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Unnatural Selection's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #6 | 4.179 | 4.179 |
| Graphics | #13 | 4.393 | 4.393 |
| Originality | #16 | 4.036 | 4.036 |
| Overall | #19 | 3.663 | 3.663 |
| Controls | #50 | 3.393 | 3.393 |
| Fun | #56 | 3.321 | 3.321 |
| Accessibility | #60 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Audio | #68 | 3.179 | 3.179 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3
Wildcards Used
Show, Don't Tell
Game Description
Here's your chance to break the food chain! UNnatural Selection is a strategy game that asks you to balance the amount of resources, prey, and predators in a magic, purple forest with some chaotic curveballs along the way. You earn points when animals successfully mate or eat. Use those points to affect the ecosystem by adding or subtracting elements. You also get daily options that can change the laws of nature. The goal is to last as many days as possible before the population gets out of control! Channel your inner Darwin and try it out! (Don't forget to zoom in to watch the animals up close! Just watch out for the p00p!) This is the second game jam for my wife and I (she provided the art/sprites and I handled the programming/developing). This game almost killed us, but we learned a lot by making it. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to play/review!
How does your game tie into the theme?
The goal of the game is to control an ecosystem that gets progressively more out of control each day.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
bearwithhands, oneclassygal87
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
2
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Comments
The art and animation are absolutely gorgeous, I love the storybook vibe they give off! And even without any text the game does a good job of communicating the goals, though it's a bit difficult to tell what exactly the laws of nature each do, though that helps the game be more vibes based and less prone to min-maxxing. I did have an issue with the music cutting out part of the way through, but besides that little bug it's an incredibly well made and fun game!
Thank you so much! We were hoping it would be fun to experiment and discover exactly what everything does, but there's always a risk of confusing or frustrating players when the mechanics are too mysterious. And I have no idea what caused that music issue, since it never happened in the debugger. That's going to take some figuring out. Thanks for the feedback!
Great entry. I like the colours. The art is very well done too. The interface is a little unclear. There’s definitely a solid idea there. The game would be much more fun with a slightly clearer UI.
Thanks! Maybe the next version will have just a few words...
Charming graphics and cool ecosystem. my entry is as well an ecosystem, but yours is way more developed. beatiful game. well done!
Thank you very much!
This game needs more bears and explanation, like why on earth is my carrot moving and what does it eat now. Still i enjoyed it, good job! I wish there were more upgrades directed to slowing down reproduction as it seemed to be the main reason of failure.
The next version of the game will have many more bears, god willing, and I think we'll add some more objectives like achievements so all upgrades are beneficial in some circumstance. Glad you liked it!
Cool idea. A population chart at the end would be good to show how your actions changed things, so you can adjust next go.
I love that idea! Thanks!
What a cruel game, having a rabbit mate with a wolf then getting eaten immediatly after ? After some upgrade the game become really chaotics and i love it. It's well implements and really fun
Thank you! Yeah, it get pretty rough in those woods...
What a cute game! Beautiful art and fun idea. Would have been great to have an option to speed up the time.
Thanks! I'm a bit on the fence about a speed up button - afraid it might take away from the experience but I can definitely see how the player might be ready to get to the next upgrade and not want to wait around. I'll have to try it out and see how it feels.
The art is beautiful and the game is lovely!
Thank you thank you! I really appreciate that!
The art style is so good! Big fan of this type of game, the mechanics were well presented without text.
Thank you! I think we'll make a lot more no-text games in the future- I like how it kind of forces you to make everything intuitive. You did a great job of that in your game!
Really cool game! I love the art style, it looks super nice. It's fun to try and balance the ecosystem with the different upgrades and stuff. Great work on the game!
Thank you so much!
Amazing, I loved it! The art is beautiful and I think autonomous entities was a great angle for this jam's theme. I gave it a few tries and I always end up losing because of too many carrots. That happens because I always pick the running carrot upgrade, it's just too fun to watch them skedaddle. The game didn't scale up properly at different window sizes. On the design side of things, sometimes I felt like it would have been nice to have a speed up multiplier for time passing.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks! And I'm glad to hear someone enjoys the running carrots as much as I do. I'll admit, the screen size issue was a complete afterthought and by the time I realized it we didn't have enough time to fix it. I appreciate the feedback!
wow this was chaotic! I love it.
Really great idea and execution, this one was a big hit on the stream. Sometimes felt like some power ups were better than others, but that's just the nature of games like this. Great submission and fantastic art.
Thank you! As soon as I saw your comment, I took a look at your stream. It's so awesome watching someone actually experience your game - I really appreciate it!
Very cool game, I really love the art and design! Looks so cool and fits this type of game. The music was great as well but it cut out halfway through after a sound effect played. I "lost" the game by overpopulating the forest but there were a ton of cute bunnies, wolves and carrots on my screen so who really lost? It got to a point where it was out of control and so I just sat back and watched for the last few minutes. Beautiful chaos!
Also I got presented with a Bunny <3 Wolf button but I was too much of a coward to click it. I didn't want to be responsible for what happened. Great game!!!
Thank you so much! Yeah we were going for a relaxing stressful, if that exists.
Nice game! I loved the running carrot option, and although I got a bear in my playthrough, I'm not sure if it did anything or not... It gets out of control at a nice pace, but I ended up with way too many carrots and rabbits. Also the art and music were fantastic!
There’s an option to “buy” more wolves on the side- was that feature available to you? One of my friends was missing that option when she tried to play. Thank you so much for the feedback!
I did have that option, and bought a few, but I still ended up with not enough. I think that was my fault though, not necessarily an issue with the game design
This was a nice concept. The music stopped playing for us after a while.
oh man! Thanks for letting us know. Do you remember if the sound effects were still working?
Yes, the sound effects still worked. It was just the music that stopped. Our first thought was that maybe it wasn't imported with looping enabled, as it felt like it could be a track end. We were playing the web version using Vivaldi (Chromium based) on Linux. I know sound can sometimes be finicky on web exports. Hope that helps!
It does, thank you! Yeah the web version sucks for some reason. We’ll have to work on that for next time.
The art and animation of the animals are awesome, and that includes the carrots. I felt the gameplay was kind of chaotic, but that's the theme after all. Great work!
Haha thank you!!! We were dying for people to choose the 🥕⏩ option.
Absolutely loved this. As an old simulations developer with a focus on ecologies this was a real treat!
Thank you so much!!!
Originally played fullscreen as suggested but in browser it'll mess with the view so went back to the embedded size. I really love the texture in the graphics of this game + the concept! Could see things getting even more chaotic with more ways to influence the ecosystem, really enjoyed this as is tho!
Thanks! Were you able to see the buttons at the bottom right in the embedded view? I was having trouble with that when it wasn't in full screen. That's definitely something we'll be fixing post-jam.
You mean the buttons for adding the carrots and other elements? Those showed up fine for me in embedded view
Ah ok, just making sure. Was hoping people were getting the full experience. Thanks for the feedback!
The game cover is GREAT and the game is pretty cute. A little confusing, but still good !!
Thank you so much!