Infernal Wyrm

I appreciate the feedback!

The story of the entry shifted a bit from what I originally intended, to fit more in line with what the gameplay turned into. Originally this was going to be a stats-management game, where you would control cancer cells to decay areas to move forward, while also making sure they did not become too aggressive and destroy everything, including the player; you had to maintain a fine balance. Since I couldn't think of a good way to bring this about early on (perhaps different "food" would have worked) I decided to have it be a bit more generic instead.

I was in a strange state of mind when I made this entry, I really wasn't feeling that great. I had this fear that I most likely did in fact have a cancer growing, whether real or metaphorical, and so when the theme was announced for this gamejam I felt very inspired to explore that idea. I made the entry with a frantic, lunatical style in mind, the text emphasizing not only the decay of the body but of its relationships as well, although admittedly that does get corny once or twice and seems to suggest complication in an unhealthy relationship in addition to this illness. This "wyrm" and its "decay", works well also, albeit unintentionally, as an allusion to Beowulf's death at the end of his story to the dragon and its venom, not a bad retroactive touch on my part. You can see that the "frantic style" mentioned above applies to this reply also, haha, I'm mostly just going over a few story elements which come to mind.

The final level, which includes a boss battle against a massive, horribly distorted, schizophrenic brain of the host, is meant to highlight the more psychological damage of such decay, whether it be physical or mental, while the audio recording at the end has some morphed and incomprehensible words of hope and of being at peace to contrast this.

I plan to go into the entry's development in-depth in a post-mortem video once the rating period is finished, it won't be this much of a ramble, haha.

I'm happy with how it turned out even with the change in direction, I'll likely explore the original gameplay concept again sometime as well. I'll definitely be focusing more on reducing frustration in future games as well, that seems to be a very common criticism, that developer bias is blinding. Anyways, once again thanks for the friendly feedback, and for playing!

Thank you for the feedback! Another issue with the movement is just that I got too used to it, I do agree that I should have buffed it though, or made red blood cells improve it as well so they had more of an important purpose, I may play with that sort-of mechanic next jam.

There actually is an improved upgrade introduced at some point after the level 5 boss (I don't remember if it's level 6 to be honest with you, haha) which can improve your movement acceleration along with a few other things (eyeball recharge rate, etc). The eyeballs are a bit overpowered for the bosses compared to the trail, I think I should have buffed the trail some as well (red blood cells upgrade it but not by much). Anyways, thanks for playing the entry!

Thank you for the friendly feedback and for making it as far as you did. I had the idea on another reply that I should have made the red blood cells upgrade movement acceleration as well, I think that would have helped with the movement problem/difficulty a lot, along with adding a unique gameplay element. I also had quite some trouble getting through this at times, and although there were difficulty tweaks periodically and near the end (the acid cells used to be ridiculous), I agree it would have been good to tweak it some more, I also should have buffed the toxic trail a bit. Near the end there was a bit of a rush because originally I intended for there to be 20 levels (there are even still sprites for these in the files), but I got tired of thinking of new gameplay mechanics and so just stopped it at 13.

The difficulty problem is actually even worse than you think, I even had trouble beating most of the levels, haha. It's good for you to bring up that developer bias, I should keep that in mind more. Thank you again for the feedback, I appreciate it!

In the later levels (Sometime after the first boss battle) there is a "Glowing" Red Bloodcell introduced which does in fact drop better upgrades which include increased acceleration. I agree that I should have just stuck some of that acceleration upgrade into the default ones as well though, it wouldn't have hurt and I like the concept.

It's just a matter of me getting used to the control scheme, eventually mechanics-wise I saw improved movement stability as a gift as opposed to a given, and that a part of the gameplay experience itself is getting used to the controls.

I still stand by this partially, as I enjoy somewhat of a challenging learning-curve especially in gamejam entries where they are typically breezed through in a few minutes at most, although I agree it would have added as opposed to detracted to this idea by making the Red Bloodcells slightly upgrade this along with everything else it does.

Also, thanks for the feedback!