LudumData

Detective Darwin by jarnik

[raw]
made by jarnik for LD24 (COMPO)
Detective Darwin is a private investigator, a single human stranded on a planet full of blobby aliens with sophisticated cycle of evolution.

Followed by his alien assistant, Mendel, and using his amazing skill of relation deducing, he solves various cases in order to fix broken families.

There are 5 cases to solve, aliens are randomly generated.

The core idea: aliens have certain properties (leg count, eye count, colors...), there are specific rules of inheritance for each of these properties. Your task, as a detective, is to find a certain alien within a given group, using these rules. It might be a long-lost children, elderly parents or step-brother.

CONTROLS:
Mouse only.
Click to skip dialogs.
Punch - be pushy, make them spit it out
Pet - be gentle, listen to their heart
Point (in selection mode) - select alien(s)

Web http://www.jarnik.com/pub/ld24/v01/
Flash http://www.jarnik.com/pub/ld24/LD24_Detective_Darwin_jarnik.swf.zip
Windows http://www.jarnik.com/pub/ld24/LD24_Detective_Darwin_jarnik.exe.zip
Source http://www.jarnik.com/pub/ld24/LD24_Detective_Darwin_jarnik.src.zip
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=1163

Ratings

Coolness 47% 601
Overall 3.25 222
Audio 2.83 221
Fun 2.88 321
Graphics 3.50 167
Humor 3.59 36
Innovation 3.79 50
Mood 2.86 257
Theme 3.33 206

Feedback

pereubu
26. Aug 2012 · 20:14 UTC
My god, this is a friggin hilarious idea, good job man !
Perry
27. Aug 2012 · 00:35 UTC
I didn't like the punch/pet dialog component. I'm not a dialog person, so this game was a miss for me, the visuals are bloody great though. I liked the little hints at infidelity also.
Brucef
27. Aug 2012 · 06:21 UTC
It was funny how you had to punch the blob person so that they could complete the sentence "thank you, you've brought the *punch* happiness back into our lives!"
Split82
27. Aug 2012 · 13:40 UTC
I like the idea. For me there is too much talking and the UI is a little bit confusing, but in overall it's very nice.
Kumquat
28. Aug 2012 · 18:50 UTC
Really nice ideas and polish.
Oreganik
29. Aug 2012 · 00:10 UTC
Awesome job! Incredible concept for the theme, a perfect match! Loved the music and the text as well.
Syarahsy
02. Sep 2012 · 08:11 UTC
Great entry!
Brassawiking
02. Sep 2012 · 14:23 UTC
The dialog system was a pain, too much of the punching and petting, but still a good idea thats need some work done. A bit confusing with the inheritance, since for example, a one eyed and a three eyed could have a two-eyed child.

Way to go at making a really iconic intro screen, really catches your eye!
SusanTheCat
02. Sep 2012 · 14:24 UTC
The kid in the orphanage had too many legs. :(
I didn't like the pet/punch mechanic. It feels like it was a neat idea that didn't work out in practice.
My son thinks this is a good game.
HappyFunRock
02. Sep 2012 · 14:30 UTC
This was pretty awesome :) Took me a while to work out exactly what I was doing though, didn't realize I had to pet/punch them to get them to talk, just sat there for a while confused, and I didn't realize I had to talk to mendel to find out how the relations worked until later :p

Good fun though, and awesome interpretation of the theme :)
Nidjo123
02. Sep 2012 · 14:46 UTC
Great idea, worked out well... Graphics are also quite good but sound becomes a bit irritating after a while. All in all, good job!
Qaterknan
02. Sep 2012 · 15:14 UTC
well, good idea, but the genetics works differently. The child always gets mothers OR fathers feature, but not anything between, so that when you have child with five legs, one of his parents has to have five legs. The game unfortunately didnt work like this, at least not for me. And yeah, the pet-punch system was kinda weird. But the idea was brilliant.
saguaro
02. Sep 2012 · 16:09 UTC
This is a fun idea. Not sure about the pet/punch mechanism, however.
zatyka
02. Sep 2012 · 16:13 UTC
Great job. I didn't care for the petting/hitting concept, but the rest was awesome.
clavicarius
02. Sep 2012 · 16:43 UTC
Dialogue is already boring to read. Why the punching/petting?
darkstarmatryx
02. Sep 2012 · 16:52 UTC
Nice job. I found it funny that I was hitting clients.
nuria
02. Sep 2012 · 16:54 UTC
I didn't get the punch/pet thing either. The game was, however, very charming and those aliens look pretty cool.
Walt
02. Sep 2012 · 17:49 UTC
cool idea, bit disconnected but funny. nice execution too, i like it
kirill
02. Sep 2012 · 18:04 UTC
Re. your comment: you are not supposed to eat food to survive, but to change your color to match that of the island as close as possible.
Thanks for your comment though, all the previous ones made me believe that the concept is intuitive enough for all to "get it".
The off-screen thing is a bug: I was going to make a "you got lost" screen but ran out of energy/time.
kirill
02. Sep 2012 · 20:36 UTC
Wow, like this entry a lot. The theme is well-interpreted!
Played till the end - lots of fun.
What could be improved: it was annoying to have to punch-pet Mendel so much, and I almost quit at the beginning, before having figured it out, when dialog was not progressing.
The dialoges/writing are a good idea in general - help established the mood properly.