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[RichSG]

The Story

Use human immune cells infused with nanobots and human personalities to defeat the evil P.A.I.N (Pathogenic Artificial Intelligence Network) and save the world!

The world and the H.O.P.E (Human Optimised Pluripotent stem cell Engineering) team of cells is counting on you. The battle for the planet will not take place in the skies, or in cities, or on the ocean. It'll take place in our own body.

How do the smallest heroes start to save the world? Hope.

Gameplay

H.O.P.E is an action-orientated RTS game inspired by the likes of Tooth & Tail, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Doom  as well as real science, Saturday morning cartoons, and comics.

Currently we are working on the single player campaign, but multiplayer support may be added later.

Features

• Get immersed in tactical moment-to-moment combat
• Units have their own unique powers and must be used against the right kind of enemies
• Enemies can mutate and gain abilities or even lose them. Enemies can even turn on their friends if the right mutation happens
• Use gene editing to upgrade your units and de-buff enemies
• Resources are generated automatically so you can focus on the action
• Battle huge fearsome bosses like parasitic worms and blowflies
• Unique economy mechanics - you can sacrifice health to build units if you need reinforcements
• Inspired by your own immune system!

Gameplay Shots



An enemy infection centre, which produces units



A neutrophil (player unit) attacks an enemy



An enemy bacterium



A body cell

Want to know more?

• Visit our website
• Follow us on Twitter
• View our IndieDB Page

A demo showcasing some of the features mentioned above is in the works and will hopefully be ready soon!

[RichSG]

Unit Focus #1: Neutrophil

One of the earliest units you’ll get in the game is Neutrophil. He’s got 2 ranged attacks:

• Acid granules (damages enemies)
• NET projectile (slows down enemies)

He’s got two visual ‘states’ - one normal (left) and one when attacking (right):



Neutrophil is good against most current enemy types, but against more heavily armoured ones he is ineffective. He also has reasonable visibility in the fog of war which can help when exploring the map.

Neutrophil can also interact with a couple of other player units - he can be supported by Mast cells, which can boost his rate of fire. He can also get eaten by Macrophages to enhance their eating (phagocytosis) ability - but more on that in a later post.

These interactions are important because when designing the units, we wanted the player to have options about the load out of their ‘squad’ (given they have limited slots at any one time). So having different units support and enhance others gives players interesting options to consider.

The design of the unit itself was inspired by the appearance of an actual neutrophil . They have a distinctive ‘3 blob’ shape which is actually their nucleus (the ‘control centre’ which contains their DNA). The shot below shows a microscope image of a neutrophil from a blood smear where you can see this:



Neutrophils are the most common white blood cells in humans, and are amongst the first responders to sites of infection.

They do several things to combat infection, but we chose to focus on two when designing their attacks. They release various granules which help combat infection. They also do actually release NETs (neutrophil extracellular traps) which can trap (and actually kill) invading microbes.

[RichSG]

Unit update 2 - Macrophage

Here’s a spotlight on one of our recently added units - Macrophage! We’ll cover how she works in the game, and how macrophages work in our immune systems in real life, and how that inspired us in the unit design.



In The Game

Macrophage is a powerful close combat unit with higher than average health. She’s extremely effective against most enemies who she can kill in one hit, by eating them! However this attack has a long cooldown (she’s chewing!) during which she can’t move, so this needs to be used smartly.



This eating attack also provides the player with extra metal which they can use for building units.

“Mac” has low visibility and a slow speed so isn’t a great explorer. She is also completely vulnerable to viruses, which she cannot attack. So she’ll need backup before taking on enemy waves herself!

Her second attack allows her to eat her OWN units, ie: yours! Why would you want to do that?!

For a start, it’s useful for getting rid of units that are infected by enemy viruses, before they start reproducing and causing havoc. However you can also eat healthy Neutrophils as a way to buff Mac’s primary attack - for a short time after eating a health Neutrophil the cooldown on the primary attack will be reduced. You see in the image below the ‘+’ symbol indicates the macrophage is now powered up.



In Real Life

Macrophages are named after their eating ability, known technically as phagocytosis. Through this process they engulf and destroy microbes and foreign agents that enter the body. Macrophages can ingest a number of microbes before they eventually die.

The below fascinating electron microscope image of a macrophage engulfing bacteria inspired the unit’s appearance and attack animation, with arms stretching out to grab some tasty microbes!



