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Gengineer (GMTK jam version)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #1637 | 3.269 | 3.846 |
| Overall | #2654 | 2.680 | 3.154 |
| Presentation | #2717 | 2.746 | 3.231 |
| Fun | #3467 | 2.288 | 2.692 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You construct a genome and release a single seed that grows into an organism totally out of your control, hopefully achieving its goal.
Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
Yes
We created all art during the game jam
Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
cool game, this is one of the better visual coding game I've seen this jam (it's a shame that people can't spend long enough to fully appreciate this kind of game in a jam setting)
Looks very promising, but with my limited biology and chemistry knowledge I wasn't able to figure out how to achieve anything in-game - a simple "example program" would work very well as a tutorial.
Other than that, it seems to be rather polished and well made - well done!
I love this type of games. Sure you need more polishing, but very good concept!
Thank you! I guess I'm going to make it into a full game eventually.
The game doesn't give any explanation about what to do, I don't think the game is playable in it's current state
I really enjoyed experimenting-- the block coding for making your genome is pretty neat! :D
I don't think I know enough cell biology to really understand what's going on in the game, but the interface all worked really smoothly. With a bit of a tutorial it looks like it could be really good
I couldn't really tell what all the options do, but it was fun to pick random stuff and watch it go.
As a biochemist, this made my heart warm. The interface was really confusing, but watching my cells just pop up everywhere was amazing. I have to give this one a bit of time to really get what's going on, but I'm looking forward to understanding it a little deeper, and the soundtrack's going to make that a great experience
I wish I had time to get to more advanced stuff, like cell specialization and migration. If you can think of anything you want to see in this, please let me know.
Nestling cells inside of one another would be really cool, so players could build up little organelles. Also, some clarification on the different products you can make would be nice, I'd love to see if they would have any interactions/reactions if certain ones were in the same space. Maybe cutting down on the number of products that can be produced so each feels like it's got it's own niche -- I would love it if one of them gave you resistance to toxins so that you could ingest that product and break it down like food.
Also, I had a quick question -- When you break things down, do they turn into arbitrary energy units? Or could they become separate products (and energy units)? It would be cool if "Food" was just a collection of the basic components, but by breaking it down you made the byproducts, which could be toxic in higher concentrations, encouraging the player to spit them out or distribute them at certain levels. I'm not sure if it would be possible, but making the cells expel junk in one direction so that it'd be easier to fight gravity/move would also be nice, or maybe making some products more efficient at performing certain actions would be cool. I shared this with a few of my friends from college, so I can see if they'd have any ideas, too. :)
That's probably a lot of feature creep and the balance might get messy, I've just been thinking about making a game similar to this for a while and it was so cool to see something like it. My brain kinda ran wild once I played it, there's a ton of potential.
Thanks for the suggestions! I was thinking of making something like this for a while too, still hard to believe I managed to pull it off during the jam :)
The products (except for food and toxin) are arbitrary, they are supposed to be signalling proteins/molecules you can use to do stuff. I actually want you to be able to add and name them, but I didn't want to write text input etc. during the jam, I spent most time writing UI and physics sim already.
Breaking a product just removes it in an exponential way, no byproducts are produced. You can break down toxin, but it's much much slower to make it hard. I want special chemicals and reactions, designed for each puzzle/level, like food and toxin now, but I didn't have time for that. And food is a simplification too, should be something like "energy" that is needed for the cells to grow, which you can get by breaking down food etc.
Yea, this is awesome! Even just as a proof of concept, the UI for designing your organism feels good and the screen where you watch it interact with the environment is really nice.