Symbiosis by -banzi
An alien civilian, now helpless captive on the brink of death, forms an unlikely bond with a deadly parasite, the only creature that could keep them alive. Together their symbiosis brings to life a new predator, eager to escape the complex.
Fight for your life against the facility security and devour your fallen enemies in an attempt to leave the facility. The only chance to get away is to have enough power to pass the gates that secure the starport.
*Tutorial: *
Symbiosis is 2D turn-based game.
The game starts with you being in a lab. You see a soldier that brought you in and a scientist.
Your turn started and you need to think about what you can do. You can move around or make actions. But be careful because enemies are always on your tail! Your turn ends when you move 2 tiles or perform an action. Then enemies will move and select some tiles to attack the next round.
You win the game by reaching an escape ship and feeding the parasite that keeps you alive.
Controls:
You can play our game using mouse or keyboard.
To play with keyboard: - WASD Move - E attack - F feed on an enemy corpse - R place a mine - SPACE next turn - ESC/TAB to pause the game
Both attack and placing a mine need a direction in which they should be performed. If using mouse simply click on the icons in the UI that correspond to the buttons.
Tools and resources:
Made with: Unity, Gale, Krita.
- All the art assets were created in the three days of the game jam.
- The music was procedurally generated using python scripts.
- The sound effects and fonts are taken from public repositories and their sources and authors can be found in the game's repository ("readme.txt").
Updates:
- 21/04/2020: Added readme.txt, fixed UI resoltion, fixed feeding bug
| Youtube | https://banzi.itch.io/symbiosis |
| Youtube | https://banzi.itch.io/symbiosis |
| Youtube | https://banzi.itch.io/symbiosis |
| Youtube | https://banzi.itch.io/symbiosis |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/symbiosis |
Ratings
| Overall | 635th | 3.744⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 647th | 3.61⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1158th | 3.317⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1546th | 3.512⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 414th | 4.183⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 720th | 3.663⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 44🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
It seemed bugged in that the laser enemies didn't do any damage to me. The game was very simple, then. I tried to avoid the lasers anyway and the movement started to be nicely strategic.
And one teensy-tiny bit - I think the movement should be faster. It just takes quite long to get across one room.
Really great game, original setting, plot, clear controls! Congrats!
I would have prefered the animations a bit faster and sometimes the feed action would be usable while over the enemy.
Good job.
Gameplay wise, the move/attack system totally works! Feels pretty complete/polished. There seemed to be an issue sometimes where I couldn't feed - mostly when multiple enemies died on the same tile, I think?
The UI looks nice, but a couple of small suggestions - the "power" meter looked only half-full, despite me having 25/25 power. Also the prompt to choose an attack direction could perhaps be more prominent - didn't see it at all, and had to read the page to figure this out.
As for the theme, I really like the parasite angle. However, it might feel even more thematic if there was some kind of hunger which drained your power over time? Then you'd have to play efficiently to provide enough fuel to really "keep it alive".
@firemax34 I might try to fix that. The issue is (as always) that it doesn't happen in editor. I hope you had fun apart from that.
@timetravelhamster Thank you!
@kl0z The music should be there, but it apparently doesn't work properly in WebGl. I will make a not in description. Thank you for playing :)
@niterich Thanks. I will take a look, but that happens. Thanks for playing.
@marcelo-zoletti Sorry to hear that - you would have like cutscene at the end. Thank you!
@hairic Thanks.
@chonky-animations Thank you for the suggestion, I have heard that a lot.
@thomu Power by feeding on enemies and health is also restored by doing that. Yeah, I have overscoped the levels a bit - if there would be more dialogs it wouldn't be bad, but there was no time left to write them. I hope you had fun :-).
@savvu The animations took a lot of effort, so we are glad you liked them.
@lukas You are right. I tried to make the background music less loud, which in process made it unhearable on some computers and the sound effects sound loud compared to that. I hope I will learn something from it. Thank you :)
@frozen-stick There is music, but it somehow doesn't work in WebGL unless you tweak the settings in the main/pause menu.
@jasond Sorry about that feeding issue. The 25 in power is how many monsters you need to kill in order for the get to let you out. There was no time to make it more apparent as some kind of indicator or to at least add a tooltip to it (so it is at max if you kill all aprx. 45 enemies).
We were thinking about that, I wanted to do it, but then we talked together and decided that we don't want too much pressure on the player. For the entry it makes more sense to be more subtle as everyone is trying to get the feel of the game and learn the controls.
Thank you for the review and I hope you liked it.
@imod Apparently there was some expcetion that could have caused it. But one is never sure :D. I have tried to upload new version, so you can try if you want. Thank you anyway for the review and I will check your game.
@debuggerpls I am sorry for that. I am glad you liked the art.
I absolutely enjoyed it, and played all the way through. Overall, it's a complete package!
I was drawn in because I like to see turn-based games, but I enjoyed all of it. The intro story was surprisingly good at setting me up and pulling me into the world, and then I enjoyed the chunky tactics of making sure to avoid getting hit by the enemies.
The art is really strong. Especially the animations, and in particular the feed animation. The hybrid main character reminded of Venom, in a cool way, and the story set me up to enjoy the sprites/action that much more.
If I could change one thing about the game it would be the pace of play. The art is so nice, but it's tough to have such a long move animation, and in an empty room it was a bit tedious to cross a large space. Combat could stand to be a bit faster, too, maybe the enemies could take a simultaneous turn rather than each going individually, and you could take the basic attack down to one button by making it so that if I move into a guy it's understood as an attack.
But while the game could play a little faster, I still very much enjoyed the experience, and I felt like it really came together with the art, story, setting, and mechanics all coming together into a cohesive vision. Very nice work!
The killer animation, intuitive and explained controls and story are all excellent! I think faster gameplay would help this game a little, but that has been said many times, so I won't say anything more about that.
Character reminds me of Venom and Defect (from Slay the Spire) combined together, and I like it! The colors and animations are really complimenting each other.
I've encountered a bug, there aren't any walls on side of this almost end of the game section (possibly in more sections, haven't looked into it that deeply). You can get out of bounds easily there. When I entered the room from the side, the enemies weren't noticing me, even when I attacked them. And they wouldn't die as well.
Great stuff, played until the end! :alien:
I notice some kind of bugs I think, sometimes I couldn't eat the enemies I just killed. I don't know if that's intentional or not. I also hope there's a map because I missed the right section of the early intersection.
5 stars Overall! Very well done!
@forging-foxes Thank you very much :-) I will definitely check it out.
@pkenney I wanted for the player to see the enemies play (as it is for example in Into the Breach) and it also made it a bit simpler for me, because when doing navigation they wouldn't clash if they played sequentially (like 2 enemies moving on the same spot). With the attacking by moving its a great idea, that would make the main loop a bit faster :-). Thank you.
@sprotex Good catch! At some stage we had walls on the sides, but we removed them bacause of esthetics and I completely forgot to add some kind of collision on their place :D. So this way you can get around and miss a trigger that activates the enemies in the next room. Venom was our inspiration for the character/parasite relationship. Thank you for a nice review :-).
@ahistyap Thanks a lot. There was a lot of effort put into the art, so we are glad you like it. Thanks a lot :-).
Some gameplay suggestions:
Try to remove “moves left” from the game. Currently, the next “round” is triggered automatically anyway, and clicking “WASD” every time I need to move slows the game down and makes long corridor runs annoying. Also, enemies take to much time to make moves. Especially, if there are many enemies on the screen.
Maybe experiment with having enemies move simultaneously every time a player moves or does an action. And allow continuous movement by holding WASD