Ludum Dare #49compo

Mars Contractor

by chameth

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.63

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.40

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.66

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.04

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.48

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.62

In Mars Contractor, you take on the glamorous role of a general contractor on SpaceY's Mars Base Alpha.

Your first task is to fix the unstable reactor, but is that the only thing that's unstable?......

----

This is a short story-based game with a few mini puzzles/tasks to complete.

Tools:

* Ebiten 2D game library
* Aseprite for art
* LMMS for sound

This is not only my first game jam entry, but also my first actual game ever! I've been playing around with Ebiten for a few weeks but before LD49 had only produced a few vague prototypes of ideas.

Tools: Aseprite, LMMS

Comments22

SlimmerBurger3 Oct 2021, 23:50

All of the minigames were really fun :thumbsup:

LDJam user 2610364 Oct 2021, 01:38

really fun, it's also short enough for my attention span to last through the entire thing; also the ai watchdog task was pretty funny

kassanu4 Oct 2021, 03:11

The AI tricked me :(

Fun little story, nice job!

Ludokultur4 Oct 2021, 14:54

Really polished and clever (big wow that this is your first ever game, please continue haha)! :)

silkworm_sweatshop4 Oct 2021, 15:03

Oh those A.I:s sure are wacky! Nice and polished entry and mix of mini games to tell a little narrative.

Nameless Ghoul4 Oct 2021, 15:03

Had a blast playing it the humor was 10/10!

sawdust4 Oct 2021, 15:17

Nice text based game! The music was pleasant. The graphics were awesome. Loved the clues that something was off scratched into the wall. My only complaint is I wish it were longer to give the story a few more beats!

Chamethauthor4 Oct 2021, 15:39

@slimmerburger @velaachlorine @kassanu @ludokultur @silkworm-sweatshop @nameless-ghoul @sawdust Thanks for playing and for the kind words! :purple_heart:

@sawdust Yeah, I think another two or three tasks would've been nice, then the story could have played out a bit more in 'real time' rather than through scratches and paperwork. I had originally planned to do a harder "rotate the pipes" level towards the end but it felt a bit clumsy, and then didn't really have time to do more artwork for anything different.

nevyn4 Oct 2021, 18:06

haha, gotta love the evil AI trope! nice mini games, great mood, nice story progression :) the only thing I'd change I think is maybe using some other controls for the coolant balancing game -- either using up/down buttons on keyboard, or having clickable buttons maybe? left and right really didn't map top "more" and "less" in my brain :sweat_smile:

Chamethauthor4 Oct 2021, 18:23

@nevyn Thanks for the feedback! I've learnt that I'm really bad at designing control schemes. I just get used to the weirdness and don't question it. The rotate-the-pipes level required you to hover over a pipe then press the R key to rotate them for the longest time - I didn't even consider just clicking until talking to a friend about it :joy:

shp4 Oct 2021, 19:12

really nice use of storytelling! it made for quite the exciting simple game

Chikentear5 Oct 2021, 00:29

Well done ! You do something really cool !

LMB5 Oct 2021, 01:01

Cool, I don't see this "sequence of mini-games" concept very often at Ludum Dare. I agree with nevyn about the controls on the coolant balancing game, but otherwise they played nicely. Many little nice touches here and there, like the password on the wall and turning the lights off. I am not a big fun of puzzles, but these were short and enough for me :smile:

Kora0h5 Oct 2021, 01:32

Good combination and funny story.
A little bit lost at Assignment level then I realized, I should shut down the ai core as well, nice work!

Owl_Skip5 Oct 2021, 07:35

This is a really cool, well thought through game, I cannot believe this is your first game!

Swen5 Oct 2021, 20:11

Ah, finally a well deserved cup of coffee. Funny game, had fun playing it! The AI definitly tricked me :D

dk5000p6 Oct 2021, 00:02

Really liked the AI puzzle it was a nice challenge. Good game and nice fit to the theme.

Jupiter_Hadley6 Oct 2021, 11:38

Very nice game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 49 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/jL-Xn4X6IAQ

Erkberg6 Oct 2021, 17:35

Awesome game! It made it into the second part of my let's play series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5X9Ha1_nE8

PS: Hi @jupiter-hadley :)

MikoziQ8 Oct 2021, 22:30

Listening to the chillout music while sending my entire crew out of airlock!

Pros:
- Simple graphics
- Simple concept
- Different puzzles
- Nicely put hints
- I'm allergic to apples, but I like when thing goes bananas
- Nicely put, chillout music
- Having a different failure endings is a nice touch

Cons:
- A one-time-pony
- Wish it was a tiny bit longer

Good job!

BarelyEvenGames9 Oct 2021, 01:13

Nice job! There was a whole mountain of text at the beginning that I kind of skipped through, but the mini games were fun and the pipe one was especially well done!

epb90009 Oct 2021, 02:21

So, I'm not saying I disabled the AI watchdog to see what happened, but I may have killed the crew. I was not disappointed. The first minigame reminded me of pipe dream. (That game is old enough, I'm going to link to it https://archive.org/details/win3_PipeDr3x )