Carnivorous by James Greenleaf
A twin-stick shooter created for the Ludum Dare 46 game jam.
Play as the first cell to have developed immunity to a virus invading your Organism's system.
Fire antibodies to kill the viruses, and to heal other cells.
Controls:
Use a dual analog stick controller if you have one.
Otherwise, WASD keys for movement, mouse to aim, left-click to shoot.
Gameplay
The object of the game is to build up your Immunity meter by killing viruses and healing other cells by firing antibodies at them. You win once your Immunity gauge is full.
Killing the white viruses grants a small amount of immunity, the purple ones give more, and the fast pink ones give the most.
Healing an infected cell takes three shots, grants some immunity, and enables a three-second firing speed boost, which is essential for clearing out waves of enemies!
There's only one level, so this game is hard! It's definitely possible to win though. Think of it like an arcade shooter - designed to keep you pumping in those quarters...
Resources used to create:
- Godot 3.2
- Aseprite 1.2.17
- WavePad 10.48
- BG music was created by https://surt-r.itch.io/
Files
All files and playable HTML5 version available at https://amoniker.itch.io/carnivorous-ludum-dare-46
Ratings
| Overall | 2215th | 2.977⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1692th | 3.095⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 2473th | 2.295⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1852th | 3.333⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1677th | 3.273⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1164th | 2.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1963th | 2.905⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 42🗳️ | 3🗨️ |
(I played without Controller)
If there was any colour coding with different enemies, I didnt understand it; I tried to figure out the difference between white/purple virus but i couldnt.
Actually couldnt manage to beat the game:
every X seconds a huge wall of enemies will appear, and it doesnt feel like its possible to shoot your way through. You are too big and too slow (especially in vertical direction) to maneuver around.
I would've enjoyes some invulnerability frames after getting damaged (you just lose 70% of your HP when smashing into multiple enemies at once).
A possibility to gain HP back could also fix that.
Keep Going!
I thought the fact that enemies would bounce off of each other and go in a bunch of different ways was a really nice touch. Often in these types of games all the enemies just go right through each other, but this added a nice touch of chaos :)
As one of the other comments said, a way to gain back some HP would be nice and maybe make it a bit easier, but overall great job!
Edit: If it's not too late -- and it wasn't intentional -- you might want to opt out of the "humor" category?
Fun: It's fun although very hard. I ended up preferring to use mouse and keyboard, probably just because I'm more used to it. Getting the firing speed boost is very satisfying. After many attempts to win the game honestly, I finally found a strategy that's more my style... flying off the bottom of the screen and shooting everything from safety.
Innovation: I think the combination of this setting with the gameplay is innovative. I also appreciate the way the cells work differently from the viruses, giving you a bonus as long as you shoot them.
Theme: Yes
Graphics: Not bad, I think everything goes well together.
Humor: Sure, I think the interpretation of fighting viruses as a shmup is pretty funny.
Mood: Good - I kinda got this "internal organ" feeling just from the colour scheme and art and the thumping sound of the weapon, without the need for particularly graphic graphics. So well done.
Some ideas to reduce difficulty:
- Increase spawns gradually, so you can get a small warmup without immediately getting swarmed, but quickly, so you won't have to wait for too long on replays
- Similar to the Antibody Printer, something you can shoot to heal back up
- Maybe have the Antibody Printer activate on a single hit, as I missed most of them due to being too busy not dieing to immediate threats
Other than that, well done!!!
1. There's way too many enemies to either destroy or avoid. Your cell is moving too slow to try and avoid them (and even if it was faster, there's usually not enough space to avoid enemies) and it's firing way too slow to punch through.
2. The enemies can't leave the screen, but your cell can. It looks like there's collider missing on the bottom of the screen, and you can move out of view to stay safe.
3. There wasn't enough difference between enemy types. At first you get two types of enemies, which don't seem to be any different. Then you get the darker ones which are much faster, but that's it. The larger ones work as powerups if you shoot them a few times, but they don't seem to die to your fire.
Overall, it's a good LD entry. Well done!