Summer Progress Update

Cellscape has come a long way over the last months, and it feels like a good time to let you in on some of the recent developments.

Parallax Background

I've been working on a huge, multi-layered scenery painting which will create a cool parallax background. The painting isn't completely finished yet, but it looks like it will work nicely!

Settings Menu

I've added a settings menu with various options to let you customize your game experience. This isn't completely finished or polished yet (control options and many graphics settings are still missing), but it's in a good place for now.

Settings added so far:

Gameplay

• Show/hide timer

• Show/hide cursor during gameplay

• Allow the game to continue running when not the active window

Graphics

• Screen mode

• Parallax toggle (in case of motion sickness)

Audio

• Enable/disable all sounds and music

• Separate volume sliders and toggles for music, sound effects, and UI sounds.

Game Timer and Scoring

The game now keeps track of your highest score, and I’ve added a timer to track the duration of your run. The timer can be hidden in the settings if you'd rather not feel the pressure of a ticking clock!

Pathogen Mechanic

Sometimes predator populations can be a bit much! While this is fun to see and quite realistic, it's not ideal for gameplay, since it can make huge areas totally inaccessible with nothing you can do about it. Instead of changing reproduction rates, I decided to add a new pathogen mechanic to put a natural limit on predators.

When Colpoda populations reach a certain threshold, a small number of virus particles start drifting around. On contact with a susceptible cell, the virus triggers an infection. The infected cell changes colour, becomes unable to eat, and slowly stops moving. The infection is also contagious! When the cell dies, it releases a small burst of short-lived secondary virus particles, which can trigger a chain reaction if there are many others close by.

While virus particles float around and passively infect Colpodas on their own, they can also be picked up and used to infect a cell directly. While risky, this allows you to intentionally bring the disease into densely populated areas. Not only does this make the area safer for you (if you're successful), it also has another benefit...

Nutrient Clouds

When an infected cell dies, it dissolves into a cloud of nutrients. The nutrient cloud attracts nearby bacteria and triggers them to divide, creating a local feeding frenzy that you can use to quickly boost your division score.

What's Next

Right now I'm working on a biofilm system. Biofilms are special patches of bacteria and slime that will act as resource and/or hazardous areas, depending on the type. The effects include various buffs and debuffs that affect your ability to survive, and will introduce some more strategic elements into the game.

Thanks so much for reading, I hope you're as excited about Cellscape as I am! Don't forget to wishlist if you haven't yet! There is lots more to come.

See you in the next update!

Kate