Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Amoebros
By spinaljack
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 395 | 3.35 | 70 | |
| Fun | 456 | 3.02 | 70 | |
| Innovation | 75 | 3.86 | 69 | |
| Theme | 164 | 3.82 | 70 | |
| Graphics | 472 | 3.27 | 70 | |
| Audio | 324 | 3.06 | 64 | |
| Humor | 325 | 2.76 | 62 | |
| Mood | 469 | 3.06 | 64 |
This game really needs a better explaination / tutorial.
How do you get DNA, what are the golden blobs, how do I make them escape, did they escape when they left the screen? By the way, it took me forever to realize that you could actually zoom out
Thanks for playing, DNA is gathered from the orbs and killing enemies. If you can get to the edge of the map there's a nice reward at the end.
Uploaded a new build with a tutorial and mac and linux versions
Holy hell, this really *does* follow DNA model :D Awesome, yet I'm a tad overwhelmed by its complexity at first. It's not over-complicated, but the vast amount of choices kinda makes it look so.
Visually I really appreciate the shading effect which makes the screen look like the microscope view.
And I'm really surprised you could pull off the mechanics behind DNA combinations in this amount of time :)
Cheers!
Thanks, it's a rough approximation of how DNA works. Glad you enjoyed it :)
interesting. i like the visuals, especially the zoom in and zoom out. it really felt like i was floating in a petri dish ha! i like the idea too. unfortunately, to me it seemed too cryptic to really get the hang of. also a bug note, when i change a parameter and the cost goes up, when i try to change back to where the scroll bar was originally, the cost still continues to go up. i feel like if you change a parameter, and then decide you dont want that change, you should be able to undo it and the cost would go back so that you could spend it somewhere else.
I also liked the visual and I can tell there's a lot of cool stuff going on behind the scenes, but I simply couldn't grasp what to do to progress, sometimes I got a lucky yellow orb, then suddenly like 100 DNA out of nowhere, then when I spent it all on an all-rounder I ended the batch and I was back at 10ish DNA points.
It might be that progression is slower than I expected it to, but it was the fact that I didn't know wether I was progressing or not that made me give up.
I liked the design of the little amoebas, tough I felt a little sad that they all died so fast :frowning:
Thanks for the comments, it's not really a bug per say as you might want to alter stats downwards to change their behaviour. Not ideal but clicking on the creature name returns all your funds though.
As a tip start with the highest life stat creature from the list (or mouse over the last one alive to read it's name)
After you get them to last a few seconds you should focus on speed then agi then the eat behaviour. That should get them to hunt for food.
Then focus on strength and speed and aggro behaviour and they should be able to take out the larger mobs.
When you've got a strong group bump up the travel stat to get them to reach for the edge.
Always select the strongest creature to breed as the default one might not be the best choice.
Or you could just mess around with the colour and pattern to see how different you can make them look lol.
I have absolutely no idea what is going on in this game. But the graphics and music in the is pretty great.
Thanks!
Uploaded a bug fix for the DNA editor
I agree with the other that a proper tutorial or better explanation of who you are, what' the goal and how to play would help the game. Maybe you can edit the game page to give more informations about that to the players.
I've upload an image which explains each stat but it's not showing up. The story is explained above, you're a lab technician experimenting on microbes, making them stronger. The goal is get them to escape.
I put the image on the ich.io page
It's also worth noting that reducing behaviour traits below default will have the opposite effect. e.g. Reducing aggro make them flee from combat, reducing grouping will make each Amoebro avoid other Amoebro etc.
Ahh this is really cool! The complexity is definitely overwhelming at first, but once I figured out exactly what I was doing it was a lot of fun! It did crash on me both times I played it though so I couldn't beat it :(
This game is great! I had a fantastic time figuring out how everything works. Selective Breeding without all the messy parts and time delay. Yes please.
Not really my type of game, but it was quite fun to have an indirect "control" of the microbes by increasing different stats and watching how they behave. :)
A really innovative and cool game! Graphics, music and sound effects really fit with the DNA theme of the game. A more detailed instructions page might be called for, as I had no idea what was going on at the beginning of the game, although it was fun to find out. Game crashed on me once (no idea why) but overall extremely fun!
So, I like the music and the overall ambiance of the game. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on - I don't think the tutorial was here when I began playing. Game was kinda fun, but the lack of tutorial kinda ruined it for me as I spent a lot of time figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. Game crashed when I scrolled to far left.
EDIT: Continued playing, much better when I knew what was going on, but it crashed again. Windows 10 btw.
