Rapid Reentry

by ygrichman

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.38

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.06

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.18

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.56

The aim of this game is to keep a space station in orbit for as long as possible by supplying it with components. You will need to mine ore using drones, build refineries to refine the ore and use the refined ore to create the components for the space station. Every minute the space station will be overhead and in range to teleport the created components to it. You will need to balance creating more drones and refineries with creating components to last as many orbits as possible. The space station will use up its stored components over time and if it runs out of components it will take damage. When it is 100% damaged it is game over as the station will be unable to keep in orbit and will suffer a rapid reentry.

We struggled to come up with an idea for this theme so decided to try and make an RTS/Base builder for a challenge. Hoped to add more resources and buildings, but spent most of the time learning how to use Unity's NavMesh system and writing the drone AI.

Controls

WASD = Move Camera
Mouse Wheel / Q|E = Zoom
Click on the buttons on the bottom UI panel with the cursor to use them.
Left click on an object to select it and left click off the object to deselect it.
If the drone is selected right click on the terrain to tell it where to go or on some ore to mine it.
If placing a refinery left click to place and right click to cancel placement.

Created By

- Richard Hancock - https://www.richardhancock.co.uk/
- Jamie Slowgrove - https://jamieslowgrove.co.uk/

Tools

- Unity 2020.3.32f1
- Visual Studio 2019 + VSCode
- Blender
- GIMP
- Inkscape
- GitLab CE

3rd Party Credits

Music

Spacial Harvest by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4401-spacial-harvest
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Sounds

Error Sound: (CC0)
https://freesound.org/people/Breviceps/sounds/450616/

Purchase Sound: (CC0)
https://freesound.org/people/Zott820/sounds/209578/

Explosion: (CC0)
https://freesound.org/people/tommccann/sounds/235968/

Teleport: (CC0)
https://freesound.org/people/noirenex/sounds/245731/

Font

Space Station / Drone Texture Font:
https://www.dafont.com/cut-me-out.font

Genres: strategy

Tools: Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, Unity

Comments24

Enjl5 Apr 2022, 16:07

I love the mood in this game! The eerie soundtrack and vast empty fields set the stage for the quite unsettling scenario of the eventual station re-entry. I feel the game is currently held back a little by a lack of player feedback. Small animations when directing a drone where to go and when resources are obtained would go a long way in getting players to get that "aha!" moment of figuring out key strategies. Just a touch more of that and I can see this being a fun and intense strategy game to try and optimize.

Jamie Slowgrove5 Apr 2022, 18:08

@enjl thanks! :grin: Yeah we had planned to add some stuff for feedback like animations such as the drone hovering up and down and making the colour of the ore to go dark when it gets depleted but unfortunately we just ran out of time in the end to do it :sweat_smile:

Snotax9 Apr 2022, 10:01

The atmosphere with the sound and the "moonscape" is really pretty. But for gameplay it would have been nice to get some kind of intro/explaination at the beginning.

LiubovP9 Apr 2022, 12:38

I like the space design of the game (drone model, refinery, planet), but there was not enough interaction (for example, drones could take ore to the refinery), the implementation of ore is not very clear - whether it has a limit or not

Jamie Slowgrove10 Apr 2022, 11:30

@snotax & @liubovp thanks for the comments! I have to agree that it really could do with some more interaction along with more explanations as to what is happening but unfortunately we ended up spending most of the time trying to learn how to use unity's navmesh system and writing the drone AI so we simply ran out of time :sweat_smile:

We wanted to try and do something haven't tried to do before but unfortunately that meant we didn't have the time to implement more of the features to help with gameplay as we had to learn it all from scratch :sweat_smile:

Cedric8610 Apr 2022, 13:29

Not everything was very clear to me. Especially the ore when ore is optained ther is no indication except the counter going up. Sometimes i didn't even know why it's going up. :-)
But the mood is very nice. Very eerie. Overall good effort. Keep it up.

