Soup by utgarda

[raw]
made by utgarda for LD34 (JAM)
A battle in the micro-world - bacteria vs virus! The one that grows faster wins. Play vs AI or go multiplayer on one keyboard. Press and hold Z to spawn resource gatherers and press X to recall them, claim resources, and GROW! Hold Z a little longer to spawn a soldier that will protect you from rogue cells and attack the opponent's core.

Select mode from menu screen. In 2-players mode, use Z, X for player 1 and O, P for player 2.

Have fun!

Credits:

the game is made with LibGDX

Programming: Evgeniy Tsvigun
Art: Yakov Nechushkin, Pavel Buzdin
Music and sound: Nikita Vasilyev, Dmitry Miroshkin

Update: v0.1.1
* due to a typo, all the purplish enemies floated to the right side, making it real hard for the blue player, fixed.
* Balance fixed: purple enemies could grow big enough to kill a base in one touch, which made the gameplay too randome

Ratings

Coolness 60% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.71 181
Audio(Jam) 3.46 272
Fun(Jam) 3.59 190
Graphics(Jam) 4.28 104
Innovation(Jam) 3.55 221
Mood(Jam) 3.83 118
Theme(Jam) 4.07 177

Feedback

馃帳 utgarda
15. Dec 2015 路 02:18 UTC
Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/qmJTuZjxx8w

OX/X and Linux links are actually .jar files, so use them if you have Java installed
Nega Drive
15. Dec 2015 路 04:04 UTC
Nice concept, sort of Osmos combined with a simple RTS game? Interesting. Great presentation too.
MemoryLeek
15. Dec 2015 路 21:05 UTC
Very polished and nice game! I imagine it would be plenty of fun with 2 players, unfortunately I don't have anyone to play with right now :)
Sounds, graphics, gameplay, everything was great.
holgk
16. Dec 2015 路 12:30 UTC
Nice game.
rockford
16. Dec 2015 路 12:46 UTC
Remind me agar.io, very fun.
tantumgames
16. Dec 2015 路 12:49 UTC
Great graphics and fun gameplay.
BubuIIC
16. Dec 2015 路 12:50 UTC
Wow, really cool game. One- and Two-Player modus both very appreciated.
Elit3dGaming
16. Dec 2015 路 12:51 UTC
Nice game, very fun and very innovative
DrTeaSpoon
16. Dec 2015 路 12:57 UTC
Really well done!
gokottastudio
16. Dec 2015 路 14:16 UTC
Love the look, it's an interesting game, you need to add messages of win and game over.
timeshapers
16. Dec 2015 路 15:06 UTC
Pretty awesome idea, and looks great too. I seem to be winning or losing solely based on random purple stuff hitting me or my opponent though.
馃帳 utgarda
16. Dec 2015 路 15:55 UTC
@timeshapers yeah, the balance needs tweaking. Still, even now you can prevent your death by recalling gatherers in time or trying to emit soldiers when purples are close :)
EternalCastleStudio
17. Dec 2015 路 17:00 UTC
Ey, incredible concept, addictive, good mechanics, original gameplay, perfect graphics, and nice music. A great entry :-)
kaype
19. Dec 2015 路 11:11 UTC
Eghh, fullscreen by default :/

Really polished though, I can tell you all worked hard on it. Nice music too.
HuvaaKoodia
20. Dec 2015 路 16:47 UTC
I've always liked cell-agent simulations and the idea of indirect control. The main challenge when developing games based on these attributes is creating interesting and compelling gameplay.

The main problem here is the "neutral" purple cells. No matter how actively I keeps spawning fighter cells, sooner or later, one of the big ones is going to appear off screen and hit my base or the enemy base.

Losing like that is infuriatingly random and winning like that isn't an achievement in the slightest.

I feel relaxing the two button limitation and allowing the player to choose the cell spawning direction would go a long way in alleviating this issue.

You could also try to redesign the purple cell to act in a different role, for instance not as a menace but rather a small hindrance in the beginning or as a tactical obstacle between your base and enemy cells.
馃帳 utgarda
20. Dec 2015 路 20:32 UTC
Thanks again, guys.

HuvaaKoodia, yes, you're totally right about that, we see that clearly for quite a while now. We're about to provide more stats - that mediates the issue with most stuff happening off-screen, making more units and, I guess now your detailed and fair criticism just made firm my intention to change purple cells behaviour. The easiest would be limiting their growth capacity, should improve the gameplay a lot.
Almax27
20. Dec 2015 路 22:20 UTC
Nice concept, and relaxing to play :D
f7f5
20. Dec 2015 路 22:30 UTC
Great production values! The only downside is that gameplay seems a bit random, at least I won against the AI more than once without following a solid strategy
Ardy
20. Dec 2015 路 22:54 UTC
Give us a mute button!
Kaupenjoe
20. Dec 2015 路 23:17 UTC
The game looks amazing and plays really well. Theme is of course perfectly implemented :D
I really liked it :)
馃帳 utgarda
21. Dec 2015 路 14:09 UTC
Ardy: will do in post-LD version, coming soon.

Thank you guys!

Update: balance fixed in v0.1.1, randomness somewhat mitigated.
NirabazGAMES
25. Dec 2015 路 02:28 UTC
good work! well done :)
BlackBulletIV
01. Jan 2016 路 01:37 UTC
Very fun. The music and graphics were nice too.
Akhera
02. Jan 2016 路 21:57 UTC
Love the concept. I had a lot of fun. However, I don't like how a lot of the action is happening off screen. I don't have much of an idea how my collectors are doing until I recall them.