Life is Pietzsche by Rave Radbury

[raw]
made by Rave Radbury for LD24 (COMPO)
A commentary on some of the faulty assumptions that are made in evolutionary theory, Life is Pietzsche uses Nietzsche's criticisms of Darwinism as core concepts.

Witness the inevitable demise of the strongest.

There's an important lesson at the end.

Best experienced in Google Chrome

My first Ludum Dare entry, made with Construct 2

Ratings

Coolness 35% 816
Overall 2.70 526
Audio 2.47 351
Fun 2.55 500
Graphics 2.40 560
Humor 2.62 201
Innovation 2.80 392
Mood 2.67 352
Theme 3.05 313

Feedback

jplur
27. Aug 2012 路 13:39 UTC
Couldn't get past the second level. Maybe that was Neitzsche's doing?
馃帳 Rave Radbury
27. Aug 2012 路 21:35 UTC
Fixed issue with enemies spawning behind the backdrop by creating a vent for them to return through.
ButtercupSaiyan
28. Aug 2012 路 21:58 UTC
Evolving Fire Dash got me up to Level 3, but I get pinned very fast and then die...

My strategy of Fire, Heart then Water is working out so far, and it's not a very deep puzzle but I like the trial and error method here. Not bad. With some polished controls and different AI swarming tactics, it has some potential.
馃帳 Rave Radbury
29. Aug 2012 路 05:03 UTC
If you're having trouble finishing the game, try upgrading your health every round.
gnx
30. Aug 2012 路 09:25 UTC
Weird game. Visuals and audio are quite disturbing which is a good thing. Control feels a bit off, occasionally my character would dash backwards instead of forward.

Intense.
Haette
17. Sep 2012 路 21:33 UTC
Oh god, the puns! They hurt!

My green dude always gets pretty clumsy after a few rounds and then pinned to a wall and killed, but then again that's the point, isn't it. I guess bigger isn't always better, eh?
RipX
17. Sep 2012 路 21:34 UTC
Simple yet fun little game. I enjoyed it.
infernet89
17. Sep 2012 路 21:42 UTC
Woha, my player is big as the entire screen!
ncannasse
17. Sep 2012 路 21:44 UTC
Very funny experience and nice ending ! Loved it !
ghRibacki
17. Sep 2012 路 21:57 UTC
Good point! I was waiting to see if there was some hidden message on the last level if I was persistent enough, but I guess I wasn't. =P

Congratulations on your first LD! =)
ghRibacki
17. Sep 2012 路 21:57 UTC
Also, my score: 2417.
PaulSB
17. Sep 2012 路 22:03 UTC
Interesting use of the theme! It was oddly satisfying splatting whole groups of eyeball things.
Maple
17. Sep 2012 路 22:10 UTC
Trippy, and interesting. Only thing is I didn't really know how to progress. I managed to get to the end by upgrading health all the time and just waiting it out, but the gameplay is kinda contradictory. Getting hit kills you, but you need to get hit to get to the next level. If there was more to it than what I said, it might be a thing to remember next time, to make such things a little more obvious to some players.
Dan C
17. Sep 2012 路 23:08 UTC
Nice use of the theme and good graphics and audio.

The music and the semi-abstract plot reminds me a bit of Rez Area 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyU76Vpr_o). This is a good thing :).

The plot is a bit ironic to me, because the game itself appears to exhibit one of the common faulty assumptions about evolution, which is that the unit of selection is the individual or species, whereas in actual fact the unit of selection is now generally understood to be the gene. That's sufficent to absorb Nietzsche's objections to Darwinism, as I understand them. Perhaps that was your point, I'm not sure. Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is a particularly lucid explanation of the various interesting consequences of this idea, which it originated (and it doesn't contain any of the shrill ranting that he has sadly subsequently become known for).

I don't understand the title, which makes me wonder if in fact I have missed the point of your game altogether :).

It was a bit difficult at first to figure out what effects the different traits had, since it wasn't immediately obvious that my character would also get bigger no matter which trait I picked.

I quite liked the gameplay. I felt it could have done with a bit more variation, although it's not at all bad for a 48 hour game.

The controls were a bit awkward and in particular I noticed that if I dashed without holding down a direction key, then the character would always dash right no matter what direction he was facing. That was quite annoying and kept tripping me up even after I figured it out.

I quickly figured out how to stave off the enemies in the last stage for an arbitrarily long time. You could probably have done with gradually increasing the spawn rate, and gradually starting to spawn enemies from more directions, in order to guarantee eventual defeat.