Ludum Dare #53compo

Spacial Delivery

by kirkami

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.23

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.79

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.00

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.92

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.90

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.84

Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.84

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.96

GUIDE BELOW

You are handed a very important package which should be delivered ASAP.
But you are stuck due to broken hyperdrive in a system crawling with hostile drones.
And package delivery is due in 30 days.
Your only hope now are your trader, explorer and combat skills.
Fight your way through. Get rich. And repair this wretched hyperdrive.

Guide:

Goal: Repair Hyperdrive of your ship in 30 days and deliver Package in time.

Controls:

- WASD - movement,
- LMB, RMB - fire using railgun or mechgun,
- Left Shift - boost,
- Click on button near minimap to switch scale.

Basics:

- Friendly fire is OK.
- Ships have different amount of armoring negating part or all of damage done by shots. Increase Base damage to increase penetration.
- You have 2 different weapons which upgraded separately.
- You can land on planet by flying above it and staying there for few seconds.
- There are neutral traders. You can raid them for free cargo.
- Neutral traders ARE actually trading stuff between planet on their own.
- Enemy robots activate when you fly nearby, but go back if you are too far. Use minimap for your advantage.
- Prices for cargo differ from planet to planet.
- Upgrades are uncapped, but different planets offer different upgrades.
- HYPERDRIVE ITSELF IS ALSO AN UPGRADE.

Tags: #exploration, #singleplayer, #space, #top down adventure, #top down shooter, #trading, #upgrades

Genres: action, adventure

Comments30

baknik1 May 2023, 02:59

The scope of this game is impressive for the time limit. Well done for getting this much done!

Brandon Campbell1 May 2023, 03:08

Cool game. I liked the art and control, but it had honestly nothing to do with the theme, and no instructions. The game has no point.

KirKamiauthor1 May 2023, 03:10

@brandon-campbell couldn't fit proper tutorial in a game , so just wrote it right on a game's page with giant header. It's a sandbox.

SpeakWithPlants1 May 2023, 03:17

Nice work! It's impressive how much you got done in 48 hours.

KirKamiauthor1 May 2023, 03:19

@speakwithplants still maybe if I didn't slept, could've put in proper tutorial, UI and quests

Castitatis1 May 2023, 03:24

I had a hard time understanding how to play the game, but as said above, the scope is pretty impressive.

peterfiftyfour1 May 2023, 03:29

That is a very nice background - is it just a scrolling texture? It kinda looks volumetric. I dunno what the ais were up to but the seemed to looove forming a big clump around planets which was entertaining lol

KirKamiauthor1 May 2023, 08:27

@peterfiftyfour background is actually a group of particle emitters with Infinity particle lifetime.
And AI ships are actually trading stuff between planets, so they clumping up is usually small planet with a good deal *wink*

kykypy3o81 May 2023, 14:11

Good work! when understand how to play, gameplay begins to captivate))

LDJam user 2588501 May 2023, 20:36

First I tried a pure trade run and made the 5k in 10 days, then I did a kill everything and everyone run and made 5k in 10 days as well haha ^^ I died before I killed all red enemies, tho at least those green traders aren't blocking the planets anymore, those are the true enemies in this game

TyeGameDev2 May 2023, 03:24

This seemed like a systems designers game jam with how much is going on here. Really enjoyed the idea of this game more so then the gameplay itself personally. Overall though I liked the direction for sure.

KirKamiauthor2 May 2023, 08:46

@tyegamedev I've encountered more hypercasual, minigames and survivors-likes. And also way too much pizza delivery games

TyeGameDev2 May 2023, 15:25

@KirKami Your not wrong. So kudos to you for innovation!

gmaker2 May 2023, 16:24

The graphics are top-notch. It takes a loooong time to kill anyone :) The sounds and effects are also impressive. Great job!

KirKamiauthor2 May 2023, 16:54

@gmaker stats for enemies are randomized. You can upgrade your guns(railgun is single shot one, mechgun is auto-firing). And sound is actually botched by reverb not working in Web

Anticdust2 May 2023, 18:12

Good work! altough my pc crashed a couple of times i really enjoyed it!