Along with Neutrophils and other cells Macrophages are part of innate immunity, the first line of defence against infection that is non-specialised (adaptive immunity is the system that provides specific immunity against learned diseases based on past infections, and is the system that is engaged by vaccines where dead or weakened versions of a disease are presented to your body so the adaptive immune system can learn to recognise it).

Macrophages also play other roles including presenting material to adaptive immune system cells to help it learn to respond to a certain microbe, wound healing and clearing dead cells from a site of infection.

This last point was actually an inspiration for Mac’s ability in the game to eat Neutrophils - they do this in real life. Neutrophils are the first to respond to the site of a wound or infection. Following this macrophages will arrive and ingest the older neutrophils.

We always thought that for a unit whose primary attack is eating, its mouth should be its main feature. Some of you that remember that old Milky Way commercial -  the mouths of those cars were a perfect fit!




Bad, naughty game science!

Ok, time to hold our hands up here. We should be honest….

You may remember being taught in school that macrophages were ‘primary phagocytes’ vs other immune cells, which was the prevailing concept before the early 90’s. After that however, more evidence emerged of how neutrophils were also ‘professional phagocytes’, like macrophages.

For the game we decided not to let cells share abilities though, in order to keep units unique in their abilities and present players with interesting choices when deciding what units to build. So why don’t Neutrophils use phagocytosis in HOPE? Well, because the nanobots they merged with caused them to lose this ability. That’s lore .

[RichSG]

Alpha demo showcasing a few levels of core gameplay is finally available for both Windows and Mac! 

You can try it out either at itch or indieDB, feedback much appreciated!

[RichSG]

Unit update 3 - Mast

Time to introduce another player unit - Mast. She's a classic support unit with 2 passive abilities. She might not do anything too flashy but it’s a great chance to talk about a couple of the game mechanics in HOPE and how the Mast cell integrates with them.



Mast’s first ability is support - any neutrophil units (introduced in an earlier post) that are within range when this power is active will have their attack speed increased, making them more potent in attack and even able to take down units that are usually quite resistant to them (like gram positive bacteria). You can see the effects below (though this is subject to change based on playtesting).



From a game design perspective, what we’re trying to do is offer players choices around what combinations of units they want to use, and offering them benefits for trying different things.

It also means that even though the Mast cell can’t attack itself, it can have an offensive impact.

Mast’s second ability is ‘Heal’. This will give health back to the player. Players have a health bar that will go down over time as long as there are enemy units around. The purpose of this health bar is to make it clear to players that they should always be on the offensive, because even though this is an RTS, it’s not one where you take your time and build a strong base before making your move. So Mast cells are useful if you’re taking a beating on your health and need to get some back.

In Real Life


Mast's appearance in the game was inspired by the fact that in real life mast cells have a 'granular' appearance, as you can see from the image below (ignore the purple colour, that's due to the dye used to stain the cells).




These granules are actually compounds which help mediate the inflammation process - you'll know this process well from when you cut yourself and see the wound go swollen and red - that's inflammation. Inflammation (among other things) allows recruitment of other immune cells to the site and is one of the first steps in defending the body against invasion from foreign particles.

So given Mast cells' early part in the defence process they fit the role of 'watcher and monitor' well, which is why we decided to make the granules in the cell faces watching everywhere. It's also why the cell has such a large visibility radius in the fog of war.

Mast cells also play a core role in allergies as they release their inflammation mediators in response to allergens. We haven't factored this into the game yet but it just goes to show how fascinating and complicated the human immune system is!

-------------------------------------

Thanks for reading, we'll be back soon with another dev log post.

[JobLeonard]

Hmm... I think I spot a line tool, and mouths. This breaks the rules of /r/polandball!

(sorry, the mast cells looked a lot like a certain squiggly meme drawn in MS Paint)

Anyway, looks very interesting!

[RichSG]

Hmm... I think I spot a line tool, and mouths. This breaks the rules of /r/polandball!

(sorry, the mast cells looked a lot like a certain squiggly meme drawn in MS Paint)

Anyway, looks very interesting!

I'm not familiar with that meme    but thanks for your interest! 

Can't believe it's been 3 months since I posted here. Being a solo dev/designer (and a parent  ) keeps me busy!

