hangarter 2020-04-21 09:45
Interesting graphics but a bit of confusing gameplay. Great job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → The Reef
By jakemchugh1 and miles95
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1586 | 3.33 | 36 | |
| Fun | 2429 | 2.47 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 167 | 3.95 | 36 | |
| Theme | 367 | 4.07 | 37 | |
| Graphics | 886 | 3.85 | 37 | |
| Audio | 858 | 3.38 | 36 | |
| Humor | 2014 | 1.63 | 32 | |
| Mood | 931 | 3.54 | 35 |
Interesting graphics but a bit of confusing gameplay. Great job!
Really interesting idea, I appreciate your investigative work and utilising the prey/predator formulas! :)
I really like the graphics and the mood of your game. I think the interaction rate is a bit off, every time I increase it, the ecosystem dies. Other than that it is a nice simulation (maybe more of a simulation than a game, but that's totally ok!)
very chill
There appears to be no way to exit properly (only alt f4). Did I miss it?
(fyi linux executable works)
Unique idea! I like how you worked the theme into a simulation based on real-world equations. It's also just entertaining to watch.
The idea is very innovative and having a game that uses proper formulae and modelling is really exciting. As an interactive experience, I really enjoyed playing around with the numbers. The graphics are cool as well.
In terms of gameplay, the UI was a little confusing and so was understanding what was happening. I really hoped to have more minute control or see wider scale changes. I understand that this would be really hard to implement, and I think you did a really good job considering the time restrictions. I missed having more events and more things to do.
All that said, a really innovative game from a classical interpretation of the theme. Loved it.
Thanks everyone for the feedback! Long nights and allot of work went into creating this. The purpose is to demonstrate how delicate the environment of the reef can be. It begins stable but as natural disasters occur if gets thrown out of whack and you have to adjust it using the sliders. It is difficult to keep the reef alive, but that was intended.
We originally intended to have a web in browser version, but the graphics that were rendered weren't doing it any justice and didn't best represent the hard work that went into the game, so we elected to remove the in browser version.
I have it on my phone and it runs "swimmingly".
Man, I love this kind of simulation. Runs even on my potato phone! Great work
This game takes me back to biology - a class which I quite enjoyed, especially when it came to learning about marine science. I remember learning about predator and prey relations, but unfortunately a lot of that knowledge has gone down the drain. Even though I'm no longer a marine sciences major, I still am drawn to games and information about it. I appreciate this game's educational drive. It's fun to mess around with the various parameters and see how the ecosystem is affected over time, and I love that you put a graph at the bottom right to indicate that.
I'm not sure if this is a bug, but when I first got a game over, that text stayed at the top permanently when I restarted the simulation and it was behaving to the parameters I adjusted. In one instance, my reef suffered from coral bleaching and the red game over text indicated that for a split second before reverting to the other text that simply mentioned that my ecosystem had crashed.
I also think the graphics could have benefited from making the predators and prey more distinct. The vibrant colours do make the fish stand out, but some of the predators and prey share the same colours and that made it difficult to tell how I was affecting the ecosystem as I could confuse predator and prey - particularly when they were all grouped together or farther away from the screen. That aside, I was impressed by the amount of details that were added to the reef itself, especially with the variety of seastars. It would have been cool if the seastars also played a role as predators, but I suppose that could be for a different simulation.
Regardless, I'm glad to see an entry that has this specific take on the theme be executed so thoughtfully. It really makes me think. :thinking:
Really enjoyed this, was peaceful and made you think about life while playing it. Great atmosphere, would love this as my screen saver :)
Very cool concept, but I found it difficult to tell what exactly is happening. It would be useful to have some cues to fish interaction. Also it would help to have contrasting colors for prey and predators.
@random-storykeeper thank you for the such in depth and valuable feedback! As to the red text, that is a bug and we will have to look into fixing that. We were programming and working on
The predators colors are actually restricted on the color spectrum from blue to green. We didn't want to make them darker colors because we didn't want them viewed as "bad" because predators are necessary for a healthy environment. So we elected to leave them as vibrant colors but restricted as to distinguish. But maybe you are right and we should do something to restrict them to a greater contrast as to distinguish them from the prey.
We also wanted to have a hunting mechanic where the predators actually "hunted" the prey to cull the population to where it was. We had a version implemented but it wasn't working correctly at release and had to cut it for time.
The main menu was going to have a wave shader that showed the surface of the ocean that was working but we ran out of time to implement.
We did want to have more varieties and creatures, such as crabs, clams and octopus but were constricted due to the lack of time.
The environment was going to react to the disasters, as in pollution would change the color of the water, trash would be visible. Coral bleaching was going to drain the color from the coral. Over time if the environment was healthy then more coral would grow.
This took probably 60 out of the 72 hours to make with both of us working. We were programming and then had to build and upload the game with 5 minutes to spare.
I am planning on fixing a few things and posting a post jam version with some of the other features and sounds we wanted to include, so keep an eye out for that. You can follow me on: https://jakemchugh1.itch.io
I do feel that the simulation is still beautiful and robust given the amount of time we had to work with and am proud.
Very interesting work, it was outstanding, different to everything else I've been playing in this LD.
That math is enough to make my brain scream. I'm really glad I got to read through exactly what is going on behind the scenes of this game as it makes the game all that more beautiful.
Out of curiosity, I left the game running without touching any of the bars and the ecosystem thrived for about 5 minutes before I started toying with the bars. I don't know if that is an issue or I'm just very lucky.
The game is extremely relaxing and an excellent take on the theme. So innovative! The concept and science is beyond my intelligence, but even it the most base level the game is just calming and serene. :slight_smile:
@codyhansen thank you for the great feedback! and yes, you were just really really lucky. Every 30 seconds there is a 30 percent chance that there will be a natural disaster.
Interesting game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/hSxuRpvTWAs
@jupiter-hadley thank you so much!