I really love the ideas and presentation in this. The art style is great since there's a lot of interesting contrast in visuals between the desktop and virus background, the music switching between modes is such a nice touch, and the desktop windows look amazing and have a lot of great visuals. However, I have an issue with the gameplay feeling too stagnant. I played for about 12 minutes or so; the first 3 I was absolutely wreaking havoc on this random person's desktop, and made it to about 80% before the combo of tech support and other antivirus software brought me down to the 30% range, where I was stuck at for the rest of my time playing. Unfortunately, I never got past this sticking point, and I feel it's due to the lack of upgrades or special events for the player to gain more bytes than what their usual infection supplies. If it was possible to upgrade my bytes per infection or gain some extra bytes by interacting with the main desktop somehow, it would eliminate these sticking points and give the player a chance to come back from a major deficit. Overall, I think the visuals, audio, and concepts are fantastic, but the gameplay needs to be balanced out to give the player a boost at more difficult parts of the game. Great work! And sorry for the essay, haha
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Hey, thanks for the reply! You actually CAN gain extra bytes and infection progress by interacting with the main desktop. If you press CTRL you zoom back into the desktop and on some menus there are green INFECT buttons that you can click to gain extra bytes and infection progress. Maybe try again with this knowledge and see if you can beat it :) I am aware this isn't explained super well in the game but yknow, 48 hour jam, crunch time, didnt get everything in as we wanted perfectly, and all that. I love the idea of upgrading your bytes per infection and I might even add that as an update in a post-jam version. Thank you!