Conway's Currency by klianc09

made by klianc09 for LD 44 (JAM)

Conway is venturing into the dungeon to find the answer to life. Conway's (game of) life is the only currency accepted in there.

Good Luck, you will need it.

Move Conway with arrow keys, click and drag items with mouse.

Hints and Tips: - Your coins behave according to the rules of Conway's Game of Life. There is a lot information online about it, you can even use an online simulation to see how it behaves. - Especially this list of patterns can be useful. - It always takes one heart to kill a slime, as they will attack you when you are on an adjacent tile. Just move into them to actually kill them. (Skeletons will take two hits to kill) - You can Drag & Drop items and coins from chests and bags into your inventory. - Your inventory contains items and coins. - Items can be re-arranged by dragging and dropping them. - Coins can only be placed initially in your inventory, then they simulate one step of Conway's Game of Life every step you take. - Items count as dead cells for the simulation. - The potion and the sword can be double clicked to use them. The potion will turn all surrounding items and coins in the inventory to hearts. The sword will cause you to attack all enemies within 2 tiles range. - The most effective strategy is to use potions to convert a bunch of coins into a lot of hearts.

conways<em>currency</em>2.png

(Fonts are by Eeve Somepx)

Windows	https://www.dropbox.com/s/hy5f3cv85evttew/conways_currency-desktop-1.0.jar?dl=1
macOS	https://www.dropbox.com/s/hy5f3cv85evttew/conways_currency-desktop-1.0.jar?dl=1
Linux	https://www.dropbox.com/s/hy5f3cv85evttew/conways_currency-desktop-1.0.jar?dl=1
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/conways-currency

Ratings

Given

31🗳️

11🗨️

Feedback

wie_

30. Apr 2019 · 15:19 UTC

It's a very interesting game. I like the colourful graphics, reminds me of old arcade games. The inventory management is a cool idea, but it's a bit unclear, how it works. If i understand correctly, you are supposed to put the coins in your inventory, and every time you move, the coins play conway's game of life? So i'm supposed to make it so, that conway's game of life doesn't delete my coins right? I don't remember the rules of conway's game of life, so all my coins just disappear really fast. Also enemies kill you really fast, and i don't really know how to fight them or dodge their attacks.

mimusangel

30. Apr 2019 · 15:19 UTC

I did not understand the game ...

shadow30

30. Apr 2019 · 15:21 UTC

Cool conecept. But I got really confused in the beginning. But all in all, nice job.

Xahell

30. Apr 2019 · 15:26 UTC

A very well executed rogue-like! By the book, with the addition of the Ludum Dare theme in a very ingenious way.

Congratulations! I hope the Java aspect doesn't prevent you from getting your well deserved ratings.

JofersGames

30. Apr 2019 · 15:30 UTC

A bit confusing but looks lovely :)

agurcan

30. Apr 2019 · 15:31 UTC

Great arcade style graphics however I think the game was a bit difficult to understand because of the unclear instructions at the beginning. Maybe you could include a more detailed explanation in the Ludum Dare description.

oberynmartell

30. Apr 2019 · 15:41 UTC

I really liked the mix of mechanics between walking and the money changing on your inventory, although I didn't know the rules of Conway's Game of Life, so I was kinda counting on my luck when arranging the coins. Maybe you could show a preview of how the next step would change the coins, so it becomes easier to learn the rules while playing? Also, if someone never heard of the Conway's Game of Life, they will probably get really confused, so maybe you can provide a link to an explanation of the rules? Besides that, the game is very polished and easy to understand. Good job!

ldjsq

30. Apr 2019 · 18:16 UTC

really good to finally understand how to make money, valuable real life lesson

ldjsq

01. May 2019 · 12:38 UTC

upps I just saw that I already commented and rated this game, but the rating and comment was actually meant for a different game which I can't find anymore to give it its deserved rating.

This game is one of the best I've played so far and I enjoyed it very much. When I got to the final floor and it said the answer is in a different dungeon I had already forgotten for which answer I was searching for... Do I get another final floor when playing it again?

🎤 klianc09

01. May 2019 · 18:19 UTC

@ldjsq Congrats for being the first to reach the end, because even I haven't done that, yet. You are searching for the answer to (Conway's Game of) Life, obviously :D The first and last floor is fixed, and only the floors in between are randomly generated. I had some ideas for the final floor, but of course ran out of time to do anything special, I hope you're not disappointed.

Rheel

01. May 2019 · 19:13 UTC

Nice idea! It's really hard though, arranging your money so you don't lose it all in a few steps. I haven't come very far, but I liked playing it for a while.

ldjsq

01. May 2019 · 20:18 UTC

@klianc09 not disappointed at all :) yeah it took some times and I think especially in the first levels if you have misfortune with the generation sometimes you cannot win. But it is a really fun game

OroshiX

02. May 2019 · 14:56 UTC

Interesting concept, but a bit hard to play.

Kirbloid

02. May 2019 · 15:57 UTC

Tough to get into but very ambitious and easy to play (with or without knowing the rules). I really appreciated the tutorial room for the basic gameplay. I could imagine in future iterations that Conway's ruleset could be presented in different ways (like letting the player see how the coins will react on a future turn or something). Great job!

snowdozer

03. May 2019 · 01:24 UTC

played this game for about an hour! reminds me a little of cave noire, especially the inventory management part, though maybe i'm just a sucker for turn-based dungeon crawlers. i actually love the graphics - i think the oldschool crudeness perfectly fits the genre. and using conway's to tie into the theme was really clever, though the game is essentially over once you learn how op 2x2 coin blocks are. before then, though, i felt like i was making important decisions on almost every floor, which is my favourite aspect of this type of game! other than that small gripe, i think you nailed the balance between risk and reward, and i especially loved the sacrificial potion mechanic.

p.s. the two signs at the end are hilarious.

🎤 klianc09

03. May 2019 · 08:57 UTC

@snowdozer Thanks for telling me about cave noire, looks like a neat game and an interesting spin on dungeon crawlers. Yeah, in the end Conway's Game of Life might not be that interesting ruleset for this after all. But maybe if the challenge was tweaked a bit, so that instead of trying to fit far too many coins into a small inventory space, one would get a large (almost) infinite inventory, but not so many coins. Then one would have to find ways to use Conway's Game of Life to their advantage to generate more coins than they initially found, instead of just always building those small stable patterns. But on the other hand, there are known patterns that explode or just generate cells infinitely.

Tony Redmer

03. May 2019 · 14:22 UTC

I was a little confused at first, but really I enjoyed the strategy here once I got accustomed to it!

miltonsilva

03. May 2019 · 14:51 UTC

it was a little bit difficult to get the idea of the game but I found the graico very interesting of the game congratulations to those involved.

sparewizard

03. May 2019 · 15:33 UTC

I made it to the top! The potion was one of my favourite mechanics, taking advantage of large clusters that appeared.