The fish are beautiful! how did you get the graphics? They definately need more frames, though, and the animations are a little bti jitterry. Nice looking! Maybe some water effects will go good with this.

Yeah I was waiting for this one.

Very interesting concept, theme, environments and atmosphere. It's alien but it also is somewhat natural or familiar. Maybe we are a microorganism inside a body? Maybe we are going to be the hive queen of some alien race one day? It feels rich and nice.

Besides the obvious placeholder graphics especially in introduction boxes (nice implementation by the way) there a couple things, though.

The environments are fantastic in design, it's a sin not to show them as much as you can. The game resolution is too low, and when I zoom in chrome it gets blurry. I think this games graphical design definately deserves HD. I don't know if you are targeting mobile, if not, I advice you find a way to implement this beautiful hand-drawn levels into game in somewhat better graphichal presentation, i.e higher resolution.

Other than that, rush mechanic seems to be broken. It just jumps in a random direction, not in the direction I am facing. Since it's useful it needs a fix.

Firing is good, but having to have to click for each shot is bad, especially when things don't die easily. The first mini-boss almost gave me carpal tunnel syndrome. I think it would be better to auto-shoot as long as the left mouse button is down.

One of the rocks got stuck in a small pocket-like edge of the layout and I had really hard time trying to remove it from there to close the hole. After working for about two minutes I was able to remove it from the edge but it was a little bit disappointing. Maybe a workaround code for stuck rocks? Also while pushing things around the mechanics are not consistent, sometimes pushes slowly, sometimes kicks away to a distance.

I know I sounded a mouthfull here but I am really interested in this game and where it can go, so when these rugged edges are fixed I will gladly play it. It's real potential, exciting to think interactions / competition between npc species, maybe using these strifes to beat otherwise very difficult situations, evolving to something else when you have enough food etc.

Can't wait.

You are welcome sir. Please share the updates as well, I really would like to see where this one goes.

I think you have all the basics going. If you are seeking game variety you can use the board itself to introduce new mechanics like traps that bind the players, special squares that make the players safe... or add mines which may also be built an be invisible... or npc monsters that move around randomly hurting players...

But I think the more basic such games the better. Sometimes when you create such simple mechanics the replay variety blooms up. Though you could create some kind of scoring system and keep them in a server, and try to appeal to the competitionary feelings of people. Like a facebook game for example.

I think, if you use arrays, and objects made up of tilemaps, you can achieve this.

I can't tell how to code it but the idea I have in mind is... Lets make it by your example. You will make shapes by using tilemap objects, and you will represent your "hole" with an array. Imagine below

Array:

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

then you have shapes made up of tilemaps, and also represented by arrays as well. Imagine a triangle shape which is represented by:

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 0

1 1 1 1 0 0

1 1 1 0 0 0

1 1 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 0

When you place it, you get the coordinates, translate them into array adresses, and add each adress over the first one. If anywhere it becomes a 2, it means the shape is not passing through the hole.

If not, object is placed. Then you place the second object which is also triangle, but you can rotate it. You will have to go into matrix coding or sth like that to rotate the arrays, probably by writing functions to do so. Same applies for the second object, place it, adress it on the array, chech for 2's. If not, second shape also fits. After all shapes placed, check for any remaining 0's inthe main array to see if the hole was closed completely.

I don't know if I could describe it, but it just what came on top of my head.

Hope it helps.

Can't catch any fish in the second run. But I really loved the gameplay. Simple but some very nice touches. I think if you could work with a professional graphics designer and added sounds this game could shine. And don't worry, 10 megs is not big. You can go all the way to 35 mb. Regarding graphics, there are some methods to make them take smaller place as well. Search the forums and you shall fish the answers out.

This is incredible and can be quite useful, thanks for sharing.

I think it's great. I loved the story, just maybe, pressing mouse button could make it go faster. And as Fraktal says, an indication that says it ended.

Gameplay is nice, wonderfull even. Very little but nice touches all around. Definately love it and would like to see more. Music, graphics, mechanics everything just fits and polished. Well done.

It's very... seperate... from the usual games in almost every way.

Such a thing is very hard to "polish" as you say because any touch has the risk of damaging what the game is built on: surreality. It is the bridge that player builds in their minds to connect the games abstract presentation into an unorthodox yet comprehensible story and/or achievement.

My initial thought was that more animations were needed on the player character. But later, everything that we interact were so stiff that animating just the player would make it worse. Adding animations to everything else is not a better choice either. Besides, due the "experimental" nature of the graphics representing entities, animating them would be difficult and the game would get even larger.

Then I though maybe you should add some text, helping the player understand what is going on but when I was defeated by the blood crying golden egypt figure, I defeated the idea as well. I found myself wondering "what the hell was that? I couldn't do anything? Maybe I should have gone to somewhere else first? To find a weapon or sth? Hitting it sure didn't help..." And I liked the thought process. I would normally get frustrated in this situation but in the context of this game, it was a better result.

I think, you should find a way to make players "not give up" on the game whether because they died to something they couldn't understand or they found the game too abstract. This is the only thing between the probable final version and this one I think. I will be watching this game, it's out of the ordinary in every aspect; but don't expect very high praise. Gamers are generally a practical lot with lots of learned habits and subconscious preferences. It will be a challenge for you. But I think you know all this very well.

Hope you find the perfect imbalance.

This is pretty awesomely small and fun!

Alexixiv Cool movement mechanic, nice little touches. I loved the stopping thrusters. It inspired me even! What are you going to build on top of this?

Real cool! I hoped I could use it for Dungeon Mastering but the dragons I came up with were all a little bit too cute for it. Nice job, though.