Evolution of a monster by eld

[raw]
made by eld for LD24 (COMPO)
A short adventure about a monster that has evolved beyond its regular monsterings.


If completely stuck use the walkthrough:


http://www.eldpack.com/ld24/walkthrough.html

Ratings

Coolness 24% 957
Overall 3.44 137
Audio 3.53 50
Fun 2.71 412
Graphics 4.40 14
Humor 2.03 391
Innovation 2.80 392
Mood 4.08 10
Theme 2.52 519

Feedback

DustyStylus
26. Aug 2012 路 23:51 UTC
Gorgeous! Getting an Ultima Underworld feel from this. Look forward to trying this out tomorrow with a fresh mind.
Porpentine
27. Aug 2012 路 01:20 UTC
I like the aesthetic--not sure how to get past the initial area. I found the key but getting it to interact with the lock seems beyond me.
whilefun
27. Aug 2012 路 01:25 UTC
This looks amazing! But I cannot get the key to work in the lock :( It falls behind the door and is gone. The ambient sound is great too.
馃帳 eld
27. Aug 2012 路 06:50 UTC
Hint: Keep feeding the young ones!, the key does not unlock the door :)
Orni
27. Aug 2012 路 10:25 UTC
I absolutely love the graphic style - don't be offended if I kinda copy it for the next LD ;)
(although not necessarilyblack&white)

I fed the slime blobs with all I could and also found the key but sadly couldn't open the door or progress further by any means
amidos2006
27. Aug 2012 路 11:06 UTC
Couldn't open the door but the graphics is amazing :)
馃帳 eld
27. Aug 2012 路 13:54 UTC
Added a walkthrough up in the description for those that got stuck :P
Sestren
27. Aug 2012 路 14:16 UTC
The game feels far too short, but the graphical style is excellent (side note: your Minecraft texture pack is my favorite) and the sound is nice. The thing about the first key was a little confusing at first, but I eventually got it.
pereubu
27. Aug 2012 路 14:21 UTC
I ... what can i say ... I absolutely loved your game. The feedbacks are pure genius for a game with no instruction, the graphics are absolutely brilliant, the theme is incredibely well used, there's no doubt we'll see you at the top of this LD from my point of view.

Thanks ...
madflame991
27. Aug 2012 路 14:23 UTC
I really enjoyed playing your game. The artwork is wonderful and reminded me a bit of Minecraft (for a second there I actually believed Notch was back to making LD games)However, I could really appreciate a walkthrough as I got stuck after feeding the blobs a couple of times.
(btw, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be a mirror, not a key..as it shines..but still have no idea where or how to use it)
Cell
27. Aug 2012 路 18:45 UTC
Cool, a bit clunky to move around tho :)
MattHartley
27. Aug 2012 路 19:04 UTC
Couldn't get the gate open with the key, but other wise great game
NostraDamon
27. Aug 2012 路 19:06 UTC
I loved it! Great room escape.
However, I found a bug: holding an object while looking at the floor make your character fly!
GlittenMoss
27. Aug 2012 路 19:08 UTC
This is completely and totally great! Love it.
Jeremias
27. Aug 2012 路 20:11 UTC
Great visual style and music. Makes a dense atmosphere. The controls are a bit uncomfortable - sometimes you stuck on items or levelparts on the ground.

[Spoiler]

Another bug is, that items fall through the ground and disappear, which makes it impossible to feed the blobs. Using the key in the bottle for opening the chest and not the door, is a bit confusing. I played it 5 times and only in the last run, the chest dropped the key for the main door.

I hope you make a post-compo-version with one or two more levels (and less bugs) :D really like the concept.
Vennril
27. Aug 2012 路 21:17 UTC
I am stunned how much atmosphere you were able to fit into a small game like this. Very well done!
You should make a full game out of this :)
Jiggawatt
28. Aug 2012 路 11:20 UTC
Great ambience & presentation. But I did get the feeling of "that's it?" after I opened the gate. Would make for a neat intro sequence to teach the basic interaction in a larger game, but that'd need more direction (didn't know you could break bottles without looking at the walkthrough).
ekunminnowbash
28. Aug 2012 路 13:09 UTC
Solid! Mood visuals were great
bushmango
28. Aug 2012 路 16:24 UTC
Cute game, really short. I guess I thought I'd be evolving the kids so that they would help me escape. Some color would have helped tell objects apart.
Oreganik
29. Aug 2012 路 00:25 UTC
Great mood. Really good sense of... well... being a scary blobby thing! =D I kept expecting adventurers to be tossed in the pit, with the ol' Wilhelm scream...
jijaweb
29. Aug 2012 路 11:16 UTC
Cool. The graphics reminds me of Shadowgate.
r3d5
29. Aug 2012 路 18:02 UTC
Very well made. The simplicity and length will serve as a reminder for me on my next game jam. Thanks for making it, I had fun!
馃帳 eld
30. Aug 2012 路 07:44 UTC
Great feedback everyone!

There's a lot of problems I had with this entry that has surfaced in terms of bad hints, little content and broken physics.

