Really cool game, nice art and effects. Well done.

@artbohr wow that was fast! thanks so much! It has a few quirks but I really gave it my all. the compo time limit is so_much_harder thanks for playing! I will add your game to my stream list for twitch https://www.twitch.tv/tiger_j you can see the schedule on the channel page :)

the pace of the action is quite slow. But well implemented, and seems to implement the theme.

This one is intense! I was expecting it to be fairly straightforward, but moving the cursor while the arm is in motion takes some getting used to, I got a lot better at remembering it as the game went on. I think it would be nice if the crane could remember a few commands, so that it didn't overwrite if I clicked again while it was moving.

I did run into a small issue while I was rushing towards the end, where a box got stuck halfway on one of the teleporters so I couldn't drop things on the teleporter anymore :(. I would have taken a screenshot for you, but I lost a few seconds later.

Graphics and sound are pretty good too!

I like it. It has a nice feel to it. The concept is simple, yet executed well. The audio is nothing special fits well enough. The graphics are also quite nice, with a crisp feel that is fitting for both a shipping warehouse and spaceport. The main issue is that the claw is a little too slow, with the entire game feeling slow because of it. Otherwise, great work man.

The concept is cool! The only thing I don't like much is using key 'E' to pick up and drop. (It is too closer to AWSD so I can't use two hands to control)

@squirmonkey I know that bug :) I had it happen a few times myself but I had to submit :)

@omniorcus thanks! It has the action and excitement of a shipping warehouse!

@gaoyuan-chen understandable! I will do better next time to have additional controls and/or options thanks for your feedback!

this game is like a job. I need more reward for my work!

@bloodjohn I agree. After playing this I am certain I never want to become a docking bay.

Thank you for playing my game on your stream. In return, I played your game on my stream at https://www.twitch.tv/saoigames

You can re-watch for my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/297054468

Had a lot of fun watching the development on this! You did a great job with the theme. Definitely felt like I was running out of space.
I was noticing while playing that the numpad would have been a good key combination if the 5 key was an action key.

@saoi-games WOW thanks for playing it! Your feedback is great and matches what I was struggling with before the deadline. This is the first game I have made where I was not fond of the entry. If I had more time I would have refined the controls and timing of the game more as well as allowed the player to queue up commands in sequence. I really wanted to have a system that would let you for example: action button on a green package, have it move and still be smart enough to pick it up when you queued up the movement to drop it off. Really sad I was not able to deliver the experience I wanted to in time.

Thanks for streaming! I will give you a shout out tonight on my channel :)

Love the art! You are developing a real skill for it (and I should do the same). The music is fitting the mood perfectly. Maybe a next time you can try to duplicate your pattern a few times a just add a little bit of variation? It's a bit hard to catch the boxes, especially when they are moving, but I love the concept. I'm thinking this could be great with a drag-and-drop mechanic, and maybe upgrades to buy more teleporters, buy more room to store... Might also work great on mobile? But you know better. Excellent job mate!

I first thought it would be easy, but I was very wrong! I really felt the "running out of space" while I was playing! Very good work!
Just one thing I would improve: It was sometimes a little bit tricky to catch boxes. It was especially frustrating in late game when you try to optimize your movements. Butthat's just a detail, i really enjoyed it! GG

Nice little game :)
Fits really nicely the theme !
The only thing was that the music was a bit repetitive in my opinion.
Thank you for the review on your channnel and keep it up !

A good take on the theme and nice presentation (UI could be clearer though). I found the game a little frustrating to play and I'm wondering if mouse controls would have improved it? I know that using the arrows means you have to navigate around the grid, adding to the effort required by the player to accomplish the goal. However, I didn't find it a rewarding effort (if that makes sense); I felt like the controls were a challenge, rather than them enabling me to do what I wanted.

@kodiqi you are spot on! what a great thing to learn from this jam. I totally agree. Thanks for playing!

Simple to understand but a bit hard to get the handle. The crane delay offers an extra test for the challenge that already is the inventory management, but is a fresh twist on this genre, that was a little saturated in this jam. Nice.

Neat little game! It got very hectic (in a good way) as it progressed. I definitely agree with the above comments about mouse controls and queued movements being good ideas. I got frustrated when I would go to pick up a box off the conveyor and it would move before the arm got there, but I guess that's just something you have to learn to anticipate. Nice job!

@jasperarmstrong yeah, I thought learning the belt timer would be a "skill" that the player would acquire but it ended up just being an annoyance. This is my least favorite of all my jam entries over the years but I feel it has given me the most reward in personal lessons with players. Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

One minor thing: when the player puts multiple boxes on the same space, and then moves to that spot again, it is hard to make out which box he picked up. There is a little (space) LED in the robot. Currently it is off or purple. It would be neat if it was in the color of the current box.

