Virus

Virus. Made for ZenoJam 2021.

Credits:

• Actually good pixel art by Kully - please check out their work!
  
• Monogram font by datagoblin

• Game/Music/some art by ImAKappa
  • Game made with Godot
  • Music made with MuseScore
  • Art made with paint.net

Instructions:

• Move with WASD/Arrow keys
• Infect cells by touching them. Lyse (burst) cells by pressing space.
• If you lyse all cells, you win. Don't get caught by big immune cell.
• The immune cell is mostly blind to you. But, if you get hit with an antibody, the immune cell will have a better idea of where you are. The immune cell can also cure cells.

Motivation

• The theme for the jam was "I am everywhere". Inspired by the current worldwide situation, I decided to make a game about viruses because when viruses infect a host, they spread everywhere. So if "I am the virus" in game, then "I am everywhere"
• I mostly program sciency stuff, but I'd never made a full game (or joined a game jam) before. I decided on trying to learn Godot, and it turned out to be really nice to work with. For my first game jam, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Is the game biologically accurate?

Lol no. But I did take some inspiration from immunology/biology:

• Viruses, the dastardly things, infect cells and hijack the bio-machines inside them to make more copies of the virus. When enough viruses are produced, they lyse the cell - like the Chestburster from Alien
• Some immune cells are hunters and some are taggers. The taggers (like B cells) spew out antibodies to bind to invaders. The hunter cells (like the aptly-named Natural Killer cells) sniff out tagged invaders and destroy them.
  • They also destroy infected cells, but in my game the hunter has a healing touch
• The cells in the game were modeled after plant cells, which is why they are green with cell walls and large water sacs. I just liked the look better than animal cells.
• The virus resembles a coronavirus (it doesn't actually infect plants tho)