Battle Arena Evolution! by Markavian

[raw]
made by Markavian for LD24 (COMPO)
Battle Arena Evolution, presesnted by mkv25.net games. Ludum Dare 24 Competition Entry - Theme: Evolution.
Entrant: Markavian, aka John Beech. (Release r1)

Produced within 48 hours over the wekend of 26th/27th of August 2012.
Tools

Competion rules - all artwork, sound, and music were created by myself (Markavian) using publically available tools.

Many thanks to the respective authors and companies behind the software:

Music: Audacity, drum beat recorded on cider can.

Sound Effects: Audacity, microphone, my voice, and that cider can.

Graphics: Paint Shop Pro 7, Flash CS5

Compiler / Language: Haxe NME

IDE: FlashDevelop

Operating system: Windows 7

If you have Haxe NME, it should build for cpp and mobile. Exploring those options shortly.

Ratings

Coolness 51% 3
Overall 3.14 280
Audio 3.11 149
Fun 2.82 359
Graphics 3.25 243
Humor 3.50 49
Innovation 2.86 364
Mood 2.79 289
Theme 3.18 260

Feedback

sclark39
27. Aug 2012 路 03:17 UTC
Hilarious sound. Great graphics. The gameplay is kind of boring but I liked the evolution integration. I'm assuming what I evolved in to was related to what I killed (and what then circled the rink).
馃帳 Markavian
27. Aug 2012 路 09:53 UTC
Yeah, that was the idea! The tiles that are marked Head/Mouse/Legs/Torso etc. around the ring are what you evolve into. It's a bit of a lottery though. If I had more time I'd have preferred to have made a screen that gave the player the option what piece of them to evolve based on the totals of what they'd killed, then you could be a bit more strategic about progressing through the levels.
theomnis
27. Aug 2012 路 09:56 UTC
My favorite part was the catghost.
TobiasNL
27. Aug 2012 路 09:58 UTC
The game got dull after a little while, but I really liked the style and as sclark39 said the evolution integration was done nicely. Sounds were awesome :P
aschearer
27. Aug 2012 路 11:05 UTC
Funny game. I liked the art style and chuckled at the sound effects. The gameplay was pretty bland. I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if you made the enemies a bit smarter and gave the player some more options. It also wasn't clear to me why or how I evolved -- could I influence what happened? If each evolution had a unique battle ability that might make the game more interesting.
mariscal
27. Aug 2012 路 11:06 UTC
Nice work man, love the sound effects and the variety of enemies!
zapaman
27. Aug 2012 路 11:10 UTC
Loved the feedback from my punches, how the enemies were knocked back and had that "omg not in the face" expression! Awesome!
turnip
27. Aug 2012 路 15:14 UTC
Lol nice voice over! A solid entry in all areas. Could have done with some variation in the combat, I got bored pretty quickly.
zeh
27. Aug 2012 路 15:17 UTC
The Borgs - contemporary philosophers of the latest 20th century - coined a saying that goes roughly like this (translated from Borgin): "You will be assimilated". This is certainly the doctrine this piece subscribes to, as assimilation of other species is at the very core of the mechanics at play here.

The twist in the anecdote is most apt, though, for assimilation in the fable depicted here is achieved through submission and genocide. It is a sad tale that should teach us well, as the desire for mindless extermination of lesser species is an inflexible property of the less evolved parts of our brains.

Interesting concept. The queue wasn't that obvious at first. Sound effects work well. Would love to see a postmortem with your impressions of NME.
馃帳 Markavian
27. Aug 2012 路 17:15 UTC
Zeh, wow. That's some deep thinking there. I'll do my post mortem later tonight once I've played through a few more entrants :) You're right, the game is really about assimilation, stealing parts of the enemies that you kill.

RE: combat - ashearer, turnip, TobiasNL, I think having a unique ability per creature rather then just a standard hit attack would have made the game much better. Its my first time making a combat style game, and I didn't know how to mix up the action, but that's definitely something I'll look into next time.

Thanks for the great feedback guys!
Porter
27. Aug 2012 路 18:30 UTC
What's there is extremely simple, and doesn't appear to present any challenge, but it's still neat. It took me awhile to understand the markers on the outside, neat mechanic.
JaJ
27. Aug 2012 路 18:33 UTC
It's fun but a bit simple. I also didn't like I had to keep clicking to move.
Lucariatias
27. Aug 2012 路 18:59 UTC
It's a lot of fun to play, mostly due to the blatantly self recorded sounds, though it does get boring reasonably quickly. The implementation of evolution was nice, pretty original seeing as I haven't seen anyone else use similar things so far. The graphics weren't bad, certainly better than normal programmer graphics. Humor can mostly be attributed to the sound effects, if it weren't for them this game wouldn't be anywhere near as good ;P
TheChemist
28. Aug 2012 路 02:58 UTC
Pretty cute but I didn't feel much depth to the combat or evolution other than a natural linear progression.
turkwise
28. Aug 2012 路 04:19 UTC
Slick control scheme.
ButtercupSaiyan
28. Aug 2012 路 23:37 UTC
OH GOD THE SOUNDS. Hahaha!

Love the "Will it blend" style evolution too. If this doesn't get a high humor score, people are out of their minds.
Oreganik
29. Aug 2012 路 03:47 UTC
134 kills! And then my click finger gave out. :(
Andrei Barsan
29. Aug 2012 路 10:20 UTC
The game was fun, but felt a bit too easy. Adding some auxiliary attacks based on what your (for instance) head looks like could increase the variety, maybe.
tomhunt
12. Sep 2012 路 04:32 UTC
difficulty curve seemed a little shallow for an arcade game. otherwise was pretty fun to play.