Mutated Carbon by Gousen Pride

made by Gousen Pride for Ludum Dare 51 (JAM)

Humanity has lost its right to live on the surface and now has to scatter resources from old underground laboratories to trade food with the machines for gold, a valuable resource for them. This game is about survival, where you will need to shoot your way out of other mutated humans that have lost their humanity while you mutate yourself. Making you faster, stronger, and even mutating your weapon attached to your arm. But be aware! Oxygen is a rare resource down there. You will only have 10 seconds of air. After that, you will count on your lungs!

Gather carbon to heal your cells, iron to use as ammunition, oxygen to fill your tank, uranium to implant other mutations, and gold to trade with the machines!

Controller Instructions:

Joystick

| Key/Axi | Description | | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- | | LeftAnalogic | Move forward, Backward, Left and Right | | RightAnalogic | Shoot/Aim | | Square | Reload | | Cross | Interact |

Keyboard and Mouse

| Key | Description | | --------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | | | Move Forward | | | Move Left | | | Move Backward | | | Move Right | | | Left Mouse Button to Shoot | | | Reload | | | Interact |

Doors

| Door | Description | | --------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ | | | Exit to a Carbon based Room | | | Exit to a Oxygen based Room | | | Exit to a Uranium based Room | | | Exit to a Iron based Room | | | Exit to a Gold based Room | | | Exit to the Mutation Shop Room |

Mutations

| Mutations | Name | Description | | ------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | ------------------- | | | Blowfish Organ | Increase your projectile size by 5% | | | Camel Stomach | Increase your weapon firerate by 4% | | | Camel Tongue | Increase your projectile speed by 5% | | | Cheetah Legs | Increase your movement speed by 3% | | | Cockroach Shell | Increase the amount of Uranium you can carry by 5 | | | Crocodile Digestive System | Increase the amount of Iron you can carry by 5 | | | Elephant Trunk | Increase your weapon range by 0.3 meters | | | Horse Muscles | Increase your knock back force by 0.2 | | | Kangaroo Pouch | Increase your magazine size by 3 | | | Komodo Dragon Scales | Increase your maximnum health by 7% | | | Lizard Blood | Increase your health regeneration by 0.1 per second | | | Mantis Claws | Decrease your reload speed by 3% | | | Mudskipper Respiratory System | Reduce your Oxygen consuption by 1% | | | Snake Salivary Glands | Increase your weapon damage by 1 | | | Thicker Skin | Increase your maximnum health by 3 | | | Whale Lungs | Increase the amount of Oxygen you can carry by 5 |

Resources

| Resource | Description | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------- | | Screenshot from 2022-10-03 16-21-42.png | Carbon, this resource represents your life, do not reach 0 or you will die | | | Oxygen, this resource represents your oxygen stock, without it you start to lose Carbon | | | Uranium, this resource is used to exchange by improved mutations | | Screenshot from 2022-10-03 16-21-55.png | Iron, this resource is used as ammo for you attached weapon to shoot | | | Gold, this resource is your main goal to accumulate points beyond to survive |

Original URL

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/mutated-carbon

Ratings

Overall	712^th	3.397⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Fun	486^th	3.485⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	565^th	3.338⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Theme	1046^th	3.029⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	879^th	3.118⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Audio	414^th	3.439⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Humor	769^th	2.485⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Mood	835^th	3.162⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Given		20🗳️	47🗨️

Feedback

milq

03. Oct 2022 · 23:04 UTC

What an amazing game, it's impressive that you did it in 72 hours for how complex the game is. I love the music, the art and the gameplay! At first I have to admit that the game overwhelms me with so many items but then it's a delight. Great game!

psychic_ash

03. Oct 2022 · 23:08 UTC

decent little shooter. I wasn't real clear about the 10 seconds. I saw the counter but I didn't see how that affected things. But it was very fun. The graphics were basic but that's not a terrible thing. The controls were very smooth.

ofiro

03. Oct 2022 · 23:20 UTC

Nice little game. Music was really fun. Liked the details in animation - screen shake, bullet casing.
Avast antivirus closed the game due to "infection" after trying to add myself to the leaderboard

Jake Marks

03. Oct 2022 · 23:27 UTC

Very fun and tight controls. Leaderboards are always great to see in LD games. 5/5 on fun.

Aes1

04. Oct 2022 · 00:12 UTC

super fun game, I think I got 5000 Au and I was moving super fast. There is a lot to keep track of when there is only ten seconds, and you have to decide what you need next. Great Game, super fun :)

thedude3600

04. Oct 2022 · 00:39 UTC

This was a really fun game! seemed really polished and well thoughtout/executed. I liked the art style, simple but everything was readable. Initially, the instructions on the page seemed a little overwhelming (without knowing exactly what they meant for gameplay) and almost convinced me to not try, once I played it and understood what it all referred to the game really came together. Good Job!

Eugenik

04. Oct 2022 · 21:26 UTC

What a fun idea! Feels very polished. GZ!.

🎤 Gousen Pride

05. Oct 2022 · 04:34 UTC

@milq Thanks man, I appreciate your enjoyment. I guess the hole game and its mechanics are a bit overwhelming until you know what you are doing. A tutorial would be nice, but unfortunately we didn't had time.

