Alien Raid by LTyrosine

[raw]
made by LTyrosine for LD26 (JAM)
Alien Raid is a minimalist 2D RTS.

Evil aliens built a base on the moon. Nice humans must destroy it.

You are this task force composed of constructions, vehicles and astronauts. You control one unit/construction at a time, change the selected one by clicking over it with right mouse button.

Basic controls are arrow keys (or WASD keys) and mouse buttons.

You start with a base, and when this is selected, you can build other constructions.
Select what to build with left/right and down to confirm.

The Ore Miner extract ore from soil. You will need a lot of ore to build other things.

The Solar Panel add power to your base. More power allows more constructions.

The Potato Hydroponic Farm produce food. More food allows more astronauts.

The Living Dome train new astronauts (use down key when a living dome is selected)

The Factory build new vehicles (again select with left/right and use down key to start).

For units, use arrow or WASD keys to move, left mouse button to attack.

When a construction is selected, click with left mouse button over an astronaut to garrison him inside. They improve this construction efficiency while inside and get cover from attacks. Click again to return him to moon surface.

Further instructions inside game.

Thank you.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.31 208
Audio(Jam) 3.24 178
Fun(Jam) 3.19 164
Graphics(Jam) 2.86 364
Humor(Jam) 1.94 325
Innovation(Jam) 3.02 258
Mood(Jam) 3.34 155
Theme(Jam) 2.76 429

Feedback

馃帳 LTyrosine
30. Apr 2013 路 02:03 UTC
Evil aliens built a base on the moon. Nice humans must destroy it.

You are this task force composed of constructions, vehicles and
astronauts. You control one unit/construction at a time, change
the selected one by clicking over it with right mouse button.

For units, use arrow or WASD keys to move, left mouse button to
attack.

For constructions, use arrow or WASD keys to operate it. Click
with left mouse button over an astronaut to garrison him inside.
They improve this construction efficiency while inside and get
cover from attacks.

Further instructions inside game.

Thank you.
Foxtacy
30. Apr 2013 路 03:37 UTC
Dude... i just loved your game. Took me a while to figure it out but... it just ROCKS!

Congratulations :D
SmilingCat
01. May 2013 路 02:50 UTC
Nice minimalist RTS. I normally don't get into RTS, but I was getting into this one. Good graphics, and the music reminded me of some of the stuff Larry Fast/Synergy has done. Awesome job!
Andy West
01. May 2013 路 03:23 UTC
This is really addictive! Excellent job.
madlee
01. May 2013 路 03:46 UTC
awesome job, very enjoyable to play. great simplification of RTS style game
MaxSzlagor
01. May 2013 路 03:46 UTC
Mood is excellent - the graphics and music match well. I had a hard time knowing what to build and I couldn't figure out how to make extra astronauts (even though I built the building that makes them). Enemies also seem to take a lot of hits to kill. Nice job on creating a minimal RTS - seems like you put a lot of depth into the game given the amount of time you had. Nice work!
robcozzens
01. May 2013 路 03:51 UTC
Looks cool.
But not super clear what to do.
CosmicAdventureSquad
01. May 2013 路 04:06 UTC
This game is really fun!

Some nitpicky things: Camera controls would come in handy; I can move the camera from my base to the attacking aliens but I'd have to right-click every few buildings along the way to pull the camera over. Or if I am flying my rocket far to the right and want to build a new one, I'd be forced to physically fly my rocket until the factory is within view. Oh, and in the rocket's description, it says "right mouse button to fire" when it should be left click.

Overall, gameplay is compelling and sound design is great (I have to say, destroying an alien and hearing it squeak is pretty satisfying). The game does get pretty easy once you can build a couple rockets in between waves, but it's still really fun and I could keep on playing. Good job!

-Rosypenguin
(this is a team account)
CogComp
01. May 2013 路 14:53 UTC
Very nice mood setting
Tokken18
01. May 2013 路 15:08 UTC
Wow. This game is robust. How you managed this in 72 hours is beyond me. Well done sir. Music really sets a great mood. Visuals are simple but do their job. The AI involved is also pretty solid. All around really great job!
Yoni
01. May 2013 路 15:12 UTC
It was hard to understand how to operate things, I basically found myself pushing buttons and hoping for the best. I liked the music though, nice idea overall.
GreenPixelDev
01. May 2013 路 15:16 UTC
Great job! The core mechanic works really well and you've managed to tie together city-building and tower defense very effectively :D The art is a little too dark, though. Maybe make the buildings brighter to make them "pop" against the dark background? Other than that, no complaints!
caranha
01. May 2013 路 15:25 UTC
That is a very creative idea, and the game has a lot of interesting complexities.

While playing, I find that a way to multitask was seriously missing - I could not move back to defend my back and forward to attack at the same time - it would be nice if there was some sort of screen scrolling option (or some way to order your units to a-move).

Also, the enemy base has waaaay to much HP, and rockets (both yours and the enemy's) are too hard to hit - I could fly my rocket above the enemy base all day long without getting hit - but also without destroying him!

