Evolooption by WiseClock

made by WiseClock for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

The game simulates how human beings evolve -- from apes to homo sapiens, and to what we are now.

You need to discover and avoid all things that harm you, and collect things that are good for your evolving. Be careful, some may be good for you in the early stages, but be harmful later on.

As you continue getting the "badies," your evolving progress will be brought back by a certain amount of ages, depending on what the "badies" are, and what stage you are at. Some may be super harmful at the beginning, but as you develop, they don't hurt as much.

List of possible "pickables": - 911 - Astronaut - Bacteria (narration available) - Batteries - Boat - Bread (narration available) - Chemistry - Clock - Money (narration available) - Computer (narration available) - Cooked Meat - COV (narration available) - Physics (illustrated as Einstein) - Fire (narration available) - Glasses - H7N9 - iPhone - Iron Smithing - Language (narration available) - Light Bulb - Mammoth (narration available) - Map - Match - Mining - Mouse (Black Death) (narration available) - Nuclear (narration available) - Paint - Raw Meat (narration available) - Religion (narration available) - Satellite - Sheep - Smallpox (narration available) - Saber-toothed Tiger (narration available) - Snake - Stone Tool - Swine Flu - Telephone - Telescope - Temperature Meter - Toothpaste - Trump (narration available) - Typewriter - Wheat - Windmil - Windows - Wine - Culture (narration available) - WTO - WWI (narration available) - WWII (narration available)

Youtube	https://wiseclock.itch.io/evolooption
Youtube	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vJLiA9RnaLfv5ZAlJTpvsoaSs2gncqhM/view?usp=sharing
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/evolooption

Ratings

Overall	763^th	3.526⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	639^th	3.474⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	819^th	3.316⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Theme	545^th	3.842⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	1072^th	3.263⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Audio	492^th	3.526⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	170^th	3.778⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Mood	929^th	3.263⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Given		37🗳️	12🗨️

Feedback

Iluvatar

05. Oct 2020 · 11:23 UTC

For such a simplistic gameplay I had a lot of fun. I really appreciate the sound effects, especially the voice over. You did a good job and it adds a lot to the experience.

PS: It took me a while until I realized that I shouldn't "hunt" sabers, as they take me back in time :laughing:

Red Chilakillers

05. Oct 2020 · 23:38 UTC

"Welcome to the loop", man I was mad at hitting that nuke :(, great game, the gravity and speed feels just right, nice to play, but I think telegraphing bad things a bit more could really help with the overall feeling. I wanted to hit on everything just to let the voice over playing.

DarcyTimms

06. Oct 2020 · 07:56 UTC

Very polished infini-runner gameplay, and a fun history lesson at the same time! I really enjoyed using the year as your score, could definitely see this being my favourite game on the school computers back in the day.
One thing I noticed is that once you reach the year 0, the positive pickups are only giving you a small amount of progress, whilst a single rat will send you back to ~4000 BC, and the constant swapping between graphically styles and player sprites can be a little jarring, either way, very fun game, nice voice over, and very impressive given the time constraints. :)

Vadzim

06. Oct 2020 · 09:29 UTC

Cool game. I think you should add chekpoints in switching eras

Archock34

06. Oct 2020 · 18:31 UTC

I really like the general idea of evolution and how you are doing it, also I think the items that have narration are very good, a great detail! Good game!

Baran

06. Oct 2020 · 20:03 UTC

I really liked your idea, and how you used your voice (I'm guessing) to spice up the game with narration!

guoboism

07. Oct 2020 · 02:05 UTC

Though simple game yet with a very grand point of view. Theme is used as "the loop of civilization".
The most dramatic scene is the time goes back to the very beginning when I hit a nuclear bomb(?) in the later part of the game.

Rhythm

08. Oct 2020 · 03:15 UTC

The dubbing is very charming and the art style is great! Religion helps the progress of the times in the early stage, and retrogress the times in the later stage. It is enough to see that the author's ideas are very deep. However, some graphics can not tell what they mean. For example, Chinese characters have the same effect as religion, but I don't understand why

🎤 WiseClock

11. Oct 2020 · 10:10 UTC

@rhythm Well yeah, it's not well symbolized... that icon actually has other languages in as well... It's supposed to represent different cultures, but I assume I failed on that xD I'm not saying having unique cultures is a bad thing.. but nowadays people really start to see them as country barriers... We treat other countries differently, or even hatefully just because they've got a different culture or tradition that we don't understand.

Edalbung

11. Oct 2020 · 12:49 UTC

Nice game on human history! :D

Here are my feedback:

_Positive points
- Good and coherent graphic style
- Interesting platformer system of human evolution

_Negative points
- Imprecise box collider, indeed, sometimes I touched an element, whereas I was sure to dodge it well

Overall: nice work!

CsOmega

11. Oct 2020 · 21:17 UTC

Really like the idea!! And how the items actually work, and how some items change from being good to being bad, love it!However, as others said, the colliders where a bit weird, and maybe the spawning position of the items(although, maybe that was intentional).Maybe you could add a way of knowing what items are bad, and what are good,like a legend or something.

🎤 WiseClock

11. Oct 2020 · 23:38 UTC

@csomega @edalbung Yeah, I didn't spend too much time on the colliders... they are not so accurate and when the icons rotate, the colliders do not rotate with them.

@csomega And the original idea was to let the players try out the pickables first, then they know which ones are bad and which ones are good and the ones they discovered would have something like an identifier on top... and for example for the religions, the players will first see it as neutral, then collect it, it starts to show the positive identifier... and after later stages they collect it again and lose their progress it'll start to show the negative...
But yeah... I didn't have the time to implement 😥

Ividusk

12. Oct 2020 · 04:05 UTC

I really like this game - such a great idea and the art style is very charming. The sound effects and narration really add to the experience. I also appreciate the triple jump :)

lduser125

14. Oct 2020 · 02:12 UTC

Cool game, liked the voice acting and the design was very good. Nice work!

Jonathan Lorenz

26. Oct 2020 · 08:14 UTC

Cool little game. The voices were funny. At that speed I didn't had enough time to see if the pickups were good or bad. Don't know it it was intentional. If not, the object could use like an aura or something (red for bad, green for good). Good work!

TheGreenWorm

26. Oct 2020 · 10:26 UTC

The idea is great, and the little comments when you pick up certain objects are a nice touch, makes it a little less repetitive. To improve it, I'd move the man back closer to the left of the screen so you can have more time to see the objects coming, and I'd change the "rotating" animation. Currently, it becomes "thin" right when it's near the man, witch makes it difficult to see.

Kazatan

27. Oct 2020 · 14:08 UTC

Loved the narration! The game got pretty difficult and seemed quite random by the end.

I actually enjoyed the nuke "twist" :laughing: Although I did stop playing once I hit that :rofl:

Well done 👍