Microbe Mash

radmccool 2017-05-01 13:49

Cool idea. Played the whole way through and felt appropriately challenged, in that i always felt that i understood all the elements at play while not seeing a clear immediate solution (well for the later levels anyway :P) Also, while the odd chaotic reaction (microbes bouncing about and taking a while to connect) was fun and thematically relevant, it did waste a bit of time. Maybe consider removing the time limit or increasing the attraction after a certain time? All in all a good entry that was fun to play :)

sgadrat 2017-05-01 13:52

It is interesting, as we begin with no description about how microbes evolve once mashed, we get to learn it empirically. I am not sure to love this system: it looks like puzzle, but is more of a "fail, learn, retry" experimentation than typical puzzles. The interesting part being to have that "learn" component.

oxrock 2017-05-01 14:00

After a while I i had no freaking clue how I was going to solve a puzzle at the start just by looking at it. I just started merging and hoping and remembering. Somehow I got by. I thought it was a fun little game. It's not hard to understand what's going on really, but that doesn't mean it's always work the way you want! :rofl:

One minor thing, I would of appreciated if there was a reset button. A few times I had to sit there waiting out the timer with nothing else to do.

theslate 2017-05-01 14:01

This is really clever! I like to poke at puzzles, and the timer kept breaking my poking flow. It took me a while to figure out how to deselect a microbe. Maybe clicking somewhere not on a microbe would deselect? The music was nice the first time, but got really repetitive.

Good work!

lefaygames 2017-05-01 14:13

Thank you for the feedback and the suggestions everyone!

@oxrock: There actually is a reset button in the game already :wink: It's in the bottom left cornor just above the hint icon

zeriver 2017-05-01 15:47

Puzzle game that requires to plan ahead, pretty fun to play. Graphics are simplistic and easy to read which is just right for this kind of game. Also very clever approach to the theme.

swiftillusion 2017-05-01 16:37

A fun and immediately engaging experience helped by the charming characters/art of each shape.

|+ The elegant physics of each piece being pulled together just inherently feels nice. |+ I really enjoyed the progression of new information/tips at the bottom of each level.

|- I felt the timer within this kind of experience was at least personally unnecessary, especially when-though only occasionally-the elasticity of the characters being pulled towards each-other and bouncing could run out the clock. Though I think this opinion is even more subjective than most so it's not the biggest issue, just it could have resulted in any larger puzzles than those included feel tedious/frustrating without adding anything meaningful to the experience.

? I ended up so engaged with it that I clicked 'next' before realizing it said exit haha. A really solid little puzzler that while not inherently unique ('spot the difference', etc puzzles) was done in such a way that I was happy to see it as another game within the genre. Even if I couldn't always pull it off, I felt like the start of the level gave me enough information that I should know what path to take to win it which meant I never felt frustrated when I messed up (and the restart button helped a lot with that too). Awesome work :)!

tombishopspg 2017-05-01 17:18

Great idea for a game mechanic Love the animation how they just float around and then bump into each other. I liked everything except I felt like I never got it. I must have played 10-12 levels ish (didn't count) but every time I just clicked things until something worked. The shapes part made sense to me but I never understand the colors.

geeitsomelaldy 2017-05-01 18:48

nice simple puzzle game that ramps up difficulty nicely. Only issue I had was that it seemed to take more than one click to start selecting a shape.

drestuff 2017-05-01 19:45

I like this puzzle mechanic of combining microbes for them to evolve, I think there could be a lot of ways to expand upon this mechanic. It's fun to see that we had such similar ideas yet they both ended up so different!

ithildin 2017-05-02 01:03

Loved the concept. At first I had to do a bit of trial and error until I figured out the rules (they were added below, but I didn't notice at the beginning, my bad), but soon afterwards it all clicked and the experience was pretty smooth. After beating the game I was left expecting more levels.

The music theme was catchy as well, I really liked it.

Good job!

jorbits 2017-05-02 09:42

This game is simple and fun, I enjoyed the mechanics. The mechanics are very easy to understand. The first levels are a bit too easy and I don't know if a decreasing time makes sense, when you are able to just restart.

jackyjjc 2017-05-02 10:58

Yay I beat the game. The music is very nice and the font looks cool. The puzzle mechanics is neat, it is kind of like the card game 'Set'. However, sometimes I feel like the game is a bit buggy because I can combine things with different colors (border and filled color)? You can also ramp up the difficulties a little bit, it is kind of easy right now. I also found a bug where the connection didn't disappear:

Capture.PNG

Overall it is nice puzzle game, I had fun finishing it :)

skullpixel 2017-05-02 12:41

This is a very well-made and calming puzzle game. You could definitely pull this to mobile if you so wished.

breadmower 2017-05-02 13:41

Lots of fun - easy to pick up, but then gets a little tricky later on. I'm always a fan of puzzles where the obvious move to make isn't the right thing to do! I do like the motion of the microbes in the dish when they're getting pulled together.

Minor bug: I think you're spawning a new music playing object each time you load the main menu (eg going to help, then back will cause the music to play twice).

askania-m 2017-05-02 19:38

So cool! I played it till the end and liked the rules. The idea is wonderful, graphics was funny, those smiling faces.. :D Thank you you for the game - overall 5 stars!

schizoid2k 2017-05-03 02:23

Very nice. Graphics and music makes the game a relaxing experience even though there is a time limit. Some of the levels are difficult to solve, but persistence gets you there. Congrats on a nice game.

doomshmuck 2017-05-05 04:53

There were parts of the music that sounded off to me, and after the 3rd or so loop, I wanted to turn it off, but maybe that's just me, not sure. Otherwise, the game was pretty fun and worked nicely. There was a good selection of levels and a nice difficulty curve, and the mechanics and controls were intuitive, although sometimes it seemed like clicking on a microbe didn't give me the line, although that was pretty rare when that happened.

navot 2017-05-05 11:08

Really nice puzzle game! It became quite challenging toward the end. Some minor critique points are that when you go to the help menu and back the music starts playing again over the existing music, and I didn't like the way the DNA looks when you are selecting a shape that isn't far away, and the texture is tiling way too much. Apart from that, the game looks nice and is really fun!

breno-m 2017-05-06 17:39

The hierarchy reminded me of Edwin Abbott's *Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions*. The puzzles are great. The visuals and instructions are good as well. I just don't think the music matched the mood of the game: the game looks very relaxing (look at their faces), but the music sounds somewhat melancholic.

lucy-linder 2017-05-07 07:58

Cool. Just a bit confused by the border colors and it would be nice to be able to undo a click on a microbe (when you get the protein cord) or to be able to restart quickly (got to wait for the timeout). Anyway, nice job ! Hate me at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/iceburg

2017-05-10 16:06

Nice little game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTDci7P3_cI