The Unfortunate Story of Hans by Bloc97
You play as Hans, second in command of the gigabus SP4-C3, sailing for Sector 6UD-7H3M3. Unfortunately for you, the captain is not what you would consider as an agreeable person. Following an unfortunate incident, your ship crashes on an harsh planet. Armed with your only resource - space, it is up to you to take command and guide the survivors to safety.
The main focus of this game is in the story, some base management and your choices
Unfortunately, anything past Day 30 (including the ending events) are currently unimplemented. Please consider this game as an demo prototype. Also, there's a lack of save feature, but the whole demo can be played in under 30 minutes.
While making the game, we ran out of time, but hey, according to Einstein, space and time is intertwined. So in a way, we ran out of space...
Controls
Mouse
Keyboard (Optional)
Hotkeys
Q: Open/Close Journal
F: Toggle between Retro and Modern Fonts
For those who have difficulties reading the retro font, pressing F will toggle to a high-definition font, which is much clearer, has less of a 'retro' feel, but has a 'futuristic' look. ;)
Credits:
Amba - Programming, Story
Bloc97 - UI/Graphics Design, Programming, English Proofreading
Chloroplaste - Setting, Writing, Story
Changelog:
v0.01 - Initial Release
v0.02 - Final LDJ42 Release, small bug fixes, added thank you message.
v0.02a - Hotfix for Linux users. Fixed sound engine error blocking the UI buttons. Now if there is an error playing sounds, the buttons will still work.
v0.02b - Hotfix for Linux users. Fixed sounds not playing on Linux with certain sound devices.v0.10 (Ongoing) - Fix graphical glitches, UI engine refactoring, performance improvements, fullscreen mode.
v0.11 (Ongoing) - Fix build/debris bug, Logic engine refactoring, performance improvements, add tooltips.
For those who have difficulties reading the retro font, pressing F will toggle to a high-definition font, which is much clearer, has less of a 'retro' feel, but has a 'futuristic' look. ;)
Java JRE is required to run the game.
Ratings
| Overall | 723th | 3.264⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 742th | 3.083⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 767th | 3⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 726th | 3.338⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1007th | 2.767⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 694th | 2.586⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 384th | 2.986⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 733th | 2.972⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 85🗳️ | 119🗨️ |
I would have liked to hear maybe some ambient background sound or music, but given the constraints of the jam, that's totally a fine oversight in the wake of the final product.
Love the story integration, things are pretty polished. Got stuck pretty early by building far too many material factories at once, one restart later I had a handle on things, and died to monsters and my own poor planning. Overall the mechanics were sensible enough. I love unfolding games like these. :)
My biggest source of confusion was the space used / remaining meter, top-right. I never really could figure out how my space was being calculated; later in the game I discovered that debris was a thing. Is that displayed anywhere? Being able to see debris more clearly (if it was there I couldn't figure out which number it was) and the space consumed by active buildings after they were built would have been super handy. That's nit-picking though, overall this is pretty solid!
Think that a really simple few tracks for the intro / day to day gameplay would have added a lot to the overall feel. Really enjoyed the presentation and the overall idea
Both fonts are also somewhat hard to read, the futurist one only because it is too small and I don't know how to make it bigger.
Anyway, I really like the concept, the writing is awesome and the game is charming overall. Hope I can find the chicken nuggets if you guys finish the game :D!
@ramanujo Do you have the Java Runtime Environment installed on your computer? The game will not start without it.
Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)
And damn those monsters ripped me apart.
it was a great time exploring the imagenary world of hans
the simplystic graphic are awesome
Good Job guys
Thanks for the feedback! We are happy to hear you enjoyed it as much as we did when making the game.
@g4mr @comenoha
Poor Hans, he's the one doing all the hard work and decisions. At least he's in good shape, that is if you keep him that way.
@acdimalev
Thanks for the feedback, we actually are considering changing some game mechanics as they felt a bit forced. We think you are right, the debris should appear somewhere as a card icon in the settlement, at least to indicate they exist. Maybe also scrap the top right counter altogether for blank icons in the main screen.
Also, the weird flickering is caused by my shoddy in-house engine. ;) I am currently fixing it. I hoped and hoped during the jam that it would not appear to much and not be too much of an annoyance.
Sadly, not being able to dismantle buildings is one of our forced game mechanics. We are trying to change that, maybe allowing deconstruction but it has to be somewhat punitive. However we do believe after one or two retries the player will be smart enough to figure out a balance of what to build, and won't need to deconstruct anything.
@alexrose
Thanks! We really appreciate the fact that you liked the writing style. We were trying to go for an unique style where it is both serious and funny at the same time, I'm glad that you found the story amusing.
@greenbluebit
Your feedback blew us away too! We did not expect someone to like our game this much.
@thefoppian @shapkofil
We really went full throttle on the text-only aspect. It was our goal to try to make old-school text games look like the modern style games have nowadays. I'm glad the UI was compelling enough for you guys.
Wow! I'm glad you guys took your time to give us both constructive criticism and commendation. We're sincerely happy that you guys liked our game.
P.S Thanks for playing my game and the nice feedback :)
Try opening cmd.exe, and type "java". If the command is not found, your Java path is not registered. Reinstalling Java should do the trick. Or you can find your java.exe in programfiles/java/bin/java.exe and run the game from that.
`java -jar SpaceSurvival.jar`
if you're not in the right folder you can type the full path like this
`java -jar /home/folder/folder2/Unfortunate_Story_of_Hans_v0.02_LDJ42_Final/SpaceSurvival.jar`
Pros:
- Nice mood and interface
- Fun experience
Cons:
- Not very clear on the resources (what is being produced, when/how space increases...)
- Couldn't find nuggets...
Obs:
I know I'm not suppose to consider what happens after day 30, but just curious why my buildings started to disappear and then a game over happened by day 35
Cheers!
Edit: `v0.02_b` fixes most sound problems found on Linux machines. Linux support is more complicated than anticipated. Some OpenJDK implementations are different from Oracle JDK implementations, causing unanticipated bugs.
@team-infernus Yea, may one day the Captain find his tendies.
@jaydek We didn't forget accessibility features!
@hueson Thanks for the feedback!
I like the novelty of this game and the storyline is very interesting. I played text based games before, not many but some, and I always like them but adding the base management to the mix was a great addition here. I think space/material/debris/parts combination need some explanation because I didn't understand most of it, to be honest. I tried to build a building when my space was full and then my buildings started to be destroyed. Is this because there must be some space to build another building? If so then how do I get more space? I chose once to prepare the base for defence and that cleared some space for me but these events are rare so what is the alternative.
Regardless of all this, I think the complications in resources could be the reason for this game's success if you used it wisely meaning that it needs to have a clear purpose. Maybe it already does and I just didn't figure it out, I'm not sure. But I enjoyed playing this game a lot and I see big potential for much more. Well done :)
The game is interesting, I like the simple building survival nature. Nothing really wrong with the mechanics though would be interesting to sell buildings.