Hey there!
Here are a couple of quick comments from my behalf.
First off, I think the main problem with this game is that it offers little in terms of mastership. Once you've played a few minutes, you've pretty much seen everything the game will be able to throw at you. There's nothing more to do/learn. How can this game satisfy both beginning and experienced players? How can you allow players to pick up and play this game and have fun while making sure that those who already played it still find something interesting in your game? I suggest to focus on depth of mechanics. Try to think of as many ways as possible for your player to reach his goal. It's one thing to explode and infect but could there be some way to infect while not dying? Could there be a way to protect yourself from the enemies? Is there some way to alter the traits of the virus (speed of movement, rotation, color, enemies I can or cannot infect, etc) using the basic mechanics? Would adding a second mechanic enhance or not the experience? These are all questions that you have to answer because your player asks them.
Linked to masterhsip are goals. The game offers only a few short-term goals which is pretty bad. Besides making chain explosions to score points, the player doesn't have anything else to do and has no other purpose in the game world. You have to provide enough goals to the player so he'll want to play again. You need much more than high scores. How about if you could alter the amount of explosions you could do by infecting different cells? Perhaps you could create cancers or diseases that allow you to become stronger? Perhaps you could think of a way to alter the play field so that the player has to use the movement mechanic in new ways. Perhaps you could create different types of enemies wich would have their own behaviors instead of just moving around randomly. Perhaps you could add blood streams that would alter your movement, pushing you in different directions... Try to think about your subject (viruses and stuff like that) and come up with various ways to keep the player wanting more. It's an interesting concept so you have alot of options with it.
In terms of emotional content, I feel like the player isn't part of the world. I mean, you're a virus detroying the body right? Well, why are all the colors so happy? Why doesn't the body react to the multiple cell destruction? Why can't I invade the whole body? Try to make me feel like an important part of experience you are offering
In terms of balance and difficulty, as stated before in a previous post, the game lacks challenge as of now. Of course adding more goals will change that since the player will have to master different things in order to truly win, but still, the player can easily become "invincible" once he knows when to blow up. There are many ways to fix that, like increase the amount of points needed to get an extra life every time the player scores one or make it that only certain cells give lives or simply just make the score limit higher. Be creative, it will work as long as the first extra life is easily achieved.
Well, that's all I can say right now. Good job and keep at it. I know you've just started to work on game design so don't give up. It's a long and rocky road but it's not impossible to go through it.
Good job!
Guert
Developer