@psychic-ash Good to know you liked the controls game play is something that I hold dearly, I would liked to explain a bit more (in the game) what the 10 seconds mean, but we only had time to create a tutorial. Good to know you had fun tough!

@ofiro, wow your Avast must have hated our game, lol. Probably had to do with we using the deprecated WWW class in Unity, we are going to look on that. Nice to know that you enjoyed the screen shake and hit registration :D

@jake-marks I personally think that, in those kind of games, leaderboard are mandatory. And it keeps the players wanting to play just "one more" run. Good to know that you liked the controls!

@aes1 The first concept of the game was exactly that feeling of having to chose which room you would descend next so you keep al your resources in check! 5k Au?? You beat my score, damn it! LoL. Nice to know that you enjoyed that much. Lastly move speed is a good mutation, but you should try the reload speed and fire rate, that combination makes shooting very satisfying, but be noticed that your Iron will be sacked!

@thedude3600 As we were deciding that a tutorial would be out of the question (for time limit purposes) we knew that a work around it would be to detail as much as we could in the game page, as the game has its complexity it is indeed a lot of information. Good to know you gave it a try anyway, we appreciate it! Interesting point in the art style, we would liked to iterate a bit more on it, personally I think we could do better, but we decided that gameplay was more importantly to get it right. Thanks for your patience!

@eugenik Thanks man, good to know you liked!

Paul Avallone

05. Oct 2022 · 04:36 UTC

I like your execution of theme. The game seems a little too easy. You can take a lot of hits and not really worry about it. If you expand upon this game I would love additional task that you could do as well as more weapon and enemy types. Good job!

🎤 Gousen Pride

05. Oct 2022 · 04:47 UTC

@paul-avallone Thanks man, glad you enjoyed! The game was actually too easy, we "balanced" it at the last minute due to some friends feedback. I think the enemies scales pretty good, I guess you just didn't played enough to get to the hard part?! Anyway, expanding this game would be a dream, we created a solid base for it. More weapons and enemies were planned, but not executed due to the short time frame that we had to create the game. But we did implemented weapon swapping and an inventory for it, but we had to remove it because that weren't a nice way to get new weapons which was a very sad but necessary decision. Thanks for your feedback though.

LDJam user 285924

05. Oct 2022 · 08:45 UTC

It's awesome, so simple but cool art. I love this chemistry and biology style, very good mutation mechanic. I liked explore rooms and collect different elements to use it and i liked figure out where i can use it. Very good game, thank you.

Jibberwocky

05. Oct 2022 · 08:51 UTC

Very fun game, played through it a few times to try to maximize score and play with fun things like giant bullets.
I feel like the upgrades might be better if they were less incremental? like a 3% increase to move speed or fire rate doesn't feel like very much when you just get one so I tended to just spam the same upgrade when I got the chance otherwise it felt like a waste.

savorytoast

05. Oct 2022 · 12:07 UTC

I really liked the simple but fun concept of resource-based rooms, although I often found myself short on bullets, would be better if iron resource gave at least maybe 10 units.

BayLock

05. Oct 2022 · 13:50 UTC

Great work man amazing game. Got hooked in first 10 seconds

Ggross

06. Oct 2022 · 02:08 UTC

I like the design of variant element resources and mutations. The game will be amazing when more enemies and maps are available. Well done!

ChillerTyp

06. Oct 2022 · 14:14 UTC

Super cool with the gamepad controls! :sunglasses:

LDJam user 240168

07. Oct 2022 · 11:58 UTC

A very cool game! The only problem is that the growth of enemies' levels feels too harsh, I quickly lost all my ammunition and had to go through ferrum rooms a lot to re-fill my supplies. No other resource went out so quickly, so I'd say the game would benefit from a bit of balancing :) Anyways, nice game! I almost got to the leaderboard :)

![2022-10-07-145214_1920x1080_scrot.png](///raw/82a/a3/z/52b12.png)

mar3k

07. Oct 2022 · 17:09 UTC

A very nice rogue like game. I like the powerup system and slowly upgrading the character. Also thanks for the linux version, it is always appreciated and not always included in many entries.

jirrev

08. Oct 2022 · 15:03 UTC

Jeez, as someone knowing the periodic table I got slight ptsd when I saw those simbols, afraid I was going to have to make some form of molecular bonds, but you used them amazing and even if you didn't know what each icon was it made sense soon enough. Amazing work!

real_flamingicecubegames

10. Oct 2022 · 17:26 UTC

Really good use of the theme. I like this game a lot. The gameplay is satisfying, the graphics are great, the game concept is genius, and the constant upgrading makes the player feel powerful. Overall amazing entry. I don't even have anything bad to say about it.

I'm "egg" on the leaderboards.

automatonvx

10. Oct 2022 · 23:47 UTC

I have to say after a couple of plays I was still a bit confused. Some of the gam ewindow was cut off to the left on my 1920x1200 screen I guess the game doesn't support that aspect ratio very well and no option to change. Anyway, Music was cool, art was charming in a very old school early 8-bit sort of way. The game concept about balaning different elements was intriguing. The enemies as far as I got seemed a bit basic, felt like I might as well just run around them instead of waste bullets and time on them. The levels did get a bit too repeaty, but limited time for content so fair enough i guess. Didn't quite understand how the health worked maybe some crucial bit of UI was cut off on the left for me. Feels like it has potential, good job.