On this NES/Famicom game you are a laboratory assistant. Your laboratory is studying some microscopic creatures in Petri plates, but they have been contaminated by "impostor" organisms, which try to mimic the real creatures. You need to examine these Petri plates with a microscope and inject antibiotics on the impostors.
You can recognize an impostor by looking at the creatures on the plate - they should have one or more features in common, but the impostors won't have the same features. For example, you may notice all creatures are squareish with two fangs... except for one round guy and another one with small teeth. Exterminate these!
After eliminating all the impostors you get to see the whole plate. Let's get to the next one!
When the time's up - or if you make too many mistakes - your performance will be evaluated. Will you get to keep your job?
Controls ========
On the web emulator, "X" or "Z" can be used to start the game and to inject the antibiotics. Arrow keys will move the lens around the Petri plate.
@itskdog I wrote the code in C++ and 6502 Assembly using the LLVM-MOS SDK (target "nes-unrom"). Graphics were made in NEXXT and Aseprite. Music and SFX were made in FamiTracker.
Played your game! It was a really great take on the theme and I found it quite a challenge to figure out the imposter, especially in the later levels! I think the camera move speed adds to the memory challenge of it all. Good submission Wendel!
Nice concept ! Very retro vibes. The floatiness of the controls wasn’t very fun for me at least, but maybe it’s part of the idea of the game ? I did play several levels though, so it’s engaging and fun to play. Congrats on your submission !
Cute game! Love the continuation of dong NES games. Had a similar vibe as "Not my neighbor" or that one entering a kingdom. But... different? Cute. But sadly I'm stuck at 6 cleared. Must work harder at this one, I must defeats my friends' scores!
Really enjoyed the main mechanic, I think it really made me feel like I was using a microscope x) The hidden area and figuring how just enough for who are the good creatures made it a fun challenge and risk/reward. The graphics work really well for the overall aesthetic you were going for. Game is really polished! A small improvement could be to show the controls. Great work!
The first few levels were "wow, this is easy", then things start getting more complicated and it's "oh, I get it now." Great work, especially considering the limitations of the console
Cool entry and nice use of the theme. Heaviness of the movement was a bit much, but otherwise really solid entry. As a fellow homebrew developer it always enjoyable to see games for retro platforms knowing how much work they are to make.
I'm always a fan of how much you embody the not only the LOOK of NES games, but also the FEEL and design philosophy of them. Lean, focused, and creative as always! Wonderful job. 👍
Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! If you wanted to watch it again in the future heres the vod of the stream (timestamped to your game)
Also Wanted to ask if youre fine with me using gameplay from the game in this LDs score chasers tournament intermission video. (Would play in the breaks of the tournament on my stream). Last year for reference
But first, thank you everyone for your kind words :)
> @magopian: (...) The floatiness of the controls wasn’t very fun for me at least, but maybe it’s part of the idea of the game? (...)
> @samuli: (...) Heaviness of the movement was a bit much (...)
The floatiness was a bit intentional yes. I have no experience with a microscope, but I had used a small telescope a long time ago, and more recently a camera with x20 zoom, and in both cases it's hard to move exactly where you want to. Although TBH in those cases it's more "overshooting" than "floatiness". The exact parameters I used were not intentional though, I would've balanced them if I had more time (the current acceleration, max speed and drag were pretty much the first or second guesses I made)
> @andreia: (...) A small improvement could be to show the controls (...)
I'm not against the idea of showing controls, but it's a bit complicated to do it in my case 😅 (for LD54 I tried this by making two separate builds, one that shows the NES controls and another for the WebGL emulator showing keyboard keys)
Não tem final não; tem uns 11 níveis de dificuldade, mas depois deles os últimos 4 se repetem indefinidamente. Mas em compensação há o timer de 180 segundos, e a pessoa ganha só 5s para cada placa limpa, então o jogo não é tão infinito assim.
> @moonlightbomber: Looks like this is the only NES game for LD56, based from my itch.io search (...)
