Petri Dish RogueLite

by winic

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.09

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.77

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.62

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.02

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.40

Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.85

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.64

First Ludum Dare, tried to create a Simulation Based Rogue Lite with cells in a Petri Dish. Feature Creep is real. Its not perfect, but its interesting to play around with the Sliders.
The Code is fully written with pygame.

cant seem to get it working on the ludem dare site. published it on itch.io or download the packaged exe PetriDish.zip

I am Happy if someone still gives Feedback ^^

Edit: Forgot to add Controls:

"Click" for Cell Placement in the Petri Dish
"ESC" stops current run and returns to start screen

Edit2:

Info
- 🟢 Your Cell
- 🔵 Nutrition Provider
- 🟣 Homing Enemy Cell
- 🔴 Stupid Enemy Cell

Sliders:

Aggressive <--> Timid
- searches for enemies <--> searches for nutrition

Speedy <--> Bulky
- more Speed <--> higher nutrition cap

Vision <--> Awareness
- finds target earlier <--> stat check if the movement is executed

Strength <--> Metabolism
- subtracts nutrition from enemys faster <--> Research Points are aquired Faster

Tags: #life simulation

Genres: simulation

Tools: pygame

Comments17

Chariot7 Oct 2024, 23:40

It somehow reminds me of a game I used to play when I was a child! I still love this kind of simulation game. Nice job! 😊

Ninai7 Oct 2024, 23:41

I really enjoyed it. You are right, it is fun to play around with the sliders, especially with the music (and especially after a game jam, it is honestly kind of meditative). We also weren't able to get the web upload to work on Ludum dare, I think it may be a website problem.

One thing I would have found nice is some type of insight on what the different sliders mean. Most are self explanatory, but I wasn't sure about Vision and Awareness, and what the difference is between those two.

All in all congratulations for your first Ludum Dare, especially on your own. I'm impressed, and hope to see you at the next one.

Paul_viu7 Oct 2024, 23:44

The concept is truly original ! The game works well even if it took me a while to get used to it but I restarted several runs which was really cool.

frozenfire927 Oct 2024, 23:46

Really cool idea, would love to see you develop it further! Keep on making games :smile:

Zyppi7 Oct 2024, 23:48

I wanted to make something similar to your game but as you said, feature creep is real. xD Really nice simulation. I enjoyed mixing up the traits. After same trial found and stable one where the game never ends.

Koorogi7 Oct 2024, 23:52

After a number of short rounds not really understanding how it works, I've now got a single round where I've gathered 4000+ research points and counting, with no sign of slowing.

As a game, I think it could use some mechanic to force it to end eventually -- spawning more competing cells over time, or something? As a simulation, I still wish I could get back to the sliders to try a different combination of settings without needing to wait for the current simulation to end.

A Priori8 Oct 2024, 02:25

Pretty fun and interesting to play around with! I just think that the sliders should be a little cheaper to start with because it took many runs to unlock them, especially for trying to get the first one where you don't have any sliders to play around with yet - which is the most fun part. Also very cool to see a fellow Pygame developer in the wild!

Deantwotwo9 Oct 2024, 18:36

Super interesting game haha i was mesmerized! There should be a timer that shows how long you lived in 1 round :P Sliders are a little hard to understand, but i can see how you can implement a really neat roguelite system that can make this game super interesting!

little-crow-heart11 Oct 2024, 15:01

Really liked the concept of this ^^ my suggestion would be maybe a little tutorial screen or a small information screen that you can slide in/open and close? :thinking:

Gurbx12 Oct 2024, 14:36

Interesting unique take on the theme! Would have liked a tutorial of some kind though. Overall good job!

WiNicauthor12 Oct 2024, 15:07

@gurbx
Added a Description to make it easier to understand whats going on

LDJam user 012 Oct 2024, 17:50

Genuinely stressful for a while there, which I enjoyed

ColeSlaughter13 Oct 2024, 03:01

Thanks for submitting your game to stream!

I love what you did with the sliders. It's a genuinely unique way to handle upgrades that I haven't seen before. Would love to see what else you can do with it!

Dianavi18 Oct 2024, 10:16

Interesting game, but it might be lacking some information about what's happening

Paul-Maxime19 Oct 2024, 19:50

Oh, I like this kind of incremental game where we get stronger after losing :D

In my first run, I didn't even need to purchase all upgrades, I just had max timid, full speed and full strength and got a petri dish where all the food was very close.

My cell just had to run in a triangle from one food to another and could go on forever without losing any nutrition.

TheSmellofOxygen21 Oct 2024, 21:05

Neat toy. Right now the player doesn't have enough control to really think of it like a game so much as a sim. I had a similar experience of the poster above me, getting locked into a run with thousands of research points because my little guy was running between three nearby nutrient producers quickly enough. I did enjoy the slow development of the cell and the customization of the sliders. I wasn't quite sure what most of the stats did besides the obvious ones like speed. I assumed metabolism determined how fast you lost nutrients and strength determined how much your cell resisted other cells slow effects.

Amikatag25 Oct 2024, 19:25

Nice game despite lack of control. Probably that's something Spore level 0 should've been