FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD24 → Evolve and Conquer

Evolve and Conquer

By skintkingle

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness366
Theme1002.97
Innovation1472.72
Audio1981.68
Humor2171.40
Mood2182.13
Overall2202.56
Fun2402.06
Graphics2432.23

Comments

adriczero 2012-08-28 12:47

Couldn't really get very far with the controls. I also didn't hear any audio.

science4cake 2012-08-29 18:16

I love this! I've only got two real complaints. You need a better way to get the controls info out there, even just being able to scroll through the control text would be better. I also had a rough time with terrain collision, it was easy to get hung up on shrubs, and sometimes tough to get unstuck.

gidaio 2012-08-29 18:22

This has the potential to be an amazing strategy game. Seriously. It lacks polish, and the controls are a little awkward. A tutorial would do this game good. Mr. Skintkingle, DO NOT QUIT DEVELOPING THIS.

devwouter 2012-08-29 18:42

Too make a lot of tries to figure out the controls, but this seems to be a game with potential. I enjoyed moving at the same time.

kibertoad 2012-08-29 18:47

One of the least responsive controls I've ever seen in a game. Also ugly white background on cursor. Very slow gameflow. Could be developed into an interesting game; hope it happens.

bumpkinrich 2012-08-29 18:51

You should put the instructions on this page or in a read-me so people can refer to them as they play as it's quite complex.

triliyn 2012-08-29 19:18

The mechanics sounded very interesting, but both the scrolling and the round progression were too slow for me to get into it. I also ran into a weird bug in which the menu got inverted (i.e. it was visible when the game was unpaused and not visible when the game was paused).

Like many of your other commenters, I'd love to see you keep developing this.

skintkingle 2012-08-29 21:07

As requested we will keep working on this game. I have been working on a post-dare release which has taken into account a lot of your comments over the past couple of days. It will be put on this page as a "Post-Compo" link next to the XNA Download when ready.

juaxix 2012-08-30 08:04

I love how the fried eggs move, and the map editor is a great feature.
But sorry, the game is very hard to control and understand, i'm sure you have good intentions but when a user try the things you wrote in the instructions and dont get any results it generates a big confusion and frustration...
The whole idea is wonderful, just need more time to develop it, cheers!

jomomomo 2012-08-30 17:33

Couldn't get it to play. :-(

skintkingle 2012-08-30 17:48

Did you make sure you had XNA 4.0 installed on your PC? Windows? What version?

davedobson 2012-08-30 22:29

Interesting idea. I found the pace a little too slow for my liking - it might have been cooler to have it real-time with pausing rather than turn-based. The combat was kind of hard to manage - just random shots back and forth - but it would be pretty cool to build up a big army of dudes and go attack. It seems like it might be hard to beat the strategy of just reproducing as much as possible and letting the other guy come to you, but that would be pretty boring. The AI was quite competent (far better at the game than I was). The menus and art were appealing, and the sounds good. Nice work.

creative630 2012-09-02 13:17

Cool game, needs lots of polish but the idea is there.

jarnik 2012-09-02 14:00

Nice concept, took me a moment to get a hang of the drawing path concept. Got stuck a lot when an enemy amoeba got stuck on a map edge, unable to move, thus not ending the AI turn.

brita_ 2012-09-02 15:36

No windows here! So, obviously no XNA framework...

kmad 2012-09-02 18:18

This won't run for me, I've ensured that I've got the XNA framework installed but when I double-click on the exe file nothing happens. Evolution.exe appears in the processes tab of my task manager but the game isn't loading up.

skintkingle 2012-09-02 18:23

That's weird, that's the exact symptoms of not having XNA.. strange. What version did you confirm you had installed? You need 4.0 installed.

tylerthedesigner 2012-09-02 22:53

Your audio is surprisingly loud.

kmad 2012-09-04 20:32

@skintkingle - Sorry for the slow reply. I've checked my control panel and it says that I have both the XNA framework 3.1 and 4.0 installed. I'll try uninstalling 3.1 and reinstalling 4.0 and see if that helps.

kmad 2012-09-04 20:41

@skintkingle - I've tried uninstalling XNA framework 3.1 and reinstalling 4.0 but I'm afraid that hasn't helped. It created the content directory and then does nothing. I've tried the post-compo version and that isn't running for me either. Sorry I could be more help, the game looks cool.

skintkingle 2012-09-04 22:43

@Kmad it created the Content directory? That should already exist. Please make sure you extract everything from the zip file before trying to run. Let me know.

rhaasken 2012-09-05 00:01

I can't play it. I get this when I run it: "Could not find a Direct3D device that supports the XNA Framework HiDef Profile."

I get this error when I develop games with XNA unless I change a setting by right-clicking on the solution in Visual Studio and changing properties (I think), so I don't think I can play your game :(

skintkingle 2012-09-05 06:52

hi Rhaasken, Thanks for reminding me of this. Please try the post compo version, it was compiled for the Reach profile instead. I forgot to change the settings before publishing and then made changes so i feel dirty uploading the reach profile version as the Jam entry as it has after time limit changes.

kmad 2012-09-05 07:25

@skintkingle - Ah okay, for some reason my default zip extraction software wasn't showing the content directory (no idea why, it normally shows directories inside a zip fine) which was very odd. I tried another one and it extracted and ran fine. I thoroughly enjoyed it, got the hang of it quite quickly and I like turn-based games. I wasn't sure whether or not my units were evolving initially - they took a couple of turns to do so but once I knew that mechanic was working then it was fun. Good work.

gabriel 2012-09-13 19:41

I really LOVED this entry! It's very simple, yet fun, intriguing and has an elegant risk versus reward system through the possibility of splitting military units into more workers (a nice twist to the genre) and the rock paper scissor element logic (which combines nicely with the idea of the elements being resources spread through the map).

Here are some things I'd suggest:
-Scrolling doesn't help in this game, maybe it should fit in one screen to enhance the effect of seeing everything moving at the same time?
-Collision boxes could be much smaller, since movement precision isn't supposed to be a core challenge for the game
-Movement speed and walking distance per turn are kinda redundant balancing factors, so I'd accelerate the moving pace of everyone in the game for rhythm's sake, and use only walking distance per turn to balance the units!
-The IA is impressive for a jam game, but still lacking as it seems to completely ignore what I'm doing - and action / reaction is everything in your game's concept! Maybe you could add more enemies and make that a battle against quantity (the classic 'zombie attack' shortcut to IA). :D

Once again, I really loved the several natural risk vs reward game systems, which means a very elegant difficulty design. I truly hope you keep working on this game. Actually, if it's not too much to ask, please let me know in Twitter (@pixel_cows) if you ever make significant improvements on this idea, I'd love to play it! :D

Cheers from Brazil

adhesion 2012-09-14 19:28

Interesting idea but the interface needs to be clearer - there's a period where it seems like you can't do anything but I guess that's when the AI is moving? Length of allowable paths isn't clear either. Something like a map zoom (or a minimap) would be nice as well.