Evolutionary Designer by FrozenCow

[raw]
made by FrozenCow for LD24 (COMPO)
Tutorial is highly recommended! Chrome or Firefox highly recommended!

Mixes World of Goo with Qwop by allowing you to design your own organisms and control them to get to the end of 6 levels.

Controls are explained in the tutorial, but to summarize:
Space: switch between designer- and play-mode

In designer-mode:
Drag left mouse on blob: create muscle/blob
Drag middle mouse on blob: drag blob around
Right mouse: remove muscle/blob
Hovering on a muscle and pressing any key will bind the key to the muscle

In play-mode:
R: resets the level
Any key you have bound to muscles for movement (numeric, alphabetic and arrow keys)


You can also share your creatures with others when you press escape in designer-mode.

If you can't figure out a level, you can watch my playthrough for some inspiration (contains spoilers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq9deX4v7Ss

Ratings

Coolness 63% 3
Overall 3.89 22
Audio 2.17 454
Fun 3.50 79
Graphics 3.83 88
Humor 2.62 201
Innovation 4.17 7
Mood 2.70 335
Theme 3.39 190

Feedback

panzermancer
27. Aug 2012 路 05:07 UTC
Pretty fun to mess with, even if most of my designs just end up tangling themselves up in a ball.
31eee384
27. Aug 2012 路 05:08 UTC
Wow. Beautiful game, seems very polished.

I do think the simulation is a little hard to control--it is kind of the point of QWOP, but it makes it really difficult to design and control things. Dragging the blob creature (for example, to right it) feels very slow. The muscles did feel very gooey, though, which felt nice.

With regard to difficulty, I think it is hard to balance a game like this, and while I can offer criticism I can't really blame you for the 48 hours you had. For every level up to the one with the ledge, I simply used a triangle-creature, as it was easy to control and got the job done. When I got to the ledge, I felt under-prepared, and couldn't pull it off. I like to think that I'm a spacial thinker, but it was beyond me how to move something big over to the right when I had previously only used a triangle. Perhaps allowing freer level flow would have helped, letting me try out complex designs on my own within environments.

Overall, though, it looks awesome, and I really like the concept and theme matching.
Sanguine
27. Aug 2012 路 09:10 UTC
I really enjoyed it! I liked messing around with it and trying to beat my highscore! The level with the ledge was too hard for my mind to comprehend though :P
Matt Rix
27. Aug 2012 路 14:45 UTC
This is really cool. Uphill is tricky!
馃帳 FrozenCow
27. Aug 2012 路 14:58 UTC
Here are some fun creatures I've found during development:
Big: http://pastebin.com/E6SLvaGr
Wheel: http://pastebin.com/0qC2VKiK
Walker: http://pastebin.com/5DPMZye5
Simple walker: http://pastebin.com/rhGRH2rU
My Milked Eek
27. Aug 2012 路 15:22 UTC
Awesome, had some good laughs.
My Milked Eek
27. Aug 2012 路 15:25 UTC
One issue though: you can bind the 'R' key to a muscle, but that's the reset button. Nothing game-breaking but an oversight.
My Milked Eek
27. Aug 2012 路 15:26 UTC
Used the wrong box to comment, apparently scores only save with the top comment box.
馃帳 FrozenCow
27. Aug 2012 路 22:40 UTC
@31eee384, Thanks for the helpful comments. I think the gravity is a bit too low and the velocity-damping too. I'll play a bit with these values the coming week.
With regards to the levels, yes, I tried to 'force' the player to change their design a few times, but for small creatures, yes, the last one is the only time you need to change it. Maybe bridging a small gap might force the player to create bigger creatures.
@My Milked Eek, yes I should fix that, escape also binds to muscle.
For anyone who can't figure out a level, I recorded a playthrough with one possible solution for each level: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq9deX4v7Ss
Barry Abrams
28. Aug 2012 路 13:05 UTC
Hmm... can't get past the main menu.
tomsik68
28. Aug 2012 路 13:07 UTC
Great game. It's really fun messing up with those blobs.
馃帳 FrozenCow
28. Aug 2012 路 14:29 UTC
@Barry Adrams, what browser were you using? Have you tried Chrome or Firefox?
kirbytails7
28. Aug 2012 路 15:27 UTC
Very cool! I just used a triangle for most of it...
SaintHeiser
29. Aug 2012 路 00:30 UTC
Good game! I like the game mechanic. There are a lot of fun!
Jack
29. Aug 2012 路 07:18 UTC
I made a blob that glitched the physics and slid along on its own xD great game though, shame that you didn't really need to evolve for most of it :/ I'm sure that could be fixed with added mechanics like wheels and such
matheod
30. Aug 2012 路 16:13 UTC
Wow amazing game and idea ! I love it !
Just upset when all blob at are ground blocking any deplacement and forcing us to restart.
dwrensha
30. Aug 2012 路 22:38 UTC
Beautiful. Thank you making this.

btw, I kept getting stuck in design mode, on Chrome on a Mac.
馃帳 FrozenCow
30. Aug 2012 路 23:38 UTC
I will make the creature reset back to its original position when switching from controlmode to designmode. I hope I'll get some time coming week. Also been looking at highscores for the finish-times.
brita_
04. Sep 2012 路 11:34 UTC
great!
Kmad
09. Sep 2012 路 12:58 UTC
Very original mechanic and fun too.
Pierrec
14. Sep 2012 路 17:45 UTC
Very clever idea, and highly polished! Impressive! (doesn't work well on firefox, but works on Whrome)
My only question is : Why did you used World of Goo graphical design ? You could have created your own design to give your game more personnality.
hamster_mk_4
16. Sep 2012 路 16:36 UTC
While using firefox 15.0.1, my mouse buttons do not process in edit mode. The tutorial was fun and I liked the concept.
pardue
16. Sep 2012 路 17:28 UTC
Awesome concept...
Cthulhu
17. Sep 2012 路 21:10 UTC
Very polished!

I so bad at finding effective combinations :D

Great job!