Cool little game! I really liked how the game of life resulted in me learning certain "weak spots" on enemies which would destroy them without causing huge explosions. I also really like the artstyle you got going on, it fits the game.

What I would've liked to see would be some more gliders in the start, since they are very easy to dodge, and you rarely have to shoot. Also, the explosive thingies are pretty hard to dodge, so I never made it very far.

On another note: My browser (Latest chrome) thinks that it's missing the unity player plugin when I browse HTTPS:// sites instead of HTTP:// for some reason. If you change it to HTTP:// directly in the URL it'll work fine with dropbox and users that have the same problem will be fine.

This is amazing idea!
Great graphics and sound.
Really like it.

Thank you both for your kind words, I really appreciate it!

SteelRaven7: Ah, so that's why my friends with Chrome are complaining. Thanks for the help! I switched to http, seems to work fine now.

Love this spin on the Game of Life! Great job!

I really like this game. It's a great twist on the game of life. I like how you shooting causes the different cells to "explode" in different ways. I think this could have been great with maybe one or two additional weapons, a slightly bigger playfield (to see the cell explosions better) and a score.

Great game!

Totally awesome! The best evolutionary idea I found in this LD so far. Super low-fi graphics fit this game really well. I'll be showing this to my friends.

Interesting concept. I like how the enemy dynamically create themselves. Props to using Unity and more props for making a 2D game in Unity.

I really like the art style. The gameplay itself I found to be rather bland.

Man, the music is awesome!

When I was about 11 years old, my dad bought one of those books with listings of BASIC programs. In the absence of reliable, cross-platform recording media, a book was the safest, nay, the ONLY way to store a program; if you were willing to spend a day re-typing a program, and if if you typed it correctly, you could enjoy about 15 minutes playing it! Of course, it was a recipe bound for disaster, as none of the games met the expectations created by the airbrushed art that often accompanied the source listings.

So my dad brought home one of those books and lo and behold, it announced right there in the cover, it had the source code for THE GAME OF LIFE! Having enjoyed many a hour playing the tabletop version of Game of Life with my sisters and cousin, but not owning the game box myself as it was considerably expensive for a 11 year old out-of-work boy to purchase, I was sure excited with the promise of playing the game right there, in my Brazilian ZX-81 clone, the almight TK-85 with 48kb of memory.

I painstakingly typed the code in one afternoon, ran the game, and it was with utter disappointment and a sadness only 11 year old boys can muster that I watched squares popping in and out of the screen. In and out, on and off, in seemingly random fashion. Is *that* the game of life I was promised? Black-and-white blocks are showing up and disappearing. It is not fun. I am not even interacting with it - how is this a game? I was crushed.

Then it dawned on me.

Conway's genius was not of creating an expensive tabletop game with beautiful plastic cars for the house dog's to eat or pins representing your beautiful wife that could be easily lost under the run. It was a genius of showing you that life goes on, whether you want it or not, and there's nothing you can do about it. That it is not necessarily fun, unless you learn to recognize the patterns that are taking shape in front of you. This *was* the game of life, in many more ways than I could count.

In that moment, I unsubscribed to the plastic tabletop game doctrine. Now I write code.

Great game, brilliant idea. Could use some scoring system and some powerups, maybe. Regardless, this is what Ludum Dare games should strive to be: an amazing idea with quick but flawless execution. Bravo!

Wow. Thank you all for your so kind words, especially zeh for that wonderful post. I'm at a loss for words.

This was my first Ludum Dare ever, and reading your comments was perhaps the best part of the whole experience. Makes me want to do even better next time. Thank you.

looks cool, and good fps, but on my computer(windows xp, google chrome), the middle is so bright that I cant see any enemies.

Really cool game. I know it's just the game of life based graphics, but I really enjoyed the look and feel of it.

This is the second entry I've played mixing Game of life and a shooter, and this one really takes the prize. The graphics are simple, clean and most of all effective. The music goes really well with the action too.

A good, well polished entry. Nice job!

It was pretty fun but I got bored fairly quickly. I did not feel compelled to play after a few deaths as there was no score system, levels, anything to motivate me. I really like the mood of the game though, the music and visuals were very nice.

During the Compo I saw your post and was glad to find the finished game.

Great idea, such simple rules make such dynamic enemies. You learn to hate the invincible squares and worry that your shot my cause the enemy to "explode" though if you can dodge the explosions then its really fun. What would be nice is a score system, make the grid bigger and make it transparent so you can see those stars flowing through play area as well.

GOL for enemies? Awesome!

A shooter mashup with the game of life is just brilliant.

Took me a minute to get it, but once I realized it was a shmup made from that "generations" game, it made a lot more sense.

Very neat play on an old concept, well done ;)

The nerd inside me approves of this :) Nicely done!

I like the style!

Pretty nice concept, and music wasn't half bad either. Perhaps some kind of a scoring system to keep me motivated :)?

I really like the pixel style graphics with a modern twist to them. I realised I had to shoot the cells, but wasn't sure what my main goal was or how well I was doing.

I never thought I would see a novel implementation of The Game of Life, but here we are! Great use of an existing system, truly inspired. I didn't find it particularly fun to play, honestly, but impressive nonetheless.

Very fun game! I love "Life", and shooters. Blocks are undestroyable. Do you have the bosses like that http://www.ericweisstein.com/encyclopedias/life/Brain.html ?

I like the idea - the weak spots of enemies is emergent from the conway rules, which feels deeper than just predefined ones. Real nice :)

being a conway's game fan, i loved the idea!

The music and atmosphere are magnificent!

Awesome! Great way of using the Game of Life (though it sometimes went too fast to really be able to see what was going on; maybe a bigger playing field?) Gotta be careful what you shoot!

Made a windows executable available here: http://alopex.li/temp/death-cell.zip

nice use of the game of life!

Love the visuals on this :D

Dave says: Really loved the art stlye and the audio.

Again, thank you everyone for your kind and positive comments, it really means a lot to me.

And I hear you all with your suggestions and agree with them all. I wish more of the ideas I had could have made it into the game but circumstances didn't allow for that.

Next time. Can't wait.

Well, this is a unique combination!

Love the faux-pixel-movement. Music and graphics work well together.

I wonder who recognizes the game-of-life-shapes. This might be one of the nerdiest references I've ever witnessed :)

Some of my coworkers were talking about this today so I had to track it down and play it. While it seems to suffer from some performance issues (chugs a lot) I really love the idea of using Conway's game as a way to generate enemies.

Great twist for the classic Game of Life. I really like this innovative idea. Awesome work!

This is a neat idea, though I don't think the fact that the enemies are Game of Life patterns adds a lot to the game -- most of the time the enemies just disappear or turn into squares. The big swirling explosions were cool, though. And the music was good.