Microspace by novodantis

made by novodantis for LD 38 (JAM)

Delve into the human body in your tiny MicroSub and make your patient healthy again! Watch out for Macrophages... they will crush you like a pea.

Controls: WASD and Mouse (right click to enable). Or Joypad, highly recommended.

Fire1: Surgical Laser
Fire2: Beacon
Fire3: Look-behind

The objective is to travel through the cardiovascular system until you find the aortic valve, where there's a nasty gunky buildup that you need to laser to bits. Then just head back to the needle head and signal your beacon to return home!

Your score will be subtracted by collateral damage to the patient's tissue. The total is called your hippocratic rating.
White Blood Cell macrophages will kill on sight. Sorry about that, I ran out of time to make them sap health, so they're a bit OTT.
You can press the Beacon at any time and it will give you the distance from the startpoint. This is helpful when finding your way back (although its still not easy. Yes, a map was one of the axed features)

PC Version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwNkNBDOGctScjJpbDdEVGx2cDA

Linux Version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwNkNBDOGctSZTFQWEgyUmYzTVU

Mac Version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwNkNBDOGctSRmZVc2tzOUx0Yzg

Original URL

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/microspace

Ratings

Overall	264^th	3.571⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Fun	460^th	3⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	372^th	3.143⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Theme	257^th	3.667⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	190^th	4⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Audio	138^th	3.667⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Mood	140^th	3.762⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Given		22🗳️	21🗨️

Feedback

blinry

01. May 2017 · 13:30 UTC

Hi, we discovered this game because we had a similar idea, but your game is very different in terms of gameplay!

We loved the audio lines and the nicely-paced introduction of gameplay elements! We did about 6 attempts to beat the game, but were always killed by white blood cells. At one point, we reached the plaques, though!

The controls feel very nice, and built-in controller support was a huge plus!

Bugs: Sometimes the camera glitched to the outside of the vein, and we managed to get our vehicle to the interior of a white blood cell.

Spinaljack

03. May 2017 · 09:50 UTC

Getting a strong Inner Space vibe with this one which is great. Love everything about it except the laser sound and over heat. Good stuff.

adamalexander

03. May 2017 · 10:21 UTC

Hey that's pretty cool! I wish those white blood cells would just realise that I'm on their side though. I thought the visuals and the soundtrack was excellent, and it was pretty clever how you used the red blood cells direction of flow to guide the player. I managed to vaporise the plaque buildups but then got myself stuck in a smaller vein on the way back.. there wasn't any room to turn around.

It felt a little too cramped inside the veins, not just when the camera went outside the vein either but just in general. Apart from that though well done it's a fun game.

_for_science

03. May 2017 · 11:35 UTC

Cool concept, reminds me a lot of that old FMV game "Microcosm". The travel times were a little long for my taste, and the white blood cells are not that much of a threat once you get used to the controls. I think the game would have benefited from a little more opposition, or obstacles.

A map would have certainly been nice, I ended up getting stuck in a dead end on my first run and had to restart. Other than that it's a fun game.

TomBuston

03. May 2017 · 11:43 UTC

Really good game ! The mood was so great, really felt like rescuing whoever this person was !
The controls were a bit hard to get at first, couldn't get the mouse to work for some reason, but after a few retries it worked perfectly fine.
Nice work !

AdroitConceptions

06. May 2017 · 12:36 UTC

can you do a Linux build with that Mac build?

🎤 novodantis

07. May 2017 · 11:51 UTC

@jason-kennedy Linux build is up!

Thanks for the feedback, all. Now available on Linux and Mac too; please let me know if those versions work =)

obidubi

07. May 2017 · 20:52 UTC

This is a very well done game! The visuals and soundtrack were very good and the overall feel of your game was great. Using the direction of the red blood cells to direct the player was very cool as well as the necessity to avoid white blood cells. Some things that could be improved on are things like the camera occasionally moving outside veins and the keyboard controls. I found it very difficult to gain good control of the probe with the mouse used to determine the pitch of the craft. It didn't feel as natural as maybe using other keyboard buttons like the space bar and shift for up and down or Q and E (both are used in other games that deal with the same type of controls). Other than that, it was very well done. Great job!

🎤 novodantis

08. May 2017 · 01:04 UTC

Updated the builds to fix a controller axis compatibility issue on some platforms. While doing so, I've made it so you can control with purely the keyboard; left CTRL/Command should be fire and the arrows control pitch & yaw.

Also, if anyone is having trouble with the controls, I highly recommend trying both modes (pressing Y at the title screen): Forward=down (AKA 'flight' mode) and Forward=up ('FPS' mode). Also, controlpad feels a lot nicer if you can hook one up.

TeamMonumental

15. May 2017 · 05:36 UTC

Really nice voice acting! The controls(on the keyboard) were quite difficult to get the hang of at first, but I really do appreciate how realistic and complex they are. It feels that once you get the ship going it's easy to operate, however stopping and starting up again can be frustrating. The travels times are slightly long, but the music is pretty enjoyable to listen to. Nice entry man!

Porcus_Pie

16. May 2017 · 02:12 UTC

Nice game, it looked really good and I felt as if I were exploring the human body. This was only heightened by the very floating, underwater feeling movement. I did feel that the collisions were really unforgiving, as I would crash into one wall and end up spinning out, or then for the next minute constantly crashing. After a while it was better, but as soon as you hit one wall you were pretty much dead. This plus the insta-kill white blood cells made this really hard, and I had to restart several times. Other than that though, I loved the voice acting and it added an extra level of polish, well done.

csanyk

16. May 2017 · 02:22 UTC

Really impressive. I wish that white blood cell collisions weren't instakill. It took me a while to figure out how to move effectively.

joemid

16. May 2017 · 06:00 UTC

Impressive! For some reason I had an easier time the first go on PC. On Mac, I couldn't get a hang of the controls and kept banging into the walls. EDIT: Steam controller seems to work! EDIT EDIT: Just saw your note about controls! ;) Love the feel of this game. Totally reminds me of Innerspace- the intensity of the red blood cells- the laser, the needle. Great production value! Whole body educational game please?!

julianeder33

17. May 2017 · 19:58 UTC

Impresive Game! Funy and easy Gameplay. Overlapping textures where the tunnle parts come together is a minor issiue you might want to improve. I especialy liked the vessel model and the music.

Alexandr Rum

17. May 2017 · 20:30 UTC

That's really cool! I swam in my veins! This is a completely new experience)))

Maximo Pech

17. May 2017 · 20:42 UTC

Well done, I really felt like I was inside a human body, congrats. It was a bit hard for me to control it though, I hope controls are further improved. Also great music.

🎤 novodantis

17. May 2017 · 21:39 UTC

@joemid Yup, definitely considering an educational-but-fun human body voyage simulator. It'd make learning biology so much more fun if you could be like "So today class, we're going into our Microsubs and taking a look up close..."

@julianeder33 Yeah, those seams are so ugly, but alas the only way I could figure to do junctions was to make preset meshes for them (the main tunnels themselves are dynamically made from splines). With a little more time I could probably come up with a better way that looks more organic.

@all
Thanks again for all the great feedback, and helping us finally reach the 20 mark =)