Chrononaut Lamarck versus the Texas Board of Education

Description

The Texas Board of Education has messed with the timeline to try and prove the immutability of species. Creatures are appearing when / where they shouldn't. In doing so, they accidentally revived the naturalist / chrononaut Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and he is pissed off. Harvest the creatures to acquire their characteristics and kick some sense into those Texans!

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a 19th century scientist who came up with a theory of evolution a few decades before Darwin came up with his. Vital to his theory of evolution was the idea that creatures would acquire characteristics from their interaction with the environment, so a giraffe's neck become longer due to him having to reach leaves that were higher up on trees. The giraffe then passes down these characteristics to its offspring, so the characteristics keep on being changed.

Use your ability to go through time to change the geometry of the levels that you are in. This'll help you solve puzzles and find creatures to capture!

Creatures are the animals that don't move, and enemies are the animals that do move. Use your taser or body parts against enemies, and press 'e' to extract creatures. By extracting creatures, you'll acquire their characteristics, which will help you get through the levels!

Body parts
* Bat wings: Hold down 'w' to glide, slowing down your descent while falling considerably.
* Tiger's Tail: Let's you do what Tigger does best: bounce really high!
* Elephant's Legs: Slows you down, and makes your jump shorter, but any enemy you land on will be crushed by the weight, destroying them!
* Cheetah's Legs: With these, you will be able to run really fast, and jump farther.
* Turtle shell: Any bullets that his the shell will be destroyed, and you won't be harmed.
* Octopus Tentacle: Lets you attack from twice as far away as the taser would!

Controls

Arrow keys: movement (left, right, up=jump)
a: travel to past
d: travel to future
s: use taser
w: use arms/wings
e: extract body part from creatures
q: choose body parts to use. press again to close the screen. DO NOT PRESS ESCAPE
l: go to level selection screen

Screenshots

Authors

Brandon Biagioli
Thomas Nagl
William McCardell
Alex Smith
Tim Swast

Download game source code.

Final project for Spring 2010 - CS 679 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Built with Processing