Dissection & Anatomy Lab is out: 12 specimens, 7 minigames, one shaky hand
Dissection & Anatomy Lab is live. It turns a biology-class dissection into Surgeon Simulator-style minigames you can drop into any RPG Maker MZ project. One .js file. No image files. No coding. [Image: devlog_incision.gif] What’s inside • 12 specimens, from an earthworm to a fetal pig • 7 hands-on stages in every full procedure • 140 structures, each with a real fact, collected in an in-game Anatomy Atlas • A–F grading, with the score, grade and pass/fail sent straight to your variables and switches The seven stages 1. Instrument Tray: pick the right tool for each real dissection task. 2. Incision: trace the cut lines with a trembling hand. Shift steadies it. 3. Pinning: pin the flaps to the wax, with two spare pins. 4. Organ ID: find the organ you’re asked for. Wrong clicks tell you what you touched. 5. Extraction: snip, grab and carry an organ to the dish without damaging it. 6. Physiology Pathway: trace blood, food or water through the body in order. 7. Lab Report: a short quiz on what you just saw.
Extraction is where it gets messy
Snip the connective tissue, grab the organ with forceps, and carry it to the specimen dish. Move slowly and keep clear of the neighbouring organs, and it lands with zero damage.
Rush it and things go wrong. Fragile organs tear, and the squid’s ink sac is the most fragile of all: tear it and you get an ink cloud, a stain left on the specimen, and a damage meter in the red.
Every specimen plays differently
Each animal only gets the stages that suit it. Clams and fish aren’t pinned in a real lab, so they aren’t pinned here. The pathway stage changes with the animal: • water through a sea star’s tube feet • blood through a squid’s three hearts • a perch’s single circulation loop • the four chambers of a fetal pig’s heart
Harder specimens have tighter cut tolerances, more incisions and more fragile organs. Drawn entirely in code
There isn’t a single image file in the plugin. Every organ is built from simple shapes, then lit when the game loads: a soft base colour, a tissue texture, a wet highlight and a shadow on whatever sits beneath it. There are more than 25 textures, including spongy lung, lobed liver, fish scales, crayfish shell, clam nacre and rat fur.
For developers, that means nothing to import, crisp art at any resolution, and custom specimens that get the same treatment automatically.
Real anatomy The layouts are simplified diagrams, but positions, colours and facts follow standard biology-class dissection guides. Players find out that rats and pigeons have no gallbladder, that a squid has three hearts, and that a clam’s gut runs straight through its heart. Fixed while recording the trailer
Recording the trailer turned up three bugs, all fixed in v2.0: • Pins vanished after the Pinning stage. They now stay on the tray. • Tearing the ink sac left no mark. It now leaves a stain. • Warnings that fired at the same moment overlapped. They now stack.
Tested Before launch, a scripted player ran every specimen at every difficulty: 36 full procedures with no errors. A deliberately careless player ran all 12 too, and failed every one, which is the point. Setup 1. Copy Anatomy_DissectionLab.js into js/plugins. 2. Turn it on in the Plugin Manager. 3. Add an event with Plugin Command → Open Menu (Lab Cabinet). Easy, Normal and Hard are built in, plus a tremor-off setting for players who need a steady cursor.
Your turn Which specimen should I add next? A sheep heart, a cow eye, an owl pellet, an octopus? Tell me in the comments.
Originally posted on itch.io. See it on RPG Maker Market →