A downloadable game for Windows

Download NowName your own price

Genesis - The Dawn of Humanity is an Intellivision-inspired retro survival game. You are a caveman struggling to survive the harsh ice age world. You must explore the world, find supplies, avoid dangerous animals, invent the technology that built civilization and raise a family.

Survival is not easy: you must find food for your family, discover and maintain fire to survive the winter, hunt animals for food and clothing, avoid poison and care for your children. Before civilization there is no medicine to heal you, all damage is permanent and lives are too easily cut short. You need patience and smarts to avoid dying of exposure, hunger or injury.

Done in the style of an Intellivision game the dawn of humanity is explored through the lens of a console from the dawn of videogames. There is no save function and any map transfer resets the map data. Many players will find this game very difficult, but a Training Mode exists to let people explore and learn without taking damage. The manual provides a lot of information, no in-game tutorials exist, the game functions almost exactly how original Intellivision games did, just bigger.

The Manual and Keypad Overlays documents provide you with a lot of information. It is highly recommended to give them a read before playing to learn the controls and learn some of the context needed to survive the paleolithic era.

As standard for the era, no music is included in the game, but sound effects can provide important gameplay information. The world starts shrouded in darkness. You must explore and discover the world to find the inspiration and resources you need to survive. Dangerous animals roam the land, but sound clues can help alert you to the danger.


Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

Genesis-Manual-v100.pdf 2 MB
Genesis-Overlays.pdf 283 kB
Genesis.exe 3 MB

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Hello. I really adore the graphical design of this game, indeed looks like an original game from the 80ies. Alas I'm a bit at a loss as of how controls work on a keyboard, even with the manual. Is there a list of keys?

Page 6 of the manual has both a list and diagram of keyboard controls.

General Controls:
Movement - arrow keys
Attack in a direction - Numpad 1-9 (imagine the player is at five)
Switch Weapon - Numpad 5
Pick up item - Numpad +
Drop item - Numpad Enter
Cycle Inventory - Numpad -
Unfollow - Numpad /
Use Item - Numpad 0
Pause - Space

Exit game - Space

Flintknapping game:
Rotate Stone - arrow keys
Select Billet - Numpad 9/6/3
Select Flaker - Numpad 1/4/7
Start Swing (top) - Numpad 8
End Swing (bottom) - Numpad 2
New Stone - Numpad 0
Pause - Space
Exit game - Space

Thanks for the comment. The game basically came from a little test illustration I did for an atari-style game, but I took the sound cues from the Intellivision AD&D game and decided to do it in the style of an Intellivision game - using the resolution and palette of that system. The controls are a bit awkward on keyboard, but Intellivision fans will remember how odd the controllers were. I recommend a gamepad, Xbox/Logitech gamepads should work fine. PS controllers will work using software like DS4Windows.

I've actually just made a new version. Just testing it now, a couple bug fixes and a couple new features. No timeline for when it'll be up.

Hi

Oh man, I'm now officially an utter dolt and safe finalist of the "RTFM!"-Award 2023! :D That idiot-me just read the Genesis-Overlay.pdf and obvisouly not the real manual... Thank you for your help.

I look forward to the new version. :)

Thank you again.

A game with a lot of cool ideas and a quite unique gameplay! Pretty hard to fully understand but the manual really helps. 

Thanks for the kind words. Haha yes, making it retro Intellivision style was an unusual design battle. Strange controller, and very limited interface to work with. Part of me is tempted to do a more modern version of the game. I'm really glad that at least one person out there in the wide world actually read the manual, that was a lot of fun to put together.

I would love to see a modern version of it, I haven't finished any game I've started to make, but this is so inspiring to create one! This was really fun to play and addictive (I've done a lot of run but I haven't win at the moment ahah) and there is so much game design great ideas!