Explore, Evolve, Escape! by kirbytails7

made by kirbytails7 for LD24 (COMPO)

You are an evolutionary experiment. It's lonely in the lab. You yearn for freedom, but it won't come. Fortunately, you can make things easier for the next generation.

Gather DNA to gain new evolutions for your species, and one day you might escape. Arrow keys to move, S to kill yourself if you get stuck (I ran out of debugging time a bit too soon). There are multiple exits, and you're free to evolve however you see fit. Also, since you might ask, the music gets better as you progress.

Web	http://www.sketchhousegames.com/ExploreEvolveEscape/playgame.html
Timelapse	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JzyYkzsZ80
Source	http://www.sketchhousegames.com/ExploreEvolveEscape/ExploreEvolveEscape.zip
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=4767

Ratings

Coolness	84%	2
Overall	3.21	240

Audio	2.26	418
Fun	3.12	211
Graphics	2.71	439
Humor	2.19	326
Innovation	3.07	278
Mood	2.52	430
Theme	3.71	83

Feedback

sclark39

27. Aug 2012 · 02:08 UTC

I like how evolving the better body prevents you from picking up some DNA. This game's a bit of a grind, but I think that means if you polished it up it would do quite well on Kong.

jplur

27. Aug 2012 · 02:23 UTC

Pretty addicting, I wish that you had to plan your improvements in order to keep getting stars. Pretty neat!

headchant

27. Aug 2012 · 03:03 UTC

Great concept! I agree that the grinding might be necessary, but different levels might solve that. Nice to see a good canvas/js game.

Sestren

27. Aug 2012 · 03:14 UTC

Fun game. Good execution of the theme. The level design was such that replaying after each upgrade wasn't too much of a drag.

🎤 kirbytails7

27. Aug 2012 · 05:13 UTC

Thanks, all! The goal was to have a tolerable amount of grinding, sort of like a dungeon crawler, with advancing enough each time to keep it interesting. Glad you liked it.

Senekis

27. Aug 2012 · 06:53 UTC

Nice game. It's true that you have to grind, but that's only annoying during the first few generations. Once you start rocking, you can't even consider it grinding, since everytime you reach new places.

I escaped in 15 generations. That's acceptable grinding, and given that there's a single level, I feel it was the right choice.

Nice game!

sclark39

27. Aug 2012 · 13:47 UTC

I just re-played it. First game in the LD48 I've actually wanted to replay. The evolution mechanic made me want to try again and take a different path. This time I escaped in 15 evolutions (the first time I didn't even know there was an escape). Great work, again. :)

cappelnord

27. Aug 2012 · 16:31 UTC

Cool concept. I like how the music evolves.

RobProductions

27. Aug 2012 · 21:58 UTC

Cool, had a nice Spore feel to it, how you can choose your upgrades, but it looks way too long to get to the good stuff.

LuizHGMonclar

27. Aug 2012 · 22:01 UTC

I really liked the concept, the music evolving was indeed a nice touch. I just really feel that the evolve menu has some navigational issues... It just takes too long to navigate through it, and it's such an important part of the game!

Great job with the game!

MattTyson

27. Aug 2012 · 22:06 UTC

This is in the theme and the character is funny.

So, you made a music and it evolves each level (great idea by the way) but a string hurts my hear !

Pacifist Games

27. Aug 2012 · 22:08 UTC

I really enjoyed it!
I liked how I could customize my character to fit my play style, very cool! Great job!

pardue

28. Aug 2012 · 15:42 UTC

I really enjoyed this game, it was pretty fun and could get rather addicting. This is a game I will play again. :)

🎤 kirbytails7

30. Aug 2012 · 17:26 UTC

Thanks for all of the comments!

Chezzo

30. Aug 2012 · 21:56 UTC

Fun fun fun. Worked really well with the theme. Has an ending you want to work for.

leafo

31. Aug 2012 · 17:08 UTC

Really fun mechanic. Had a good time getting collecting dna and upgrading.

Brassawiking

02. Sep 2012 · 16:31 UTC

A preview of the a selected evolution would be nice. Especially since the bigger body blocks off some of the DNA.

nuria

02. Sep 2012 · 16:46 UTC

I really enjoyed this one! I think the menu needs some work, it's annoying to have to cycle through all options just to exit and things could just be clearer.

Another problem is that you need to be so close to the edge of the screen to make the scrolling advance, which reduced considerably how far ahead you could see.

Overall great game, I had lots of fun with this one!

🎤 kirbytails7

06. Sep 2012 · 23:16 UTC

@Brassawiking Yeah, I realized afterwards that I should have done that.

@nuria You can press the down arrow on the menu to skip to the end. Also, the camera bit was initially a design choice, but I didn't think to adjust it at any point.

NgonGames

15. Sep 2012 · 04:14 UTC

love the game hate the music.

BumpkinRich

15. Sep 2012 · 22:47 UTC

Felt very well thought out, for a prototype. Would like to play a more polished version.