Murphy's chaos garden by BooleanByte

[raw]
made by BooleanByte for LD34 (JAM)
Murphy's chaos garden

Manipulate the enviroment and make the growths grow as you desire, take a side of one of them and help it to domination, or try to keep it all in balance as best as you can.

Use [<-] and [->] to select between the alternatives for enviromental events. Grass like temperature around 10, flowers 20. Flowers also likes pollination, so do grass also a little. Flowers and grass likes light, trees generate darkness and is limeted in growth by the surounding growths and don't like to much around it. Trees also has an age and will decay after some time.

Before you start, you may wonder, why this name?
Because i feel Murphy's law catched me this LudumDare, and that I have a suspicion that this game might be subject to the all mighty chaos theory.

Has to work more on this in post as I like the idea, but was not able to get it to work propperly durig the time because of problems I has problems finding at this time(But probably are pretty obvious after the commitment), and that it find it hard to balance the game because everything impacts everything in manny ways over time. Everything feels very chaotic.

Press [R] to start game
Press [R] to restart game

A game by:
[programming] Benjamin Benjaminsen (booleanbyte)
[art] Finne (stromer17)
[idea] Allan Southworth Ingalls

Ratings

Coolness 40% 1727
Overall(Jam) 2.48 1070
Fun(Jam) 2.15 1063
Graphics(Jam) 2.30 964
Innovation(Jam) 3.00 603
Mood(Jam) 2.24 976
Theme(Jam) 3.20 853

Feedback

WakeOfLuna
30. Dec 2015 · 19:47 UTC
I have no clue what's happening to be honest. I got the screen all full of flowers and then I clicked some more and then it all disappeared and it was all flickering again. Could be appealing as a genetic simulator thingie but currently it's just chaotic. Oh wait, that's the title! :)
Wumbo
02. Jan 2016 · 00:58 UTC
Okay, the screen in the beginning has some serious grammatical issues and just sounds stupid if you read it out loud. As for the actual gameplay, I liked the two-choices element to the game, but I had no clue what was going on because there weren't any flowers, grass, or trees for me to grow. I do like the fact that you managed to use java, as it is much more difficult than some of the other choices out there (cough--unity--cough). Also, I really like the simulation idea, but first it has be be a game with a purpose and a way to win and lose, then it can be cool.
nihilaleph
02. Jan 2016 · 01:09 UTC
Pro:
+ Very interesting concept
Con:
- It's all very cryptic... (though the idea is to be chaotic, I don't know what's suppose to be a tree and what the color of flowers mean)
Obs:
o Seeing everything thing change so fast is a bit weird... Maybe a slower delta? Or some animation to show the change... but then I'm asking too much

Great work!
KilledByAPixel
02. Jan 2016 · 03:07 UTC
Looks trippy, I like cellular automata stuff. Having some trouble figuring out what to do. It looks like the arrow keys change temp and pollination values randomly and I don't understand the effects.
Jajo
02. Jan 2016 · 10:13 UTC
I thought it was quite good overall. It's a shame there was no sound. I managed to fill the screen with grass, not sure if that's good or bad but I did it :)
gallerdude
02. Jan 2016 · 17:00 UTC
Looks pretty. I love simulators. Cool?
ciaodavinci
03. Jan 2016 · 15:48 UTC
Really cool entry! I loved the patterns it created on the screen. A bit more guidance on which image represents what type of growth would be nice. Also, maybe giving better feedback on the state of the system would be more rewarding. I saw there is an "Ants: indicator, but it was always displaying 50, regardless of how I changed temperature or pollination. If you continue working on it, adding sound based on the number of a certain type of growth could create interesting soundscapes. Good job!
amras0000
03. Jan 2016 · 16:20 UTC
First off, I really don't think the game benefitted from the two button controls. The text was small and hard to read, and the limitation of only being able to change some things at a time really didn't add much to the gameplay. I'd have much preferred a set of sliders to control everything, and you'd still be sticking to the growing theme.

If I pushed the game too far in either direction on temperature, I ended up getting a few rows of brown dots and black rows above and below them, and every other tile was spazzing out. I have no idea what that's supposed to signify.

Overall, I think the game turns take too long. It would've been nice to have smoother animations on a much slower clock just to know what's actually going on.

The game idea looks really interesting but I think the player just needs more feedback on what's happening in the garden.
dollarone
05. Jan 2016 · 00:37 UTC
Cool little simulator. Nice to see the changes as you temper with the environment. Gave me some ideas for the future! Excellent.