Jamie Slowgrove10 Apr 2022, 13:47

@cedric86 thanks for the comment! Yeah we were going to add more to show what was happening (like having the colour of the ore get slowly more depleted) but unfortunately we ran out of time :sweat_smile:

RealTanHen10 Apr 2022, 13:53

Had a lot of fun with this! Although, I found via trying to find an "optimal strategy", I was sort of still capped out at around 3 runs because of increasing resource demands each time- balancing is something that's impossible to get perfect within a jam though I understand! The visuals are great and everything goes together perfectly- the music, UI and art- and I have to say it has an addictive quality to it, I played a lot more than I was planning to play! Thank you for the fun game experience!

bramreth10 Apr 2022, 13:56

Very nice to look at! sounds fit well too, can see a ton of promise in the ideas - it took a bit for me to realise where the drones spawned when I bought them, nice and moody overall ^^

CellularPrism610 Apr 2022, 14:17

This beatiful game!!!😊😊😊

alks10 Apr 2022, 14:36

Really nice looking game! Was first a bit hard to get into but it got better! Music is also nice!

fatPenguin10 Apr 2022, 14:40

Very interesting gameplay and everything fits really well together. The difficulty was a bit high for me but I still had a lot of fun :)

Thanks for your entry! Good job!

chingle10 Apr 2022, 15:18

Mood is great though I have no idea what's going on XD adding some player feedback would help

Jamie Slowgrove10 Apr 2022, 18:27

@realtanhen, @bramreth, @cellularprism6, @alks, @fatpenguin & @chingle thanks for all the comments! :grinning: @realtanhen yeah, we ran out of time to really do much balancing for the game so we weren't sure how many runs would be possible to complete in the end :sweat_smile:

sacredbacon17 Apr 2022, 18:23

I like the factory building, and the environment looks nice. No matter which configuration I went with, I couldn't get past 3 orbits, but the building and deployment work great. Great concept and execution.

Jamie Slowgrove17 Apr 2022, 18:28

@sacredbacon thanks for the comment! Yeah unfortunately we ran out of time to really play test it and do balancing so I think 3 orbits might be the best that can be done. :sweat_smile:

MaiMai17 Apr 2022, 19:06

Took me a run to kind of get what was going on with the components and the space station damage.
But once I got it, I spent a few runs trying to figure out a strategy. Unfortunately, like some others, I couldn't get past 3 orbits; but it feels like a solid foundation. Really good job, I had fun!
I also attempted an RTS style game for this jam, so it's definitely up my alley.

Jamie Slowgrove17 Apr 2022, 19:37

@maimai thanks for the comment! We wanted to try to make something different this time to the other Ludum Dares we had done previously which is why we decided to try to do an RTS style game but unsurprisingly we ended up spending most of the time trying to get the AI for the drones working so we ended up running out of time for things like game balancing. :sweat_smile:

kjscott17 Apr 2022, 19:51

After a couple of restarts, after I vaguely knew what I was doing but I could barely find a strategy that could get me just into orbit 4. The setup of requiring 10 components in the first orbit then increasing by 5 each orbit I can see as ramping up the difficulty but if combine the fact if you have under the required components it still consumes them all AND damages the station it makes it nearly impossible to get beyond orbit 3. The balance between ore generation and refining feels completely off. One drone can keep up with two refineries but if you get two drones the sheer cost of building a refinery and inflated cost of saving the station means you'll barely get anywhere into the game. The game controls feel a bit off, when not in full screen if you put your mouse cursor to the edge of the screen it doesn't scroll which is pretty common for this style of game. The map might also scroll and puts your camera into a weird position right at the start of the screen which wastes precious seconds. It might be better to start off your initial drone at a ore node and give the initial building some bare bones level of refining.

I can see a lot of potential for this game, with a little bit of extra time refining the issues and a bit polish you'll see a lot of dividends from this.

Jamie Slowgrove17 Apr 2022, 20:16

@kjscott thanks for the comment! Yeah I think the balance between the ore generation and the refineries is completely out of whack :sweat_smile: To be honest we only managed to get the whole system working about 20 minutes before the deadline so we couldn't do much balancing :sweat_smile:

kjscott17 Apr 2022, 20:25

@jamie-slowgrove, been there before XD You all did a good job, just next time remember to do the balancing sooner rather than later XD