I'll write about all this in a post-mortem and then I'm going to plan some work for a longer extended version with some more rooms and a much more consistant puzzle-logic.
Ragzouken
30. Aug 2012 路 14:27 UTC
Looks and sounds beautiful :)
ned366
31. Aug 2012 路 03:17 UTC
cool art style and interesting puzzle! good job!
Accidental Rebel
01. Sep 2012 路 03:24 UTC
Love the atmosphere and ambience! My mind was able to create a backstory for the game even without any texts or dialogues to supplement it. I can see why you did not include instructions, being a prisoner, you have nothing else to do but to figure stuff out yourself. I love it.
Evil Cult
04. Sep 2012 路 08:35 UTC
Great graphics and the music is very nice. I found that the gameplay was not really intuitive and I got stuck on my first run-through by putting the first key behind the gate. Very nice mood/tone though, good work!
Desi Quintans
08. Sep 2012 路 21:33 UTC
Awesome art direction. What did you use to animate the sprites?
plule
08. Sep 2012 路 22:46 UTC
Rich and creepy. Just the way I like it.

Awesome graphics. Awesome creepy mood. Congrats.
Maxium
09. Sep 2012 路 04:53 UTC
Loved it. The graphics were great. Reminded me of my ld entry's art,but wonderfully done!
darkshadow
09. Sep 2012 路 19:46 UTC
Your map has a lot more shape to it than most of the 3D unity games. The graphics are great and the room looks like a dungeon. The only problem with the game I was a bit unclear what to do, I didn't realise at first you could pick up objects as they seemed to dissapear if you clicked on them, I later learn that if you click and hold you can move them, but if you look down at the floor they can dissapear underneath it.
Pierrec
09. Sep 2012 路 20:01 UTC
At first, I lost all my items inside the ground, and it was difficult to figure what was what. I love the black and white graphics, the blop animation and the ending music, but I was expecting the babies to evolve.
Had to use the walkthrough.
I would like to see this game improved, with more lenght.
Andrew
09. Sep 2012 路 21:41 UTC
The song is absolutely lovely. I don't quite understand how evolution plays in though.
hamster_mk_4
09. Sep 2012 路 22:29 UTC
I had to resort to the walk through. It would have been helpful to know I was playing the roll of the blob's mother/care taker when the game started.
kato9
09. Sep 2012 路 22:32 UTC
Nice graphics and mood, but I found the puzzles here to be pretty random.
Dracir
10. Sep 2012 路 00:30 UTC
I love the ambiance graphics and sound. :)
Jezzamon
10. Sep 2012 路 07:40 UTC
Yeah, not too bad, it's a bit confusing having two different keys, and also that you can lose the key out the door, as mentioned.

My mouse got trapped at the end though... XD
Maple
11. Sep 2012 路 11:51 UTC
I really wanted to see the end of this game, but that proved a little hard. I did have to peek at the walkthrough, but for good measure; On my first 2 plays, no key came out of the chest when I opened it. I tried not feeding the blobs unless I had to, instead of feeding the blobs before doing anything else, and I guess that somehow allowed the key to come out of the chest when it opened. I must admit, the tune emitting from the mirror didn't particularly appeal to me, but the full tune on the ending was definitely worth the hassle.

I like this tune! The transition between the mirror tune, and the full fledged tune, makes me think about playing a song on the ocarina compared to the cut-scene with the fully fledged version of the tune, in Zelda. I would give you a 5 for audio (I'm very strict with my 5s, so you know I liked it), but the audio throughout the rest of the game didn't hold up, so I have to give you a 4. If there were puddle-splash-footstep noises when walking in the water, and during the game before playing the mirror, the air noise was more whistly and had evident whistles (contrast in noise arks), and then after playing the mirror, you had that full track softly weaving in and out of the whistly air (only enough to give a taste; the whistles in the air would overpower it and completely drown out the sound during the deeper sways in the whistles of the air), and then have the ending audio you have now, I would have straight-out given your audio a 5, and probably added a star to mood.

To comment about the game itself, and not the music/audio: visually, I liked it. The movement felt a little stunted because you'd slow down a lot when walking over stuff, but otherwise it was nice enough, though feeding the blob didn't really make too much sense in the scheme of things, but this is a nice entry indeed.
Maple
11. Sep 2012 路 11:53 UTC
Wow, I didn't think I typed that much, lol. Good job.
Jorjon
11. Sep 2012 路 17:28 UTC
Nice visuals :) But what's in for evolution beside the title?
馃帳 eld
12. Sep 2012 路 14:18 UTC
Maple, I love long posts! :D, I think I had some more stuff in mind for the whole mirror and theme with it, earlier I wasn't going to show as much of the player being a monster but hint on it.

The mirror was a sort of a thing giving the monster self-realization as it examined the different things the townsfolk would throw down the trash, and eventually lead to it going beyond its natural instincts.

Something that wasn't as apparent as I should've made it was that you actually become bigger and more able to do things as the "days" pass, and eventually giving you the ability to reach the bottles (Unless you were one of those figuring out how to knock them down with something else)

I'm not sure why the key wont spawn from the chest as it should every time you use the first key on it, it's entirely possible it is bounced outside the world or pops out behind it.



Jorjon, the monster evolves, but the theme isn't as strong as I would've wanted it to :P
SamoojaMies
12. Sep 2012 路 15:38 UTC
I like the graphical style. Gameplay had some problems. Was awkward to climb to the bottles and I couldn't use the key I got from the chest.
pardue
16. Sep 2012 路 06:26 UTC
Nice game, loved the graphics... :)