FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → The Next Generation (Conway's Game of Life Puzzles)

The Next Generation (Conway's Game of Life Puzzles)

By kevinworkman

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5083.4431
Fun5033.3131
Innovation2213.6931
Theme6043.5831
Graphics9432.6331
Humor7972.0721
Mood8442.7625

Comments

fussenkuh 2020-04-20 03:54

Game of Life. Keep it Alive. Could there be a better idea for the theme?!? I really love this kind of puzzle game. I could see myself playing something like this on my phone to pass the time. Great work!

zwodahs 2020-04-20 04:03

Got to say... without the hint, I will never win lol .... Nice twist of the game of life

evolving 2020-04-20 04:04

Realy good puzzle game concept! I hope you'll continue creating something like this

owl-skip 2020-04-20 06:33

Nice work, enjoyed playing it. Game of Life is an excellent choice.

jonah 2020-04-20 06:53

very challenging puzzles! Thanks to your game I learned some new things about game of life, thanks!

It would have been cool to be able to use my keyboard/ OR buttons on the screen, to move all the cells in one direction. and I really would like to know the solution to level 10 haha!

👍

martiansteve 2020-04-24 09:43

Nice, I was considering doing something inspired by the game of life myself. The hints were definitely needed in my case, I found it very hard to visualise past one generation, but it was fun.

penguinbob 2020-04-24 13:09

Nice difficult puzzle! One of the better puzzle game. The game would be a fun mobile game if it were easier(I think the game should start out easier). Good job! Keep it up!

n8 2020-04-24 13:12

This was a good head scratcher. Forced you to work backwards. I don't know that the theme was the strongest but the game was something I could play a lot on a phone/browser and kill my work productivity.

kiddy 2020-04-24 14:18

This is a great puzzle game to keep this mathematician alive ;)

sheepolution 2020-04-25 09:58

I thought I would be quite good at this but I must admit that I couldn't get past level 4. Nice idea!

kevinworkman 2020-04-25 20:26

@jonah Thank you for playing! If you made it to level 10, that's really impressive. If you're curious, here are the solutions to all of the levels: https://imgur.com/a/lTWsTRU

kevinworkman 2020-04-25 20:27

@sheepolution Thank you for playing! If you're curious, here are the solutions to all of the levels: https://imgur.com/a/lTWsTRU

szieberth-adam 2020-04-25 22:30

Also a Game of Life entry maker. Very nice puzzler you made of it, and it is surprisingly hard!

selftitled 2020-04-26 08:38

I'm shock how hard I found it to work the game of life rules in reverse in my head. Nice idea, and great tribute to the man. You might want to explicitly define when cells die though, if players arn't familiar with game of life they may miss that.

kleinzach 2020-04-26 18:08

Cool concept. It takes so much thought to figure out the puzzles, so its a good thing that you keep the grid size small!

baturinsky 2020-04-26 18:34

I have counted five Game of Life inspired games on LD46, including mine. And each one is different and interesting in it's own way.

You puzzle is interesting, though a bit too hard for me - I got stuck on 4th. I figured the next-to last step, but not the first one.

You have a small field, instead of effectively infinite one, so most real GOL patters do not work there. Which is not necessarily bad, I guess, but was a minor annoyance for me.

I also liked that you use unusual "hosting" for you game. I also initially considered to just put my game on codepen:)

baturinsky 2020-04-26 18:36

@kevinworkman Thanks, I was sure that 4th need to have symmetrical solution, and I think tried them all in vain.

kevinworkman 2020-04-26 21:02

If anybody is looking for other Game of Life games, check out [this entry](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/cellular-automata) by @baturinsky. So good!

despdair 2020-04-26 23:46

You should give hints after 2-3 tries, giving them at first error can lead behaviors like "I will get a hint so just press random cells to solve it with hint" Cool try though and brain cracking

demandooda 2020-05-12 05:35

Very fun, very challenging, great tribute to John Conway. I'm not smart enough to go past level five, but I'm sure it's possible. I think that normal people may have trouble predicting after 1 generation, though. Really smooth, really well executed. Nice job!

2022-09-07 09:29

Life is a very complicated thing, our whole life is like a huge [puzzle for adults](https://journeyofsomething.com/collections/1000-piece-puzzles), where difficult problems constantly appear and we have to solve them. For me, games are something that can make my life easier and save me from some problems. I love various games and constantly play them with friends, thereby forgetting about some problems that I can forget about and not solve them. I will definitely play your game, because it sounds very interesting. I grew up on various games like checkers, chess, backgammon, charades, crosswords and so on. Therefore, this game seems to me very familiar and so native. Thank you for your efforts, good luck!