FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Life

Life

By esenti

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall8233.0723
Fun7353.0223
Innovation3343.5223
Theme9493.0023
Graphics8022.9723
Humor8261.9719
Mood9132.6021

Comments

tesseract 2020-04-22 23:02

I also made a game-of-life based game, but went in a different direction.

I really like what you did here, it makes very nice use of game of life patterns.

somniac 2020-04-25 04:52

Good idea to make a game about game of life automata. Small game but what's there is perfect.

teo-miklethun 2020-04-27 22:12

I love the idea of making a game where the mechanics are emergent from the game of life. I also made a game of life based game.

szieberth-adam 2020-05-02 21:12

Haha, we Life game makers do gather at the theme. I like your game. I had something similar in my mind as future directions of my game.

saleh-elhalaby 2020-05-06 23:33

I really liked the moving animations of the game! :)

mykola 2020-05-07 18:41

Original idea, I would really like to see how you develop it further to add more game elements. The idea to base game mechanics of game of life rules is really good.

jojo-the-clown 2020-05-07 18:54

Dope, fun little game. Movement is solid, timing seems fine. Overall, for what it is, good job mate.

esenti 2020-05-07 19:11

Thanks for all the feedback!

@tesseract @teo-miklethun @szieberth-adam it's fascinating to see so many great and different entries based on the same simple idea! I think it gives this theme a nice twist - in a way of keeping Conways's legacy alive.

matt-burton 2020-05-07 19:12

Reminded me of a mix of Galaga, Asteroids, and Pitfall. I quite enjoyed playing. Nice work!

weeping-rupee 2020-05-07 22:30

LOVE IT.

Also, I played it on my stream and the VOD is here if you want to check it out:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614265642

retrome 2020-05-08 17:13

Cool usage of cellular automaton! Game needs easier way to restart than refreshing page :)

the-missing-bracket 2020-05-08 17:27

there's a unique charm in simple games like this

lcstark 2020-05-09 09:56

I love the idea of using Game of Life as part of your mechanics. Overall I liked it, though I wish there was some sort of a challenge here.

An idea I had is to use colours to determine block threat - enemies and their projectiles are red, your shots / spaceships are blue. When you generate a new block in the next generation, you set its color to the average color of its neighbours. You must shoot the red block to either make them disappear or to turn their color as much towards the blue as you can. If red blocks touch the bottom of the screen, they damage you. Blue ones would simply disappear.

dan-thompson 2020-05-09 15:38

Cool concept! I found it difficult to really strategize, and it felt like sometimes a chain reaction of "explosions" would work its way to the bottom of the screen and there wasn't much I could do to mitigate it. But damn if it wasn't fun to fire off a bunch of shots and watch all the chain reactions happen!

doot 2020-05-09 15:58

Great job! I saw several games based on the game of life, and the concept here is one of my favorites.

I feel the player might have a bit too much life, I deliberately tried to die and it took me a lot of time!

Thanks for the game.

pusheeneiro 2020-05-09 16:26

I like this idea.

esenti 2020-05-10 22:58

Thank you!

@saleh-elhalaby I guess all the credit for the animations goes to Mr Conway himself ;)

@weeping-rupee thank you for that, it's absolutely fantastic to watch someone play and enjoy my game. As for being familiar with the mechanics — the LifeWiki was really helpful when making this, eg. here's a list of all currently discoverd spaceships: https://www.conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Spaceship. In terms of preventing chaos, the only alteration I've made to the rules is the "garbage collection" of stable patterns that you've noticed. By the way, I would love to see your take on Game of Life that you've mentioned on the stream!

@lcstark I like the colours idea, need to try that!

patrikherman 2020-05-12 21:29

This is my first ever LD comment, because I just had to say this is such an excellent game, well done!

joe40001 2020-05-12 21:37

Innovative idea. Rip John Conway