Germies!

[stuckie]

 

So, after a chaotic year, we've managed to release our first game, Germies!.

This was done as a prototype for the One Game A Month challenge back in January, and indeed was based on another Ludum Dare experiment I did a while ago!

Interestingly, I have noticed there already is a Germiz, but thankfully the games are different enough that we should be fine

 

In our game, you need to arrange the Germies into squares or rectangles to clear them from the grid. As long as the incubation areas on the side are kept clear, everything ticks over fine and dandy. Once they are full, it's game over, even if there is space on the grid! This gives a nice little twist on the usual "match-3" games, I think

 

Currently, I've only got it up on clay.io.. but I shall be getting it up and running on as many platforms as I can get my dirty little mitts on. I've also tested it to work on a few mobile browsers; including the stock Android 2.3 browser on my middling ZTE Kis, and it seems to perform pretty well. I've also got it that it'll detect whether you're in portrait or landscape, and adjust itself accordingly. This works on the desktop too, should you feel like opening it in a separate window and keeping it to the side.

 

Anyway, waffling aside, here's a few screen shots!

 

And you can play it over on clay.io here: http://germies.clay.io

[Ezelia]

haha, you choose a title very close to a game I release some time ago (bellow in my signature) ... and it's also about infections

 

[stuckie]

Yea I noticed that... my heart sank when I saw your game!

Thankfully, they are different enough that there shouldn't really be a problem

Just proves that if you sit on your backside with an idea for too long, someone's bound to come up with a similar one! I had been working on Germies on and off since 20th December 2010 - http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/12/20/germies/ - and I've only just got round to releasing a cleaned up version now.

The joys of life getting in the way of things.

[Dream Of Sleeping]

I like the graphics. And what sound effects there are, are good. I'm not sure about the gameplay, to be honest. It may need some tweaking. At the beginning there is a lot of waiting around for the timer to fill up. It does get more fun when it gets tougher.  But getting through the easy part can be a bit of a chore.

 

I'm not sure if I've found a bug or not. A couple of times I have played it and as the screen gets more full it appears not to clear the shapes. It may be that there is a subtle difference between the shapes that stops them counting as a match. I am a little bit colorblind. The last time this happened I took a screen shot so you can tell me if this should have been a match.

 

Shouldn't the four triangles near the middle disappear?

[stuckie]

Nope, those are completely diseased, so the only way of getting rid of them is to encase them in a frame.

I perhaps should make the help button a bit more obvious, or perhaps force the player through the help the first time they play, as it explains things a bit. Rather than just throwing the player in at the deep end to figure it out!

The help icon is on the start screen in the top left corner - the [ ? ] button.

 

Additionally, the thermometer can be clicked to "force an infection" should you feel you are waiting around too much. It's useful in the earlier levels to fill up the incubation areas at the side, then pull everything out to arrange them before it starts getting too fast.

Again, this is in the help, but I've probably tucked it away a bit too much... shall have a think on that tonight!

[Dream Of Sleeping]

I agree you should make the tutorial clearer. I didn't notice it at all, and I'm one of those rare gamers who actually reads tutorials.

 

Knowing the rules made it a lot more enjoyable. It's now something that I would play again.  I still have some criticisms though, (sorry).

 

In the tutorial I think you should rethink the phrase "encasing within a frame", it wasn't until the second time I read the tutorial I worked out what you meant. " Surround them by other matching germs" would have made things clearer. Admitedly the picture makes it pretty clear and I was probably just being stupid, but well, there are a lot of stupid people out there. lol

 

Another thing I didn't like was the way your messages like "forced infection"  and "level up" come up from the bottom of the screen the way they do because it kinds of makes it look like pop up adverts. It made me find them annoying and distracting and I wanted them to go away.

 

I was really enjoying my game, getting really far, then suddenly the play again menu popped up, I don't know if my game was over or if I'd somehow triggered the menu, but because it was unexpected and I was quickly clicking the mouse for the game I hit restart by accident. Therefore I never got to see what  my score was. So really if you are going to pop up a menu like that make sure the user isn't going to just accidently hit the replay button when they don't want to.

[stuckie]

Ah.. thank you

 

It's somewhat tricky to gauge stuff like that as you're going to be good at your own game, and even your testers end up being well versed in it, so don't notice things like tutorials or help being ambiguous, as they already know how to play it!

 

As for the play again menu suddenly popping up, it could be that the incubation areas ( the sides ) filled up. That catches my seven year old daughter off-guard as well, so had already been planning on showing up a warning sign or something when they were getting too full. Speaking of which, she can easily get 7,100 which is not too shabby!

I'll also think about how the end screen works to stop accidentally clicking restart.

 

And the pop-up information... I wasn't quite sure on how to do this, as I didn't want to display it over the play-area, but still wanted to get the player's attention as to what was going on. Perhaps needs another thought, or I could have Dr. Pus say what's going on instead, since he already gives score information and isn't too distracting.

 

Anyway, yes, thank you for the constructive criticism as it's given me a bit more to think about

[stuckie]

Well, that took longer than expected due to life!

 

I've updated Germies! now...

I've added some music, three difficulties, an in-game tutorial, a refined start/end sequence and some social media posting!

 

Hopefully I can get a few more bites with sponsers on this, as it didn't fare too well at all in it's original state.

 

Oh, and if anyone has any other lovely bits of critical feedback, please post

[Dream Of Sleeping]

Hello. A big improvement from the last time I played it. The speech bubble idea works better than the pop up text and I like the music. I think it takes too long to get hard which makes me less likely to play it again. And before you say it, I know you have difficulty levels, but I still think the default should be harder.

[stuckie]

Yea, I don't think I can win much with that in it's current iteration... I had people complain that the original was too easy, as well as too hard, and I've had people say that the default difficulty on the new version is much better, and some saying it's too easy - though the bias is shifting towards the too easy now, so I must be getting somewhere, at least!

 

For now, I think I shall leave it for a while and get on with something else.

I've tried pushing Germies in front of many-a sponsor with only one non-exclusive and one revenue share ( and that was from the original version back in July ) to date. Ad-wise, I've made a grand total of 93c via clay.io's implementation of Leadbolt for mobile, and whatever they use for desktop ( though this may more be me not sticking ads everywhere, and trying to keep it as non-obtrusive as possible, so it's loading screens and pause screens mostly. )

Trying to get much critical feedback as to perhaps why it's not being picked up is damn near impossible - which is why I'm so grateful you took the time to actually provide some!

 

I do have ideas to extend it; adding powerups, multi-player support, and other fun things, but I feel a bit burnt out with Germies! for the moment, so they'll have to wait for now.