Rise of the Meebas by Jimjam
Rise of the Meebas is my puzzle-platformer/sadistic torture app for LD#24 - Evolution.
Guide the Meebas through the caves and as they evolve, they will be able to take on increasingly difficult challenges! To pass each level, you'll need to find the exit and get one Meeba through.
Keys:
*Walking, jumping and flying controls are only available when the Meebas have evolved legs and/or wings
*Use the mouse to select and deselect Meebas. Click away from one to deselect. When nothing is selected, you can pan around with the arrow keys or WASD
*Roll, run and fly around with the left and right arrow keys (or A and D)
*Hold space to power up a jump, and let go to jump
*Hold space to fly
Other notes:
- I'm aware that the Meeba jumping is very laggy and a little broken, so apologies for that! Hopefully I'll get it sorted in a future release.
- Explanation for level 2: it's not broken :) You have to pan around with the camera to find an exit, then look for a second hive.
Guide the Meebas through the caves and as they evolve, they will be able to take on increasingly difficult challenges! To pass each level, you'll need to find the exit and get one Meeba through.
Keys:
*Walking, jumping and flying controls are only available when the Meebas have evolved legs and/or wings
*Use the mouse to select and deselect Meebas. Click away from one to deselect. When nothing is selected, you can pan around with the arrow keys or WASD
*Roll, run and fly around with the left and right arrow keys (or A and D)
*Hold space to power up a jump, and let go to jump
*Hold space to fly
Other notes:
- I'm aware that the Meeba jumping is very laggy and a little broken, so apologies for that! Hopefully I'll get it sorted in a future release.
- Explanation for level 2: it's not broken :) You have to pan around with the camera to find an exit, then look for a second hive.
Ratings
| Coolness | 73% | 3 |
| Overall | 2.86 | 434 |
| Audio | 2.77 | 242 |
| Fun | 2.33 | 576 |
| Graphics | 3.61 | 135 |
| Humor | 2.43 | 251 |
| Innovation | 3.03 | 301 |
| Mood | 2.94 | 223 |
| Theme | 3.53 | 132 |
The main audio loop is a bit annoying after some time. The sound and atmosphere you were going for was achieved though, so no worries.
Overall, cool concept and gameplay!
You should make the level's border clearer, so the player isn't forced to scroll somewhere around until he finds a black screen. Additionally a zooming-out-functionality would be nice. I think that's the part which "breaks" the gameplay for the other guys. The camera is too close to the level.
Good job on audio and graphics!
I beat the game :)
Jeremias, I think you've nailed some of the fundamental changes that have to be made, so thanks for pointing them out. I'd made a note of some of them, but I think what you suggested would really help. Ta!
It was difficult for me to understand what to actually do in the game though :)
Looking forward to play a post-compo version. Good job!
graphics are good.
didn't have enough patience to play it all.
no restart button.
was a durability bar really needed?
Thanks to you all for playing!
This game would have great mood if the music suited it a little better.
As for the gameplay, I see what you were going for and I had some fun beating it. However, there isn't strategy or puzzle solving with the game as it is. There's a little, though, which is great!.
*SPOILERS(?)*
For instance, when you need to evolve legs the first time, if you just run each one to the exit, they die. That's fine; it's a challenge and you need to overcome it. If you just shimmy each one back and forth though, you'll evolve legs faster and can beat the level. The problem here is that it doesn't "seem" like I solved a puzzle; it seems like I found a bug and had to take advantage of it to move on. For what reason (in the game-universe) would shimmying be better than running?
I like the later levels where you need to figure out in which order you will kill your meeba's off, but the game quickly becomes a one-trick-pony in the problem solving department. Maybe there could be more possibilities if you had to do more than just reach the end. Like, one Meeba has to bring a key to another before dying, the other opens the door remotely but dies before another Meeba can actually go through. Maybe you could greatly improve the controls and play up a platforming aspect, too. I'm just thinking out-loud, here.
Anyways, it's a really cool, innovative mechanic where you have to kill off some of your creatures to reach the end of the level, and I can kind of see the theme connection. I hope you keep working on this!
I definitely felt creatively bankrupt with the puzzles in the end, but as you've suggested, there is the start of something cool there, and it was because of that that I carried on with the idea.
The one-trick pony thing is particularly true, especially with having the Meebas fall to develop wings. Obviously this started as a means to forcibly (although kinda boringly) show the player *how* to develop wings, but unfortunately the puzzles never really got to a point any more sophisticated than that. Same with the legs one - there's too little direction - and though you can't really not develop the legs, there's nothing guiding you there. There was always this great puzzly idea on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't give myself enough time to flesh it out in the beginning, which is a pity.
Anyway, I like these ideas. I'll work on it some more tonight. Probably with the dangerous intention of letting the gameplay come about as I go in a freeform way. But heck, this is Ludum Dare, and when else can one be totally experimental?