Otherwise, it is a nice little game! I actually felt like a part in a factory due to the unusual moving mechanic, and soon enough I came up with more and more strategies for placing and sorting.

@halfmule that's a brilliant suggestion and would be easy to implement too. thanks! I am glad you experienced the factory feeling, getting the player to feel that was the initial design goal.
Thank you for playing!

Very unique concept. The art and music was good. The only thing that annoyed me was that it felt random whether or not you had to press E once or twice to pick something up. Other that that great game.

I don't know about other players but I really had a hard time playing this, I think this game would actually do really well if it is a turn-based game rather than real-time. I like the mechanic in this game, having the conveying basically doubles the cost for each action (picking A from X to Y). I do think this will make up for a great turn based game. Anyhow, great work putting everything together for the compo, I failed that so, good well done!

I could see this game playing well as a mobile game. Took me a little while to figure out what I was trying to do, since the teleporters were not matching box colors and then I saw the color would change and that you could move boxes away from the teleporter and just on the ground. Might have been nice to know what color the space was going to change to, not sure if there was a predetermined or if it was random.

@dk5000p totally random. there is a nice amount of bugs in this compo

@tigerj we all have bugs, just great to get a game out. Drag and drop with Mouse might have been better but the animation wouldn't have really been there then.

@dk5000p yeah, I’m going to resurrect this in a week for optical optimize jam (https://itch.io/jam/optical-optimize) and add a queue for commands, test mouse input, probably allow the player to buy command slots and other variable changes (speed...)

@tigerj great. I saw you talking about that on your stream

I won't be able to add much to the current comments. I liked the concept and thought you did a good job.

I really enjoyed this game, reminded me a bit of Tetris, in a certain way. The game matches the theme perfectly, a cargo company was IMO a fantastic take on the theme. I think you were a bit generous with the amount of health, I reckon this game would've worked just as well, if not better (if you consider more tension to be better) with instant failure. Still, I thought that the crane mechanism was fantastic, in that it actually took time to move things further away, so even if you weren't running out of space in the whole facility, you were still running out of space that is close enough to move objects to the teleporters quickly. Overall, a brilliant game, very deserving of high ratings!

@mikethewayne wow thanks so much for the high praise and for playing! Buffing the health up was a compo hack to make it easier when I had little time left. I’m going to enter optical jam next week on itch.io and update the game. I’ll probably use your feedback and reduce the health!

Thanks!

Despite the time constraints and the bugs, I think this turned out well and I had an enjoyable time. It's a simple but elegant concept. I love the snappy 2-step process of moving around the shipments, and the sense of urgency when the line piles up near the end zone. I found it all appropriately stressful, going well with the setting and the gameplay style. For purposes of speedy box transferring, my preferred control scheme was to use WSAD and the control key. One graphic-related feature I think I would find pretty convenient is to be able to see the color of the box you're currently holding a bit more distinctly. (Maybe the crane changes color?) Looking forward to future projects!

Wonderful feedback! Thanks @happyhour

Wow simple and tense. I thought it was really good. I am not sure I enjoyed it, but I do now feel alive and that my concentration levels are raised!

@arron-fowler thanks! I read your explanation of clap-bang and I’ll stream it again in a few minutes

Pretty fun game, @tigerj, good job! :) It took a bit to understand what I have to do (I was moving shipments around, trying to stack the ones with the same color, but not moving them to the right place), but I got it in the end. I have, however, a pretty small complaint about the controls. They are a bit fast (when I wanted to move to one tile, I was moving to the one below, and so on), and a bit cluttered - I have pretty big hands, and Arrow keys + right CTRL is totally not going to work for me, at least if I want to be fast. By the way, I am playing on a laptop where the arrow keys are right next to the right CTRL, so this may be the issue :). Also, another small problem I had was that after dropping the shipment in the right spot, it took a while to change its color and I couldn't see it if the cursor was right above it. However, this may be by design :). Anyways, I had fun playing your game, and I especially liked the graphics! :)

@luca1152 thanks so much for the feedback and gameplay!

Simple and well thought, I like it. I'd prefer a mouse control option, but I suppose that the WASD adds to the overall difficulty. I've think there may be a bug with the snap to grid implementation, but it's enjoyable nonetheless.

Good music & art too!

@korso there are a few bugs there:) thanks for the play and kind words!!

I really liked this! I've played some other cargo management ones this time round, and I've definitely liked this one the most. I like that this cut straight to it with the crane movement system, and the sound was just right!

@ctrble awesome I am glad you liked it. There were a few bugs I had to leave in hopefully they didn't bite too much. I'm going to polish it next week a little and then shelve it.

