User Guide

Name: Ampi The Antibiotic 

Description: 

In Ampi The Antibiotic you play as Ampi; an antibiotic with a mission to journey through the body and rid your host of both good and bad bacteria alike by spewing your toxic insides on them, in a fast-paced platformer filled with puzzles and traps.

Basic Gameplay:

The main character (Ampi) can run left or right, jump, and spew her toxic insides on her enemies. Hold the jump button to jump higher, or just simply press it for a shorter jump.

The goal is to kill a target number of bacteria on each level while doing your best not to let Ampi die. If Ampi runs out of health and dies, that’s okay! Antibiotics rarely cure a patient in one dose so more Ampi’s will line up to replace the one that is lost. All of your progress in the level will be retained on death, so you won’t have to go back and kill the same bacteria all over again. You can collect more ammo or health from any Ampi corpses you leave behind. You can also get more ammo after defeating a bacteria.

Once you have defeated the target number of bacteria all you need to do is complete the level! Watch out for traps though, like the Uvula of Death!

Make your way through the mouth, down the throat, and past the stomach to complete this prototype and cure the patient (for now).

Controls:

Controllers supported in Google Chrome. Safari on MacOS does not have controller support.

Game functions: 

You can control Ampi, moving left or right, or even jumping and attacking.

But don’t fall down the cracks!

Watch out for the bad bacteria! If you touch them, they’ll hurt you. If you get too close to their toxic gas, that will also hurt you.

Luckily Ampi can ATTACK! 

Watch out for acid traps!

The carrot boat will keep you safe!

Food is delicious, but if it hits you it will hurt!

This guy is also a trap!

You can jump through these platforms

If you die you will come back as a different colour!

The game will keep track of your kills, and on one level there is also a timer to complete the goal by!

Ampi has health and ammo, so don’t go wasting her precious toxic spew.

There is an optional godmode for the game. This will block all the traps and nothing can hurt you. You will also have unlimited ammo in this state! 

There is also the occasional checkpoint before a harder part of a level! 
 

Game screens:

This is the main menu, this is the portal to be able to start the game, go to settings, or go to a credits page!
 

This is the settings page. Here you can adjust the music and sound volume! It is set low to start with, as some players felt it too loud.
 

This is the credits page! Look at those jazzy Ampi’s flickering away.
 

This UI will pop up when you start a level.
 

Speaking of a level, here’s what the start of one looks like, complete with all the UI!

Here it is again with godmode/LindSlay Mode enabled!
 

Here’s a pause menu. You can skip the level from here if you really get stuck.
 

And finally, here’s the stats screen at the end! Can you beat my total playtime?

Documentation

Compare to Concept

Ampi has turned out pretty close to the vision I had for the game originally. There are a few minor game mechanics that I either ran out of time to implement, or changed my mind about implementing. One was the use of game buttons to open certain areas, or effect the environment. I couldn’t think of a great or realistic use of buttons inside the environments that I created for the first few levels. For example if I added a button to move a tooth to a certain position for platforming, it would be a bit of a departure from the slightly more realistic depiction of the body. I did stray quite a ways away from a realistic human body, but I think adding buttons would be a bridge too far. 

I also removed the need to kill good bacteria. While they would be easy enough to implement, they really would just be sitting ducks and easy for a player to kill. I don’t think it would add any sort of moral objection by the players and I think the methods required to make the player feel something while killing a good bacteria would be quite large to implement.

I removed the need for a time limit on the levels overall as it didn’t feel right for the game. The second level required a time limit as Ampi is literally falling down a throat and I don’t want that to last forever, as it would be a bit too unrealistic for my idea for the game. I also implemented an artificial timer-like section in the last level to give the player a sense of urgency. The rising acid is similar to a time limit section. So, I didn’t completely compromise that part of the original vision.

I also added some functions to the game that weren’t originally planned. I’ve made it so that when Ampi dies on levels 1 or 3, the level doesn’t reset. Instead, a new capsule is spawned in, which fits better with the theme of multiple doses being needed to cure a body of an infection. It is still possible to win the game in a single life/dose, however players aren’t punished for Ampi’s death.

I added the ability for bacteria to both passively and actively attack the player. This wasn’t in the original concept, however I found in early testing that enemies that don’t hurt the player feel pointless and offer no challenge. The other option would have been to increase the number of environmental dangers, and make the bacteria harder to reach with platforming, but I believe that would increase the complexity of the platforming outside the scope of the original concept. 

I believe the game fit the original concept in all other ways. It wasn’t a tight or precise platformer like celeste or super meat boy, it has come out looser like Donkey Kong or Rayman. The art, gameplay, target audience (6yrs+), and basic story were all kept to the original concept (outside of the above-mentioned minor changes). I feel the platforming, environment, atmosphere, and controls all fit with the original plan for the game as well.

Summary of Feedback from Testing Session

The testing session went very well with 9 testers playing the game and filling out the feedback form. Overall the players most liked the art of the game, idea behind the setting, platforming, and the fluidity of movement and control. These were the main positive aspects I was hoping players would enjoy, so it was really good to see those parts of the game score so highly.  

The constructive feedback was mainly based around difficulty, including the controls in some parts. More specifically the players were having a hard time with the damage output of enemies, the sudden shock of being pushed by the seeker enemies, and the low attack range of Ampi. Half the players also had trouble with the rotation controls in level two, and several players were hitting ‘space’ to attack, rather than ‘W’. I have fixed both of those issues since testing. The overall concept of each level didn’t seem too difficult for players with everyone scoring it highly in controls, and a few verbal compliments on level design. I was able to correct all of the key issues highlighted by players in their feedback and have gone into more detail on that in DevLog_06 Game Testing. https://josh-daniels.itch.io/ampi-the-antibiotic/devlog/615256/devlog-06-game-testing

I observed a lot of similar habits and problems that players had during testing, that they didn’t mention verbally or put in feedback forms. On first opening the game about 50% of the players immediately went to their PC settings to turn down the volume. I had already decreased music volume to 25% but I guess Unity runs loud, so I’ve lowered the default music volume to 10% now. I also noticed that people using Godmode were just attacking constantly, and running out of ammo. So I’ve made ammo infinite in this mode. 

Assets

Scripts

Art

Audio

Animations

Fonts

Materials

Prefabs

Other

References 

Audio
Christmas Synth  - 3xBlast  https://opengameart.org/content/happy-synths-loop-with-slight-christmas-feeling
Beeps & Synths - 3xBlast https://opengameart.org/content/bleeps-and-synths
Copycat - Syncopika https://opengameart.org/content/copycat
Hitting in a face (player hit sound) - florianreichelt https://freesound.org/people/florianreichelt/sounds/460509/

Programming
Parts of player controller script modified from script by Jonas Tyroller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFsJIrm2btU&t=10s
Parallax script modified version of script by Adam Younis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMXgLBwtsvI

Fonts
Frijole-Regular https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Frijole?query=frij
BubblegumSans-Regular https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Bubblegum+Sans?query=Bubblegum