WigHz2 May 2023, 19:08

Good job with the particles and explosions! It took quite a while for me to figure out what's what on the minimap. It made more sense after that. Very ambitious project, maybe a bit too advanced for me to grasp in a jam format. Also, a death screen would have been nice, I exploded and nothing happened :)

xbcw2 May 2023, 23:12

I liked flying around and shooting things. I never did figure out how to upgrade my ship or how exactly to use the minimap.

justslavic2 May 2023, 23:16

Don't undertand why there are guns in these game, if they don't do damage, for me it's a little too overcomplicated game. I didn't get what I have to do, some bots just go in and out, etc.
It's not about putting a tutorial in, it's about simplicity of the design, I guess if design would be more simple and obvious it would benefit the game.

rohanmoon2 May 2023, 23:29

No bad, I enjoyed the physics, I couldn't figure out what I was doing though, I couldn't tell where I was going or what my goal was. Also couldn't do any damage to other ships.

rohanmoon2 May 2023, 23:31

Oh! I just properly read the instructions, ok so I can trade at planets and upgrade my ship? That's actually very cool, I've changed my rating because there's quite a bit of depth there and it's pretty neat once you figure it out!

KirKamiauthor2 May 2023, 23:56

@xbcw @wighz ship upgrades are done on planets through Tech Center. Minimap: red - enemies, green - traders, yellow square - you.

@justslavic @rohanmoon I had no time to slap in tutorial so it was just an instruction in description. And you did no damage cause you encountered ships with many armor points negating some amount of damage forcing you to upgrade guns and use single-shot one.

Arch1eN3 May 2023, 11:50

A very cool game.

Pros:

- Graphics. I really liked the models, especially the "good" ships look really cool.
- Game Feedback. Game has a nice visual feedback. I know when i hit something.
- Readability. I had practically no problem in figuring out what's going on.

Cons:

- Landing on the planets. It could be done by key press (spacebar?), its less frustrating than having to wait for menu to appear (especially that friendly ships are constantly bouncing us off the threshold).
- Miss-ballanced early game. It takes too long in the first seconds of the game to kill something. I think there would be more fun if there was more enemies with less health, and if we could collect more packages, but sell them cheaper at the base. Also i had a feeling that machine gun does 0 damage, till the first upgrade.
- Lack of weapon distinction. Railgun and machine gun look the same. At first i wasn't sure how should i switch to machine gun. Moving railgun to the front middle side of the ship, and changing it's VFX/SFX would really help to distinct that.

Very good job mate! Had fun playing

Groundwater Studio3 May 2023, 18:19

First off that little drone you have in the background does WONDERS for setting the tone of the setting. I think the feeling of becoming stranded and puttering around this solar system really really comes through.

Had to restart and re-read the instructions a couple times to wrap my head around it but once I did I dug what you had going on. The orbiting planets and NPC ships are a nice touch. I could totally see myself getting super into this kind of top down elite dangerous-esque trading/exploration game.

The minimap also confused me as first because I had flown offscreen before adjusting the scaling so at first I thought the big yellow dot was me. Not a huge issue but definitely caused some confusion at first.

I really struggle to dive into system heavy games like Stellaris because it's all just maps and menus, this game made me realize that honestly it takes a VERY small thing (like having your own ship) for me to overcome that feeling.

Cool little game, nailed the atmosphere.

WouterK123 May 2023, 19:15

The environment looks really cool! Though it is a bit unclear what to do, but that doesn't really matter because it is really fun to just fly around and shoot enemies :D Well done!

elysiagriffin3 May 2023, 19:24

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my stream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1810468382?t=1h44m9s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

tetrapteryx3 May 2023, 19:27

Great visuals, and I'm impressed that you fit in so much complexity! I felt pretty powerless early on with how little damage I could do, I think it could do with some balancing and weaker enemies to pick up the pace of progression.

Cleoh5 May 2023, 22:58

It's incredible that you've made this in 3 days! It basically feels like a jam version of Starsector. Now there's obvioulsy a lot of things you could do to improve it, but i'm sure you already know that so i'm not goona try to list them. But if this is just a start and you plan on expanding on the idea, i'll gladly follow your progress! (I'll probably follow your progress either way lol)
Also, it feels weird to do this here, but i'd like to recommend Starsector to @groundwater-studio, because i think it could allow you to enjoy a type of gameplay that you aren't used to (and because i'm in love with the game).

KirKamiauthor6 May 2023, 10:46

@cleoh that's good to hear. I'll wait for results and then decide how to expand on concept, multiplayer Tarkov-like or singleplayer simulation sandbox. And this was actually done in 2 days, since it's Compo game