Impending chemical catastrophe by codebug
There's a problem in the chemical factory. Dangerous chemicals are mounting up and can only neutralised by mixing them in a particular way. A red, blue, and a yellow chemical will combine and render themselves harmless (they will disappear). Chemical balls will drop from the dispenser, one by one. They form intermediate chemicals initially. Red and blue combine to form purple, for example. A yellow ball would then render the purple ball inert (they will disappear).
Balls that cannot react with each other will stack up, worryingly. If they reach the top of a chemical tube a chemical catastrophe will happen and the game will be over.
The rate of the chemical drops will increase the more chemicals you neutralise. Can you keep up with the never ending flow?
Colour combinations
The dispenser will only ever drop red, blue, or yellow balls.
Red + Blue = Purple
Red + Yellow = Orange
Blue + Yellow = Green
Purple + Yellow = Neutralised
Orange + Blue = Neutralised
Green + Red = Neutralised
Game written in Javascript using P5.js. All assets created by Codebug.
| Link | https://editor.p5js.org/CodeBug/full/NGIRMnV9p |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/impending-chemical-catastrophe |
Ratings
| Overall | 1195th | 3.074⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 766th | 3.315⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 636th | 3.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 412th | 3.889⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1183th | 2.778⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 910th | 2.462⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1005th | 2.38⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1220th | 2.846⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
It definitely delivers on the theme; even when I was getting the hang of it, that unstoppable speed-up caused a sense of terminality.
One question: is there music? I see a check box for "mute music" but I didn't hear any music at all, even when there were other sound effects playing. Maybe a browser issue?
Great game!
It wouldn't a game jam without, at least, something small going wrong :)
Red, Green, Blue
Red + Green = Yellow
Red + Blue = Magenta (or Purple if you want to use a word people would actually be more likely to know)
Green + Blue = Cyan (or Turquoise or Teal if you think those colors are better known)
The simple art reminded me of games I used to play when I was 5yo. Brings back the simpler times!
Bonus points for including WebGL build!
Great job!
If you tried the keyboard but it didn't work, please let me know. I only managed to test it in Firefox so I don't know if there are issues in other browsers.
Thanks for the note about the colours, RGB would make more sense. I'll add it to my notes for when try and improve it later on.
The speedups came a bit aprupt and felt kind of unfair in the later parts, but it works well aside from that.
I got a score of 4000 twice and felt completely out of control with that high dropping speeds. (which is the point, I guess)
While playing I tried coming up with a bunch of strategies, but all of these ultimately failed which is exactly what I want from a game like this.
I can imagine this to work well as a mobile game. Here's some random thoughts on that:
- I'd love to see a leaderboard
- Maybe you can add some white or black balls that dissolve anything
- Colorblind mode where there's symbols instead of colors (maybe just thirds of a circle)
- More gradual speed changes to more clearly see the differences in speeds the players can operate at. (I'd be very interested in seeing a graph of the high score distribution and some ranking within that once the game ends)
Given the time constraints and this being only my second Jam, I'm starting to think of this as more of a prototype rather than a finished game. I'd now like to take my time to make a more complete version.
Your thoughts have been really helpful and I have added them to my ever growing list of improvements and additions for the future. Thanks again!
There seems to be a bug with the music: it stops when you start the game. It also stops when you check the "mute music" checkbox, but it doesn't come back when you uncheck it again.
You've managed to make something that is at once easy to understand and play while also being hard to master, I think.
I do think the controls would've been more intuitive if you controlled the dropper rather than the test tubes (as it stands, it feels like the controls are backwards!) I also will admit I had trouble keeping straight which colors result in a neutral compound - thinking that maybe you could have some kind of visual indicator on each drop, showing which colors it consists of (and hence what colors it's missing)? It would definitely be nice to make the game colorblind-friendly!