LudumData

Game of Life+ by Teo Miklethun

[raw]
made by Teo Miklethun for Ludum Dare 46 (COMPO)

A one player version of John Conway's zero player "game of life". NOTE: The browser version is somewhat playable, but NOT recommended, as it runs poorly, I removed the music, and some features do not work.

GOL.gif

As Conway recently passed away from COVID-19, this game serves as a tribute to his life and his work in mathematics.

From Wikipedia: The universe of the Game of Life is a two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, alive or dead, (or populated and unpopulated, respectively). Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:

Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.

Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.

Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.

Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

Youtube https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-56yqWCSCboiENf2bP1GSu2klO6RaT9E/view?usp=sharing
Youtube https://gamejolt.com/games/ld46gol/488056
Youtube https://gamejolt.net/?token=RjQSyhQKwKJLTWpYJYjZCgjqXNk8pv
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/game-of-life

Ratings

Overall 105th 3.932⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 166th 3.773⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 148th 3.841⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 628th 3.568⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 159th 3.667⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 32🗳️ 15🗨️

Feedback

ChloeOfArroyo
20. Apr 2020 · 11:47 UTC
Cool concept, but it wouldn't advance cell state after the first level (space bar didn't work :( )
🎤 Teo Miklethun
20. Apr 2020 · 12:23 UTC
@chloeofarroyo It's a flaw in my level desgin that it seems that way, but it's actually just that the configuration in the second level is stable, even if you add a cell. The solution is therefore to remove a cell.
ChloeOfArroyo
20. Apr 2020 · 12:30 UTC
Ahhhhhh right that makes sense! making good progress right now, tis a fun game - might want to make clear to players though that space can be pressed multiple times (As I assumed it was 'solve in one move') :)
🎤 Teo Miklethun
20. Apr 2020 · 13:00 UTC
@chloeofarroyo Thanks, that's really helpful feedback!
GameDoodles
20. Apr 2020 · 13:06 UTC
Great sound and presentation! The interactions between cells was difficult to grasp at first, but after lots of trial and error, started to make sense. More user feedback and general hand holding early on would be welcome. That being said, I was engaged enough to stick around until it made sense. Very nice puzzle game!
Goutye
20. Apr 2020 · 13:14 UTC
Very nice take on the original game! :v: Some nice memories when I was a student, making an alternative version of it! Well done :smile:
🎤 Teo Miklethun
20. Apr 2020 · 13:20 UTC
@chloeofarroyo Thanks! That's really useful feedback!
cirno
20. Apr 2020 · 13:29 UTC
I thought of making a game in memory of Conway but I failed to find a good way of adding interaction into the game of life. Your idea of manually controlling time steps and changing some cells at any step is awesome!
ManTou
20. Apr 2020 · 14:07 UTC
Very good puzzle game! Great idea! But it's too hard for me.
Marc Grabow
21. Apr 2020 · 14:24 UTC
Great game and tribute indeed! Clever take on game of life!
irwatts
21. Apr 2020 · 18:29 UTC
Great job at turning Life into a puzzle! I couldn't stop playing.
Brainloaf Studio
22. Apr 2020 · 09:28 UTC
Awesome puzzles, and a clever usage of the original game of life. Nice!
Le Slo
22. Apr 2020 · 18:47 UTC
I really love the concept, the game works great, but it is sooo difficult at times and sooo easy at other times. This is definitely my favourite approach to conway's game of life, for sure. Some things, Z to undo is pretty universal by now, so having the U to undo was awkward, the game didn't presented well the idea of being able to use moves after start pressing space, the glider level was definitely my favorite. I'm stuck in the 4x4 green square. I'm not sure if levels could be any different, but I guess it can be even more difficult to design levels for this. Congratulation, I really liked your entry!
🎤 Teo Miklethun
22. Apr 2020 · 18:54 UTC
@le-slo Thanks for the feedback! I absolutely agree that the weakest part of this game is the level design. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to work on that aspect, which made the difficulty curve terrible. I'll be sure to change undo to Z if I make a post-jam polished version. I'll also try to see if I can make a much simpler introduction to the idea of altering the game state after the first iteration.
Szieberth Adam
24. Apr 2020 · 16:01 UTC
Nice to see another Game of Life entry, and a very good one!
Kaisean Games
26. Apr 2020 · 22:15 UTC
I am a fan of GoL, well... all automata for that matter.
And I've very seldom seen the simulation turned into a real game.

This works.

Some levels were too hard for me so I've had to spend a bit more time, but a really nice concept.

Well done!
Keep up the good work.
Tesseract
02. May 2020 · 00:16 UTC
Very well made. Some of the levels were pretty hard, I enjoyed solving them. I particularly liked the glider level. The animations for cells being born/dying were a very nice touch.

I'm using Linux, but got
```
Error: Couldn't load project data at path ".". Is the .pck file missing?
If you've renamed the executable, the associated .pck file should also be renamed to match the executable's name (without the extension).
```
(repeated twice). It worked when I downloaded the source and ran the executable from inside the source folder.
UltraBill
02. May 2020 · 09:43 UTC
Nice concept ! It helps understand how the Conway's game of life work, and also use its mechanics into a puzzle game is a great idea.

The music is cool, and the animations are cool.
Some level are too difficult, but solving them is really enjoyable.
🎤 Teo Miklethun
02. May 2020 · 16:35 UTC
@tesseract Thanks for bug report. I wasn't able to test on Linux, so that's really helpful!