At first I was clearing plates but only later realized I was doing it for the "wrong" reasons. Thinking red or angry faces were bad. I thought that could have been better messaged (for those of us who don't read the instructions 😆 ) BUT I figured it out without making any mistakes in the early stages, so maybe it's the perfect amount of slow progress to let the player get a handle on the game play. Very nice game loop with increasing difficulty. It didn't occur to me right away until the later levels that your time carried over into the next stages.
First play through made it to plate 8 without any mistakes until panic selecting on 8 due to running out of time. Second play through made it plate 7 because I didn't realize incorrect guesses carried over and was being more careless for speed. Third play through made it to 10, I did have some mistakes I was surprised at where there was a single color one I was sure was the imposter but wasn't, I realized I need to be more careful at looking at matching traits.
I love the audio, it's excellent and set a very good mood! I also love how the game is a great fit for the theme, observing tiny creatures under a microscope. Somehow, I get "Dr. Mario" feeling when playing this game :).
The gameplay is very fun, once you get the hang of it, times becomes on enemy, and it's hard to "race" clearing the plates without making mistakes. My best score is 11 plates after several tries.
As a fellow homebrew developer, thanks for keeping the NES alive! And congrats for this great entry :)
So neatly put together! Very satisfying NES mood with such simple gameplay that I'm able to not feel like I'm analyzing anything but rather just sit down to play a game. Fun straight forward concept and solid entry, nice work!
I played like 6 rounds and the best I could get is 8, am not so good at the memory matching lmao it's a really cool idea tho with great execution and the sound effects + music are perfect! The gameplay kinda reminds me of those sniper shooter games with a memorization twist
Nice! Gamepad controls didn't work in the web emulator for some reason, but they worked fine in my NES emulator of course =). I managed to clear 9 plates before running out of time. A couple times I apparently kept zooming right pas the impostors without quite making them visible and that ate up lots of time. Audio was nice, didn't get annoying =).
@pov I don't know if you'll read this but this Exa user is spamming comments on multiple entries. I just clicked on a handful of the top graded entries and there's almost always a generic comment by them. Most of the comments are the literal string "Nice game,very interesting plot!!!!Nice job!!!!" but I've seen a couple of variations (including the one above).
Lovely game! It seems easy at first, but with multiple type of creatures and impostors you really need to be careful examining the situation. Awesome as always that you made a NES game. I took out my NES emulator for this one. Making a NES game alone does not automatically give it the classic NES vibe, but I think you nailed it with the graphics and music. Great job!
My error rate suggests that I am not cut out for the field of simulated microbiology. Made it to 5 plates before I just became utterly incapable of identifying the impostors it seems. I'm honestly impressed to see an NES entry. Thanks for dropping a note in my small games request thread.
That's awesome you did this for the NES ! I unfortunately don't have one but I still have tried on a Nintendo console thanks to the virtual console (Twilight menu to be honest ^^). The game is impressive technically annnnnd, also very good ! I like the graphics and the music, there is little animations, sound effects, you made an high score handle, there is a menu screen, the game is well polished ! I saw that we lose immediately when an error happens, even if there is a "mistakes" counter on the top right, that would have be a cool feature but I guess you didn't had enough time to do everything. Congratulations for this entry !
Whew, it took a few tries but I got 5 cleared (according to the end screen) on my best try. I have NO IDEA what the difference was then lol even after making 2 mistakes and seeing the whole screen, I dunno which ones were the erroneous ones. Maybe a little thing showing which ones were wrong when losing would be helpful, to be like "oh okay in the future I need to look out for that!"
But at the same time, it makes me feel very clever to learn those things on my own, so maybe not :D
@sebbernery I have a question, did you say you lost immediately after an error happened? Because that isn't supposed to happen, and I never saw it happening to anyone else; the game does track mistakes and ends after 3 errors across all plates in a run. I wonder if it's a bug on the virtual console emulator...
It's one thing to make a NES game for a game jam but another to make it a fun one. Really liked the idea and execution! 😊👍 For your records, here’s the recorded stream
Comments46
Wish to see more content.
The floatiness of the controls wasn’t very fun for me at least, but maybe it’s part of the idea of the game ?
I did play several levels though, so it’s engaging and fun to play. Congrats on your submission !
