Sick! Virus Busters by Raptorspank

made by Raptorspank for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

In Sick!: Virus Busters you play a nanobot pill that must navigate the patient's arteries and destroy any virus cells. However, your nanobot pill has limited memory space and so it can only use a certain number of abilities at a time. You must navigate the body while disabling and enabling different systems to fight off the infection. Most abilities cost (1) Memory space but others may require you to disable more systems before you can enable them.

Be careful, as colliding with or attacking blood cells will do more damage to the body. You will need to aim carefully to ensure you only eliminate the virus itself.

Controls: WASD - Move QE - Rotate Space/F - Fire

You can also hold shift and press one of the above keys to disable/enable those systems as well. Otherwise, you can do so by clicking on the system's name.

We played off the theme of Limited Space by confining the player in a very small play space, but also making the player have a limited amount of memory space for abilities so that the player has to disable some abilities to enable others.

Link	https://raptorspank.itch.io/sick-virus-busters
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/sick-virus-busters

Ratings

Overall	1078^th	2.788⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Fun	1087^th	2.515⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	746^th	3.141⭐	34🧑‍⚖️
Theme	846^th	3.203⭐	34🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	965^th	2.578⭐	34🧑‍⚖️
Audio	598^th	2.969⭐	34🧑‍⚖️
Humor	833^th	2.283⭐	32🧑‍⚖️
Mood	1010^th	2.703⭐	34🧑‍⚖️
Given		27🗳️	49🗨️

Feedback

Joymagine

03. Oct 2023 · 03:43 UTC

it needs some better indicator about the systems reconfiguring, like bars with separate rectangles or something, at first i thought the shooting doesnt even work or something.. maybe also a warning thing saying you cant shoot right now or something like that

AncientEntity

03. Oct 2023 · 03:45 UTC

UI could use some scaling depending on resolution, but besides that I enjoyed the concept! Good job!

Luke Woodruff

03. Oct 2023 · 03:46 UTC

I love the mood, and the music, but found the controls and ability shifting hard to understand.

🎤 Raptorspank

03. Oct 2023 · 06:38 UTC

Thanks for the feedback! The UI definitely can use some work, we wanted to make it so disabled systems would look different but we didn't end up having enough time to get that figured out.

hacknick

03. Oct 2023 · 16:52 UTC

I like the idea and music! But it's hard to see which systems are enabled.

Jeremy Klassen

03. Oct 2023 · 16:54 UTC

Fun concept. Like what the others said, the controls are confusing. I wasn't able to figure out why I wasn't shooting sometimes and not rotating, or moving other times. I suspect a few adjustments would make this an excellent experience.

Areez Memon

03. Oct 2023 · 16:55 UTC

I couldn't figure out after exploring and moving around, the shooting didn't seem to work at all. The audio was fine, but no UI telling what to do, when shooting is enabled, how shooting is enabled etc.

Unfinished632

03. Oct 2023 · 17:02 UTC

Couldn't beat the first level but the idea is neat.

tatawanda

03. Oct 2023 · 17:05 UTC

It's a fine concept. However, if you want to incite the player to go fast (by putting a time limit) you should make it easy to switch between gears and to know in which state your ship are easily (as well as the enabling/disabling being visible but that is already cover). But congrate on your first jam :D

artilor901z

05. Oct 2023 · 00:44 UTC

nice mood and all works combine smoothly together. Nice work!

NIrlandec

05. Oct 2023 · 00:47 UTC

I wish my nanobot could be cuter and more of the cartoony style. I loved the virus XD. The mechanics are interesting lovely concept . Good work on audio gotta admit. Some more work on game feel would be great. Nice job

LDJam user 239490

05. Oct 2023 · 00:52 UTC

I think it's an interesting concept for a game. I like the idea of switching the power to different areas of the ship, but found it difficult to do quickly which made it too cumbersome to switch often. I think some sort of map that could be drawn as you explore or a slightly zoomed out view would help ensure the players aren't going in circles. I like the song too.

Chartle

05. Oct 2023 · 00:58 UTC

I like the concept, but got confused at times, mainly at the UI and what the reason was that i lost a system. I also lost the first time I played without seeing an enemy, but that might just be me lol.

