Survirus by AdultLink
Finally I've been able to participate in my first Ludum Dare! I was hoping to be able to finish the game within 48h and submit for the compo, but that has proven quite hard as a solo participant. So here it is now!
Press Escape to pause! Instructions at the bottom (and ingame).
Survirus is a puzzle/skill game in which you need to make quick decisions and execute precisely.
You play as a computer virus living in a hard drive, and you just want to survive! Don't let the user thrash your environment with their terrible holiday pictures or the latest Marvel movie and protect your space.


Be quick on your fingers and save HDD sectors from being wasted, while avoiding the antivirus (flashing red tiles). Find a way to exploit the system and reclaim your space!




Instructions
- Jump between sectors with WASD
- Prevent sectors from locking up by pressing the corresponding arrow key (the one that matches with the color of said sector) before the countdown finishes.
- If you pressed the wrong arrow, the sector will be lost forever.
- You can't jump between LOCKED sectors of different colors.
- You can always move to & from an empty/flashing sector.
- Pick up exploits (yellow thingies) to unlock sectors around it.
Builds for Mac OS X and Linux have been added. Disclaimer: I am not able to check these builds, so I can't confirm they work properly.
Ratings
| Overall | 27th | 4.174⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 37th | 4.044⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 58th | 3.989⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 42th | 4.278⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 56th | 4.424⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 125th | 3.783⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 438th | 2.872⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 189th | 3.648⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HLD0XMFR2bUZcu_O-9ipvi4BWNz7wq43
It took me a bit to figure out that I needed to press the color matching arrow key to remove a file but then I slowly got better at it. I wasn't able to remember the arrow-color-code so I constantly had to peek to the upper-right before almost every file removal which hurt my eyes a bit. Ended up with a score of 3396.
I couldn't unpack the RAR file as well. Even though 7-Zip supports .RAR files but I guess it's some weird new RAR version? Maybe just pack things in a ZIP file because that's what everyone can unpack. Choosing compatibility over compression rate.
Edit: Oh, I guess you can just let the field fill up and then wait forever to get unlimited score?
3396?! Holy shit I'm shit at my game XD
Regarding unlimited score. The antivirus (the flashing red cross of death) should be able to catch you when you can't move anymore, but I'm aware there are a couple bugs here and there, and sometimes the antivirus just doesn't work. Oh well, just like in real life :D
If it were just for me I'd distribute my games as .7z but having ZIP support in Windows Explorer is a pretty good argument for it, haha.
Can you play it blind without looking to the arrow chart? I tried to remember it but getting it wrong is worse than losing a sector so I always take a peek to make sure.
The UI and menu design are super clean and satisfying.
Simple but catchy, and makes you want to keep playing it
But at the end of the game if you end up on a pattern with at least 3 similar adjacent tiles, you can survive an infinite amount of time by jumping from 1st to 3rd tile of the pattern everytime the antivirus appears.
To increase the challenge and duration of a game you may either increase the size of the antivirus or the number of them appearing over time, and maybe once there's no empty time left spawn bonuses over used tiles and even swap some used tiles to another color/icon ?
I'd love to test again a more balanced and challenging version of the game :)
Glad you liked the gameplay and visuals!
Thank you for the tips on balance. I have some ideas on how to make it more challenging and diverse :)
In general, it was a very good take on the running out of space idea - instead of doing another drive cleaning simulator, you turned it around a bit and make the player a virus, which was very smart!
Good luck in the jam :)
Thanks for your feedback! I'll make sure to pimp out the page haha :D
But there is one problem with the game. What happens, if I never destroy sectors of one specific color. In the end I'll have a field to move around and will never lose.
Thank you for playing and for your feedback!
Graphics are awesome!)
Concept is really interesting
There's a lot of tension when everything is locked down except for one square. You keep hopping back onto to it to save it in the hopes it'll turn into an exploit soon and you can get back some of your space. It keeps you feeling like you're always in the game no matter how much everything piles up around, unless of course you lost a lot of tiles xD.
Really well done. Love the graphics and audio, the gameplay is genuinely compelling and it feels very fresh.
Here's my high score.
I really had a bless playing it! Graphics are very appealing and the controls are well designed for this type of grid-based movement. I was also very amused by the fact that the instructions were straightforward and polished.
#### Here is my high score after 3 attempts :wink:

