Developed by Enseo, Game design & Development first-year student at Creative Seeds, Brittany, France

THE GAME

You wake up....

You've been absorbed by the fleshy monolith that stood before you only moments ago. You should be dead, but you are only trapped. You feel the creature you are in lurking in your mind, feeding on your memory to change its form. If you don't do anything, you will surely die, reduced to a vegetative state. 

But don't give up—your determination has transformed you into a being of pure hatred: a cancer.

 Make this organism as sick as possible and make it pay by accumulating points before getting totally absorbed.

-- FEATURES --

Organ placement: You can freely place bumpers across the entire area with little to no limitation.

Sick accumulation: You can buy "Sick," which are bonuses in this game that give multipliers and bonus points.

-- ART-- 

The art and sound design are all themed around the body, organs, and sickness in a semi-cartoon style inspired primarily by The Binding of Isaac (Flash) and the Gluttony layer from ULTRAKILL.

The art was all made by me.

 THE PROJECT

This game is a 10-week end-of-year Godot 2D project made during the first year of the Game Design & Development programme at Creative Seeds.

Among the four given themes, I chose “Chain Reaction” by default. The other themes didn’t inspire me as much, and I’m a big fan of games that use this mechanic, such as The Binding of Isaac, Balatro, and more recently Everything Is Crab. To represent this theme, I chose to take a classic game that is inherently based on chain reactions: pinball. I added a mechanic that allows players to place the bumpers and flippers themselves, giving them the opportunity to be strategic. It worked, but the gameplay was still too repetitive, so I added roguelike elements with bonuses that appear randomly in the shop, making every run unique.

It was really tough to find an artistic direction that fit the game well and that I could still draw myself. As I said earlier, I’m a big fan of The Binding of Isaac, so I took inspiration from it. The art style of the original Flash version of The Binding of Isaac was especially helpful. I also took a lot of inspiration from The Womb levels in The Binding of Isaac and Gluttony from ULTRAKILL for the fleshy, organic theme I wanted to create while still maintaining a cartoony vibe.

At first, I really struggled to find the right art style and color palette. What really helped me crystallize what I wanted to do was designing the shop. After drawing it, I knew I was on the right path for the pinball elements such as the bumpers, the walls, and even the background. However, for the player and everything they have control over, I chose a different direction. I took the colors and art style of the ball and applied them to everything the player controls: the menus, the tutorial, and most importantly the UI, which I tried to make as clear as possible. In a fast-paced game where you need quick reactions, you don’t have time to look at numbers, so I tried to use color indicators to help the player understand their situation at any given moment.

One of the biggest challenges I faced as a developer was creating the shop. Since it has to be randomized every time you enter it, I had to use an extremely convoluted system where buttons receive a random node from a list, and each node has different sprites and behaviors. For a button to display the correct icon for the correct item, I have to instantiate the node, retrieve its sprite and other information such as its price and description, assign those values to the button, and then free the node afterward. It was really difficult to implement, especially since it is my first long-term project made with Godot.

 ASSETS CREDITS 

SHADERS: "2D Liquid Wave, PWira, https://godotshaders.com/shader/2d-liquid-wave/ "

 CREDITS 

Thanks to our teacher, who really helped me throughout the project and was incredibly patient.

Thanks to Abyssalmon, who was a great help and always listened to me when I needed feedback.

Thanks to my friends on Discord, who playtested the game and provided very valuable feedback that helped improve it.