Professor Unstable's Chemical Combustion by Kazatan

[raw]
made by Kazatan for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

πŸ§ͺ About

Professor Unstable's Chemical Combustion is a game about combining molecules without the mixture becoming unstable!

You can play it to try and see all the reactions or to get a high score - there's no "win" condition. Take your time 😊

See the tips below. I hope you enjoy it! :smile:

unstable-low.gif

πŸ§ͺ Play

HTML5 (web) :video_game:

πŸ§ͺ Controls

  • Click on the test tubes to add molecules.
  • Slide the flame on the bunson (bottom left) to adjust the bunson burner.
  • Restart with the restart button (on the box) if things go wrong!

πŸ§ͺ Tips

  • Too many molecules will easily make an unstable solution.
  • Use the reactions to work out which molecules you need to add.
  • Control the temperature with the bunson burner.
  • The instability monitor is there to warn you if there's potential for a catastrophic chain reaction!
  • You can add Red, Green, and Blue - other colours you make through reactions
  • One combination of R, G & B uses energy in its reaction - thus lowering the temperature of the solution around it :wink:

πŸ§ͺ Tech

  • Unity - Engine (https://unity.com/)
  • GIMP - Graphics (https://www.gimp.org/)
  • Audacity - SFX Editing

πŸ§ͺ Dev Notes

There were some things that got cut to meet the deadline: - There's no "win" condition. - I created some music but wasn't happy with it so decided the sound effects would be enough. - I spent a long time simulating fluid heat transfer and energy transfer - so there's that :laughing: - you can't tell this in the game though!! :rofl:

Thanks to everyone who makes LD so awesome πŸ‘

Ratings

Overall 134th 3.775⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Fun 194th 3.575⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Innovation 37th 4.125⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Theme 68th 4.175⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Graphics 329th 3.3⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Audio 259th 3.15⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Humor 366th 2.3⭐ 17πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Mood 336th 3.063⭐ 18πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Given 25πŸ—³οΈ 9πŸ—¨οΈ

Feedback

poisondart00
03. Oct 2021 Β· 22:44 UTC
![Capture.PNG](///raw/a8e/71/z/44269.png)

Got them all. I really enjoyed the game. It was quite complex.
Dobryn
03. Oct 2021 Β· 23:58 UTC
I love chemistry games.
Richard Jiang
04. Oct 2021 Β· 01:01 UTC
Very fun! Scared the heck out of me when the glass broke, lol
Chameth
04. Oct 2021 Β· 01:05 UTC
Really good fun! I was on my way to hitting 20 double-yellows when disaster struck:

![Screenshot_20211004_015934.png](///raw/49d/f3/z/44551.png)

The way the molecules move around is perfect. Combined with the sound effects it just feels _right_. The reactions are nicely done to create an interesting series of steps, too.

I'm not quite sure I understand what affected stability, which meant it was a bit hard to avoid it going bang. It felt like going slow was more stable, but I'm impatient so I risked going faster anyway. It worked until it didn't. :laughing:
caiustsm
04. Oct 2021 Β· 01:13 UTC
I was not able to get the 100 deg. yellow plus cyan reaction to happen, but got 6/9. Particle simulations are always fun.
kassanu
04. Oct 2021 Β· 01:25 UTC
Was fun to play around with. ~~What is the trick with getting the temperature down? I couldn't figure out to get to 10Β° to get double blue reaction~~ nevermind I just decided to dump as much as could and it started dropping!
![Capture.PNG](///raw/abb/1/z/44589.png)
MickM
04. Oct 2021 Β· 03:21 UTC
I feel like I need to sit down with nothing else on for a while to really appreciate this game. Looks like there is a good theoretical base for it and the temperature dependant reactions are a very interesting mechanic.

It is almost factorio like reverse engineering the molecules you need to get to with a harder twist of temperature management. I feel like there could be a (niche but existent) market for this kind of game commerically, hope you continue it!
🎀 Kazatan
04. Oct 2021 Β· 09:54 UTC
@poisondart00 @dobryn @richard-jiang @chameth @kassanu @mickm Thanks for playing! It's great to hear what each of you experienced from the playthrough! There's quite a lot of simulation going on under the hood - and I realised later that most of it was not necessary for this game πŸ˜†

I did have a debug view which I never managed to add into the released version:
![modelling2.png](///raw/f55/72/z/44884.png)

The molecules get energised based on the solution temperature they're in. They all enter at 17°. That's why - when they're near the flame at the bottom - they get energised a lot more and wobble around 😁

The temperature shown in game is the average for the solution - and it's this that controls "game over" (110Β° and -10Β°). The Stability text is trying to work out if you've got a lot of reactive molecules in the solution which might force the temperature up above the max, or down below the min. πŸ€“
kromeboy
04. Oct 2021 Β· 10:45 UTC
Great game and hard to master. The simulation could be a little confusing. For example is not clear to me how different reaction affect the temperature.

Anyway I managed to get all the reactions

Great work!
🎀 Kazatan
04. Oct 2021 Β· 10:48 UTC
@kromeboy yes - I agree. I should have included something in the "Reactions" UI to show if it the reaction was endothermic or exothermic. I blame lack time and sleep 😁
jka
04. Oct 2021 Β· 14:21 UTC
Well, I'm still not great at chemistry, I guess. :grin: Great concept though and it looks good too! The shattering glass got a bit of jumpscare out of me. :smile:
SlimmerBurger
04. Oct 2021 Β· 16:48 UTC
Really cool game, although the temptation of pressing all of the buttons all the time kept getting the better of me
Maxthedoom
05. Oct 2021 Β· 02:33 UTC
Well I got all the reactions except the first one and the ones that needed double blues. I couldn't figure out how to get the temp down so I added a load of blue ones in and decided, yeah, let's add one green and red in there to see if the second reaction help cool it down a "little" bit. Bang. Very interesting game :)
LDJam user 239493
11. Oct 2021 Β· 01:35 UTC
Very fun and interesting take on the theme! Unfortunately magenta + yellow and yellow + blue didn't seem to react at 95 and 100 degrees respectively, possibly related to the low performance I'm getting on my macbook (about 2 fps).
🎀 Kazatan
12. Oct 2021 Β· 20:04 UTC
@cody-miner that's a shame about the performance issues. You might have to wait for the molecules to heat up in the solution (it's not instant - each one has it's own energy level). Maybe the performance issues is slowing down the simulation too 😬
Wendel Scardua
12. Oct 2021 Β· 21:49 UTC
It was really fun to trying to get all the reactions, I like how you've added optional goals even though the player is free to just mess around (btw, my current score is 119, with 9/9 reactions). One thing that could've been interesting here was a button to enable "heat vision" - basically your debug view, but with the game's flavor.
🎀 Kazatan
14. Oct 2021 Β· 07:53 UTC
I agree @wendel-scardua - to see the underlying simulation would be really interesting I think. It's a shame I didn't work a view of it into the game. Thanks for playing πŸ‘πŸ»
Barrier
18. Oct 2021 Β· 12:43 UTC
I have no idea what I'm doing but it reminds me of being in high school doing science experiments.
I really like pressing stuff and making the thing explode :D
schwede
18. Oct 2021 Β· 16:59 UTC
Kazatan, so nice to see you again! My congratulations on your entry! With some molecules, I had some problem to get the hang of it, but I believe that’s the part of being a scientist?! As a suggestion, you could have added a timer, so you could try to beat your own record to get the molecules and the people could post their record. A nice solid game! Good job!
Dacota
04. Nov 2022 Β· 19:56 UTC
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