Pretty fun, the zooming in and out thing is an interesting idea and i liked that you have to balance picking up the dna with destroying the enemies to get health, the different art styles between the icons and the backgrounds and the sprites is a little jarring though and it felt like it takes a ton of bullets to kill the enemies.

Cool sound effects. The missile damage on the enemies seems low making them hard to kill.

Sort of a Flow type design to it with the DNA collection and enlarging / shrinking.
If you were to continue with this, I think you would probably benefit from going with a non-photorealistic background as it would clash less with the pixel art, and it might make sense to link your 'energy' to your firing, as there's no real drawback to continously firing at the moment.
Good entry!

This was pretty cool! The size change was the highlight of the game for me. Very cool.

I agree with @mrnyarlathotep about a non-photorealistic background being a good fit. The missiles seemed to be positions in camera space instead of world space, so they would follow the camera as I moved around. The difficulty seemed tuned well, it was quite a challenge but didn't seem unbeatable. Well, I am using a touchpad at the moment, and I couldn't beat the game, but with a mouse I'm sure it would be perfect.

Very cool mechanics, and they felt very well implemented. Great job! By the end there was a lot to keep track of, which felt great for such a simple rule set. The sound effects were well made, and didn't feel as repetitive as it easily could have.

Cool concept! Balancing collecting dna and getting food was pretty difficult, but not too difficult. I agree with what others have said, the photo realistic background definitely clashed with the pixel art. Overall, good job!

Very cool approach on the theme! Shrinking and growing reminds me of Spore. I think the energy drainage made it a little too difficult, especially at first. But, great job!!

This is such a great game!!! Seriously, 5/5 from me across the board, this was clever, difficult but not frustrating, and endlessly replayable. The graphic fit well, the controls are great and the overall take on the theme is incredibly inventive. Really, really well done this was incredibly entertaining :smiley:

Quite a difficult game, but with a very interesting concept behind it.

Nice concept, it's really fun to play. Great job.

You made me shoot cats! :(

The graphics instantly drew me in. Not sure if the movement is linked to framerate but the cats move around crazy fast and take a lot of hits to kill. Was only able to finish level 1 after getting a cluster of DNA spawn nearby. Second level got really busy all of a sudden. The mechanic is interesting, would've been easier to process if the powerups were visually distinct from the enemies or perhaps more like a triggered ability balanced out by power.

Here's a :cookie:

This was a really fun mechanic, I like how your levels slowly added more layers to the game. It made it much easier to understand what was going on and how to play. The gameplay was simple, but very entertaining and addictive. I completed every level too. I also love the little fart sounds whenever you shot a small creature.

The only issue I had (which may be just because my laptop isn't very good so I'm not going to mark you down for it) is that the last level was really sluggish for me, but I still played it to completion regardless.

I liked the zoom mechanic a lot, and the difficulty increased in a good way!

Killing the animals when they are big should probably be a tiny bit easier though (didn't really understand that I could kill them at first since shooting them didn't seem to have any effect)

Hard game. Didn't passed the 3rd lvl. It's a bit frustrating that zoom-in tiles, zoom-out tiles and DNA are randomly placed.
I lost games because i can't find a DNA close to a zoomin tile :expressionless:.

It could be great to be able to sacrifice energy to force a zoomin/zoomout.

Innovative game ! Good job guys :slight_smile:

Mechanic of the game is very interesting, I really liked it :)

Its a fun game and a really good concept ^^ If you improve the graphics will be perfect :3

Strange but nice!

Hey neat game, and thanks up front for your review! Hope you enjoyed the bratwurst :).

I liked the graphics of your game a lot right off the bat. Varied enemies and great use of colours. The backgrounds were interesting but not intrusive and didn't clash with the colours of the other sprites. The UI elements were sometimes pixellated.

As far as gameplay, I liked the idea of growing and shrinking the world. I think some fine-tuning would really assist a future iteration. Damage from enemies should probably be less when you outsize them (I figured at first you could just step on them to kill them without being hurt). I suspect grow/shrink tiles are randomly placed - they sometimes stacked up causing you to shrink, then grow again (or v.v.) and consume both tiles. Maybe if fewer were placed and they weren't consumed on use. To the missiles, it felt like their speed relied too much on the player's momentum. A lot of times they would just go sideways if you were strafing so it felt like i had to charge the enemy, back off and repeat leading to a lot of hits. One thing that also might help there is if the player took up a little less of the screen, giving you more room to see the action at the pace it's going.

I liked the sound a lot. Again, it was varied and sounded professional. The menu sounds added a really nice touch of polish, which is one of the things that really differentiates LD games imo. If time permitted adding some BGM would be the icing on the cake.

Thanks a lot for your submission and review of our project! Hope you had a great time and have success with your entry :D

I've played spore, but it is an interesting idea that not growing bigger but growing smaller

cool mechanics, was a fun game to play