Lava Lamp Factory by Jcourt

made by Jcourt for LD 40 (JAM)

You own a Lava Lamp Factory. Your goal is to make a Golden Lava Lamp. As you sell more Lava Lamps, demand becomes lower and they are worth less.

NOTE: If you destroy a factory or resource in, you will also have to destroy any transport bots carrying Lava Lamps produced at said factory/resource in. If you don't they just run around in circles and generally brake everything that goes near them.

Sorta-Tutorial-Thing:

You should start by clicking on the structures button at the bottom of the screen (it will open the structures window) and build at least one resource in, at least one factory, and at least one resource out. You need robots to move resources and lava lamps around. They are in the workers tab. In order to sell Lava Lamps, you have to get resources from resource-ins, bring them to factories, and then bring the lava lamps to a lava lamp out. eventually you'll need to get some upgrades, or the stuff you already have won't be able to make any money, and you'll lose. Remember, workers cost money to maintain.

Some more Images: First Screenshot.JPG

Windows	https://jcourt325.itch.io/lava-lamp-factory
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/lava-lamp-factory

Ratings

Overall	1005^th	2.921⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	927^th	2.842⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	630^th	3.1⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Theme	928^th	2.9⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	978^th	2.632⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	675^th	2.719⭐	18🧑‍⚖️
Mood	981^th	2.639⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Given		19🗳️	14🗨️

Feedback

nardandas

05. Dec 2017 · 05:26 UTC

The game was a bit abstract, and the movement of the little guys was often frustrating. When I first tried to play, I built a factory before a resource in, and the game seemed to bug out, with the little guys not moving at all.

Kramdar

05. Dec 2017 · 06:22 UTC

Managing demand could make for interesting economics in a factory building game like this, the only problem is that demand keeps going down. With a method to increase demand at a cost like marketing or rotating colors the game could have a longer lifecycle. Placing some structures is a little wonky and results in the bots having trouble getting there and sources that can't be reached will never disappear and only lure more bots in to get stuck. That being said, the progression was satisfying and I enjoyed building up the factories. Good job!

disperse

10. Dec 2017 · 02:35 UTC

We liked this game a lot. Is it winnable? I tried leaving it up for a couple hours after building a yellow factory but the demand went down to %0.006 and it looked like we'd never get the 1.2 million we'd need to build the golden factory...

LoneWolfDev

13. Dec 2017 · 16:43 UTC

Great game, but sometimes the robots do whatever they want hahaha

Tuomo

19. Dec 2017 · 12:26 UTC

First of all: I almost didn’t play your game because of the graphics. Those fully saturated colors are an eyesore and literally hurt eyes. Never use full saturation in such a large amounts, especially red with green. I liked the concept. It’s interesting to see economics simulation built around a niche item. I just hope you’d flesh out the economics bit more, like earlier suggested about demand for different colored lamps. Also AI wasn’t the best. It felt as after playing a while my biggest bottleneck was getting the bots work (or destroying ones that had bugged out). Overall there were lots of interesting elements here, the bots and managing a production, but execution felt bit unfinished.

GeroX

27. Dec 2017 · 03:22 UTC

I like the game, i especially like the music

Rosik

27. Dec 2017 · 08:31 UTC

As I understand you can move camera only by WASD and couldn't zoom out or rotate. That not most comfortable controls.Bots also choose factories in strange way. I have resources to 3 factories, but they always go to one of them, so I must have resourse for every factory and walls betwen them? By the way walls collide with center big lamp if you hover them near, while choosing place to build.

TheMonsterFromTheDeep

27. Dec 2017 · 08:55 UTC

I would say that the game's biggest flaw is that bots really are quite unpredictable. I can't really see any way to make sure that all my factories are being utilized, and in fact all but two of them ever got any use.

I also feel like there's something wrong with how the economics in the game are presented, but I can't quite put my finger on it, so I'll just say that perhaps they should be given a little more consideration.

almost

27. Dec 2017 · 10:22 UTC

Resource games where you just keep building stuff and getting more money can be fun.

Other than the bots colliding with each other, it didn't seem to get much worse. (Though the bots did tend to collide with each other and get stuck) The building indicators had rigidbodies, so they sometimes spun around or fell down. I also never found a use for the wall. I wanted to move the camera around with the mouse (but I eventually found that WASD works).