Anyway I'll try to put more posts up here, for now here's a shot of the 'Lab' that you'll visit in-between game levels.

Currently, the Lab is for:

• chatting to your team
• choosing genetic upgrades
• reviewing the map

Let me talk about each of these in turn briefly:

Chatting to your team

By chatting to your team, you can learn more about them, their backstories, and unlock character missions that in turn unlock more attacks for these units. If you've played Mass Effect you may be familiar with these 'character missions' - I really liked these when I played that game and I think it's a really nice way to integrate learning about these characters in the game.

Genetic Upgrades

The game will feature upgrades using CRISPR-Cas9 (which is an actual process used to edit genes in organisms). The idea is that you'll have slots where you can either:

• enhance a unit with certain extra abilities
• enhance a structure with extra abilities
• create a virus unit that can infect enemies and cause certain attribute changes in them

I'm really excited about the virus aspect of it, as it'll lead to 'genetic warfare' where you can introduce debuffs to an enemy, and using the way enemy populations reproduce, cause that debuff to spread. But more about that in later posts.

Reviewing the map

Tracks progress, allows you to choose which area to take on next and progress towards the next boss. Currently the plan is to make it possible to revisit levels in case you've missed NPCs/upgrade options.

Lab layout

We toyed with a couple of different layouts, as each tube represents a different character who you can chat to and we were trying to see what would be a reasonable number...

We tried platforms....



and just putting in more tubes....



But in the end we went for a more intimate set up with fewer tubes, so that we could add personal items around each tube to add some depth to each of the characters and make it a more 'lived in' lab.

[JobLeonard]

So is the campaign basically to save the people in the various incubation tubes?

[RichSG]

no, they are your teammates. Due to *story reasons* they are the personalities of the units you control. Your job is to save the rest of the planet!

[JobLeonard]

Interesting! Looking forward to more updates

[RichSG]

Enemy Mugshots #1: Bacteria

Time for another update! This time we're looking in detail at one of the first enemies the player will meet - Bacteria! I’ll go into more detail on my thoughts for this enemy during the design process and also some of the science behind it.

I’ve recently been playing Control, and one thing I really like about it is the enemy design - each enemy provides one kind of challenge (either through its attack or by countering one of your attacks). So different combinations of enemies can provide unique encounters and keep things fresh.

It’s the sort of interaction I’m aiming for with Nanocell Squad.

Bacteria are close range attack troops and boy do they have the tools for the job. Firstly, they give off dangerous toxins that harm any units that come close to them.

But if that doesn't work, they have 2 decent size tusks to swipe with!





Bacteria often fancy finding metal deposits to harvest minerals so they can reproduce. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you don't take care of them. And if they don't have enough resources to reproduce, they might produce some robo-toxin (see below) instead that can interfere with your body cells.



So that’s it - nothing too fancy but these are the enemy grunts who just want to take your units down up close, they don't care how. So you better make sure you have some ranged units around to help out!


Design

The visual design of the units was very much driven by 2 things - what the bacteria look like in real life and what to give them to make it very clear to the player what their strengths are.

You’re not going to go near anything with huge tusks, are you?

I worked with our artist to get the look right too - we wanted just the right combination of ‘biology’ vs ‘tech’ - sort of like cyborg cells.

When we first started out we tried sticking to a more realistic 'bacteria' look (see below) but it was just a bit....well...boring! We're definitely happier with the new look!




The goal for all these units is to keep it simple. There’s going to be a lot going on and the player isn’t really going to appreciate (or even notice!) lots of tiny details - instead each unit should have one or two distinguishing features, and that’s it.


Science

You've probably heard about bacteria before, and yes some do cause disease via the toxins they release.

There are two main types of bacteria - gram negative and gram positive. These classifications relate to how the bacteria stain with certain chemicals. Gram positive stain differently because of their cell wall, which you’ll see when we cover them means (in the game) that they’re trickier to deal with than their gram negative brothers!

The bacteria enemy I've mentioned here is gram negative and is modelled off a bacterium you’ve probably heard of, Escherichia coli (aka E.Coli, though it doesn't have tusks!).


Image credit: biocote.com


These bacteria have flagella which help it move of its own accord, which you can see in the enemy design.

But I want to make it clear that not all bacteria are bad for us, and in fact the more we learn about the human microbiome (the name given to all the bacteria that live within us without causing disease) the more we understand how important they really are. (If you’re interested in this, there’s a fantastic book about bacteria called I Contain Multitudes by Science journalist Ed Yong).

