Balanced, challenging, satisfying, but not perfect
Right off the bat I gotta say... This looks like an inter-dimensional programming feat. Insane props guys, I'm surprised I haven't run into glitches left and right.
This looks like it was a VERY challenging game to make... Combining medical truth with balanced gameplay, using real terminology without making it seem so dry that the player just walks away from it (though I came very close several times) and THEN blending all that with an interesting storyline, and make the game actually fun to play.
I found the difficulty spike in this game insane, not because there was anything genuinely difficult about what the game wanted me to do, but because I was clicking around frantically, trying to remember what organelle did what... And while that would seem to be BENEFITIAL (as I assume the point of this game is to educate), re-re-replaying a 15 minute level through trial and error becomes more infuriating and dry than simply opening a medical book and looking up what the damn organelle does.
So why is any of that a problem? Because we run into either 1 of 2 scenerios:
1: If you're a non-medical, non-bio major, it turns the game into a crapshoot, where success is determined by the memorization of terminology, not the actual skill of the gamer.. and such memorization, not being a bio major, would be useless to that individual (or, more simply put, a massive chunk of the game just became a massive waste of time)
2: You ARE a medical or bio major, and you already understand how all of the organelles work, you breeze through the entire game on the first try, and you don't really learn anything (as anyone who understands this stuff probably understands it a LOT more indepth than this game went into it.)
So, what's the point of this game? You said, "The goal was to make a truly educational game that was also genuinely fun to play." Well, yes, you did achieve that, but was it achieved adequately? "Zero Punctuation" once said something along the lines of: "Trying to please 2 totally different audiences never works nearly as well as pleasing 1, as instead of giving 1 audience the experience they want, you stretch yourself thin and give a poor, unfocused experience for them both."
So yes, you created an educational game, and you created a fun game.. But it wasn't as educational as it could have been than if you just focused on that (in all seriousness, this game teaches a slightly more indepth version of what I learned in middle school), simultaneous, the game was no where near as fun as it could have been if you could have dropped some more realisms, dropped some of the jargon, simplified the resources, toned down the overwhelming clutter, etc, etc, and etc.
But in the end, the very existance of this game is a VERY positive sign, and I would be lying if I said I didn't learn a thing or two from it. Most allegedly revolutionary games (Spore, Mirror's edge, Fallout 3) take 2 steps forward then 1.9 steps back, and don't perform anywhere NEAR as well as they should... But this game was an exception to that rule. This game proved that education, intuitive gameplay, interesting storyline, and straight and simple fun can be in the same sentence (if a tad bit awkwardly).
As for the storyline, it's simple, it's childish, it's stupid, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I LOVED the story and I was TOTALLY into it.