Petri Dish by johanhelsing

Play around in a petri dish with some tiny creatures.
Controls: Left mouse button to drag things, right mouse button to draw loops.
I had a lot of fun making it, hope you have fun playing it :)
It's made according to compo rules... almost. I started and finished one day late. I made everything myself in 48 hours except the font, which is "Quicksand".
I fixed one bug after the deadline where the game would end prematurely.
| Youtube | https://jhelsing.itch.io/petridish |
| Youtube | https://jhelsing.itch.io/petridish |
| Youtube | https://jhelsing.itch.io/petridish |
| Youtube | https://jhelsing.itch.io/petridish |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/petri-dish |
Ratings
| Overall | 911th | 3.423⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1024th | 3.154⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 348th | 3.74⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1017th | 3.404⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 780th | 3.577⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 795th | 3.14⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 585th | 2.977⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 668th | 3.5⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
@wevel: Actually, you can break the circles if you drag very fast. I guess it would have been good with a bit more of a tutorial/intro, though.
The game over appears when you have a monoculture (only one species left), or if the dish gets overpopulated... I put the limit at 300 which is where my machine started to kneel for performance reasons, but I guess I should have set it a bit higher.
The original idea was to make the dish break when overpopulated and have the creatures explode all over the black area of the screen, but I ran out of time.
You could probably give the game more of a concrete goal by keeping track of a high score, in terms of deaths / generation. But I feel that the score would also be very dependent on the starting position.
I like the creepy background noises, it makes the whole thing very atmospheric.
It's a little frustrating that the barrier material never goes away – it takes up space and blocks strategic moves later in the game. Maybe it could degrade after a set amount of time. I agree with @amarillion that high score tracking would let people compete more, even with themselves.
I would've liked the munching/dividing action sounds to be a little more cute and/or squishy to match the aesthetic of the game. The bacteria are so cute with their one little eye!
Overall, good job!
It would've been nice if I could set the limit for the creatures. Because I've the feeling that it stopped to early (and I really wanted to have my epic battle). On the other hand that kept me really busy with your game ^^.
I wonder what that game would have looked like if you'd about one week time for it =).
Overall, great job, the simulation works pretty well !