Game seems to be private. :( Notify me when fixed

Seems like the issue is fixed @talesofpixelia.

I like the idea of using genetic algorithms to breed units, but the real interest of that comes when you have multiple genes that are advantageous, or where a certain gene can be good when its large or when its small. It doesn't feel like the mechanic adds anything in this case because you just want the number to go up and theres no decision making about what you toss in the pit. I would love to actually be given some more knowledge of what is in the gene pool, because the average being all that is shown just boils the game down to "Is this number larger then that number?" Also, RTS controls are quite heavy for a game so simple, and I have found tend to be hard to get feeling right. I think the emphasis of the game, and thus the place where you should put the most effort is where your game is unique and sets itself apart. That would probably be the Genetic manipulation, and I think it has some potential if you focus on what makes that mechanic unique.

Nice game, although I'm not entirely sure how to play. I've read over the instructions, and I think your problem boils down to a lack of player feedback. Things I want to know, but don't, mainly because the game doesn't make it obvious. Which units am I currently selecting (highlight them). What are they currently doing (maybe give a status or mark the target location). How much longer to respawn? How much health do each of the units have and how much is remaining? Attack power is a thing, so surely health is too, but I don't know how much is remaining. Should I back off or is the enemy low on health and vulnerable? Are the pits actually doing anything? I can't tell, because the enemies (seemingly) can't enter the pit, so is it maybe dealing damage to them whilst touching the pit? If so, maybe make it more obvious. Perhaps I just don't know how to get the enemies into the pit, in which case you should inform the player! What do I do? It seems that without doing anything, my number is higher than theirs, so what gives? Is this a balancing problem, or is it expected.

There are also some polish problems, particularly the frustrating fact that the restart button doesn't work. Also, the sprites of the units look a bit strange, but remind me somewhat of Conway's Game of Life (intentional?). I would also recommend spending more time considering fonts. You have chosen to use a pixelated font, but I see no reason for that in the game, particularly with the absense of pixel art. The game feels a bit spacey, so maybe a clean, sans font? The font colours also make the text hard to read, particularly the numbers on the enemies (white on light gray). You have done some nice polish however, particularly the subtle change of background colour, which is quite nice and adds some graphical interest. I would definitely recommend investing more time learning art techniques though, as some of the art in the game is ... meh. You're coding is certainly more advanced than your art, so perhaps you could team up with someone and work on programming?

Honestly, the game needs some work before it is really playable. The game's been running in the background whilst writing this review and the gameplay still isn't over, leading me to suspect that either there is no lose condition, or losing is tough to achieve. Either way, as an evolution simulator / puzzle / strategy there should be some challenge, and as it stands, there doesn't seem to be a way to lose. I'm not so sure about winning, as I don't really know how to play, so no comments there. My main recommendation is to keep developing as this is the best way to gain experience. Don't give up! :thumbsup:

Hope this isn't too honest, and most importantly, I hope this helps. :wink:

EDIT:

Oh hey. I'm dead. Well then, maybe some form of increase in difficulty or balance the game a bit. If the game can be completed with inaction, then the game becomes quite boring to 'play'. I would definitely recommend forcing the player to do something. The player's action should improve their situation, whilst inaction does the opposite.

I found it a generally frustraiting experience. I can see it has potential with a bit of refinement. Once I got the concept I had a much better time.

It's an interesting concept, but I think it's hampered most strongly by the fact you're only selecting for one characteristic (one of the other comments said that).

I found the music to be a bit too repetitive. Personally, I feel that if you're adding something to your game that's not adding to the game's quality or even drags down other aspects of it, it may be worthwhile not adding it. In this case, I think your game would have been better without the music. The music kinda demands attention and really it's not the thing that's worth paying attention to in this game.

I don't mind the art, the art actually doesn't demand attention and it lets you focus on the main bit of the game, so to me that's less of a problem.

But yeah, the gameplay felt possibly a bit to slow/simple. As I said, only one trait to breed for, it meant there weren't really any complicated decisions that needed to be made, nor was the game fast enough that I had to make difficult choices quickly.

I hope that helps! It sounds harsh but don't be discouraged, I think this is not many steps away from being able to become an interesting game!

I found it difficult to figure out what was happening at the beginning (it took me a lot of trial-and-error to determine which color of thing I even was!) - but after playing for a while I think that if this had some more intuitive UI (obvious who is player, can tell what is selected) and some kind of quirky interface (the "pit" is more than just a rectangle... it's obviously a sacrificial pit, the genes have some character, the background is interesting etc - then I think you could get away with the "selecting for one characteristic" part.

