Asolar by krunoslav

Do not let the city produce power: destroy its central plants.
Controls
Arrows or WASD to move.
1,2, 3 and 4 to throw bombs.
Rules
If the city generates more than 2000 power units, you lose.
If you get more than 2000 destruction points, you win.
Dynamics
The city is modeled by a celullar automaton. + There are 5 types of buildings: + Houses + Apartments + Factories + Power plants + Banks + Apartments appear when the density of houses is high. + Factories and banks appear when the density of appartments is high, but they can not be together. + You get points when you destroy buildings + 1 for Houses + 2 for Apartments + 1 for Factories + 1 for Power plants + 10 for Banks + You level up when you reach a threshold of destruction points. + Destroy factories to avoid that power plants appears. + Destroy banks to level up faster.
Mysc
Asolar means devastate in spanish. I like it because it make me think in not-solar: darkness.
Why celullar automata? I would like to make a complex game where you have to control the city indirectly, just changing the rules of automata. It could be interesting, I hope.
I tried to approach differently the Theme. Here you are not running out of power, it is the CPU that is in this situation.
Buildings
Houses

Apartments

Factories

Power Plant

Bank

| Windows | http://atakovat.com/asolar.zip |
| macOS | http://atakovat.com/asolarOs.app.zip |
| Linux | http://atakovat.com/asolarLinux.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/asolar |
Ratings
| Overall | 475th | 3.286⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 269th | 3.393⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 215th | 3.429⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 511th | 3.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 539th | 3.214⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 248th | 2.864⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 519th | 3.038⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
I play this game until the end.
What I liked:
- The building art style is super cute
- I had a lot of fun playing it and destroying everything around.
- I like the city spread
- Unlock bigger bomb is exiting
What I disliked:
- I got stuck on a building when it grow on top of me
- Sometimes the controls can be a little tricky.
- The character art didn't really match the city
Overall I had fun, thanks :)
Great job!
It was difficult to understand the actual goal at first. I thought I had to search for the power plants and only destroy them. Then I figured it out, but I think the feedback for the player could be improved to make things more intuitive and avoid getting lost:
- Use some effect to show the area of explosions to understand more easily how much damage each bomb does
- A gauge for the global level of energy would be easier to read
- A gauge for the player level as well
- Maybe some other feedback on how much energy decreases when you destroy buildings? So you could start aiming at specific ones
- Direction of the power plants (maybe just some arrows around you) so you have an idea where you should rather go
I hope you plan to keep working on this project! It's very promising.
For example, you could have the game happen by night, and have more and more light around when the city produces more energy, and some blinking effects when you destroy stuff and turn the energy level down.
Same for the player, maybe it could be a team, and more members come to join when you pass levels.
I admit that your second solution would be better but it would depend on how much I will work in the next version. If I make a next version, it would have different levels to be less monotonic.
There is something unexplainably fun about blowing up cities. Its hard to put your finger on it.
Anyway, I really liked the concept of cellular automation in a world that is actually part of the game. Thankfully nothing like The Game of Life (Conway's of course, not the one where you have a family of kids, though that is just as bad), which is more of a simulation than a game of any sort.
I was a little disappointed that you dropped out of audio, I thought the background music and explosion sounds were quite good.
The graphics were pretty good, although the main character could have used a bit more detail probably. I know he is suppose to be a robber kind of person, but in the middle of the day, usually things aren't all black.
The gameplay was pretty fun, and although there might have been one there and I was just too focused on getting around to notice it, a count-down bar would have been a cool thing to have to know when your next bomb would be available, at least early in the game. Towards the end, you have so many bombs that you are just using the most expensive one there is since the thing limiting you is your movement speed, not your ammunition.
Anyway, this was a fun game. I spent quite a bit of time playing it :)
The game is really fun to play, as it is just watching the city spreading in real time around you. Maybe a little bit of animations on tile type change could have helped in noticing the growth even more, and also I would have changed the controls from a WASD to a mouse based game (click to place bombs and avoid getting stuck in buildings). Other than this, it feels really really good, I will probably make all my teammates play it! Continue programming cellular automata man!!
There are a few things that I think could improve the game, though.
First off, particles, screenshake, and explosion sprites! Its a game where your primary interaction with the world is blowing it, so it feels a little underwhelming when buildings just dissapear.
Another thing that I felt could be improved is how you handle the energy producing buildings. Buildings that produce energy could have particles around them to indicate that these are the prime targets, and the player could have some sort of radar which will guide them to nearby sources of power.
The graphics are good, but because they are not aligned to the pixel grid when scrolling, there is a weird effect where pixels are different sizes as the camera moves. That's really hampering my enjoyment of the game because its a little bit nauseating for me :(
Overall, great work though, and I'd love to see this concept pushed further.
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Graphics were great for this game, and music and sound were well done. The way the city grew and expanded was really cool, though the speed of the character was a bit slow, especially when you get stuck at a dead end road, it felt like I wasted so much time getting back to the center or to new buildings to splode. Getting stuck on buildings instead of sliding up the street at a slower rate was also a bit of a nuisance. Those are a bit nitpicky and the dead end one would be really hard to change due to the nature of the city generation. Honestly this would be super cool as a screen saver! I could just sit and watch the city being grown and blown up over and over for a long time!
The only negative thing about the gameplay is the character gets stuck a lot. Buildings could block the way, but I think the character should keep moving even if close to a building.
Great job!
jokes aside, it's a fun game but there are some drawbacks:
- the movement doesn't feel very fluid
- you get stuck under a spawning house often
- the game is quite hard
It's still got a high level of polish and good audio and stuff!