Forgotten Machines by SaphireS
In a world, where humans are long gone, nowadays inhabited by machines, you strive for survival. As one of the last remaining autonomous mechs you have to try and collect the valuable energy sources and fight off the enemies that try to break you for their own survival!
Collecting energy sources may grant you better abilities ...and more enemies coming after you! And the more you have, the worse it is!



Controls: Mouse + WASD
Everything except the music is made by me in 3 days, Blender/Aseprite for graphics, Unity as game engine. Wanted to try a pixelart/3D model hybrid artstyle like this for quite some time and I'm pretty happy how it turned out. :)
Music by http://ericskiff.com/music/
And of course very happy about my first Ludum Dare, been planning on taking part for years now :D
Update:
I kept developing on the project and tried to fix most of the stuff mentioned in feedback, thanks again. There's also some stuff left I wanted to originally implement but ran out of time, so pay close attention to the github repo which I will keep updating! :)
Here's a link to the current version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nvgsxdzu9byi11/LD40ForgottenMachinesUpdatedVersion.zip?dl=0
ChangeLog since Jam: * Make enemies stronger (higher shot rate and more health) over time * Upgrades are not as common now, by far not every enemy spawns one * Lower default volume to 0.4 * Added text popup to pickups, so player knows which upgrade she got * Recreate CanvasHealth prefab, versiontxt
Ratings
| Overall | 590th | 3.435⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 373th | 3.522⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 753th | 2.978⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1021th | 2.717⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 205th | 4.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 784th | 2.472⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 690th | 3.136⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
Visuals are great, game models looks really good and pleasant to look at.
On the technical notes, the camera movement is pretty jerky and makes gameplay little uncomfortable.

P.S. I played directly on the web and had zero issues with firing or anything.
@sun-wukong: I tried to create a smart camera system which focuses on the area between cursor and character. I now realize a simple but working camera system would've been better than a smart but half-assed one. Keeping it in mind next time and I'll update this one for sure.
@ahintoflime @disperse I never experienced this problem, neither did my testers, but I'll definitely look into it, sounds like quite the gamebreaker here. Could you maybe provide some infos which systems you were using if possible?
@mgadrat: Glad you like it!
@cubeeo: I worded that wrong, I didn't initially plan for anyone to get that far was what I tried to say. ^^
Another little suggestion is a tiny bit of smoothing on the camera movement. I loved how it moved with the aiming direction, but suddenly switching would throw it across quite a lot.
But overall, a really good-looking and fun game! :)
I think the pixel art on the edges/limits of the green ground are way too low res, kinda off from the rest of the look/feel. Also, I can see Unity's skybox where there's no ground limit (to the sides).
Other than that, really liked it, great work :)
@jason-kennedy: True, noted and will fix this! thx
@saramartins: Spot on observation with the texel density on the adges, need to fix that. Odd you couldn't run and fire, definitely need to look into that. Because of time constraints I only implemented a fire mode which uses a big delay in the beginning, so you get a constant fire rate when just holding down the mouse button, not one shot per mouse click. Maybe that was the issue? If so, it's on my todo list!
@king-kujito: Thanks, glad you enyojed it. Felt so too, next time I'll make sure to leave some time for balancing ;)
@local-minimum: Nice user name hehe Great observation with the sounds, putting it on my todo list! Camera will be redone too!
@ddrkirbyisq: Glad you found this one out, I'll implement a one-shot-per-click firing mechanic until the fire rate is up to a certain threshold when holding down is more convenient to fire.
Thanks to all of you, I'll checkout and rate your games now :)
That was definitely a bullet-powered experience. First off all, It's nice to see another person tackle the theme as it getting worse _to the enemy_, and I think the whole upgrade-based gameplay transmitted that theme interpretation very clearly. It was endearing to see the number and spread of bullets increasing as I collected the different upgrades found on the crates and which enemies dropped, although I never really got to the exact same level of chaos as the gifs you included in the images in the description. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
As others have mentioned though, the one thing that really felt off in regards to the gameplay was the camera controls. I felt that, both of the times I played, immediately after moving and attempting to aim, the machine became un-centred in regards to the camera, making it hard to see what exactly was in some of the sides of my surroundings. The low FOV also didn't help much in regards to this, and it would have been nice to have the camera just slightly a bit more zoomed out, especially with the previous issue present.
The graphical presentation is overall one of the best aspects of the game and I really liked the whole pixel-art inspired texture and model work. However, sometimes I would get the particles/feedback, such as the cube collecting particle and the explosions stuck on screen. I don't know if it was intended effect (although I wouldn't think so) but it felt off to see them like that. Seeing the Unity default skybox and the completely off-style grass tiles at the edges of the map was also slightly immersion breaking.
[In behalf of our team](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), congratulations on making it through your first _Ludum Dare_ with such a action packed entry, even with all the points I mentioned previously! Being able to successfully going through one is just the first step to many other great ones, and we personally can't wait to see what you create next! Cheers! :whale: