Gameplay

The gameplay loop leans into the simplicity of a single celled ecosystem. As the Player you must navigate a dangerous environment and gain energy which you can then use to gain lives and improve your character.
Your main cell moves forward following the direction of the mouse, and consumes nutrient pellets scattered throughout the dish. You must avoid carnivorous cells and toxins in the environment until you collect enough energy to divide and edit your cells.
New cell parts are purchased with collected energy in the cell editor and each one unlocks new abilities or parts, branching into different paths of evolution that mirror the evolution of early prokaryotes here on earth.

Procedural Generation

As with my Procedural Dungeon Generator tool, this project uses procedural generation to create unique encounters for each game, this time focusing on the characters as opposed to the level. The bodies of each cell in the game use procedural meshes with a front, middle, and back segment. These segments can each be stretched in two directions and the body is constructed around these parameters. Any unlocked organelles are then dynamically attached to the generated mesh. This system allows for a great deal of control for players when designing their own cells.
NPC cells also use this system to generate their body structures before selecting their organelles and adaptations from the same tech tree available to the player. This allows for a great deal of variety in NPC cells that players can encounter, as well as creating a unique and dynamic ecosystem for players to navigate and adapt to during the course of gameplay.

Educational Elements

My first introduction to game design was during a high school science project when we were tasked to make a game that taught a concept we’d learned that semester. To honor that project Petri Kings is intended to serve as a light introduction to the concept of evolution and microbiology. Unlike Spore where new parts are randomly encountered in the game, each new part here is unlocked in a branching tech tree which follows the evolution of prokaryotes here on earth. The 1.0 release will include evolutionary branches into simple Bacteria and Archaea. While some cell parts like Ribosomes and Membranes are universal, others like Capsules and some Secretion Systems are only available to specific cell types after specializing, resulting in different playstyles based on the design and evolution of your cell. There are also many examples of convergent evolution where parts have analogs with similar effects on each branch, ensuring successful and potentially overpowered traits aren’t fully locked to a single line of evolution. Descriptions of each cell part and the effects it has on the cell are displayed when hovering over them in the editor before unlocking them.
As the complexity of your cell grows, you’ll require more energy to divide resulting in a steeper difficulty curve the quicker you evolve and unlock new parts.