node.js ko
Microbi.us
Microbi.us
by Node Juice
A massively multiplayer microscopic survival horror game. This is a dangerous and persistent world, so eat things to get bigger, and try to be the biggest.
Judging Instructions
- Go to: Microbi.us
- Click “play”
- Use the arrow keys to move: “up” for forward, left/right to rotate.
- Collect food (the green stuff) that is smaller than you to gain biomass. (hint, follow the home icon to smaller food to eat.)
- Try to eat other players without getting eaten yourself.
- If you get stuck, hold down the space bar and tap the ‘up’ key until you’re free.
- Collect the most biomass, and become the biggest!
p.s. Works best in Chrome or Safari. Turn off your music to enjoy the cool ambient soundtrack.
Who
Techwraith — San Francisco, CA
cstumph — Portland, OR
JeffreyKaine
pthurlow — San Francisco, CA
How
Express, Jade, Socket.io, jQuery, Crafty.js, Mongo, Mongoose, Underscore.
Votes
Your Vote
Voting is now closed.
Other Votes
(19)
giri_sreenivasjudge
mattcshorejudgeSweet sound effects!
okaysamuraijudgePretty fun multiplayer take on the Flow/Spore gaming mechanic…I can see how with a lot of players this could get very interesting. I got stuck a lot, and there was some pop-in with some food too. Like the global count of biomass. Some more variety in gameplay would be nice to take it to the next level, like powerups or enemy NPCs – otherwise the core gameplay doesn’t seem intriguing enough to replay again and again. Nice work!
dapsaysjudgeCool game. I moved around for a few minutes eating stuff and getting stuck in stuff that would appear after I’d already gotten stuck or at least passed it. I wasn’t really sure what else I was supposed to do, maybe because I never saw other players.
hongymagic
contestantGreat game, I think the lag may ruined my game experience (ping to linode, no.de and heroku from down under is ridiculous for sockets).
Great concept and nicely done
foxxtrotjudgeI would get a ‘Demo over’ message so early, it was hard to get a real feel for the game. The game worked as advertised, though it seemed that my biomass kept dropping, which could have been by design but was not expressed through the documentation that I could see.
revagomes
contestantNice idea. In fact I couldn’t really have a nice experience because I had no one to play with so I’ve got game over every time I tried. :P How can I be sure that I ate that green stuff? :S BTW it seems a nice game to play when the server is full. Great job!
mapejudgeReally great entry, although the gameplay isn’t that intriguing and the collision detection seems rough around the edges it is a great base. I can see it evolving into something really cool.
therazorbladejudgeThe game engine is really cool. The game itself it a bit boring. Needs more stuff to do. The space bar use is weird.
3rd-Eden
contestantHad some initial issues with connect-slowness but after switching to safari it all went away. It’s a pretty awesome game.
One of the best cames I have played so far. Good job <3
jeffreyjudgeThe gameplay worked for me. Was fun getting the hang of the navigation. Reminded me of steering a boat. Only, all I could do was move around, but couldn’t find anyone to eat. Think it could be a fun game with more of a critical mass. The design of the game is really great though. Nice job!
- contestant
Thanks for the feedback – it sounds like you might have tried playing this on Firefox. You should be able to see the food if you use Safari or Chrome 13. We’re definitely continuing development after this :)
aaronheckmannjudgeLove the ambient sound. Maxes out my cpu in chrome on ubuntu. Nice background fx too. I felt like the control was a bit clunky. Good job
izsjudgeVery fun game when it works. Would be nicer if some of the assets were hosted on an edge-network CDN. (Flash and sounds are pretty big, take a while to download.)
One of the most complete entries, for sure.
joaomilho
contestantSimply couldn’t play properly. Tried Safari, FF6, Chrome…
hij1nxjudgeGood example of tying a game engine to socket IO. design is great!!
deluxeroyale
contestantCouldn’t Play it either, just says generating world. Looks fun tho
rauchgjudgeMy personal favorite design of all the competition.
arlolra
contestantamazing design. a lot of fun. i expected nothing less from this team
kfalter
contestantloved the microbe. great music. awesome way to display the score with the levels and biomass — tells the complete story. don’t even like science, but i liked playing this :) what did you attach to the background for the breathing effect on the color change? couldn’t inspect because chrome kept killing the page.
dylang
contestantI couldn’t play. It just says generating world.
chapel
contestantOnce polished a bit more, it would be a great game to waste time with. I kept getting stuck on random stuff that I either couldn’t see or was appearing out of nowhere. Other than that, I enjoy the idea. Multiplayer spore (early stages at least) is fun.
geradjudgeI love the design, and the sound effects rock. The scope is really ambitious, with the radar and the biomass high score and the home button, and collision detection isn’t quite nailed, so I’ve got to ding you a couple points on collision. Looking forward to seeing where you take this after Node Knockout.
davidmoffitt
contestantI like that the app is massively multiplayer, and that despite that it’s player-vs-environment oriented. The sound design is fantastic, the graphics are quite good, you should be proud of what you built!!
csanzjudgeAwesome game, the theme, the music, the game-play is simple… this has so much potential. I’m a fan! <3
dethe
contestantGreat game, but I keep getting stuck under new plants when they show up, because of the delay. If more of the world was filled in around the player it might help.
cousinwil
contestantYou guys ROCK! But, seriously, why did I die? Nothing happened…
paularmstrong
contestantI really really wanted to like this, but I got stuck under some algae-looking organism and there was no way to get out. I tried spacebar to “get out of a tight spot”, but it seemed to just wedge me in more.
But, I love this style of game. As urbanpug said, it’d be awesome to turn the codebase into something that could be reused like an API to build games like this.
urbanpugjudgeGood sound, pretty graphics, clever idea. I can see some potential for further development. Some suggestions are – add some PvE elements (little nasties that can hurt you), perhaps some “power ups” – seeing further in one direction (an eye), moving faster (a tail), etc.
I think you could go two ways with this – you could develop the game some more or you could take the code base and try to make a reusable game API to be able to crank out more games.
Oddities: Sometimes, “Building World” takes a very long time. Sometimes, biomass appears on top of me.
dennyferra
contestantcarsonmcdonald
contestant
game never loaded.