Cell la vie! by picttarge
Cell la vie!
A microcosm in a petri dish
How long can you last in life's harshest arena? Lets shrink you down to size and see what you can handle. The maniacal scientist might invite some of their "friends" to the party...
Survive as long as you can by collecting energy and using it to build your bacteria minions.
You will die, but as they say... that's life...
Controls
Singleplayer
- LMB : move - hold to move towards mouse
- RMB : target - click on enemy to target, click off enemy to clear
- 1 : build attack bacteria
- 2 : build repair bacteria
- 3 : build decoy bacteria
- Space : spawn - spawns built bacteria
Credits
Programming & artwork
- Andy Murray - @Glaikunn
- Matt Hubbard - @Antanites
- Peter Bell - @Vault101
Audio
- underwater ambience by akemov -- https://freesound.org/s/255597/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Platforms
Links below to itch.io
v1.1 contains updated tutorial, the rest of the mechanics are unchanged.
v1.0 is the original at LD56 competition end.
- linux: .zip -> Inside bin folder execute
- mac: .jar -> requires java 21
- windows: .zip -> execute
Ratings
| Overall | 537th | 3.566⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 654th | 3.264⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 406th | 3.473⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 228th | 4.039⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 526th | 3.697⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 847th | 2.386⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 647th | 3.408⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 62🗨️ |
I spawned a bunch of bacteria, but they all got eaten :-(
I find the pacing is just a tad too slow, I never felt any real challenge. You have a great artistic style going on here though, it feels very "right" for this type of game.
Well done! :)
Thanks for the feedback so far :) Original v1.0 still available.
The information summary about the cells is perceived well. If you make it an educational project, it will be very cool. It is necessary.
It's a little bit not intuitive how to act, but it's solved by balance and interface.
Didn't figure it out quickly enough in how to play it, but it turned to be a nice... colony simulator I guess?
I'm usually leaving much more detailed comments, but this is pretty flawless so I'm not even sure what to comment, sorry :D
I would have personally preferred a bit more dynamic gameplay, especially for an "arcade" game like this. I hoped I would get into a game state where all my bacteria would destroy everything but sadly I lost before that.
Great game!
Really cool to also learn how you did the graphics from your previous comments!
The lack of a tutorial did lead to me stumbling around a bit initially, but as soon as I got the gist of it it was very fun.
Also, guilty of this myself, but maybe a taaad bit too much chromatic aberration :skull:
Good job!
I played the game. Died instantly few times, but managed to play 18 minutes after that. It seems the main trick is to keep damaging myself so the repair cells always follow me and not get destroyed somewhere off screen. All the bacterias merge into one spot and hard to understand how many of them there, I wish they spread out a little. Overall a great entry has some Osmos vibe, but a different game entirely. Love the art and sound work;
Here is my attempt:
https://youtu.be/SmhyQL-wPBM
Really high level of polish on everything here. Menus looks great, game looks great, controls and game design are all really refined.
Great entry.