Sim Sperm by nbilyk
Everybody was small once. Microscopic even. Sometimes we lose our way, and have to remember to keep trying.
Directions: Click or tap to thrust. Hold down your mouse button or finger to keep moving. To win, you must be the first spermatozoa to reach the center of the egg. Use thrusts to get to the center faster once you've attached.
Press F11 for full screen.


"The Best Game Ever Conceived... Conceived, get it?" - Someone
Web
http://www.indiepig.com/games/LD38/
Source: http://www.indiepig.com/games/LD38/LD38_nbilyk.zip
Tech notes:
Music is improvised on the piano. Art is vector drawn in Adobe Flash and converted to sprite sheet pngs. Programming is in Kotlin, using a framework called AcornUI. This is the first time Acorn has been used for a ludum dare jam. Sperm animation is a weighted mesh done in Spine.
Ratings
| Overall | 307th | 3.227⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 299th | 3.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 319th | 3⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 215th | 3.545⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 325th | 3.045⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 44th | 3.818⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 111th | 3.25⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 158th | 3.429⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 34🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
Rated !
Cool game, great music. I was a tad disoriented at first but I quickly found my way once I stayed with the swarm.
Would love feedback if you get a chance on my game:
**https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sling-ship-search-for-a-small-world**
Cheers!
I found it difficult to win since I had no idea where to go, so I was just following other sperm and you all go at the same speed. An old trick they use in racing games is to make the cars at the back go faster than the car at the front, until it's no longer at the front anyway.
It gives a really good atmosphere to that little race!
Really enjoyed it to navigate the little dude around. I only had my problems by passing the green enemies. They catched me everytime.
Great game with an awesome pino track!!
Fun stuff. Thanks for sharing!
Only a handful of votes away myself, good luck to you! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tiny-dentist
Silly and meaningful. You picked an very interesting idea and did it justice. This would have been too easy to nosedive into parody or crude humor. I appreciate the route you took artistically. Kudos!
Map design could use a little work. There was no point in the lower portion. Worse, there is a gap down there I could leave through and just cruise around outside.
There were some very interesting learning moments. First, the follow the pack mentality works well to guide players through. Secondly, I liked learning that the guys in the lead aren't going to make it. There's an interesting strategy to winning this game that I appreciated.
I'm sure it goes without saying that the music is great. Since you've got some audio chops there, it would've been nice if you could have fit in some light 'tinks' to 'wumps' when an agent hits a wall or dies or something, just to round out the soundscape.
EDIT: Oh, you could've done better on the name. I'm looking at the link title "The Best Game Ever Conceived" and my mind is racing with punny possibilities. Little sorry you played it save with "Sim Sperm".
One thing this game does really right is that it lacks any "replay cooldown". Failing and trying again is never a process of painful waiting.
I think I may have managed to swim outside fallopian tube at some point. Not sure if this is a bug or a short cut.
Here's sort of how I wanted the game to be:
- Start off getting shot into the vagina, kind of this chaotic beginning where all the sperm is struggling to get going in the right direction.
- The cervix is like this bottleneck that lets in a cluster at a time with every contraction. So the fun here would be trying to time yourself to the contraction. Then you get carried away for a bit like a water slide. Around here there should be a bunch of acid clouds that you can't hang around for too long. (I think that's realistic, I did my research =-p)
- Within the womb there are immune cells, that behave as I described earlier.
- The Fallopian tubes then would be more like an obstacle course. No enemies, just tricky navigation and competition.
- The egg part was the only part I think that I did the way I envisioned. You have a struggle to get into an opening, and you have to time your thrusts to get to the center first. To those that didn't make it to the egg, I think that's the highlight of the game for me ;)
Known bugs:
- Starting the player going South at the beginning was a bug, I accidentally introduced that at the 11th hour.
- The gaps in the walls were unintentional. I didn't have a visual editor, so it was kind of a gross process of getting the reproductive system to look right. Maybe in time for next Ludum Dare I'll have some sort of visual editor for creating abstract levels.
- The victory cadence was clipped. I'm not much of an audio pig and didn't record it right.
- Slow and choppy in IE or mobile. (iPad works ok)
After 27 attempt, I finally reach the end! (How did I succeed in only one try in real life, I'm asking...)
Great music and good game! =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1o2f-9mGRU