Well, it needs some balance, but it is a cool game

(nothing to do with the theme, though :-P)
docix
01. May 2013 路 16:32 UTC
Overall, this is a lot of fun.
I would just recommend a bit fast pace in the beginning.
Maybe bringing down the length of time to build and cost, but also bringing down the total number of astronaut support per building.
I can see this shaping up to be an awesome full blown build.
Great work!
kibertoad
01. May 2013 路 16:45 UTC
Great entry, had lots of fun with it. Please develop it further! I'd buy a polished version of this in a heartbeat.
cakemonitor
01. May 2013 路 16:47 UTC
This is a fun game and had me hooked for a little while :) I'm not sure it really fits the theme but is really good work anyway. I'd like to see slightly better AI for the astronauts - mine kept shooting into the side of a hill while the aliens on the other side of the hill shot down my buildings!
Bloated Hippo
01. May 2013 路 16:51 UTC
Great work!
Hume
01. May 2013 路 17:03 UTC
I finished this and it took me 31:00. That tells you that I was having fun for pretty much 31:00.

Loved the friendly unit AI (wander around camera), the squeaky toy alien sound effect, the variety of units. Wished I had a way to repair buildings. Killing garrisoned units when a building explodes would make this harder, maybe not better. But it surprised me when my building blew up and all four astronauts just bounced away.

Good game!
Fritzendugan
01. May 2013 路 17:12 UTC
Controls left a lot to improve upon. A hot key to switch between my army and my bases would've been nice. Also a command to make the army "stay here" or something like that would've went a long way. As well as some way to set a rally point or something. It was so frustrating to be only able to either attack with your army (and then you'd have to wait until EVERYTHING died before you had a way of getting back to your base) or sitting in your base and building up your force. Also that steep hill made it really difficult to get the tanks up over the hill. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

Wish I had more unit types, and the astronauts seemed basically useless unless I'm missing something, since the tanks and rockets were so much better at combat. The game was fun though. It was really gratifying to finally roll out on the enemy base with a massive force of tanks and rockets. Take that you bastards.

Music was appropriate and fairly well done, sound effects were effective without being annoying. Overall pretty well done for 72 hours, although I did wish there was some kind of victory screen or something at the end besides just showing me my victory time :P
Dietrich Epp
01. May 2013 路 17:33 UTC
It is seriously aggravating to try to get three tanks over to the alien base... whichever tanks I'm not controlling at the time will slip backwards down the hill. I finally got them over there only to be wiped out in less than thirty seconds--a lot of effort for not much result. But an RTS was on my "checklist" of games I wanted to see for Ludum Dare. I'll be saving this one for later, maybe I'll have more success then.
thatwhichis
02. May 2013 路 19:08 UTC
Evil aliens doooooooown! I agree a hotkey to switch back to the base might have been nice, but still ultimately enjoyable :-)
Jiddo
02. May 2013 路 20:01 UTC
This is without a doubt my favorite game so far. I'm a HUGE fan of RTS games, but they are sadly underrepresented in Ludum Dare. This one was great. I've played it longer than I did any other game yet. It took me 23 minutes to level that evil alien base with the ground.

It took a little bit of thinking to figure out how everything worked, but that just adds to the fun.

The game was well balanced in that I had just enough time to get used to things before the first attack came to my base, and when I actually started to form my own attacks, the enemy base wasn't easy enough to bring down in one single blow. I actually had to regroup and rebuild 4-5 times before I finished it.

Even the AI controlled units did their job! :)

The controls were a bit awkward, but they worked.

I ran the game on Linux using Wine, and it worked well. The sound did get a bit messed up tho.

Kudos for making such a great game!
EggDestroyer
02. May 2013 路 20:07 UTC
Although the game lacks some clearer feedbacks on selection, some balance between units and rythm and that sort of things, the whole idea of making a minimal RTS in so little time is quite impressive. Also, the game looks good and sfx/audio are fine. Good job guys :)
Jellycakes
03. May 2013 路 01:10 UTC
Really nicely done. Kept me interested and playing for 20 minutes straight. Lots of content too! Good job!
Blinked
04. May 2013 路 20:28 UTC
Very nice game, excellent job on the mood and music of the game. Side scrolling RTS games are hard to come by, but this is a very good one :D
TijmenTio
05. May 2013 路 01:15 UTC
Wow, really nice job! Found myself playing this for a long time ;)
Rafael Sales
08. May 2013 路 21:30 UTC
Great mood and music! I believe that the first enemies wave could be faster to increase the fun in the early experience. Congrats!
lightnarcissus
10. May 2013 路 04:04 UTC
Interesting simplication of a fairly complex genre. Could use some work in the sense of difficulty balancing but still it's a lot of fun for a game made during LD.
joshimoo
11. May 2013 路 19:32 UTC
Good Game.

I liked the mood (settings, graphics, audio)
I also like the depth of the game.

my suggestions for improvement would be focused on usability. creating a better user interface and decoupling the ui + controls from the individual buildings.
Also a move-able and zoom-able camera would be good.

Besides that a way to repair my buildings would be good.
Erunaamo
19. May 2013 路 20:43 UTC
Pretty fun! I like the 1-D RTS concept. As a RTS novice I appreciate that it's not too hard at first, but it does seem to matter what you do...I can imagine replaying this a few times to improve. The controls are pretty convenient once you get used to them, and I like how the astronauts bounce around in the low gravity: it looks both whimsical and realistic at once.