LudumData

Natural Selection: Travel Agency by lucasncv

[raw]
made by lucasncv for LD24 (COMPO)
A different approach to natural selection. Control the winds and direct a species of birds towards its future. You must escape predators (red birds), collect food and be "naturally" selected to survive. For how long can this branch of birds avoid extinction? Follow your travel agent: nature!

This is my first time participating, the theme was quite a surprise! Shame the idea itself didn't really evolve, the game ended up being very simple.

The game was written in C++ using GLFW, OpenAL and FreeType. All content made with GIMP, BFXR, Autotracker-Bu and Audacity. Vista upwards. You'll probably need the VC2012 redistributable linked above.

Summary: collect food, escape the red birds and get inside the DNA region when it appears.

Windows https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1341831/NSTA.zip
VC2012 Redist http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679
Source https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1341831/NSTA_source.zip
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=10289

Ratings

Coolness 32% 858
Overall 3.00 357
Audio 2.83 221
Fun 2.69 424
Graphics 2.62 475
Humor 3.00 120
Innovation 2.92 341
Theme 3.23 245

Feedback

Rellikiox
27. Aug 2012 · 02:48 UTC
The captions really did it for me :D
Ninja
27. Aug 2012 · 02:51 UTC
This game was rather confusing to me, but I did manage to live for 3000 years!
Vordux
27. Aug 2012 · 16:42 UTC
Pretty cool, didn't get the intuition of the controls until I played it for a bit.

Pretty nice overall, played it for a bit and enjoyed it the whole time.
Khayet
27. Aug 2012 · 17:09 UTC
Pretty cool, the captions are funny. ^^
Controls could have been more intuitive.
shinD
27. Aug 2012 · 17:56 UTC
A bit unintuitive at first, needs a bit of explanation to get the hang of it! A bit simple, but overall enjoyable.
sPe
27. Aug 2012 · 21:22 UTC
Well first played, then read the inscriptions here and then played again.

Couldn't find a way to prevent extinction through game mechanics. Apparently eating, going to islands and avoiding predators is not enough, or I wasn't good enough at that :). But managed to survive at least 8000 years, guess that's ok.
The relaxed background music somehow fits the game. Feels like vacation..
🎤 lucasncv
28. Aug 2012 · 01:33 UTC
I've never managed to go beyond 8000 years! I feel like the flock never really increases in size. It was quite a challenge to reach this unbalanced state, can you believe it? Gonna try harder next LD!
mes
29. Aug 2012 · 05:08 UTC
Hey, I installed visual c 2012, ran it, got MSVCP110.dll is missing. I'm using win 7 64.

It seems it worked for other people so maybe its on my end?

Anyway, sound's interesting and I'll come back and rate if I can get it to work.
🎤 lucasncv
29. Aug 2012 · 11:14 UTC
Well that's weird since the redist includes that. Did you get the right version? What's your OS?
🎤 lucasncv
29. Aug 2012 · 11:17 UTC
Oh sorry, you said win 7! Try getting the x86 version if you installed the x64.
scoots
30. Aug 2012 · 13:36 UTC
Downloaded the binaries but the window just closes for some reason right away on Windows 8. The process stays open and I can hear some beeps.
Josh @ Dreamland
01. Sep 2012 · 20:02 UTC
Fails to run in WINE, unfortunately. Looked pretty cool.
Andrew
03. Sep 2012 · 20:16 UTC
Seems I'm missing MSVCP110.dll
metadept
10. Sep 2012 · 14:50 UTC
Very solid all-around entry. My only complaint is that it took me a little while to figure out the discrepancy between the screen wrapping and the DNA areas; went extinct several times by flying past the goal. If the map scrolled and you could explore islands and continents, with a little bit of species progression, I could play this for a very long time.

NOTE: If you get the missing dll error, install the x86 version of the runtime instead of the x64 as the author suggested.