Loved this one a lot!! :3
I really love that your game is easy to understand yet hard to master.
No começo é fácil e depois começa a dar um nó na cabeça. Achar a diferença começa a ser desafiador.
Há um final? Eu fui até a fase 8, acho.
Bom trabalho amigo!
I managed to score 6 in a few tries.
I'm always a fan of how much you embody the not only the LOOK of NES games, but also the FEEL and design philosophy of them. Lean, focused, and creative as always! Wonderful job. 👍
Also Wanted to ask if youre fine with me using gameplay from the game in this LDs score chasers tournament intermission video. (Would play in the breaks of the tournament on my stream). Last year for reference
But first, thank you everyone for your kind words :)
> @magopian: (...) The floatiness of the controls wasn’t very fun for me at least, but maybe it’s part of the idea of the game? (...)
> @samuli: (...) Heaviness of the movement was a bit much (...)
The floatiness was a bit intentional yes. I have no experience with a microscope, but I had used a small telescope a long time ago, and more recently a camera with x20 zoom, and in both cases it's hard to move exactly where you want to. Although TBH in those cases it's more "overshooting" than "floatiness". The exact parameters I used were not intentional though, I would've balanced them if I had more time (the current acceleration, max speed and drag were pretty much the first or second guesses I made)
> @andreia: (...) A small improvement could be to show the controls (...)
I'm not against the idea of showing controls, but it's a bit complicated to do it in my case 😅 (for LD54 I tried this by making two separate builds, one that shows the NES controls and another for the WebGL emulator showing keyboard keys)
> @euler-moises: (...) Há um final? (...)
Não tem final não; tem uns 11 níveis de dificuldade, mas depois deles os últimos 4 se repetem indefinidamente. Mas em compensação há o timer de 180 segundos, e a pessoa ganha só 5s para cada placa limpa, então o jogo não é tão infinito assim.
> @moonlightbomber: Looks like this is the only NES game for LD56, based from my itch.io search (...)
You can also check the Platforms page here on LD: https://ldjam.com/tags/platform/nintendo-famicom (admittedly it's a very hidden page; if it wasn't already on my browser history I couldn't even tell you how to find it 😅). Sometimes I check it to see which unusual platforms got entries; I collected some from this LD here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/petri-plate-potpourri/entries-for-unusual-platforms-ld-56-edition (there's even a game for the Pokémon Mini console, which I didn't know was a thing)
First play through made it to plate 8 without any mistakes until panic selecting on 8 due to running out of time.
Second play through made it plate 7 because I didn't realize incorrect guesses carried over and was being more careless for speed.
Third play through made it to 10, I did have some mistakes I was surprised at where there was a single color one I was sure was the imposter but wasn't, I realized I need to be more careful at looking at matching traits.
Clearly lots of replayability for the game.
I love the audio, it's excellent and set a very good mood! I also love how the game is a great fit for the theme, observing tiny creatures under a microscope. Somehow, I get "Dr. Mario" feeling when playing this game :).
The gameplay is very fun, once you get the hang of it, times becomes on enemy, and it's hard to "race" clearing the plates without making mistakes. My best score is 11 plates after several tries.
As a fellow homebrew developer, thanks for keeping the NES alive! And congrats for this great entry :)
it's a really cool idea tho with great execution and the sound effects + music are perfect! The gameplay kinda reminds me of those sniper shooter games with a memorization twist
update: well, they said that it wasn't intentional in the comments of this post: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/its-a-bees-world/yeah-im-dealing-with-spam-ratings-too
Well done!
Love good old NES games :)
~XpMonster
That's awesome you did this for the NES ! I unfortunately don't have one but I still have tried on a Nintendo console thanks to the virtual console (Twilight menu to be honest ^^).
The game is impressive technically annnnnd, also very good ! I like the graphics and the music, there is little animations, sound effects, you made an high score handle, there is a menu screen, the game is well polished !
I saw that we lose immediately when an error happens, even if there is a "mistakes" counter on the top right, that would have be a cool feature but I guess you didn't had enough time to do everything.
Congratulations for this entry !
But at the same time, it makes me feel very clever to learn those things on my own, so maybe not :D