SpaceDrifter 4500

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.61
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.59
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.96
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.50
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.69
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.96
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.45
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.44
Oh no! Our ship, the SpaceDrifter 4500, has run out of fuel...and we'll soon run out of oxygen! We (a.k.a...you) must somehow navigate our way home without any resources! Hopefully we can find some on the way..and hopefully we don't crash into any asteroids.

SpaceDrifter 4500 is a game made in under 48 hours for Ludum Dare 45 (Theme: "Start with Nothing"... Category: "Compo"). I'm responsible for the code, art and design of this game. I hope you enjoy! It's my first Ludum Dare and I had a ton of fun!

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Controls:

M - Toggle Minimap

WASD+J - Thrust in specified direction (only works if you have fuel)

(8-directional thrusting, ideally by pressing (and holding) WASD direction first then pressing (and holding) J)

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GIFS:


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Tools Used:

- Unity
- Blender
- Photoshop
- BFXR

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Fonts from: https://www.kenney.nl/assets/kenney-fonts

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Updates:

2019-10-07 08:28:00 EST:
- updated UI to work with different resolutions (like fullscreen'ing embedded html5 game)
- remove left-click thrust bug
- https://github.com/SharkWithLasers/ld45_start_with_nothing/pull/16

screenshot

Comments23

blobo
blobo7 Oct 2019, 17:08
Great work! It's very well balanced and fair, which is tough to do with random generation. Nice entry!
ROBOWARRIOR1982
ROBOWARRIOR19828 Oct 2019, 06:01
Very good game, introduction is good, clear and there is a map. Concept is simple but very well executed ! Maybe you can polish the animation of ship rotation.
tmullet8 Oct 2019, 06:29
Nice little game. I was about to give up because of sharp difficulty at the beginning but got into it after a minute or two.

The phyrics need a bit of work since you can stop on a dime, takes a bit of the tension out of facing an asteroid.

I really liked it overall though.
PurpledArtFrog
PurpledArtFrog8 Oct 2019, 10:19
Very nice entry - light and simple :thumbsup_tone1:

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
dqmhose8 Oct 2019, 10:33
Really well done! I gave up because I'm a pretty slow gamer and it was just too fast for me to react in time. But that's on me, other than that it's pretty amazing!
Hexcolyte8 Oct 2019, 11:35
A simple yet effective game! I find myself keep the map visible all the time to find the next closest resources.
RaisetheDead8 Oct 2019, 13:13
Great entry ! easy to understand, more difficult to master (I'm playing on a f*ck*ng french keyboard). Nice job guys !
Ferdi8 Oct 2019, 21:10
french keyboard too, tricky to control but still pretty fun to play. Good job !
AdamCYounis
AdamCYounis9 Oct 2019, 02:54
Pretty good. I had a good time. I thought it was difficult / too random at first, but I got the hang of it and enjoyed what I played. I thought the mini map idea worked well, and provided a nice trade-off of long term visibility vs short term. Nicely balanced, and well made, if a little simple. Thanks for the game!
erebus9 Oct 2019, 04:37
Really great for your first game! The art and particle effects look great. Thanks so much for bringing it by the stream!
trmrddr
trmrddr9 Oct 2019, 15:06
The sounds are a bit harsh, so I turned my volume down quite a bit. I also felt it was a bit weird that moving Up and Down, the ship looks kinda tilted. So just having it straight up or down would maybe make the initial confusion less confusing. Other than that, great concept and fun to try to manage fuel vs oxygen and trying to go fast!
BilalCh213
BilalCh2139 Oct 2019, 15:36
The game was very easy to understand and still very balanced. The art is also decent. Ship movement could improve a lot.
Artyom Volkov
Artyom Volkov9 Oct 2019, 15:37
I like your game, you made it relly polished and fun to play, I like retro vibes!
HumphreysMedia
HumphreysMedia9 Oct 2019, 16:17
Great job! Love the final design of 3D assets in a 2D game, made the asteroids and stars seem that little more real. Ship, however, does slow down rapidly when changing a direction, so maybe speed that up a smidge, other than that, great game!
cirno
cirno9 Oct 2019, 16:48
Hard to control the spaceship at the beginning. But the game becomes more attractive when I learned how to get the resources under the guide of the map. This game has got the minimal key points of some similar space exploring games.
Assaf10 Oct 2019, 11:22
Got me hooked for a while, really nice game, a little hard at the beginning
Nick Parry10 Oct 2019, 11:36
Cool little game, found my self trying to watch the map, calculate physics, how long i have left and avoid austeroids all at once.

The audio effects was quite harsh but I felt it fit the game well.

Fantastic job.
ManTou
ManTou10 Oct 2019, 11:48
It's a interesting game! But the asteroid are too big to avoid.
onnofal
onnofal10 Oct 2019, 11:52
It is well balanced. And mainly aesthetics are for me what this little gem is about. I love to see the ship not turning smoothly by design, not that it easily could not. I feel some art direction in it overall, knowing what you try to achieve.
reheated10 Oct 2019, 13:15
Overall: Fun and well presented!

Fun: Very good. I particularly like this game because every time I made an attempt, I felt myself getting a little bit better at it, until I finally won. I think it is well balanced. I found myself keeping the minimap on - which made the screen a bit cluttered - but that's not a complaint, it's the price I have to pay. I was expecting floaty space controls but was pleasantly surprised at the level of control I had.

Innovation: Good, I haven't seen a game like this before.

Theme: A very good interpretation.

Graphics: Good! I like how the graphics feel retro, even though it's all 3d models.

Audio: Good sound effects.

Humor: N/A unless I missed something?

Mood: Good! Normally I expect to hear some music but in this game it is appropriate to have none.
justinooncx10 Oct 2019, 14:58
That was.... actually really fun! It's a tense race to the next node of oxygen or fuel, and while having the minimap up is helpful, it's distracted me enough to crash me into an asteroid once or twice! Once I got the hang of things, though, it felt really good to zip around space, doing small boosts to keep my fuel reserves up, while staying fast enough to not suffocate. I actually really like the design decision to make the boosts stop on a dime; while that's not really realistic, it certainly makes a harrowing game like this more forgiving and fun. So many close brushes with asteroids, avoiding death at the last second by boosting the other way... Very fun entry, well done!
SharkWithLasers
SharkWithLasersauthor17 Oct 2019, 15:23
Thanks for all the love and constructive feedback everyone! It really means a lot!

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