Space Station Alpha

Description

Keep yourself, it, and a decaying space station alive by buying yourself enough time to escape.

Controls

Desktop

Arrow keys to move/interact/repair/pickup:

* move (will automatically open and close doors)
* interact (walk into yellow object to get sensor readings, recharge power, call for help, launch lifeboat)
* pickup (walk into yellow tool to collect to fix help broken environment, used with scrap)
* pickup (walk into yellow objects to increase power, o2, scrap, ammo)
* repair (walk into objects to repair them)

X key to perform the following actions in priority order:

* shoot gun (bullets are rare, use sparingly)
* interact with environment (activates sensor readings, recharge power, call for help, launch lifeboat)
* repair first closest broken object (starting top left going to bottom right)

Z to discharge oxygen (this makes the area breathable and doesn't reduce O2 when you move so long as there are no holes)

Z+X to quit game

Mobile

Very similar, except Pico-8 creates a virtual handset for you.

O button represents the Z key in the format

Quick guide

Hints

* Go south immediately and grab everything
* There should be enough oxygen early on that you can pick it up anytime you see it
* There are often multiple routes to everywhere
* Ammo become more frequent about half way through the game, avoid to begin to with!

Objects

* All interactable objects are yellow
* Broken and non-interactable objects are light purple (didn't have time to distinguish the colours)

Icons

Tools

Sample Gameplay

Source code

Source code can be found at the same place where you can play the game, underneath the game by clicking on "code"

Source code can also be found in .p8 format (open with any text editor) on google drive as ld46_station.p8

Pico-8 owners

Full game can be downloaded by this picture

Post LD46 development

Planned updates

* Add screen to give additional information as to what everything is and does
* Change the colour of non-functional objects (probably to dark blue) to avoid confusion between items
* Give the player the spacesuit to begin with to stop needless early deaths
* Allow player to pickup one spare O2 tank which is automatically used when out of oxygen

Planned bug fixes

* Fix camera movement to scroll with player
* Fix UI in one place
* Fix movement bug where if you are maxed out with scrap and try to pick some up, next movement fails

Potential updates

* Have all major damage randomly generated at start of the game rather than being hard corded in
* Multiple difficulty levels (3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 station)
* Create each part of the station in a modular way to allow game to randomly put them together to create a more randomness and repeatability to the experience

Retrospective

I did a little retrospective of the game over at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/space-station-alpha/space-station-alpha-retrospective

WARNING

If you skipped down to here to find the link *read the description!!*. It will help a lot to understand how to play and what's going on. I didn't have time to implement an in-game description of everything.