You Made them! by garygreen

[raw]
made by garygreen for LD24 (COMPO)
Created in Scratch, using Soundation for sound and Texture Processor for some of the graphics. I'm quite happy with the overall game idea, but I'd definitely want to improve the graphics (think I should have used another tool to create them, or maybe gained a qualification in design ;-) ) & build on it in general.

Navigate quickly through 5 small worlds ("Ages of development") and pick up characteristics (indicated by icons) to define your species. Find out just what species you've created at the end of the game.

Left / Right arrows - rotate "Age"
Up / down - shift "Age" up or down.

Edit (based on feedback) >>

I did originally have totals for things like kindness, aggressiveness, happiness, sociability etc on the screen that would change if you fly over the relative icons on the map. + & - signs affect how the totals change. eg. run over a + sign and then a smiley face you get more happiness points; run over a - and then a heart you lose kindness points. I also made your character's health start at 100. If you hit the rock you lose health points. At the end of the game if your health is below 0 it means your species didn't survive. However, if your species does survive, at the end of the game you're given a summary based on the scores.

Ratings

Coolness 91% 2
Overall 2.21 705
Audio 2.50 343
Fun 1.83 709
Graphics 2.11 661
Humor 1.86 449
Innovation 3.21 208
Mood 2.03 630
Theme 2.67 458

Feedback

SteelRaven7
27. Aug 2012 路 13:55 UTC
What on earth did I just play? It was pretty hard to navigate with since you could both move and rotate the... thingy.
Prealpha
27. Aug 2012 路 14:24 UTC
The lack of feedback makes extremely difficult to know what you are doing and if your are going to get any result at the and. Some sound or visual cue showing that you have picked up something would help a lot. I guess the original idea was for the "rock" to be solid?
sampyxis
28. Aug 2012 路 20:12 UTC
So, I like the idea - but when I played through it, there was no feedback about what I was doing - but if there was, this idea seems pretty innovative
馃帳 garygreen
28. Aug 2012 路 21:09 UTC
Thanks all for the feedback. I guess I was trying to be a bit abstract about it. I did originally have totals for things like kindness, agressiveness, happiness, sociability... on the screen that would change if you ran over the relative icons on the map. + & - signs affect how the totals change. eg. run over a + sign and then a smiley face you get more happiness points; run over a - and then a heart you lose kindness points. I also made your character's health start at 100. If you hit the rock you lose health points. At the end of the game if your health is below 0 it means your species didn't survive. However, if your species does survive, at the end of the game you're given a summary based on the scores. eg. It looks like I created a caring... sourfaced... aggresive species... etc. I did have sounds effects in there if your collected things, but they were probably masked by the music. I'm already working on improving it (especially the graphics) and tweaking it all, so your feedback's appreciated. Thanks.
kevincorrigan
28. Aug 2012 路 21:26 UTC
Interesting, is there anything after the 3rd circle?, Good Game.
Arkazon
28. Aug 2012 路 21:29 UTC
A nice innovative idea but I couldn't get the hang of the controls and the lack of feedback doesn't help.
pjchardt
28. Aug 2012 路 21:30 UTC
I agree with some others, I was confused on what was going on. It took awhile before I even grasped the game mechanic. Now that I do, I like the idea for the game, but I had no idea whether I was doing things right or not. The feedback seemed random. I think it was just that all the sound effects sounded like bad things. So I could not tell what I did that was right. And there was no visual feedback at all. I would suggest focusing on the clarity of the user experience as one of your first updates. Good luck!
quasist
28. Aug 2012 路 23:55 UTC
The controls are hardcore. This game should be played with some MIDI equipment - like slider to move and rotator for rotation...
Mach60KAS
29. Aug 2012 路 10:58 UTC
I was utterly perplexed, and the lack of feedback didn't help at all. Oh, tell the guys back on scratch that RHY and Mach said hi! :)
mipi
29. Aug 2012 路 12:31 UTC
Oh yes, I was missing damage taken indicator for the ghosts. Also it took so many hits to kill a ghost, that it was totally my bad that you didn't quite get it. Should have informed it some way.
badlydrawnrod
29. Aug 2012 路 21:09 UTC
Would have been nice to see a damage indicator.
Zelen3d
29. Aug 2012 路 21:56 UTC
Each time I tried it said "you haven't come far enough for them to even exist" Only after reading theese comments I understood that the player had a health value. A health indicator would be truly nice.
馃帳 garygreen
31. Aug 2012 路 19:01 UTC
Thanks again for all the feedback. I realise now I should have really kept the health and other indicators in there.

@kevincorrigan - There were a couple more after the third circle. I'm still trying to work out why that happens. It's happened to me too once as well, but it's so intermittent that I'm having trouble ironing out that bug. Thanks for spotting it though.

@quasist - I really like the idea of a midi controller. Not sure I can do that using Scratch, but I definitely need to work out the best way of controlling the game.
Datw
31. Aug 2012 路 19:49 UTC
The audio is a bit annoying, and the lack of information on screen got frustrating :(
Andrew
02. Sep 2012 路 22:26 UTC
It seems a bit random, and I didn't feel I contributed significantly while playing. It could have been a random number generator.

What I did like was the control scheme. It's fairly unusual.
YSelf Tool
04. Sep 2012 路 21:56 UTC
I did not really understand what's the matter of this game, why I am playing it and what to do.
I thought I should not hit the rock, but when I did nothing bad happened, so...
tastive
06. Sep 2012 路 22:40 UTC
Neat control screen. Not sure I get the point -- seems like hitting the stone barriers ought to be somehow punishing.
sev_inf
08. Sep 2012 路 13:20 UTC
I'll say nothing new here - good idea, but needs better instructions.
Josh @ Dreamland
08. Sep 2012 路 13:55 UTC
I'm gonna join in complaining about how there's no feedback. I had no idea what I was doing, until it told me that I hadn't gotten far enough for them to exist. It's neat that you made it in Scratch, because my general feeling about Scratch is that it is incapable of producing a game. I like the idea, I just didn't see it in the game.
Walt
08. Sep 2012 路 13:57 UTC
cool idea, feels somewhat incomplete though through the lack of feedback. bit more of a ramp in difficulty would be nice, it's tricky the first time around
someone
17. Sep 2012 路 16:13 UTC
I have no idea whats going on. It always says I never got far enough. The controls are a bit confusing, I kept getting up and down mixed up.
ghRibacki
18. Sep 2012 路 00:31 UTC
Didn't understand exactly what I was doing until the game ended, it was kind of confusing. Maybe some more feedback and slower speed could improve the experience, was really hard to move.

Really nice idea, though. Congratulations. =)
馃帳 garygreen
18. Sep 2012 路 22:42 UTC
Thanks all for the feedback. I know where to go from here. Lack of feedback in the game was a big boo-boo on my part. Crazy really, as I did have have feedback at the start and decided it might work better without it. I'm pleased I got more than 2 out of 5 overall after playing some of the other games in the competition. Thanks for everyone who rated my game. :-)