LDJam user 375151

05. Oct 2023 · 00:59 UTC

As others have said, it was hard to tell what was enabled and what wasn't. At first I just thought it didn't work until I saw comments in here, so then I played it again and was able to kill a bunch of the enemies. I did find a few areas that I just couldn't move past. Felt like an invisible blockage or something. I think to improve the controls you could just have the w key propel the player in the direction they are facing. It was a bit strange flying sideways while shooting. Art was pretty cool. Good job on the jam!

🎤 Raptorspank

05. Oct 2023 · 02:16 UTC

@draekdude Thanks! Definitely needed to do more to make enabled systems clearer. We probably should have started with horizontal/vertical movement and shooting enabled, rather than just the movement systems. There are actually invisible walls so that's likely what you ran into. Rather than a wide map, it's a relatively confined space that you need to go from either end of. I wanted to put some sort of "signal weak" message when you reached an invisible barrier but I ran out of time. I probably should have made sure to include that from the start though.

LDJam user 320773

05. Oct 2023 · 07:34 UTC

This is a pretty interesting game idea with very unintuitive implementation, limiting the play area to a smaller arena with invading viruses and allowing the player to get used to designating memory to different features would allow some learning space with the mechanics both for player and designer.

xD there was too much blood :P nice work

🎤 Raptorspank

05. Oct 2023 · 22:39 UTC

@steamhat thanks! We probably made the level a bit too big, that's certainly fair. We kept nerfing things to try and make the game a little more forgiving but I think we probably could have gone a bit farther without making it too easy too.

Sorry about the too much blood! Quite ironically, two of us are pretty queasy with the sight of blood and we probably made it a little too close to realistic at times haha

Kizilejderha

06. Oct 2023 · 19:00 UTC

The idea of having a limited number of mechanics available at any given moment is cool and a good connection to the theme. The level design could be better, the levels are too big to traverse in time. I like how you can use the blood cells to boost yourself around, I couldn't finish the first level even with that boost tho

🎤 Raptorspank

06. Oct 2023 · 22:44 UTC

@kizilejderha Honestly, I didn't think about using the blood as a boost, that's definitely an interesting way to get around! I definitely think the difficulty is a bit too high, we probably should have had a little more health and then narrowed the play space further than that. Thanks for playing!

Cody Raethke

11. Oct 2023 · 04:09 UTC

Interesting concept! I liked the idea of swapping out mechanics, but I think you could have made more out of it by building the level in such a way that required certain combinations to beat a puzzle. I just turned off rotation to enable the shooting and was able to get pretty far with that.

It was really tough for me to tell where I was, and the very flat walls (and invisible walls) didn't do a great job of conveying that I was inside a body. I think a more organically-shaped level would have helped with that.

🎤 Raptorspank

11. Oct 2023 · 22:29 UTC

@cody-raethke Thanks for playing! I definitely agree that the level design fell a bit flat, we wanted to make one of the levels a lot more confined and in a heart-shaped series of rooms which probably would have conveyed the idea a lot better. Unfortunately we just ended up running out of time on that.

Making a couple of puzzle levels or sections could be a great idea for shaking up the gameplay too, that's a great idea!

AdrianGray

14. Oct 2023 · 13:32 UTC

Nice game, I didn't quite understood why I die randomly, but nice touch with limited inventory slots

Damp_Squib

15. Oct 2023 · 22:21 UTC

Liked the concept very much. I always find it interesting to manage your stats by having to decrease one to increase another. However, it took a good long while to understand how that actually worked. I think the game could use some UI upgrades. Also, it took me even longer to understand that the map continued in all four directions. At first I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong because I wasn't even seeing any virus. I think maybe having a virus moving in and out of the screen in the first visible portion would clue players in that the map is bigger than what they see at first. Overall though, good game!

🎤 Raptorspank

16. Oct 2023 · 01:34 UTC

@damp-squib Thanks for playing! I definitely agree on it needs some UI upgrades. That's a good idea for helping players realize there are multiple directions to go. I think it may have been better to have the first level be a stationary level and then used the bigger level layouts for the later levels too.

Emma.Ge

19. Oct 2023 · 03:17 UTC

I really like this idea! Moving inside blood vessels, that's very interesting.