Thanks for the feedbacks! I'll upload a dev build, probably some random null references causing some people crashes.
This is certainly one of the most original games I have played so far. Once I understood what was going on I really enjoyed it. A few minor quibbles:
[1] I like the blur effect but it would be nicer if, after zooming out, the focus changes so that everything becomes clear again. [2] The music fits the game well but it could do with being a longer loop
I love the Space Invaders! :grinning:
Thanks, Vivienne did all the music on ipad for the first time, she had fun making it. The blur effect should clear up after a few seconds.
There's some awesome mechanics (very creative) and the visuals are great! the game plays really nice. But it took me a lot to realize how everything works, maybe including some kind of tutorial would be good.
Cool game!
Cool!
I love the post-processing effects you have going on here. It makes me feel like I'm actually looking into a microscope.
A very impressive simulation this. Artificial selection at work.
The speed and travel traits are somewhat annoying in that while they make the little critters faster, they also make their targeting skills really bad. Many a generation was lost to those amoebros circling around food, unable to steer into it due to the high speed.
Selecting the best specimen is also tedious due to there being 21 samples to choose from. Less choices or better tools for sorting samples based on favored criteria, please.
I would also change the *Terminate Batch* button to a *Speed up* button.
I was very proud of my bacterial minions when they managed to off a :space_invader: for the first time. Good work!
I agree that sorting and speed up would have been nice. I'm amazed someone actually took down an invader lol
I have now also rated your game.
This is an awesome game! I had great fun playing it and only a few things on my mind:
- A fullscreen or a maximised window mode would be great - Maybe change the walls ingame. I, for myself found them somehow distracting. - Also maybe tune the microscope effect a little bit down. - Please name your zip file (and the game folder) after your game-title. Gametitle_Linux.zip for example.
I've found a bug pretty early that one could exploit: One just needs to add a point to a trait and remove it and add again. Repeat that and the overall cost will be lowered every time. I am pretty sure it has something to do with float value rounding.
Oh and the ending was fun :grinning:
PS: Thanks for the Linux build!
Since the voting is up, I've added rating to my earlier feedback. Cheers!
Peek-a-boo! :cat: Came back to leave ratings!
@testlab Thanks, you can go full screen if you press alt+enter or select full screen when launching. Or you can on windows, not tried the linux version.
@spinaljack Yeah, i've tried alt+enter because that also works for linux usally. There was no Unity Launcher for me at startup, if there should have been one?
@testlab oh, I thought there was one. You can usually get it to show the launcher if you hold ctrl while starting the game.
This is the type of game I normally turn on tooltips for. :D I like the combination of controlling traits with the random sandbox in which your microbes then behave.
I did lose track of what my microbes were doing. They spread out a bit and there were sound effects, but more visual feedback would have helped me. I found I turned my eyes to my DNA counter instead, which is not where the player's eyes should go as things unfold.
The in-game graphics are nicely stylized (love the lone eyeballs), but the menu and the in-game visuals don't feel like they belong together very well. The music is well made, but I am not sure it's the right vibe for this game. It's a little more high-energy than what I expect for a game in which you essentially look into a petri dish. The sound effects are nice and... _moist._ :D
Overall a very creative entry, very nice work!
Super innovative game but I could not work out what I was controlling? Does starting a new strain make a whole batch based off that DNA? I would love to see more of this game, but it definitely needs longer in the genome sequencer.
@swamphen You've got it. There's an info diagram on this page that tells you have each trait does as well.
The game is very interesting but has a very steep learning curve. It took me quite long to figure out the basic mechanics and it still was really hard. Perhaps minimize the amount of options at the start and later on add more to them?
LOVE this game - and I actually finished :-) It's pretty addictive too - could have played all day! It would be nice if you could zoom out enough to see the whole petri dish/slide at one go as I couldn't always keep tabs on my little guys. Fab game though - we also did a microscopic angle for our game - so it was interesting to see what someone else came up with on this theme. Nice one!
Enjoyed this, though I agree with a few other comments that the lack of a tutorial meant that I spent the first few batches randomly pressing stuff to see what worked (though, thinking about it, that's actually a pretty accurate description of natural selection!).
Couple of suggestions: it's sometimes difficult to keep track of where your amoebros are when you've scrolled around - something like arrows around the outside of the screen pointing to where they are would be good. Also, the ability to click and drag to scroll around would be good (I kept finding myself trying to right mouse drag for some reason - must be a behaviour I've learnt from another game (C&C?)).