Will there be friendly bacteria and gram positive enemy units in the game? Well, that's for another post

Thanks for reading and as always we really appreciate any comments or feedback here! And if you'd like more updates, you can sign up to our newsletter here.

[RichSG]

We've now added our first NPC to the game - Campus!

NPCs (non-player characters) are always a great way to build lore and draw the player into the game world. As part of the next demo we're adding Campus to the game. He knows a lot that can help the player and their team, but they have to help him too of course


^{Campus first encounter}

Design

Campus' design is inspired by the actual 'hippocampus' (an area of the brain), which looks a bit like a seahorse (see the section below for more on that). Thinking on that theme I remembered the horse from the Bravestarr cartoon, Thirty/Thirty.


^{Thirty/Thirty had attitude! And some great hair}

Thirty/Thirty had a great look with the white hair that we wanted to emulate to give an 'old and experienced' look.

So we tried a few different designs:


^{Campus concept art}

We also wanted to give Campus some fuzzy hair in homage to Albert Einstein. But the hair wasn’t really working, so we went with metallic features instead.


^{Finalised Campus design}

After the concept art it was just a case of tidying it up and getting it into the game. I’m really pleased with how our artist did Campus and what we ended up with - it’s going to be fun writing his dialogue and bringing the game world to life!


^{Campus in-game art}


The Science

The hippocampus is part of the 'limbic' system and is thought to play a role in forming short term and long term memories, although it's not clear how yet.

Its role in memory was proposed following studies of a man with epilepsy whose hippocampus was surgically destroyed in order to treat his condition. It's a famous case that you might have heard of referred to as 'Patient H.M'.

After the surgery the patient was unable to form short term memories and only remembered long ago memories from childhood.



^{A real human hippocampus}

These real facts have influenced the personality of Campus in the game - he’s a character of many memories, and will serve to reveal something about all the other characters, too.

What do you think of Campus’ design? And who are your favourite NPCs in games? Get in touch, we'd love to hear from you!

If you'd like to be the first to hear more about Nanocell Squad development, don't forget you can sign up to our email list at the Science: Gamed website.

[JobLeonard]

I'm on Linux so sadly I couldn't give this game a spin if I had the time

But based on the blog post I can say that I like the concept - turning a hippocampus into a sea-horse like source of memory sounds like a very fitting anthropomorphization

[RichSG]

I'm on Linux so sadly I couldn't give this game a spin if I had the time

But based on the blog post I can say that I like the concept - turning a hippocampus into a sea-horse like source of memory sounds like a very fitting anthropomorphization

oh that's a shame - we're not currently planning on doing a linux version. Glad you like campus though!

[RichSG]

Enemy Mugshots #2: Viruses

Given what’s happening in the world right now, I thought it might be an apt time to talk about the virus enemies in Nanocell Squad, as it might be interesting for people to read a bit more of the science behind viruses and how they work.

Also, in the game you can shoot viruses. So there’s that, too. Maybe that’s cathartic for you?

I’ll cover the virus enemy design and then go into the science behind them in a bit more detail. Then I’ll talk a bit about the current pandemic, COVID-19.

In the game

Viruses are the second enemy you meet in the game. They’re not hard to kill, but they are very destructive if they manage to infect any of your units or body cells. They’ll use your cells to produce copies of themselves.


^{An infected cell bursting to produce several virions}

Just one virus enemy infecting a cell can cause havoc and tip the tide in favour of the  enemy!

This is the only way viruses can replicate in the game. However there are some reasons why you might WANT to get infected:

• Infected cells are not attacked by other enemies
  
• If there’s a virus with a good mutation/upgrade that you want to carry on, letting it infect your units is a good way to do this (we’ll talk about mutations and upgrades in a later post)
• Reproducing viruses have a chance to turn into a virus that attacks other enemy cells as well as yours! (Bacteriophages)
  

So it’s not a simple decision to steer clear of these viruses in the game. It’s another tactical choice the player can make. One element of the game we’re working on is to produce an interesting ecosystem of enemies for the player - something to give them lots of interesting choices, but more on this in another post.


Design

There are two virus types in the game.

