What We Do
Cells at Work! 
Cells at Work! is a single player, 2D pixel, roguelike RPG game. The idea of the game is inspired from the popular Japanese animation Cells at Work!. The story takes place inside the human body, where trillions of anthropomorphic cells are working hard on their positions to keep the body healthy. The player will play as a red blood cell whose main task is to deliver the oxygen while dodging the attack from the dangerous bacterias and viruses. As the game proceeds, you will ally with more cells to fight against the stronger enemies and protect the body.
Overview
Inspirations
The game gets inspiration from Japanese animation Cells at Work. This animation features the anthropomorphized cells of a human body, describes how the cells work together to protect us from bacterias and viruses.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 is spreading and threatening everyone’s life. This reminds us to pay attention to human health.
Key Features
- 2D pixel role-playing game
- Unlocking abilities as the level progresses
- Exciting fight scenes when defeating the viruses
Goals
- Educate players about the human immune system
- Build an interesting environment that encourages the player to explore the story
- Create an immersed gaming experience that challenge players
Target Demographic
The target audience is the people who want to learn about the human immune system or the people who enjoy ACG. This is a large demographic, and not necessarily age-restricting.
Gameplay Overview
At the beginning of the game, the player controls a red or white blood cell, and is able to
- collect usable items as red blood cell
- destroy foreign substances that infiltrate the body as a white blood cell.
In higher levels, the player could get support and use skills from Macrophages, B lymphocyte, Cytotoxic T lymphocyte(CTL), Effector T cell.
Also, there will be NPCs, such as Senior Red Blood Cell, Helper T Cell, Regulatory T Cell, to Post tasks, give hints, and promote the development of the plot.
The task of each level in the game is to defeat different viruses or bacteria.
Our Levels
Level 1
In Level 1, the player will act as the White Blood Cell and encounter Red Blood Cell. And the player will meet the Dendritic Cell and obtain a bodypedia from him.
Level 2
The map for Level 2 is a path to the boss scene, which represents intestines in our body. Because the body is infected with deadly disease in the stomach, in this scene, the player will meet mutant giant bacteria which is tough to deal with.
Level 3
At this level, the player will meet a hotel and bank. In the hotel, the player can rest and buy buffs in it and then prepare for the boss fight. In the bank, the player can get a daily reward from the bank. The left bottom room is the weapon test field.
Final Level
White Blood Cell, Red Blood Cell meet the final boss at stomach and launch a decisive battle.
Game Design Document
Game Design Document includes Game Overview, Gameplay, Roles and Elements, Levels, Sound and Music, and Production.
Future Plan
Our team plans to add Roguelike mode to our game.
In this mode, our character fights with randomly generated monsters.
And it will take about 4 weeks.
So how to be roguelike?
Generate randomness
Each new game will randomly generate game scenes, enemies, treasures and other different things. And every adventure of the player will be unique and cannot be copied.
One-way process
When we choose the “Adventure Hall” mode, the only function of the save function is to record your current game progress. Whenever the save is read, the corresponding progress will be cleared until you save the next time. This save mechanism ensures that players cannot use “Save and Load” to reduce the difficulty of the game.
Irrecoverability
In the game, each character has only one life. The death of a character means that the player will always lose the equipment and abilities acquired in this game. We hope that players can experience every different death and failure, and do their best to be the current self.