Oh, and the momentary defocus effect when zooming is a nice touch :-)
Thanks!
@breadmower Click dragging is another thing that I would have liked to add
@bunnery I can't find your game, maybe link to it in your profile
Here we have an interesting game!
I liked almost everything, sound effects, the environment, models, etc. But, there are some problems: getting the point of what to do at the beginning and lost the track of your amoebros.
Holy shit this game was awesome! I love this kind of games. Loved the idea, and who would have known? I was a girl all along! Love the ending with little Amoebro jumping out the microscope haha. Only complain i have is the music/sound where too loud and the mute button was really hard to found. Also i think the WASD movement is no needed, for this kind of game i think a click and drag movement is better, it allows to sit back and relax watching Amoebros go around wrecking havock! =). Also i think there was a bug when moving the sliders im pretty sure i cheated a little moving the sliders back and forth as it changed the values randomly i think.
It's a very potential game that deserves more polishing! I got confused at the beginning, but with some tweaks on the difficulty curve, it's bound to be an addictive game.
This is actually really damn fun. Your tips etc really helped me understand what was going on. I wasn't expecting to do nothing beside of using the editor at first. What would really benefit the game would be moving the camera by dragging the mouse. The DNA creatures are really cute with the eye and squish animation. Really cool would also be an option to speed up time, since often you're just waiting till they inevitably die (I Know you can terminate the branch, but then you won't know what would have happened. Really nice job!
The game itself is very confuse, i missed a good tutorial to help me through the game. Anyway the graphics are great and the idea is nice!
This was very fascinating to me. At first, I was quite confused as to what was going on, but it became clearer quite quickly.
The graphics are truly fantastic. They fit the game perfectly. I was very pleasantly surprised with the blur effect. It's feels like looking into an actual microscope. Awesome!
The sounds are not quite as impressive, but the sound effects do their job and the sound track is also beneficial to the mood (but it gets repetitive quite quickly).
Overall, I really liked this entry. It was a lot of fun to breed my own horde of super bacteria.
Thanks for the comments @krylos @matheuscampos2910 can you add your games to your profiles so I can find them?
Great Idea!!!! The game have a problem with tutorial but after you understand the gameplay is very good and Fun!!! Congratulations!!!
Cool entry! Similar thoughts to some others here, but I liked the graphics (including the microscope shader) and sound but thought the learning curve/initial complexity was a bit high. I liked it though!
the music loop and the graphics stood out for me, the concept and gameplay mechanics were a lot all at once.
maybe weening me into the gameplay with less options to start out with would make me feel even warmer and fuzzier than I already am :smile:
great take on the theme, our team wanted to start out similarly, kinda a Spore but with mushrooms feel... but it just turned into a mushroom pizza game :pizza:
Its pretty Interesting even I didn't know really what I did in the Game.
A better Tutorial or Explanation would be really helpfull.
Started off doing well despite not knowing what I was doing, got more difficult despite not knowing what I did wrong... still really enjoyed it. It's addictive, but could use more clarification on goals and the means to achieve them
@shaolin-dave Yeah there is an amount of randomness in the AI behaviour so each run wont be identical. The main thing to look out for is seeing how high you can get your desired trait to be on each generation. You can just rush for the end by pumping speed, life and travel.
Well, managed to escape the lab! After an admittedly shaky start not really knowing what I was doing. Main thing that it took me a while to grasp was that the list of microbes (with their three letter names) are *individuals*. And you can only take one of those as the foundation of the next generation, after modifying a few traits as DNA points allow. I especially liked watching for "heroic" ones (bashing the crap outta Flu), noting their name, then going straight to selecting them for improvement at the end of the generation. That soon had them kicking ass, but it takes a while before they start doing notable things.
@novodantis Thanks for the comments. That's the way I play the game as well. The names list would probably have been more obvious if I'd bothered to create a list of readable names instead of random letters.
I do not understand this game at all, but I love it. Thanks for making this, it was really refreshing to play something so original and well-polished, haha.
A little overwhelming at first, but once I figured out what was going on I was hooked. Great job with this, a very fun idea and looks awesome!
I Played this on Livestream Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6NTcovuI0
There's not enough feedback to the user to tell them what they're doing and how it affects gameplay. If I might suggest (As I do in the video), looking to cut the sliders down to 4 sliders, and having a series of "Traits" like "Venomous" or "Aggressive" that affect their behavior and are a little easier to understand. Solid simulation game.
I had a crash with it, I dunno what caused it.
