Gut Check by matt1will
An idle, deckbuilding game about balancing your gut microbiome.
Note: This game is not very polished or complete. My main goal was to explore this concept within the short timespan. I hope to expand this post-jam :)

| Link | https://mattwilldev.itch.io/gut-check |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/gut-check |
Ratings
| Overall | 921th | 3.105ā | 21š§āāļø |
| Fun | 1008th | 2.605ā | 21š§āāļø |
| Innovation | 532th | 3.316ā | 21š§āāļø |
| Theme | 276th | 3.975ā | 22š§āāļø |
| Graphics | 573th | 3.625ā | 22š§āāļø |
| Audio | 676th | 1.571ā | 16š§āāļø |
| Humor | 927th | 1.967ā | 17š§āāļø |
| Mood | 1015th | 2.611ā | 20š§āāļø |
| Given | 12š³ļø | 5šØļø |
I noticed that there is no penalty if all bacteria are selected directly and sugar, fat and fibre always remain at 0-1. Perhaps it would be better if e.g. the sugar level has to be kept within a certain range. That way the player can lose due to hypoglycaemia too and not only with hyperglycaemia.
It took me a while to understand the goal of the game.
The card descriptions are not intuitive. The symbols for fat, sugar, and fibrinogen (is that it?) are very unclear. Sugar is intuitive, I guess. They could have written something like: "Reduces sugar", etc. The stripes need to have a red line, because I didn't know that I would lose if I had too many of all the elements at once. I was just keeping the balance.
Overall, the game is very cool, and the idea needs to be developed, so far I have too few levers of pressure on the situation. But it makes the game more interesting. Which is good.
Definitely a like. I got into the game and played it for more than 10 minutes.
look at me go!!! I agree with one of the comments above tho - my first two runs were not fun, since I never drew the fat bacteria and was left watching my arteries clog up :slight_smile: With some more polish to the gameplay this could be even more addicting!