I'd like it if I could "retreat" more safetly - like if there were some walls I could go hide behind!

Once I understood what you were going for I think it was fun - it just needs some UI polish to make it so the user isn't confused at the beginning.

I think the worst point of your game is that it is very slow and it has 0 polish, like there are no feedback, you don't know what's going on (at least before playing a bit, but it's a problem). I can see what kind of games you wanted to make and the idea is, I think, actually interesting and could make something great! But it would need a lot of polish overall.

The art and the audio didn't help, but as it has been mentioned before, I don't really mind that since the problem focuses on the gameplay.

However, it is still a working game and it is a really great thing that you participated to the LD! All the feedbacks aren't there to discourage you but to help you make better games, and I'll look forward for the next ones :D

A visual feedback to know which unit you have selected would be a nice addition: right now, you don't really know if you have selected them or not, especially when you just click to select one.

Maybe show the life on the different units, many times I did not understood why my unit died while it had a better attack than the enemey (and they spawned around the same time) so showing the life would be a nice addition

The RNG at the beginning is frustrating as hell: how do I do when my 4 units I begin with have around 50 when the enemy has 3 around 70 and 1 around 50?

Finally, the art and the audio were not great (for the music, quickly repetitive) and you notice it even faster than usual as you quickly focus on the game's downsides.

On a brighter note, the idea is interesting and could lead to a cool game.

Overall, it is not a great game but RTS are really difficult type of game to create and you did a good job doing one in such short time. I think if you can adjust with all the feedbacks you reveived, it can be a cool game.

The controls were really bizarre, in the sense that dragging-and-dropping a box would have been the most intuitive control scheme for selecting units, but instead the game required 2 left clicks, and even then, I wasn't too sure. Right click as a "go here" was a bizarre decision in my opinion. I think a good old context menu on single clicks would have been a better idea for "go here." I also had a very difficult time knowing what units I've selected, and initially, didn't even know which units were under my control (white or black?).

Ultimately, my winning strategy was literally running away from the opposing AI (and an occasional cheesing where I dropped a unit to the bottom right of the opponent number grid, making a lot of newly spawned AI units fall into the square). That's....kind of an interesting statement about a population.

WTF? How does this game work? Got no idea how to control even a thing. Every mouse action just draws a selection box. nothing else happens. You can view the VOD of my stream if you want to see what I am talking about.

Plays OK, interesting concept, although very simple to win once you figure out that you should first just get rid of your weak units.

Not exactly sure what was going on but it was not too difficult to win every time.

This is definitely missing some polish, but I find even the core loop to lack an engaging element. This concept might be interesting if there was an element of choice or sacrifice in choosing which of your units to kill. Maybe a unit's strength being inversely proportional to its number, so a very low number would be bad to keep around in terms of victory condition but very strong against fending off the enemy.

Kudos on doing things from scratch! You definitely didn't make it easy on yourself by implementing selecting units and issuing commands from scratch. 3 days can disappear quickly to technical issues when there are so many problems to solve.


This concept was innovative and fun once I understood it. This main problem I had was there was little feedback on what was going on, which units had the most influence on the breeding? I think there would be more gameplay if you could choose to selectively breed units instead of it being seemingly random.

A tutorial on how to play the game would have been useful because I really had to read the description thoroughly before understanding what to do, leaving out the technical details in the beginning and just how to play would be better.

Good job on the implementation though, I did an RTS for LD41 and it is really a lot of work to do unit selection and formation correctly. I think the controls could have been better though, selecting with left mouse button and having it work as a cancel selection button would be better because now I tried to cancel my selection and moved all my units to an unwanted location.

I hate to echo what other people have said, but these seem to be the weak points: graphics (very simplistic), audio (repetitive fast), and the gameplay (a bit confusing). I know it's hard to make a polished game in such a short amount of time, so it's all very understandable. It was actually very easy to play once I saw the gif at the top of the page, although it would've been nice to have an in-game tutorial. Also, it was a bit irritating because I never really felt in control of the units-- they just seemed to move totally randomly sometimes, regardless of where I tried making them go. It is a fun concept in my opinion, but I guess a few days just isn't much time to execute it very effectively. Kudos for making anything in such a short amount of time, though!

Interesting game, I had a similar idea for my game, sadly I didn't had time to implement the mutation part.
The few times I played I seemed to win kind a out of nowhere, I feel like I was losing on the map in terms of overall strength, but by sacrificing the weak it sent my gene pool high enough to win.