Probably the weirdest game I've come up with to date. It is set in the cardiovascular system of a mammal. The objective of the game is to direct incoming blood cells to their respective "tubes", to keep the mammal alive. Each cell has a colour associated with it which indicates the "tube" to direct it to.
Objective
Simply try to last as long as you can. Your score is counted by how many cells you direct successfully. Your "heart rate" adjusts accordingly depending on how well you're directing cells. If your heart rate reaches zero, you lose!
The player is able to "collect" a maximum of 3 cells at a time. Use the spacebar to release them as you want. After 3 cells are stored, any other cells that try to enter will be destroyed and your heart rate will reduce.
The game also features two "power ups" - a BPM boost, and a movement speed increaser.
Controls
* Left/Right: Movement * Spacebar or Down arrow: Release cell. * P: Pause. (Alternatively click in bottom-left corner of screen.)
*Only 64-bit systems supported.*
To run the game
* Download the .rar archive and extract somewhere using WinRAR, WinZip, or 7Zip, etc. * Run the executable file, 'Bloody Fantastic.exe'
oof, this is really tricky xD I do like it though, it's got a good amount of tactic with very few rules. Great job :D I was very hooked~ Played for quite a bit (never got far though xD) well done~
Cool concept, good graphics - but there are some design issues worth addressing.
The gameplay is a function of time. The blood flows over time and the movements take time, that is an interesting tension to explore. To do so fairly would mean either limiting the maximum frequency of the blood flow to the period of time it takes to reach the farthest color, or accounting for the difference in time consumed between the colors - because each color takes up a different amount of time, and each blood cell takes time to deliver.
To the anonymous commenter, thank you for the valuable feedback.
I sort of realised near the end that the design of the game is just a bit unfair in general. It is practically impossible to pass anything past 200 or so points due to the design.
The way I tried to address this problem was to simply give the player more points depending on how far to the left the player went. You may have noticed that if you directed a cell to a green "tube" you'd actually get more points than a magenta one. Additionally, your points are multiplied by a factor depending on the heart rate. Lower heart rate -> slightly more points. Clearly this wasn't enough :P
It was a bit difficult finding a good balance between 'too easy' and 'too hard.' :laughing:
I was honestly thinking of implementing a restriction mechanism, to lower the spawn rate if the player was to the far right of the screen. Guess that would've helped a lot.
An interesting game, it is quite hard though. Graphics are essentil but bive the right vibe, music is nice as well. I think that needing to collect the blood cells adds a lot of difficulty. Just having them pile up in the main blood vessel could be more interesting, and loss would consist in having the vessel clogged up. Otherwise increase the speed at chich the "collector" can move when the cells are coming faster (the present speed increase is not enough), otherwise it simply becomes very hard very fast.
@alex457 Sorry, yeah I had a feeling it wouldn't work well on Mac when I built it. For some reason Unity3D was exporting the .app file as a directory. :thinking:
I like it. Speed of the movable part could probably be increased along with the spawn rate. I particularly liked the temporary storage of up to 3 cells. That was a great design decision.
Pretty cool idea that got pretty hectic! Something that would've been cool - maybe progressively intense music, or at least consistently intense music, I felt like whenever the rapid drums kicked in I expected the pace to pick up, and then I expected things to calm down when the music lulled (of course, it didn't, and I died :laughing: )
I really liked this idea! Very on theme! I was confused at first, I kept flicking back to the start and I didn't know what to do, but after a while I started to get in the rhythm of things (pun intended) Keep up the good work!
@defectivemelon Ha I actually got that feeling myself while testing the game! I'd never done progressive/dynamic music before but I think I could've done it in time, especially since I'd recorded all the tracks seperately in Audacity for the panning. :wink:
Solid game, found it very hard but had fun anyway. I've not encountered anything I had gripes with (I think the difficulty is on me) so just well done!
My goal was 100 points, and I managed to reach it on the dot, using maximum concentration with those speed powerups. The game got very hype during when it got fast, I liked that a lot. The powerup system was pretty neat too, that added a good variety to the gameplay. All in all a great job, well done!
Pretty cool idea for a game! I really liked the mechanic you've built. With some fine tuning it could be really awesome. You had some power-up mechanics there as well to keep it interesting. I wasn't the best of players since I only got to 67points, but I had fun playing it! Good job!
Comments28
Nice game overall, it get's hard pretty fast. Good job!
The gameplay is a function of time. The blood flows over time and the movements take time, that is an interesting tension to explore. To do so fairly would mean either limiting the maximum frequency of the blood flow to the period of time it takes to reach the farthest color, or accounting for the difference in time consumed between the colors - because each color takes up a different amount of time, and each blood cell takes time to deliver.
I sort of realised near the end that the design of the game is just a bit unfair in general. It is practically impossible to pass anything past 200 or so points due to the design.
The way I tried to address this problem was to simply give the player more points depending on how far to the left the player went. You may have noticed that if you directed a cell to a green "tube" you'd actually get more points than a magenta one. Additionally, your points are multiplied by a factor depending on the heart rate. Lower heart rate -> slightly more points. Clearly this wasn't enough :P
It was a bit difficult finding a good balance between 'too easy' and 'too hard.' :laughing:
I was honestly thinking of implementing a restriction mechanism, to lower the spawn rate if the player was to the far right of the screen. Guess that would've helped a lot.
As you said yourself a different spawn rate could remedy the balancing issue.
I think for me, it was a bit difficult to hit the right tube (maybe on purpose?) - it was more like that I clicked and it skipped one.
Keep up the good work!