Mining Empire by Royoyo
The more work you have, the worse it is!
You're the only worker on a mining station. Station AI will give you more and more orders. How long will you tolerate her tyranny?
Controls: - WASD - Movement; - '1', '2' - Select Tools; - LMB - Use Selected Tool; - RMB - Grab object/Throw grabbed object;
Links:
https://royoyo.itch.io/mining-empire
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/703017


| HTML5 (web) | https://royoyo.itch.io/mining-empire |
| HTML5 (web) | https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/703017 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/mining-empire |
Ratings
| Overall | 458th | 3.551⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 517th | 3.372⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 587th | 3.154⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 877th | 3⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 304th | 3.949⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 604th | 2.851⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 313th | 3.594⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 44🗳️ | 32🗨️ |
However, there are few things that should be polished to get a high quality game (and you're not so far from that imo) :
- Game should pause when you're in buying menu
- When I grab an asteroid, I should be able to mine it
- There should be feedbacks about whether I'm mining or not. I mean, it was not clear to me that mining an enemy would just kill him and not give me any resources.
- I don't really see what's bad in dying, it's even better sometimes so you get quicker to your base
Besides those few points, game's already good so good job guys !
Also, the way is setup I feel like everything is moving except me, you could fix this with some movement in the background.
Anyway, great job!!
Masadow, Thanks, these are good points.
'Not pausing' was intentional, but I guess it didn't work out...
As of other ones: just lack of time ^_^
As an improvement, try to make the movement of the spaceship more obvious, as in which direction is going.
Cheers. (Morco - CyberPunks team)
donvermo, What is your browser? I've tested it and all seems ok to me.
Never really understood what I was doing though...
- it wasn't clear that the mining tool could be used to attack the enemy ships - I assumed I'd get an upgrade for that instead, and that did sort of happen with the turrets.
- it took me a while to realize that I could switch tools with 1 and 2
- I enjoyed grabbing and launching the asteroids. It wasn't very clear what was happening when the asteroid struck something, though - does it do damage to enemies? Does it do damage to the station or turrets? Does it give resources to the station? Is there a difference between the two types of asteroids?
These kinds of problems are inevitable when making a game in a weekend, of course, but it does seem like your best avenue for improvement right now is in usability. Great job!
Matthias Schedel, yes. It's very unclear, but you can attack enemies with you Drill('1') or place turrets, other thing - you can grab enemy and throw them at the station(station destroys everything that hits it)
knexer, Great points!
- I should provide some visual feedback to attacks.
- Also, I should make some sort of soft tutorial for tools switching and grab mechanics.
- At first, asteroids damage everithing based on their speed. But before release I turned this off because it was making game a lot more chaotic(even now it's pretty chaotic).
- Station is designed to destroy asteroids on collision and gather all the resources.
- There are 3 types of asteroids, based on their 'richness'. The bigger it in size and the more bluish thing it has, the more resources it provides.
Thanks again, Feedback helped me realize what I need to improve the most.
The fact that the station menu doesn't pause the game adds to the time pressure, there's hardly time to read.
I got to the end screen kind of suddenly though, not sure what happened there. I had 4 stations and then it just ended?
Cool graphics and funny mechanics. Just the controls disturbed me a bit. The W must make the ship accelerate instead of jsut going up. Good job anyway =)
- I was thrown into a crowd of enemy spaceships and there is no time for me to get familiar with the game controls and mechanics.
- When I was happy building my empire, it tolds me that the game ends and thanks for playing. Lack of game goal. I didn't know the win condition
You've got the gift, I believe you will be a great game developer as you gain experience.
Expecting a post-jam version
1. Check if WebGL enabled in your browser.
2. Check this build: https://simmer.io/@Royoyo/mining-empire . It may be problem with later WebGL version.