Symptomatic by Andy Gainey
A pathogen has invaded our patient's skin! Just beneath the surface, it travels along pathways through the cells, producing itchy symptoms as it migrates. We must uncover the arrangement of this tangled mess, and apply an antigen to the skin just as the pathogen arrives.
A hastily written manual is available when you visit the page. But as the game is admittedly a still rather opaque in terms of mechanics, I have now also created a video tutorial that should hopefully explain things a little bit better. That tutorial is available here: http://youtu.be/H_iXbOqOufQ
A hastily written manual is available when you visit the page. But as the game is admittedly a still rather opaque in terms of mechanics, I have now also created a video tutorial that should hopefully explain things a little bit better. That tutorial is available here: http://youtu.be/H_iXbOqOufQ
Ratings
| Coolness | 45% | 1547 |
| Overall | 3.58 | 203 |
| Audio | 2.67 | 602 |
| Fun | 3.12 | 459 |
| Graphics | 3.31 | 457 |
| Innovation | 4.50 | 5 |
| Mood | 2.86 | 687 |
| Theme | 3.62 | 249 |
As for polish and publish, I'm debating on that. This genre is not really my primary interest, and I honestly know very little about the platform for which I think it would be most natural (tablet). It would also take valuable time away from my other projects. But I also know that bringing a project to completion and publishing it can be a great learning experience (not to mention possibly generating an early revenue stream and community), so I'll keep it in mind.
Thanks for the awesome feedback on my game, first off!
I definitely agree with the others that it was a bit confusing to start off, but once I "got" it, it was fine :) It's a very hard game though, even on easy, or maybe it's just me :P
One thing I did notice is that even though the pathogen was facing one way, it travelled an entirely different direction...is this intended?
Thanks again!
Once I understood what was going on (your original tutorial, and like 20 seconds about the symptoms in the video was enough! The video is waaaay too long... Maybe you could make a shorter one that just goes quickly through the basics?)
The jump from normal to hard is maybe a bit rough? I was guessing every normal in the first turn, but hard just seems so intimidating at first glance (the difference in pathogen speed and symptom radius is 2, and both of them are increased! O: ). But I guess that's partly what the "custom game" is for.
I want to make it clear that I'm absolutely crazy about this game. It's rare to see a puzzle game of such caliber in a LD, I'm bookmarking it and coming back to it after I am done rating 100 games. The way that you mix guessing (for lack of a better word, since it's not random guessing) and planning ahead is great.
It's true that it doesn't have the Minesweeper solution of the player losing a lot, but that doesn't bother me. It makes it feel more like a pen and paper puzzle game, like Sudoku or Kakuro.
Anyway, nice job, thanks for the game (and for the great feedback on my game, I appreciate it a lot!)
Hard to understand but if you play step by step (trivial, easy...), it's ok.
One problem: when you erase, you erase all the paths on one tile... Maybe an undo button will be cool...