I participated in my first game jam a few weeks ago, Ludum Dare 24. The theme for this jam was evolution, and in less than 48 hours I submitted a game called Mutating Scales.

I ended up using ShiVa as my engine, as I had the most experience with it and it could also export the final product to flash for easier reviewing. The core of the game was using a genetic algorithm to infer gameplay values for enemies and towers in a generic tower defense setting. Between each wave, the enemies automatically evolved while the player had to choose how they would evolve their towers to combat the next wave.

I was especially proud of creating most of the art programmatically by scaling, tinting and assembling the game objects from basic building pieces since the art work was definitely going to be my major weakness in working to complete the game in time.

I regret wrapping the interesting evolve mechanic in a tower defense game since that’s pretty rote, especially by game jam standards. I might revisit the genetic algorithm and throw it in a better setting with more interactive gameplay. For now, feel free to try it out and let me know what you think:

Mutating Scales (Source)

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