Petri Kings: Devlog 3

I'm excited to announce the first major update to Petri Kings, introducing Plasmids, combat changes, and a new editor and tech tree UI!

Plasmids

Plasmids are small, circular, DNA molecules that are separate from a cell’s core DNA. In bacteria, they act as a genetic memory and can provide the cell with advantages like improved resistance to viruses or antibiotics.

Cells with this trait can generate starting with any one plasmid, gaining a buff to its health, defense, damage, or speed. When that cell dies, it drops its plasmid as loot for a short time, or passes it on if it was consumed by a predator.

After unlocking plasmids from the tech tree, you’ll be able to gain your own by defeating other cells in the world. Each cell can collect and use up to three plasmids, as well as two extra to trade out. When selecting which plasmids to use you can stack their effects, creating super fast or strong builds with each life. Don’t forget to be careful though. Since plasmids aren’t part of your core DNA, they’ll all be lost on death.

Combat/Editor

Along with the inclusion of plasmids many combat abilities were tweaked. Toxins have been adjusted with stronger varieties, and the new secretion system, SST5 was added. SST5 is a last resort defense available to bacteria cells that automatically releases large amounts of toxins upon death, potentially taking out any attacking cell with it. This ability, as well as SST2 have also now available for carnivorous cells.

With the new combat abilities and the growing interactions and dependencies between parts, this update includes a full redesign of the cell editor and tech tree, laying out all the available parts and branches for better clarity and decision making when designing your cell. Many of the previous non-combat abilities have been merged with this tree while combat parts and abilities were separated into their own tree.

An itemized list of changes is included in the changelog on the Itch.io page.

Thank you to everyone for your interest and support and I hope you all enjoy the game!

Try out the new update here: Petri Kings