Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Sim Cell
By archimagus and johnryanaudio
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2260 | 2.93 | 25 | |
| Fun | 2483 | 2.29 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 1140 | 3.32 | 25 | |
| Theme | 1336 | 3.60 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 2280 | 2.30 | 25 | |
| Audio | 1505 | 2.50 | 23 | |
| Mood | 2033 | 2.85 | 23 |
I love games like this, spent a lot of times playing it, trying to figure it out. A loot of waste is piling up quickly. It was not clear to me at all what buildings cost what or produce what. Still not sure what ATP does. But great game and I feel like I have learned something :)
@listonos Thanks, yeah, we got a bit overambitious on trying to include as much of the actual biology as possible, we sort of ran out of time to explain how to play it in the game :/
It seams a solid simulation but quite hhard to figure out for someone who hasn't a big grasp on cellular byology.
It could be blood with some sort of tutorial.
It needs a tutorial, I think. I liked the idea.
I like the idea, but since im not that fluent in english, a tutorial could help me a lot. The concept is so interesting and i like when the game is about something cientific!
I like that you chose a science topic for your game to make it educational, reminds me of a PHET simulation (from University of Colorado Boulder). I suggest pausing the music when in Pause mode and providing player control instructions. Thanks!
I'm very much into simulation games, and this one seems very interesting. I had a fun couple of minutes(even though I had no idea what I was doing), and then all my structure dissapeared into waste. Any type of tutorial would help this game a lot. Also the nucleus UI and picking what to build is a bit clunky.
I like the idea. It was fun to play! I think it would be use full to show a hint what those things do. At the point in the game ware I clicked the information button Wikipedia was opened inside the HTML5 player and the status of the game was loosed, this was annoying. Overall, it is an impressive game. Excellent work!
I think I'm too dumb for this game, but it has nice base idea.
Without a background in cellular knowledge, very difficult to know what to do.
Cool concept, I liked the idea of keeping a cell alive. It would have been nice if the game was a bit more clear on what you need to do though, I ended up just building some of each component. I like the educational aspect too, though it would be nice to have it integrated directly into the game since clicking the Wikipedia links reset progress.
@falzock @space-man Thanks, unfortunately we didn't get to try the HTML5 version enough before the deadline to realize that clicking the link was a problem.
Playing the game from a non-biologist perspective was an interesting challenge for sure. I didn't *really* know what I was doing, but experimenting with the different kind of "actors" felt science-y on it's own. It was nice discovering that combination of them worked together, even with no prior knowledge. Also I appreciate all the effort that went into the user interface, it's looking very intimidatingly complex, but in a good way that fits the serious theme of the game :D
Interesting idea, but I can't understand what am I doing wrong and why builders don't build their structures. Information wiki links are cute, but break game progress :D
Just as others have mentioned, I also wasn't capable of understanding the mechanics to be able to provide any relevant feedback, but considering how detailed it is, this has a huge potential of becoming an educational tool for people interested in biology if you focus your post-jam efforts this way. If you integrate the knowledge describing various other specific cells like bacteria, maybe it could help people visualize the consequences of some of their structural details, e.g. if the cells could also interact with specific environment. But ignoring the WebGL iframe issue, directing casual players to "Wikipedia: Actin-binding protein" seems like an overkill... :D Anyway, there was recently a huge project at legendsoflearning.com which financed various small Unity games by thousands € each, having them cover simple educational curricula, and this game seems to resemble some of their better quality stuff, all that's missing is a tutorial along with some quiz :)
I understand that it is for educational question in reference to the cells, it would be more understandable if the figures were more pleasant for them to understand, if a child can understand your project it would be a wonder for the schools.
Interesting game. The sound cut out after a while, just as a heads up. It was a cool simulation, but I wasn't sure If I was doing things correctly or if the parts of the cell were interacting with the things the nucleus was producing, if it had more of a response to the actions you did would be more satisfying as a simulation game. I wanted to help you get over 20 reviews! goodluck!
Nice game! It has plenty of mechanics and stuff to do. I didn't really understand what I was meant to do, but I'll try and supply some feedback. An idea would be top upload a video in your Ludum Dare page for a tutorial. They're much quicker to make and are people tend to respond better to visual tutorials (rather than words for example). This is a very ambitious game, and I like the depth and attention to detail it has. This can definitely be extended with more work to become a very fun and complex game, even an educational tool as others have suggested! I don't understand the biology much, but you clearly do, so congratulations for the great job you've done of implementing it! There's lots going on and the game feels reasonably alive! Some more audio and graphic work would enhance this. I liked the close up camera you used in the top right corner! Overall, good start, but some more work is needed for it to be more playable (mainly surrounding tutorials and in game explanations). But you've done great so far, you just needed some more time to extend what you've made to others so they can understand it. Good work!
Great sim! It maybe too professional to play but a good tutorial would make it easier to start.
I noticed your entry was a few votes short, so I played it on Twitch and gave some live feedback. VOD is up on Youtube, if you'd like to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6oja9yekY
As a firm believer in the power of games and sims as teaching tools, what a neat project! I jokingly complained about it a bit on stream, but the fact that each unit was linked to a wikipedia article was pretty nifty! I had to do a deep dive into my rusty old Premed Dropout brain to remember what cell bits did what, and definitely struggled to manage the waste products in my cell, but I had a good time with this! I think my biggest complaint would be the death rate of cell machinery, and the difficulty I had with managing RNA to make bits to keep the cell going. A system for queueing up RNA orders, or setting target numbers of different cell machinery, would have taken a load off my poor bad-at-multitasking brain! That said, thanks a bunch for making this!
@solifuge Thank you so much for playing and giving the video feedback. It's really helpful to see where people struggle. We know it's much more difficult than it has to be. We just ran out of time to do a good balance pass, and especially a tutorial. There were even more processes we wanted to get in as well, and we should have probably stopped sooner to make sure we could get that all important tutorial in. We wanted to do pretty much everything you suggested. Also, it sucks, I think you ran into a bug, maybe after a restart? It seemed like some of your workers bugged.