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Another fine specimen from newgrounds.com
You know that little thing called DNA that makes up who we are? It’s that coiled, twisted ladder-like do-hickey, that contains the genetic makeup and development and of all living things, as well as being a really cool tool to catching criminals and identifying their victims through blood, skin, or hair ? If you have you've ever watched CSI on television, you know what I’m talking about.
Well now it’s being used in a puzzle game of the same name, and even though science has never really been my strong point, I decided to snap on some rubber gloves and give it a try.
But does it have the X or Y wow factor needed to be a fun, casual puzzle game?
She’s Blinding Me with Science
You are an assistant to a botanist named Dr. Rose Thompson, who is studying cells, trying to create and preserve some rare flowers from extinction. Well, that's the storyline even though I wouldn’t call it much of a story, but at least they tried. Combine different combinations of free-floating proteins and cells to cause chain reactions, and of course the bigger the chains, the higher your score.
This all helps Dr. T (as I like to call her) grow all kinds of amazing flowers, rather than something more productive, like oh, I don’t know, let’s say, a cure for cancer perhaps!
Like all professors she’s a little absent-minded so you must make sure she fills her daily quota before time runs out, a biological fight against time so to speak!
You have limited "lives", it starts you off with 3, but more are added as you advance , if you fail after 3 attempts, you’ll have to start from scratch.
Psst, here’s a tip I figured out; to avoid having to start back from Level 1 I would just quit to the main menu whenever my time was just about to run out, and I then chose “continue” to retrieve my saved progress again.
Sweet huh! You won’t find that kind of insider information anywhere but here folks, I guarantee you!
Before every level, Dr. T. will instruct you on how many colored cells you will need to create a new breed of flower in the lab .Between each level a screen showing the doctor's face and a paragraph of text will describe what you'll be observing in the next level, and the good doctor will give you a few tips as to how to complete the level. For example, before you reach the part of the game where the virus cells come, she'll share with you something in her lab notes about the important viral discovery that she has made.
Time Is Money, so you must think fast on your feet, a timer ticks away second you spend mulling over your next move.
Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten
You'll need to mix colors to form combos, such as
Red and Yellow = Orange
Yellow and Blue =Green
B lue and Red = Purple
There are three colors of cells you must match up orange, green, and purple, that come from the colored pieces that are on the board, yellow, red, and blue. For instance, you may need to create 20 green, 15 purple and 25 orange cells to complete the level. Do you see where I'm going with this now?
If you link at least 10 of the same protein colors together they cause a chain reaction, and the cells will burst., keep it up until you get the amount needed of each color. In later levels there are obstacles to avoid, such as infected and diseased cells.
If it all sounds a little confusing, don't worry it’s really quite simple; point/click, color mixing action, trust me, within minutes you will be a master cell creator.
There are three different modes of gameplay, Action, Puzzle, and Eternal.
Action Mode- is the basic genetics to the game.
Puzzle Mode -clear the screen of all shapes to move on to the next level. Most of the puzzles are easily solved in one quick try, but some can be real “head scratchers”! Unlike in action mode, there may only be 1 or 2 solutions to each puzzle, so choose your moves carefully.
Eternal Mode-lets you play at ease with no time limits or goals, so you can play at your own speed just merging cells as much as you want
Puzzle games usually don't offer groundbreaking graphics, and with “DNA” the same theory applies! Ironically for a game about genetics, it came off a little dead at times. All I can say is the brightly colored protein enriched pieces looked good against the dark background.
"DNA" gives us a unique one of a kind twist to the standard match 3 gameplay, maybe even enough to spawn a whole new evolution of puzzlers. Of course, it's hard to know exactly what's going to happen when you start messing with DNA!
Get DNA Here
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Posted by oxyjen on Dec 20, 2006
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