented the bug fixes needed, and produced a Windows version. Hopefully some of you who wanted to play it now can! Cheers again!
BenW
13. May 2013 · 23:23 UTC
I couldn't tell how long it takes before it's nighttime or how hungry I was. Since killing animals doesn't feed you I really didn't engage with them. They were really easy to dodge so I felt like I could just ignore them. I could only eat sometimes but there wasn't an indicator of when I was hungry. I feel like this game would be much more enjoyable with a bit more of a UI.