right i loved Rich's self denial even though he knew most likely that his fears/suspicions were true! and all that foreshadowing...
the way you've spun this all to max out the thriller part really adds to the horror and disgust, not like tension before a jump scare, but like failing some big exams which is a nightmare that can't be woken up from, just keeps going and going, trapped in it with the reality pressing in, i LOVE IT
This was a really nice comment to read, thanks for posting it! This game didn't end up getting a ton of engagement, so its super fun to hear that someone played and enjoyed it this much.
I've thought about posting the story on its own somewhere, but to be honest I don't really know where I would. If you'd like to extract the story to read later, you can copy and paste it from the source code (right click the canvas and select 'inspect' The whole story is inside TextFiles.js, or you can just enter kTextFiles on the js console. It will take some formatting, but feel free to copy/paste it to a doc if you'd like to read it again later. I did work with a game publisher for a chunk of 2019 to create a sequel, but unfortunately had a spat of bad health and had to drop the project. Maybe it'll come someday in the future :)
To answer your question, the other colors are meant to represent the pressures Rich applied to the colonies he tested in order to pressure them into mutating - bacteria, other fungal colonies, or the immune systems of his test subjects.
yea you really deserve so much more feedback and engagement, like how are there not more comments and stars?? i really did love it so much, brilliant and mindblowing storytelling
if you don't mind publishing it for free, you can try putting it as an original work in archiveofourown.org? maybe add some tags (authors usually put trigger warnings in tags), then in your author's note you can explain how you edited the story from your original game (link it too!) (as i don't think a raw copy paste may be suitable). if people like it there, i am confident you'll get lots of support!
id love to see the sequel so much! as i wrote above, is there some way i can support you? it's not every day i find a game so amazing that makes me want to voluntarily open my wallet HAHHAHA