(Also, maybe a "Speed Up" Button.)
Liked this one a lot! I didn't read the instructions so it was fun to find out how things worked together (or didn't! Grouping + No Travel means they all just sat there and died haha!) Overall well done. Did get a crash when moving to the edge of the map though. While I did intuit what was going on pretty quickly, maybe lowering the amount of germs you had to look at each round would be better. For those who like to min max, having to compare 20+ variations every minute or so gets pretty daunting.
I am not sure if I did everuthing ok, but my bacteries became bigger)) Need more time to get deeper into this game
Addicitve! :smile: I also found myself going for the ones that 'stood out' in colouring patterns, despite nominally trying to optimize things. I just like green and purple I guess...
Anyway: Maybe part of the whole 'tutorial' problem is that the initial text suggest that you can 'help them eat'.. which is true... *indirectly*. Once I understood I could only take any meaningful action during the period the 'edit' menu is shown, I got used to it quickly. And it aquired the aforementioned addictive (albeit repetitive) qualities. :grin:
Also, I know you can select them after a strain's died out and *then* see their names, but I had a rather hard time of keeping track of who was who during the whole 'fighting and eating' phase (maybe since I lucked out and Agility was high right of the bat?) This could perhaps be remedied by adding a :pause_button: button (and then still have their 'names' shown on mouse-over of course)?
I had a lot of fun poking around with this one. I was surprised at how much I was enjoying trying to figgure out how it all worked.
Thanks for the comments, all good suggestions.
Very creative and using a good aesthetic. It is not always understable for me, but I had fun playing it after a while. Thank you ++
I played around for a while but didn't understand much. I have no idea what you mean by "ennemy" in this game, "aggro" and many other terms. After a while almost all the amoebros disappeared out of the screen. I have no idea how. And it seems like they were fighting out of the screen.
Even while playing randomly it was fun to watch though so the system is well done and entertaining. After a while I had the surprise to discover amoebros with very différent shapes and color. That was surprisiong and fun. I guess those were mine but I don't really know. :thinking:
Even if I didn't know what I was doing the amoebros escaped anyway so I guess I won :wink: :innocent:
@jojocanard Thanks for playing, there's a diagram on this page which explains all the traits. You can also scroll the view with arrow keys and mouse wheel. I'll work on making easier to understand games in the future.
Ha-ha, nice end-game screen! I love genetic algorithms, food -> speed -> life -> agro -> hp -- my win sequence.
I think the game should show a location where glass got broken at the end, because it was a bit unexpected and I just won.
For a better tutorial some tooltips near each stat/slider would be very helpful. Also I'd like to see my best species by life time and DNA collected (e.g TOP-3 with names and stats). You could add some glowing to food blobs, because they are hardly noticeable with the current color scheme, especially on max zoom out.
By the way, is there any way to lose here?
Thank you! It was fun to play and invader is a good Easter Egg.
Here is my playthrough: https://youtu.be/sbHenMdY5s0
@icxon Thanks for the comments and the video. There's no lose state except maybe giving up from confusion. The group trait keeps them together making them easier to keep in view so you can see which one made it to the edge.
The gameplay was a bit confusing at first, but was nice! As others have said maybe giving some more feedback to the user would be good.
The only problem I could find was that the music's loop point could be heard.
I didn't understand the gameplay that well but the game itself was well made. I liked the zoom effect ;) Good job!
Ah man this was awesome, the visuals, the music, the animations were perfect. Gameplay, although very simple, was really addictive. top entry!!
Super fascinating game! The grain & zoom effects you added to make the world feel microscopic were a real nice touch. I was almost ready to dismiss the game as more of a "toy" than a "game" when I discovered that the 3 letter codes weren't random presets, rather they correlated to your actual amoeba! I do think that's the key point you need to get across in the tutorial. Maybe start generation one with just a few amoeba, and when they all perish, display their 3 letter codes above them so you know the buttons correlate to actual amoeba. Perhaps you could also break it up into 2 phases where the first phase you're just choosing the amoeba you want to start your next strain with, and the second phase you're using DNA to augment that. Once I understood that, though, the other stuff was fun to discover on my own. Great job making something original and with lots to discover!
Good suggestions!
Great idea! Really loved cultivating my own colony of bacteria. The music was good, if not a little repetitive. The visuals were nice and I loved how you made it look like everything is happening through a microscope. Great work!
Nice 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=rDPVuoHG3u8
Thanks for the video!
It's so cool that people love science! Great job!