Ludum Dare #54compo

Distant Horizons

by oleg20111511

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.46

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.48

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.02

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.27

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.21

Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.73

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.04

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE PLAYING! I didn't have time to make a tutorial (sorry!)

Rules

* Survive for as long as possible.
* Move with WASD.
* Towers spawn in random places.
* Each tower blocks access to 1 outermost unblocked ring. If there's 1 tower anywhere on the map you can't go to 5th ring, and if there are 4 towers present you can only stay in the middle.
* If you stand on a ring that's about to be blocked by a tower, you'll be pushed back on the closest available ring.
* As the game goes on, towers spawn faster.
* Game ends when the 5th tower spawns.

---

How to destroy towers

2 ways to destroy towers: _shooting_ and _direct contact_.
#### Direct contact
Move on the same square as the tower. Timing wheel will appear above your character. Press Space when orange cursor is in blue area on the wheel.
Destroying towers in this way will give you $75.
You can't use this method if tower is on a blocked ring.
#### Shooting
Click "Shoot" button in bottom-left corner using mouse to destroy a random tower. Alternatively, click the tower you want to destroy. Each shot costs $50.
This is your only option to destroy a tower on a blocked ring.

---

How to get money

Click "Build" button in bottom-left corner using mouse to place a factory on current cell. Building cost increases with the amount of factories you have.
Every 3 seconds you gain money from each factory.
The further from center the factory, the more money it brings.
When a ring becomes blocked by a tower, factory's HP starts to decrease. When factory HP reaches 0, it is destroyed.

---

Strategy

Build as many factories before towers start spawning faster than you can handle.
Then rely on Shoot button to destroy the appearing towers. You should have enough income from factories to afford the shots.

Comments15

LDJam user 3742612 Oct 2023, 10:16

Nice game! fun to play :)

jk50002 Oct 2023, 20:59

The idea is fun, and I had fun trying it. The visuals could have been better, and some music and sound effects would have been great. An in game tutorial would also have been great. But anyway is this still an okay little jam game.

Alexey Akulovich3 Oct 2023, 19:01

The block stops going where I point. Instead, it goes in the other direction or teleports somewhere. Sometimes enemies just disappear on their own... Is this logic that I don't understand, or a bug?

QTE mechanic looks similar to mine for dodging enemies :)

LDJam user 297867author6 Oct 2023, 08:16

@alexey-akulovich You get pushed back when a tower blocks the ring you're standing on, it is intended behaviour which I think I should've made more obvious through graphics.

Enemies disappearing is actually a side effect of Unity treating spacebar as a click on the last button you clicked, so if you use shoot button and then start the QTE then the shoot button will be clicked again. Didn't notice it during development, otherwise it would've been fixed.

Thanks for the feedback!

JustMars18 Oct 2023, 13:22

Interesting idea. Instructions on this page were essential for knowing how to play, so it would have been nice to have them in game. Visuals are simple, but not ugly. Sound effects would have gone a long way to make the game feel more juicy. A solid compo entry overall, good work.

Sabi18 Oct 2023, 13:55

Liked the idea!

Flancon18 Oct 2023, 14:02

It's nice ! Some minor bugs, but it's working ! Nice usage of the theme and nice dev graphics :)

For the bugs I encountered, nothing was game destroying, it's more details than other things.
A tower can spawn under a tower, the spinning system sometimes stopped.

Well done !

very dark lord18 Oct 2023, 16:29

Phew this is pretty difficult! For like 5 rounds I thought it was impossible because the towers always kept spawning outside-in for me, so I was effectively unable to ever use the contact destruction, and they crept in to the middle before I could ever build a second factory. Gave it one more go however and was much more lucky with the spawn points. But still, money came in too slowly and eventually the towers kept destroying my buildings until I eventually perished.

Pretty unique concept though, well done, maybe this would even work nicely as a round based game.

LDJam user 297867author18 Oct 2023, 16:35

@very-dark-lord oooh, a very nice idea with round-based system. Thanks for the feedback!

OadT18 Oct 2023, 19:26

Pretty abstract game, but fun once you figured the rules out. Maybe coloring the outer rings in red when you are not allowed to move on them would help make the mechanics a bit more easily clear. Balance wise it was actually pretty good, I never got too many factories were I could just always shoot towers immediately but also felt like I could go on for a theoretically infinite time. But I feel like some basic sound would have improved the game by a lot!

cake18 Oct 2023, 19:29

Cool concept! I completely failed on my first try, but once I understood the gameplay I found it quite easy... up until 6 minutes, then towers started spawning at a very fast rate and I couldn't keep up :laughing:

octahedron18 Oct 2023, 19:33

Love the idea! It's essential to read the intructions before starting the game so I guess an in-game tutorial or manual would help a lot.

cheesepencil18 Oct 2023, 20:20

Oof, it's very difficult! I believe I understood the instructions, it took a second try to really "get" it. It would be helpful if there were a visual indicator of which rings were inaccessible at any given time, for example if I had a tower on the board then the outermost ring would be a different color (or missing completely). But it's also compo, and there is just never enough time!!

henk18 Oct 2023, 20:55

Not a bad concept. It was a little frustrating to have movement input be blocked on the square's sliding animation. If you want the player to be slow when moving around, then it may be better to either:
1. use continuous movement, rather than grid-based movement
1. let me hold down the movement buttons so I'm not forced to impatiently mash them or
1. have the buttons control an on-screen cursor towards which the little square is constantly moving

ScaryTreeGames19 Oct 2023, 08:22

Interesting concept. It can grow into something more. Yes, such games definitely need an in-game tutorial, as already said. Overall this is a good game!

Other games by @oleg20111511

★3.09

★2.94