Interesting game, it fits perfectly with the theme~
It indeed gets stressful when the space fills up, knowing the belt comes in faster than you can put the boxes.

Also not sure if it's a bug, but on my second round, I got a box stuck on the conveyor belt that I couldn't pick up.

It's a pretty good and challenging game you made you here, but I'm just wondering to make life a bit more easier, could you have considered stacking cargo a possible mechanic? I think what could have made this game more fun would've been another goal for the player to keep track of, or possibly some item that acts as a bonus to the score. Of course, if you were to implement this new mechanic later on, the conveyor belt would probably need to be slowed down to compensate for more multi-tasking.

@lexyvil totally busted! congrats!!
@bustosman yeah I ran out of time to do some of the other ideas I had. One was to connect them side by side with matching colors and have a larger pad to send them off with. Another was to ignore color all together and use shape based mechanic imagine Tetris shaped peaces that would lock out certain patterns on a 3x3 grid of pads. essentially playing Tetris on a 3x3 playfield that has a cooldown for each section. Ambition got the best of me though and I had to scrap the prototypes for a color matching game. damn compo time limits!! ;)

Very fun, requesting mouse support though.

This is very cool! The art work and audio are amazing. I found this incredibly difficult; this is a great challenge! Well done :)

@chadrbanks 10-4 will have that soon during optical jam in a couple days thanks!
@adonisdevs wow thanks a lot! yeah it is harder than I had hoped, in the end when I ran out of time I just threw extra life instead of balancing (ran out of time story of my LD life)

What is optical jam?

Nice one! I like the concept, and the way you must store some cargo or else lose everything. I wish that you could see the colour of the teleporter quicker after dropping off a package, rather than having to move away to see.

My preference would be for the cargo deliveries to come in waves with breathing room between, and reduce the health to 3 - then when things start going wrong it's a lot faster.

I can imagine the concept working quite well as a mobile game, where you can just tap the next spot you want the crane to go!

@chadrbanks Optical jam (hosted by https://tdelarosa723.itch.io/ (@troyD)) this month has a theme to take a previous game/project and rework it for 7 days https://itch.io/jam/optical-optimize I will be streaming all the games :)
@radical-dog very specific feedback with regards to the mechanics I really appreciate that and will take it into consideration next week as I update a fork of the game.

Very cool game :) At first I thought it would be some sokoban clone but I was surprised. I would either add another button to drop - pick up packages or give better indication if a package is being held.

I had some problem picking up the crate. otherwise the game is nice even if it's not really my type of game.

I managed to drop a box of the wrong color onto one of the goals and it got stuck. :frown:

Also, perhaps it's just me, but I found the white boxes quite confusing. The first time I dropped a colored box onto a goal it turned white, and I thought it had closed -- it took me quite a while to realize that it was in fact just waiting for a white box!

Otherwise, really good entry. Very different to a lot of the other games I've played this time, and very complete.

thanks @pennycook sorry about the bugs, I had someone also manage to lock themselves out of the playable area, ah nothing like jam games.. Nice note on the white boxes, I think I will drop them when I update the game this weekend for Optical Jam. I appreciate you taking the time to leave feedback! Have a great day!

Very good job! But I had some problem, the blue crate never come ^^ The music is good, and the concept nice.

Nailed it on the theme! :ok_hand:
There were times that I had to hit the [E] action key to pickup the crates..

It gets addicting, attempting to try out various sorting strats.
Best solution involved at some point to utilize the drop the crates at the conveyor belt for easier access and to buy time..

Optional suggestions:
- Conveyor belt (split into 2 lanes), and option to either:
- "Hold-it!": Temporary stop the one of the lanes..
- "Return to Sender": Reverse its direction.. (Only this time if crates went back-up and no ship in docking area then you'll see it fly to space; perhaps limit to a number of tolerable 'space-mulligans')
- "Vertical-Cycling": For controls of the crane, there are times it would feel nice that by simply move further down its limit the crane would cue to automatically move back to the top (like cycling its values in a loop)
- "Latch-mode": another alternative control scheme for crane mechanic; hold [e] action key to pick up and let go to drop.. or have opportunity to rearrange dropped boxes on conveyor belt
- Power-up drops (just to name a few..):
- Control-time;
- Stack boxes (act like multiplier but heavy, slow response in transit);
- Auto-pilot (automatically pick nearest box to correct teleporter for a limited time)
- Repair (Recover Health)
- "Key-Sort": boxes are sorted to its Alpha+Numeric [eg. battleship-esque]ID: eg. range: Horizontal A-M (1-13)[note: not including the conveyor-belt tiles] and 1-9 vertical; Whereas [9D] and [9H] are the teleporter coords.. type or key-in coords to have the robo-crane pickup and drop towards its destination.

My best score as of this writing: 0004900 :dizzy: