Darwin's Apple

If you are on Mac, beware that due to Apple fucking up Java applets this will flicker. Instead, download and run the JAR directly: DOWNLOAD.

This is a game made for the Ludum Dare 48 hour game programming competition. The theme was "evolution." You are a renegade angel who has decided that man should have the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge in order to evolve from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens. The path to the fruit is fraught with dangers, however, and the lowly Homo Erectus are not strong enough to make it there alone. You must selectively breed the Homo Erectus until they are strong enough to fight off the feral creatures blocking the way to the apple.

To move, left click anywhere you've seen on screen. You will automatically path find. In addition, hold space to lure Homo Erectus after you, right click or shift-click a Homo Erectus to tell it to go breed, and hold shift or S to bring up a stats display for each Homo Erectus.

The forbidden fruit is at the bottom right of the map. The monsters get stronger as you go, and you may also find different types of Homo Erectus along different side paths.

A good strategy really is to just select for fertility first, and then when you have very high fertility start selecting for attack and defense. The game is not terribly well balanced so you can pretty quickly get a small army that can win you the day. Also, I erred on the side of easy so it's very unlikely for a child to be worse than its parent in any way - if you keep breeding you're golden. I also implemented but later removed an inbreeding function (inbred creatures are much much worse) but I didn't have time to communicate this aspect at all so it's removed.