The only issue I had was UI scaling. I have a 21:9 aspect ratio monitor and unfortunately I had to play at a lower resolution, since at 2560x1080 the interface was being cut off :slight_frown:

I kept pausing and looking, maybe that's why I should "feel" and not think :smile:, but having an arrow below the countdown would be very helpful atleast in the beginning as a tutorial mode so you memorize the colours.
Really cool game overall, the virus added to the stress and you really had to focus to make sure you don't get stuck on tiles with the same colours. Sometimes when the virus appeared I was unable to move anywhere and I assume that's because I had different coloured sectors around me. I think you should be able to escape from the virus even if the sectors mismatch.
I wonder if there is a way to make it so that the game requires less peeking at the color cheat sheet. I found myself doing that quite often, despite trying my best to 'feel' more than I was 'thinking'. :smile:
Apart from that small dissonance I only have praise to say about this one. It looks good, feels good and leaves me wanting to play again after I lose. My favorite part is that intense moment when you fight over the last few remaining spots, frantically clearing one sector after another and hoping for that clutch Exploit to catch some breathing room and drag the game a little longer.
Impressive stuff, one of the best games I've played so far!
There's only two things I'd like to point:
- Associating a color with and arrow keys is really difficult in general, that's why rhythm games put the color on the key more than just displaying color blocks. In your game I had to constantly go back and forth between the color mapping on the top right and the level to know which arrow I need to press. I think that if you managed to put the arrow shape on the block, it would have been so much better! But then you'd need to display the countdown in a different way, so it needs proper thinking and design (ergonomics yay! :D)
- It was quite frustrating that the antivirus blocked me from grabbing exploits and unlocking sectors when it was in the same spot. While playing it felt unfair to know that a sector would be locked because of the antivirus and not because of my lack of skill or anything. I can understand that an antivirus would try to block me, of course, but when it comes to players I think it's better to avoid unfair frustration.
But other than that it was really fun to play your game, great first LD entry ever!!!

@eric-schmiel I like to think remembering the color code is part of the "git gud" process haha, but I can see it being annoying to most people that play it for the first time.
I feel the exploit mechanic is nice but it could be improved to benefit the player even more. I was thinking instead of triggering the effect the moment you pick it up, you could choose when to use it. This way the player has more of a choice in regards to strategic playing, and it's not just reacting to the board.
Thank you for your thoughts! :)
@jonasz999 Ahh I'm so sorry about the UI scaling issues! :( I must admit resolution concerns were not at the top of my priorities by the end of the jam. Thanks for making me aware of it! :)
@lootgrounds I'm seriously thinking about a mobile release after a few tweaks and gameplay improvements. Thank you for playing! Glad you liked the visuals.
@xphere Thank you for your kind words! :D
@linus Yup, definitely needs a tutorial or some other way to ease the player into it. I also need to revisit the no-jumping-between-different-color-locked-sectors (phewww) rule. It might be a bit confusing at first, but for now it is necessary for the game to end! Otherwise you could just move around for as long as you wanted :D Thank you!
Are there any issues whatsoever with the Linux version? No slowdowns or visual glitches?
@auxc Yeahhh I need to find a way to make it more intuitive, or I can just say it's part of the learning process :D Thank you for your thoughts! I'm glad you found the exploit mechanic fun! I also think it's quite nice and it feels good when you pick one up just before the antivirus fires :D It could use some improvements tho.
@tommytheitguy Thank you for your feedback! :)
@kiirohanabi Yup, sector real-estate is at a premium haha! On the antivirus point, I completely agree, it should not prevent you from pickinp up an exploit, and regarding sectors, it also shouldn't allow the countdown to continue, it should just pause it and resume after it fires I feel like. You are absolutely right about player frustration, unfair mechanics are never fun and drive players away.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts :)
@firesplash-entertainment Hey thanks for playing my game on stream, I hope I can catch you online again! Those two suggestion will definitely be considered for future versions, especially starting with just one color. Thanks!!
My only gripe was that it wasnt intuitive from the get-go, though its expected since its based on a specific set of rules.
Great Game!

By the way please feel free to leave us some feedbacks on our game!