Evolve or Die by Lazzor

made by Lazzor for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

Evolve or Die is a Jam game made by two guys from Kiel!

You are in charge of a fish species living happily just under the surface. A friendly dolphin warns you of the impending doom of the apocalypse caused by the sun dying out. Your only chance to survive is to go deeper to avoid the ice that is slowly but surely freezing the entire ocean.

The journey to the deep sea is not easy though. Food is sparse in the deep sea and only grows when there is enough light. Also your fish need to defend themselves against predators!

In order to proceed to the next level, you need to reach a stable population of 30 fish per level. You fail a level if either all your fish died or the predators reach a stable population of 30.

Evolve your fish at the start of each level to prepare for the challenges to come!

Have fun and we hope to see you in the deep sea!

Link	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sBUdwhkQ8s1uRtPj81yFS8oxdSO4xAzO/view?usp=sharing
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/evolve-or-die

Ratings

Overall	782^th	3.591⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Fun	580^th	3.568⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	85^th	4.136⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Theme	643^th	3.841⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	1234^th	3.386⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Humor	427^th	3.333⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Mood	1402^th	3.114⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Given		28🗳️	20🗨️

Feedback

Haardy

28. Apr 2021 · 10:08 UTC

Seems like an interesting game with much work put into it. Really a shame that it's not web-based as you miss out on many testers. My general advice is to try out Unity and build for WebGL :)

Seskon

28. Apr 2021 · 10:10 UTC

I like the concept of the game, and the editor is well made. But I dont like that you cant delete parts of your fish, you should at least be able to upgrade them. Also, the simulation ist basically just wating so maybe that needs some more interaction. Overall good entry :)
Ps: Grüße aus Lübeck ;D

mariszin

28. Apr 2021 · 10:27 UTC

Hilarious idea of building Your fish. Would be nice if You could remove a part, but at a cost of a fishpoint or something.

PaulFrick

28. Apr 2021 · 15:51 UTC

Not bad, but some of the fish cannot be removed. There is also a bug in the construction of fish, which allows you to put a block in the corner.

Noel Widmer

29. Apr 2021 · 21:43 UTC

I took me a few attempts until I figured out how the game works. The first stage seems to be a bit hard since one starts the game blind and needs to know quite a few things already. Maybe unlocking different fish parts when going deeper would have made this a bit easier (take away options in the beginning to reduce complexity).

The fish building idea is ridiculus, I would have never thought of that :D I also liked that you though of increasing the speed of the simulation. That would have otherwise been quite painful :P

Fearawl

30. Apr 2021 · 07:45 UTC

Cool idea and cool implementation! The only drawback is the limited number of attempts to pass. The ability to undo changes can also be very useful. Great job!

machrom

30. Apr 2021 · 08:02 UTC

Nice idea, however it is really hard to understand why you can't pass a layer sometimes. Sometimes you fail a layer that you passed in a previous try with the same combination of parts. It is especially confusing at the start. Very good and interesting game!

Great job!

qviguier

30. Apr 2021 · 08:09 UTC

I love that you pulled off the concept, it's great. i sadly couldn't get through the first level most of the time, nor the second but damn man, real spore vibes here.
well done

miej

30. Apr 2021 · 08:12 UTC

really cool submission! would love to see it expanded upon. I created some terrible monstrosity of the deep. though it did at times feel a bit rng-heavy, and i managed to pass some levels just by trying again without making any changes

Michael Grieshofer

02. May 2021 · 07:14 UTC

I think this game was very well made. But there are a few problems I have with it.
First the difficulty curve is a mess. The first two levels are very hard to beat and took me more than half of the time I spent with the game. The later parts though are very easy because your fish is already a baby making machine.
The second thing that I don't like is that your fish become monsters at the end, but they don't look like cool monsters but min-max monsters that are constructed in a checkerboard pattern to maximize efficiency. I think this could have been avoided if the body was free and could only be placed next to another body.
But as I said, I like the idea and also the game itself. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered writing this critique.
Great work.

Solah

02. May 2021 · 19:41 UTC

Ooooh nooooo, my fantastic fish died :'(
![Capture11.PNG](///raw/1e1/8/z/42088.png)

It is hard to build a resilient fish. It actually feels like luck had a too big impact on the game. However it was really fun to build a fish, well done!

Scrawach

05. May 2021 · 17:12 UTC

I really like evolution games. And this one looks cool. It's not good that you can't delete items. Because otherwise fish soon turns into something incredible. But I think that's cool too. And funny!)

VixenMink

06. May 2021 · 00:28 UTC

Our team was thinking of doing a game similar to this. Nicely done.

Viperux

06. May 2021 · 17:55 UTC

Nice game, i like evolution games and this is quite interesting. As someone said before I missed the possibility to remove/cange pieces... probably adding that feature as well as some constraint on the placement of the body tile would have avoided creating monsters. Since the procreation triggers when 2 individuals cross they ways, the more space you cover, the more chance they have to cross theyr ways!

That's (one of) my winning boy![Immagine.png](///raw/10b/73/z/423b3.png)

phoenix-gi

10. May 2021 · 07:03 UTC

Hey! I really like such evolution kind of games!
Your simulation concept is very interesting. Of course, your game is unbalanced, has some little bugs.. But I am sure - you should continue work on your game! I think, you need think more about concept and gameplay - there are many variations how to make it better!
And here is my best fish ever:)
![best fish ever.png](///raw/f26/72/z/42545.png)

Quetzakol

13. May 2021 · 12:08 UTC

Very fun concept! I liked the idea and the number of options, though as others said I wish it was possible to remove a part from the fish (for practical reasons but also for the pleasure of having a pretty fish and not something with parts that are not even attached to each other).

It was also a bit hard to understand what was happening during the simulation.

But overall, really nice work!

ditam

13. Apr 2022 · 10:39 UTC

A very digestible introduction to the normally dry and complicated marine-evolutionary concept of fishpoints!

(I got my jams mixed up, but it was still fun to come across this one.)

ledpotled

03. Sep 2022 · 04:29 UTC

great game, thank you. 0.39 inch [3492AW](http://www.xlitx.com/datasheet/3492AW.pdf) led [3492AW](http://www.lanpade.com/7-segment-led-dot-matrix/3492aw.html) 7-segment [3492BW](http://www.xlitx.com/datasheet/3492BW.pdf) display [3492BW](http://www.lanpade.com/7-segment-led-dot-matrix/3492bw.html)