FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Life Alive

Life Alive

By claytonrumley

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4273.8522
Fun6233.6222
Innovation284.3222
Theme304.4222
Graphics19952.9222
Audio12053.0520
Humor18182.2518
Mood18912.9719

Comments

devparty 2020-04-21 00:55

great game! My highScore is 51. I wish that I could download it to play it more! Keep it up!

tri11paragon 2020-04-21 00:59

wow thats pretty neat and innovative!

blake-freer 2020-04-21 01:11

really enjoyed this game. never seen anything like it and it fits the theme perfectly

mmason 2020-04-21 01:47

I love Conways game of life, this is a very clever adaptation of it

kara 2020-04-21 10:22

Truly innovative and good adaptation of the game of life. Coincidentally I chose the same inspiration for this jam!

thebreakfast 2020-04-23 00:06

Really innovative. Having working online multiplayer is a huge accomplishment for a game jam. Great work!

graebor 2020-04-23 03:35

Congrats on your first LD submission! Your twist on Life is cool and comes across well even with "simple" visuals :)

mattwoelk 2020-04-24 04:02

Makes a networked multiplayer game in a weekend ... how!?! :) Well done.

junebug 2020-04-25 04:42

Great work! Having the extra mechanic of needing energy to keep players moving is a good addition to the game of life formula. It runs out quick enough that you need to keep looking for it, but not so quick that one or two unlucky generations makes you lose right away, so good job for striking a good balance there. I appreciate that they always spawn somewhere safe for the player so you don't get baited into letting yourself die by the game of life rules.

tesseract 2020-05-08 23:13

Loved it. I'd like to see how it plays out with many players at once.

staircase27a 2020-05-11 14:47

Really unique and interesting game! Only one other person on when I was on but can imagine it would feel quite different depending on how many people were online at the same time.

Hmm also just managed to get a weird glitch where I had a large object in front of my view and so couldn't actually tell what blocks there were around me. Moving seemed to cause the object to move in and out of view but not in any simple way.

fabula-rasa 2020-05-11 14:51

Interesting concept - I saw some games based on the Game of Life this jam but this is the first multiplayer one.

The graphics are indeed very basic but they are informative. Although I once spawned in a completely empty area and died before I even saw any other cell. And I was moving but with no other cells as a reference point, I wasn't even sure if I am moving at all. What I am getting at is that maybe some simple move animation would be nice (like jumping delicately up and down).

I felt like the sounds are somewhat too loud in comparison to the background music. But soundscape was well-created otherwise. Well done overall!

Here is my lonely board.

Screenshot_5.png

zondarg 2020-05-12 16:30

Nice interpretation of the theme, and a really interesting twist on the game of life. Found it sometimes hard to find the next power jolt (and died on the way) - it would be better to have some kind of movement indicator when crossing the empty fields, otherwise it is not obvious a movement takes place at all. Good work! :thumbsup:

claytonrumley 2020-05-12 16:54

@fabula-rasa Thanks for the feedback! One of the things I didn't build into the server was a "reset after X generations" feature so I need to manually restart it every few hours to reset the game board (it didn't come up in testing naturally as I was restarting the server every 2 minutes :P). Thus the board can get empty if I forget for a day or so.

You have a great username, btw!

sinci1 2020-05-12 17:35

I don't really understand Conway's game of life, so this game on a personal level didn't really click with me, but I have to say even though as a player it didn't click for me, as a dev I have to say this gmae is really polished, first of all I love how it's multiplayer, I mean it's difficult making a multiplayer game already, but making a multiplayer game for a jam is amazing! not to mention some of the other polished elements, such as allowing the player to watch what's unfolding from a bird eye's view. Or how when the player moves it plays a sound effect. Stuff like that makes this game a nice expirience, even if you're not familar with Conway's game of life :)

monkeydvrus 2020-05-12 18:51

Great game. I love it. The background music goes well with the game. Great idea for multiplayer.

claytonrumley 2020-05-12 19:22

@monkeyDvrus thanks! Assuming your name was "monkey" I think I briefly ran past you in the game! :)

monkeydvrus 2020-05-12 19:48

@claytonrumley Exactly, that was me. I had my doubts too when I saw you passing by... :grin:

claytonrumley 2020-05-22 05:34

Updates since the end of the jam:

Version 0.9.1 - Fixed server to regenerate the board after 300 generations (so the board doesn't die out completely over time) - Added transition between moves so you can easily see what direction you're moving in - Added small death melody - Fixed issue where unnamed players were showing empty string instead of "Guest" in event log - Fixed bird's eye view camera orientation (it was upside-down) - Fixed issue when connecting and simply watching bird's eye view without first joining the game - Lowered the sound effects volume - Added version number to splash screen

Thank you to everyone who played, ranked, and commented on this game! It was great fun!