One Day To Breed by Hazel

[raw]
made by Hazel for LD24 (COMPO)
When you only have a single 24-second long day to live, you need to take evolution into your own hands.

Start out as a near useless cube and then control successive generations as you struggle to find the best suited mate and spawn a child slightly more suited to the harsh cube world environment. Also collect more cubes.

Controls:
- WASD or arrows to move
- Space to breed
- z to jump, if you evolve the ability to jump

Features:
- Cubes!
- Two dimensions, plus an additional dimension FREE!
- Bad coder art!
- Worse coder music!
- More cubes!
- Frustration!
- Romance!
- Cubes!

Ratings

Coolness 20% 1013
Overall 3.42 145
Audio 3.00 170
Fun 3.08 222
Graphics 3.54 155
Humor 3.25 70
Innovation 3.25 193
Mood 3.14 136
Theme 3.79 71

Feedback

matthias_zarzecki
27. Aug 2012 · 09:27 UTC
Hey, it's a boxcat! I have one of those too :)

Lovely idea. It's fun trying to find a partner for the next generation, and then playing as that one. Love the run-animation, simple and efficient.

Movement can be abit clunky sometimes. I often got stuck on slopes (sometimes on slopes between the level-wall and spikes), which was kinda frustrating.
eyehawk
29. Aug 2012 · 11:35 UTC
Haha, I was cracking up at your feature list before I played the game - e.g. bad coder art, worse coder music :) But honestly though quite a cool quirky game! Loved the style of the cat and the cartoony world!
Desi Quintans
01. Sep 2012 · 11:08 UTC
Yours is probably the highest I've rated any game so far. The only thing I didn't like about it was that my cube animal would slow down or even get stuck when trying to climb hills.
raohmaru
01. Sep 2012 · 11:13 UTC
Loved those cubed cats!
Besides the fun, the game has a goal or a win condition, or are you always evolving?
hgcummings
01. Sep 2012 · 11:17 UTC
This was really fun. I really liked the combination of game elements: Frantically trying to find a mate, while avoiding the spikes, and attempting to follow the 'nearest mate' indicator in the bottom left (which I guess actually makes sense, since pheremones or whatever would tell you proximity but not direction). I thought the controls were fine and I liked the movement of the cat, although the camera angle was occasionally a bit awkward. I couldn't tell what the little cubes that you could eat were for; they didn't seem to increase my score or anything else. I thought the graphics and sound worked really well.
🎤 Hazel
02. Sep 2012 · 13:52 UTC
Thanks for all the comments! Personally, I wasn't very happy with the final controls or camera. During the compo they varied from even-more-frustrating to great in 90% of situations but completely broken in the other 10%. I actually wanted your character to feel a little inadequate at the start so the species becomes a little more controllable as you evolve, but the problem with hills breaks that.

@Raohmaru You win and the game ends, when you become the "perfect species" - by reaching a certain value in all your stats. Most of your potential mates at that point are going to have the possibility of decreasing your abilities at that stage though.

@hgcummings The yellow cubes give you points, red give health and blue gives more time. The idea was that the cubes don't regenerate so they give you a boost in the start, to prevent the game getting easier rather than harder as you become more powerful. They were a bit last minute though :O
robcozzens
09. Sep 2012 · 18:06 UTC
Great job!
Datw
09. Sep 2012 · 18:16 UTC
The controls/physics were kinda messed up (IMO), but quite good anyway.
Pierrec
09. Sep 2012 · 19:12 UTC
it lags a bit on my computer, preventing me to play it well, but it's rather funny!
sfernald
10. Sep 2012 · 07:08 UTC
Cute concept and graphics. Found the short time to find a new mate a little irritating. Also, I could never get jumping to work I think. But still really well done.
samoojamies
11. Sep 2012 · 16:30 UTC
Controls a bit awkward but playable. Overall a great game. Very nice graphics and the theme was implemented succesfully!
KevinWorkman
12. Sep 2012 · 00:24 UTC
This is a fun idea and it was good to just play around with, but it would have been cool with some more game elements- maybe some bad guys? Different levels that different traits would be good for? Overall great job for 48 hours!
goerp
12. Sep 2012 · 19:49 UTC
haha it sounds like the bass-voice of the music is saying meow meow. Cute and definitely evolution. Good one.