Ludum Dare #52compo

Moon Harvest

by swarrizard

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.32

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.46

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.84

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.29

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.93

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.92

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.16

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.69

Goal

In Moon Harvest, your goal is to construct ramps to help the autonomous moon-mobile harvest as many canisters of Helium 3 before your fuel runs out!

Controls

- LMB -- click and drag to construct a red ramp
- RMB -- click and drag to construct a blue ramp

You can only have one ramp of each color at a time. Previous ramps will disappear once a new one is built. Also, constructing ramps costs fuel proportional to their size so be economical!

The moon-mobile will continuously move forward. If it gets stuck, it'll reverse directions.

Notes

Shoutout to @caeonosphere for encouraging me to enter my first ever game jam! I only recently learned Unity, so this was a perfect way to learn a bunch of new skills and have fun at the same time.

Created with:
- Unity / C#
- Procreate
- sfxr

Tools: sfxr

Comments15

Chum Chum8 Jan 2023, 23:36

Fun mechanics! :thumbsup:

Untitled Studios9 Jan 2023, 00:59

Really really fun! It gets surprisingly tense when you're low on fuel.

Dev_31410 Jan 2023, 23:11

Cute game! I kept forgetting which button was which color but that just made for more exciting moments of freefall! Cute robot, good graphics, nice mechanics, controls explained in-game! Great work!

cagibi14 Jan 2023, 13:32

Cool game, though my fuel running out felt very sudden (a "low on fuel" sound or the indicator turning red would be a good idea). I mostly stuck to one color at a time, no idea if this is the right strategy but it was fun anyway!

swarrizardauthor17 Jan 2023, 22:05

@cagibi, thanks for playing and the good feedback! Yeah I agree that the game can end abruptly, especially since drawing platforms costs fuel (e.g. if you draw one that's too big, you can suddenly die). If I had more time, I was going to add some UI to indicate how much a platform will cost to build as you are dragging the mouse to build it. I also like your idea of something to indicate when fuel is low!

Jonqs17 Jan 2023, 22:17

Not sure to fully understand how much fuel cost a ramp so it make it a bit hard to have a proper strategy. Overall i think the idea is really cool. Congrats !

kir Pow17 Jan 2023, 23:36

Took me a second to work out how to get going up the first ramp without crashing into its base. After that really addictive and simple game. Having the two bridges element was a really nice touch for those moments where you realise you hit the wrong button and its all over

VerttiXPertti18 Jan 2023, 08:12

Really decent. The game should somehow become harder as you get further though.

swarrizardauthor18 Jan 2023, 18:42

@verttixpertti, totally agree. I unfortunately spent too much time at the end of the jam adding audio rather than balancing the parameters to make the game more challenging. Once you get the hang of it, it's fairly easy to stay alive indefinitely. With more time, I was planning to add obstacles/traps as well as limit the spawn rate as the game progresses to make it more and more challenging.

treenut18 Jan 2023, 19:54

neat little game, slightly hard to see where the ground really is, but otherwise pretty nice, good job

Metzkermeister19 Jan 2023, 23:21

Interesting take on the theme and quite a good job for a solo entry. I'm glad you took the time to add audio, there are entries with much better gameplay but its just no fun to play in silence.

Pope PAF20 Jan 2023, 17:29

nice mechanics. it would be nice to have an indicator how much fuel a ramp will cost :)

brainles etertainment20 Jan 2023, 19:08

Pretty fresh idea. I can't remember any game with such mechanics. Not very easy to play, but a lot of fun. Nice example of how simple idea could turn into nice time killer.

someone25 Jan 2023, 23:20

Nice mechanics. A fun game.
The way the physics works sometimes seemed a bit odd at times, sometimes the vehicle would flip over, or stick to the side of the screen.
I didn't actually realise placing ramps cost fuel until I the comment above just now. I did wonder why I suddenly lost after doing so well. It would have been good to display how much it would cost to place the ramp somewhere.
I also often wanted a way to cancel a ramp placement because I started it in the wrong place or accidentally picked the wrong colour. I kept forgetting which mouse button was which colour.

Itzemii26 Jan 2023, 19:22

I like the idea and the very solid mechanics.
I.e. I love the way the rover moves and flips. Very nice!
Graphics is ok. I like the engineS "blobblobblob..." sound!
Cool little game!
I believe that you could take the mechanics and turn it into something bigger: a 2d platform exploration or something like that.