March 2025

Many game updates and a new microbe painting

Hi everyone!

It’s been a wild several weeks since my last update. I won’t discuss the current events here but like most people I’ve been very distracted by all the bizarre, disturbing, and honesty frightening news that’s coming out almost every day now. I truly can’t wrap my head around what’s happening in the world.

I’ve also had a situation with my personal health which slowed me down for a few weeks. Things seem okay now, but it was a stressful time which made it difficult to focus on any meaningful work. I did at least manage to finish watching all of Monk in time before Netflix takes it away!

Despite all that, I actually have quite a few updates to share with you today.

Game Updates

In case you missed it, you can check my previous post for an overview of the microbe game project:

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More Bacteria Types

There are now four types of bacteria in the game, each with different rarities and unique effects on the player when consumed. So far the bacteria can affect your movement speed and how much you grow when you eat them. I have loads more ideas for bacteria effects to come.

New Predator: Stylonychia

Stylonychia is the first active predator. Unlike Colpoda which minds its own business as long as you stay away from its mouth, Stylonychia will actively chase you if it notices you. You’re not its favourite food, though, so as long as there are other flagellates around you can head toward those and Stylo will chase them instead.

New Hazard: Heliozoan

Heliozoan is a hazard rather than a predator. It gently drifts around minding its own business, and won’t bother you as long as you leave it alone. Don’t touch the spines though, or you’ll be stunned!

Helio also stuns predators, so if you’re lucky you can use it to buy time for an escape, but this is a risky strategy, as you can see in the video below.

Too Much Math

Performance isn’t normally much of an issue this early in a game’s development, but my game has so many objects the computer was quickly getting bogged down trying to calculate the physics and other behaviours for all of them at once.

I spent a lot of time finding ways to reduce the demand on the computer while staying as true as possible to my initial goals. For example, I created a system to simulate the effects of physics interactions (such as soil clustering) without using actual physics in areas outside the player’s view, and only activating real physics when the player is in range. This dramatically lightened the demand on the computer while still allowing the soil structure to build organically over time, and letting the player experience real physics interactions as they move through the environment.

Since the game involves a lot of dynamic behaviour and many moving parts, anything I can do to keep things efficient and optimized will be a top priority every step of the way.

Fixed Play Space

Initially I wanted to have a world without boundaries that you could explore endlessly, but it turns out it's very complicated and performance-heavy to continuously generate an interactive environment on demand while also giving a sense of ecosystem progression over time.

So I decided to set a fixed world size and focus on making the world rich and dense instead of expansive. Since the landscape will be constantly changing, it should still feel like exploring new areas even if you're technically moving around in the same space.

I painted a bunch of soil clusters to start with, added them to a tile palette in Unity, and used them to build walls around the play area.

I want to make variations of these tiles and have them gradually change over time to reflect the ecosystem development as the game progresses. I may also use them to create more elaborate structures like tunnels and “caves” in the later stages of the game.

Squishing Bugs

Finding and fixing bugs in programming is a game of whack-a-mole. Even in my little game, so early in development, there are already enough connections and different things depending on each other to create unexpected and often bizarre problems almost every time something is added or changed.

For example, when I made the walls around the play area, I also needed to adjust the camera to stop when you approach a wall so you can’t see past it. This was pretty easy to set up and it worked fine, but suddenly there were no bacteria when I tried to play the game. Uhh… ?

It took a few minutes of bewildered troubleshooting to realize I had put the camera boundary box on the same layer as the play area boundary, which is set to destroy bacteria if they hit the walls. Since the camera box covers the whole play space, bacteria were being immediately destroyed as soon as they spawned!

While it can be exasperating having things go wrong so often, I know this is totally normal with programming and I can usually just laugh at the silliness, plus it’s extremely satisfying to solve these little puzzles.

Game Logo and Branding

Even though the game is still early in development, I want to settle on the title, logo, and colour palette before I continue working on it. Having an established set of colours and fonts is essential for creating a cohesive and polished look when designing UI (user interface) elements like buttons and alert text, menus, etc.

I’m pretty sure I have the title now, and I’ve been working very hard on the logo and colours over the past week or so.

I’m not a graphic designer and don’t have a budget to hire one, so this part has been quite a challenge. All the pressure is on this single word and image to represent my entire project, so I’m really taking my time here, to be sure I feel as confident as possible with the final result.

This will also give me the opportunity to bring in some colour, since the game environment itself is generally dark with muted, neutral tones. I want to keep a more realistic look for the creatures and scenery, and use the UI to add colour and brightness to the experience wherever possible.

When to Reveal?

I still haven’t decided if I should reveal the title and logo as soon as they’re ready, or if I should wait and reveal them as a big announcement when the Steam page is ready. What do you think? I’d welcome any thoughts or suggestions here!

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New Artwork: Colpoda

This is another “mini” painting I made as part of the more complex soil life illustration project I started late last year (I talked about that in this post). I actually finished this in early December, but winter fatigue took hold before I got a chance to share it. Then in early January I started the game project which became so all-consuming I forgot all about it!

So here it is, finally! My newest protozoa illustration, featuring two Colpodas sweeping up a cloud of bacteria with a plant root in the background. This is based on a scene I’ve seen many times in the microscope when looking at slides with living roots and the flurry of microbial life surrounding them.

Colpoda remind me so much of little Roombas zooming around sweeping up whatever comes in front of them. I find them so cute and charming, which is why they were the first ciliate I added to my game, and why I decided to make them relatively harmless even though they are still a predator.

I’m really happy with how this painting turned out. I don’t normally use photo effects in my work, but I tried adding a heavy blur to the background this time and I absolutely love how it adds so much depth. I also like this slightly more blueish colour as opposed to the yellow tones in much of my earlier work. I think this colour is both very realistic and much more appealing to the eye, personally. It has been a long, long journey to get this right! I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Both this and the previous mini-painting are now available in my print shop over on INPRNT. They happen to have a site-wide sale running at the moment so it’s a great time to order! Site-wide sales give you a discount on your order without reducing how much I get paid, so it’s a nice deal for both of us :)

If you happen to live in Norway, feel free to contact me directly about ordering prints so we can make arrangements with a local provider.

That’s all for now!

Thank you so much for being here, and for all your wonderful feedback and support. I appreciate you all and wish you the very best 💕

Kate

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