Symbiont Web Version is Out

The HTML5 version of Symbiont is done, and you can now play the game in your browser.

There are some differences to this version, however, and I'd like to go into a bit more detail.

First off, settings and high scores aren't saved, they only exist for as long as you have the tab open. In the downloadable version, both settings and high scores are kept in a .json file that's stored in your Local Application Data, but you can't do that with a browser game. Maybe there is some sort of way to do this that I'm not aware of, but I've figured that it will be less of a hassle to deal with it by cutting out any file access period.
Second, itch.io doesn't seem to have an option of changing the viewport dimensions of a web game dynamically, so I had to choose only one scaling option to go with. I've decided on x2 (320x288 pixels), because it's somewhat of a catch-all choice. This way, even people with 720p monitors will be able to play comfortably. 4K players will, unfortunately, likely have to use the zoom option of their browser, but hey, that's a solution too.
Third, and most dreadfully for me, HTML5 target platform on Game Maker doesn't seem to like decimals when it comes to things moving. So I had to change some things, most notably the way camera moves. For example, now on Level 1 there is no smooth scrolling, the camera doesn't ease in to the player's position anymore and instead just follows the character with a constant speed, like it was in the jam version.
It gets trickier on Level 2. To make this work, I had to double the scrolling speed of the camera. This also means that I had to stretch the level to make it twice the size. The result should technically feel almost identical to play to someone who doesn't have this game burned in their spinal fluid. Hell, it feels near identical to me, and I played this game more than anyone.
The scrolling issue also broke the ending sequence after you beat the railway cannon boss. So I had to alter that one a bit too.

Basically, it's still the same game. But it's a bit different.
And hey, there's some retro tribute appeal in that, too. You can think of these version differences like they're differences between two versions of one game for different 16-bit consoles. Or something.

If this little game, for some reason, becomes popular enough that people decide to brag about their scores online, there's gonna be an extra headache for me about thinking of a way to differentiate between scores across different versions. After all, they are different, even if superficially.
Hopefully and realistically, that never happens.