The first type of virus infects only units. It looks like a sphere:


 

For the design of the virus, we chose to model it on the ‘flu’ (influenza) virus. In images the genetic material wrapped up inside the virus capsule looks a bit like a snake, so I thought that was a cool angle to go on, as you can see from the infection animation:



This virus will release all its copies (virions) at once by bursting the host cell. A bit like that scene in Alien, except with more gruesome offspring!

The second type of virus infects units and body cells. It looks a bit like a snake:



We modelled its look off the ebola virus (below), which looks a bit like a snake due to its filamentous crooked structure:


^{Electron microscope image of an ebola virus}

And it has a similar infection animation to the first virus type:



These viruses will release virions one at a time, each replication depletes the host cell health until it dies.


The Science

Viruses carry around their own genetic material but not the tools to make it - that’s why they need to hijack a more complete cell, like human ones, in order to reproduce. It’s like only carrying round the instructions for a piece of furniture, then going into someone else’s house and using their equipment and wood to make it!

The basic structure of a virus is a protective coat (capsid), inside of which is their genetic material, which can be in the form of RNA or DNA. I won’t go into the difference between these two here, but basically they result in slightly different replication mechanisms once in the cell.

Once inside a cell, viruses produce replicas that either spread through bursting the host cell (lysis) or ‘splitting’ from the cell through its membrane (budding). The second one sounds nicer doesn’t it? But it still kills the host cell!

Below is a simplified diagram of the Hepatitis C virus infecting and reproducing in a cell:



This reproduction technique can lead to viruses jumping across host species (like coronavirus). This can happen when a host animal is infected with two different strains of the same virus - their DNA recombine to allow the virus to infect human cells.

This is what happened with Coronavirus.

The term ‘Coronaviruses’ actually covers several viruses that cause respiratory issues in mammals, including SARS, which you may remember from 2003. The current virus is known as SARS-CoV-2 and is genetically very similar to SARS. The official title of the disease it causes is COVID-19.

As you can see from the image below, the overall structure remains very similar to usual viruses with a protective envelope and then the RNA strand inside. The proteins on the envelope help dictate what cells it can bind to and use as a host.



Vaccines are available for some viral diseases (eg: seasonal flu). There are different types of vaccines, but overall their goal is to introduce the virus to the immune system in a controllable, restricted fashion so the immune system can learn to recognise it in the future.

Once vaccinated, your immune system responds much quicker to actual infections and this means you can defeat the virus without getting the illness it causes.

I hope this overview helps some of you appreciate the ‘enemy’ we’re up against and how it works, but also how it can be defeated. If you’re anything like me, understanding the facts in a bit more detail helps calm me down!

If anyone has any questions on viruses of COVID-19 please just ask and I’ll do my best to help..

Thankfully playing games is a good activity when doing social distancing / self-isolation! If you’re interested, please do check out our demo at itch.io or indieDB.

Also don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about new updates for the game!

Anyway, stay safe and stay isolated!

Rich

[JobLeonard]

Nice update!

I'm surprised there's only two viruses, since there's so much variety among them IRL. But I guess that's mostly due to "time budget" reasons?

[RichSG]

thanks!

Yes partly due to budget reasons, as the plan is to get a demo out there with a limited number of units, to showcase the game idea, garner interest, etc, before we start full production.

There's loads of exciting stuff we can do with viruses if/once full production starts - eg: these large viruses in human mouths that have only just been discovered!

[JobLeonard]

Wow, thanks for that link!  Very interesting!

[RichSG]

New Demo (v0.2) Released!

Your immune system needs YOU! Help a group of scientists-turned-nanocells save a world that treats them like villains.

We’re thrilled to announce the new Nanocell Squad demo is out with updated story, UI, music and more.

Some really exciting stuff has been added that we hope will enhance players’ experience. These include:

• New unit: mutation virus. You can use this to introduce negative genetic mutations (de-buffs) into enemies
  Genetic CRISPR upgrade screen in the lab
• Music tracks added
• Updated UI
• Tweaked demo levels
• Updated dialog & story
• New NPC (Sparrow Marrow)

We’d love any feedback you have. There are tons more unit / enemy ideas we have (the human body and the pathogens that infect it are truly fascinating!) but we want to get feedback on the core mechanics first.

Download the demo at any of these places:

IndieDB
Itch
Gamejolt

We’ll be posting some more in-depth features on some of the above in future posts.

Thanks for reading!