Microdominion by LeReveur

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Look in the microscope! Those strange cells seems to fight to domine the petri box!
This is a casual (and I must say, most contemplative) game, where you manage a cell root to evolve and beat the opponent one.
Each round ends when any of the two downs to zero cell. If both disappeared, or if the fight takes too much time and you hit the "Too long" button, you can retry with DNAs as is, but if there is a loser, its DNA is improved. Opponent take one randomly, but if you lose, you can take either one more cell at start (until 18 max, and if available, this is the default choice), or one improvement the opponent had already unlocked.
(you can see if any gene is at its max, when its value is black)
Theoretically, at some point there is no more improvement to get. If you seek for a end, this is it, but you won't get anything else than a retry button.
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I spent about 23h on this game. Despite my best efforts to balance it, I'm affraid that it still comes with too much randomness (and btw that's the reason for the 'Too long' button :joy:), and I suspect that some of the DNA improvements are more like deteriorations, but as I rushed to implement the very last feature just before the deadline, I guess I'm not doing so bad - at least, the game works more or less like intended :sweat_smile:
edit: I think I found how to fix the long lastening bug, now you shouldn't have many minutes runs
edit:
Get full DNA for both: check. :smile:
However, as it's pure javascript procedural drawing, FPS drops a lot when there is more than hundred cells on screen (and yet, I have improved it a little when I fixed the long lastening bug, by discarding some background decoration)

| Link | http://workshop.xenedon.com/LD56/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/microdominion |
Ratings
| Overall | 982th | 2.946⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 979th | 2.73⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 244th | 3.662⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 83th | 4.257⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 498th | 3.73⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 924th | 2.014⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 864th | 3.108⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 53🗨️ |

I won game after game against the opponent with this distribution - I actually think the perception might be a disadvantage - the winning strategy seems to be to just flood the petri dish with as many splits as possible without getting distracted.
Very nice entry (I miss some sound !)
I was a bit confused by the upgrade process at large. I get it that you only get to upgrade when your creatures lose, but what determines which updates are upgrade-able?

I like the theme interpretation a lot. Going as tiny as possible is a cool choice. Though the feedback was so lackluster that I didn't understand the game at all at first. Like, I didn't realize that I won a round when I did because the game still says "Oops, lose" and tells me to "improve dna" even though I can't even choose anything. Similarly confusing is the fact that when you do win, you get to choose between some of the traits to improve them but it seems arbitrary which traits you get to improve. For a casual game, this was sadly quite the confusing experience and start into the game.
Unfortunately there's one more strange game design aspect I'd like to highlight: You only get to make a choice when you lose. That means, that you are kind of rooting for the enemy to win so that you can have an interaction with the game. I think because of this, it may be better suited as a 2-player game where each time, both players get to make a choice and the losing player always gets to choose last so they can react to their opponent's strategy, as a catch-up-mechanic.
I wish there was some audio.
The game also lagged quite a bit for me but it's ok because it doesn't require fast reactions at any time.
In a way, it was relaxing to watch the tiny creatures battle it out. It is almost like a tower defense game in this respect, although there are some important differences. Overall, a unique entry that shows a lot of imagination.