Reviews for Parasite X

[Nivolak]

Bloody big deluge for little parasite blue!

Lvl 26, 2nd place at 24,000,000. (Without exploiting the cheat... yet)

I'm gonna rant a good long while, so if you're wondering why I have played for so long, it's to see if I can get an explosion big enough to fill the whole window or fast enough to just sit and just click my way through.

GamePlay Design:
Overly simple. The concept isn't very interesting to begin with in my opinion since many other games with same concepts exists already. The abilities given are rather limiting with few balances between them. Example, the size increase is as useless as the speed increase. After one upgrade of both categories I immediately switched to the others for I was able to see no change to the parasite significant enough for any future expenditure. The advantage of increasing the bomb recharge + explosion radius is what I find most exploitable, however I was quite displeased to find by surprise that the bomb radius upgrade is infact capped around 8 or so stopping around 110. If the upgrades have limits, I see no reason why this isn't shown. Players who wish to develop gaming strategies ought to be given a fair warning for all the critical limitations in a game. I'm also slightly disappointed with the lack of understanding and design of what a parasite really is, but being a biologist, this problem is probably overly fussed on my side. The mechanism for blood droplets falling is also quite poorly executed... I believe you have them such that when one is eaten another appears. What I don't understand is why you'd then make these appearing droplets fall much faster than when they originally were? I'm taking heavy deduction out of this game in 1) originality, 2) creativity and 3) accuracy. If my deduction to 3) is unfair in your opinion, feel free to change the name to "something X" instead. ex. Alien X, Bloody X. The game also has an exploitable bug.

GameItem Design:
Overly repetative. Similar to the criticism I've made about Red Code, there are even less varieties in this one. The upgrades show 0 change in terms of display and all levels look the same. Even if the background changes colour every 5 level to indiciate difficulty will earn you some points here, but for now, heavy deduction for 0 changes. Your parasites look a wee bit more like some shooting stars than what they really are suppose to be. I wish I can rant more, but unless I have limited letters to use, I'll spent them more effectively on suggestions.

Music/Ambience/Mood:
Good for the first 3 stages. The only music you have is one very loopable, which is good, for players who wish to keep playing will have to endure it. As the level increases and the game becomes more and more difficult, have the same calm music as the 1st stage just doesn't seem right.

Suggestions:
Finally I can suggest... Plenty to say here...

GamePlay Improvement:
- in-game accuracy needed; I don't know whether you ever bothered to open a bio-book (yikes! what's a bio-book?!) to check what a parasite really is or what/how it eats, you really should have done that before making a game about one. Ex. making the "Dragon Ball Z" movie without even knowing that the main character's physique is east Asian based, or "Harry Potter" without knowing that he is an English teenager.
- in game variety needed: more than just same blood droplet, more than just same shooting star parasite. Make your upgrade more interesting and make your upgrade actually noticible. The graphic is so dull that even changing the color of the upgraded characteristics will make it more interesting. Use upgrades like adding more parasites/multiply yourself after certain time/ recruit friendly parasite/ making the blood stick together etc. Someone below suggested adding a boss type droplet; I think that would be awesome! instead of beaker all the way, add some story to the game, like "the parasite has escaped and infected the scientist!", and changed the background to a wall of cells. I'd then add some white cells that hurts your parasite upon contact.

Ran out of letters. 6/10 3/5. Much improvements needed. Good luck in ... X-2.

[ringdingding]

Opps!

White cells fight infection, not red!

unbelivable responds:

Of course, but the parasite is eating red cells for sustinance.

[jbgray]

Fun at first, but soon gets repetitive!

It's a fun game, and I played for a few levels. However, the upgrades are very, very small, the pace is quite slow, and there's no variation aside from this incremental evolution and increasing amounts of blood. I kept thinking there would be something new lying around the corner, but there never was, which left me feeling a little cheated.

I'll admit that I'm not really someone who enjoys playing long, slow, repetitive games to get a l33t high score (e.g. Tetris, Columns); I prefer games which are fairly brief, have some sort of on-going story or at least some variation as levels advance, and adds new elements as you continue playing. You've got a fair number of tens, so I'm probably not your intended audience, but I see that a few other people left similar comments. So if you wanted to add some awesome for this ornery bunch, consider:

* more obvious/interesting upgrades, with more visible and elaborate changes in appearance;
* an obvious progression as levels increase (e.g. moving through different areas of the hosts body, perhaps some sort of running narrative); and
* something other than conventional blood cells in later levels.

Any one of these would have seriously improved the game, from my perspective!

To recap: it's a good game that gets dull very quickly from my possibly biased perspective, and I'd love to see what would happen if you tried a few of those suggestions in a "Parasite X-II". :)

[chryoung]

One thing I saw...

My buddy would leave the screen and not come back...pathing must be buggy

[tvann5m]

good at first

i liked it at first but after awhile it gets boring
you should add maybe diffrent typs of blood cells in later levels
like white blood sells or t cells or somthing to that effect
that would make it more intresting