Running out of robots by Offz
Make sure you read the rules, the game is hard to understand without a tutorial! (Don't worry, we've got images and videos to help you out)

First Ludum Dare, the game's got a lot of bugs that I know and don't know of. Please be sure to report any bugs you find! Thanks!
How to play the game:
You play as Captain Tamre, trying to survive as long as you can on your space ship before the power runs out. (Control him using the "WASD" keys)

As the Captain you get to control robots.
Each robot has a battery, when it dies the robot dies

On you right is your system power bar,

You can left-click it to get a battery charge robots with (by right-clicking on them)!

Robots can be sent to work stations by left-clicking on the robot and right-clicking on the station (Stations light up green when hovered above while robots light up when selected).

Robots give an icon from time to time. A robot will only do a task matching this icon (For example, an engine icon means a robots will only work on the engine);

If a robot with the matching icon is standing at its station, the station will charge up.

If you want to change the icon to the station the robot is currently at (To keep it charging) you can use the screwdriver (bottom left!) to play a minigame and convince the robot (To win the minigame click the red squares to make all of them green and dont hover your mouse above the light gray walls).

This game gets harder the more a robot works. To reset a robot's minigame difficulty, you must send it to an entertainment station. The room is split into 2 sides, the left are the entertainment stations. (Entertainment stations in red, work stations in blue).

An entertainment station does not generate power, it simply resets the convincing minigame difficulty and makes the robots speedier
Well, you got to the end (That's surprising in this day and age) congrats! Now go play the game!
| Windows | https://offz.itch.io/running-out-of-robots-reupload |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/running-out-of-robots |
Ratings
| Overall | 298th | 3.368⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 401th | 3⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 112th | 3.632⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 140th | 3.842⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 228th | 3.526⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 166th | 2.941⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 281th | 3.059⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
I like the idea very much, though. Maybe this could be more interesting if the robots had their own movement, so you had to "convince" them to move onto more important things and hope they'd be efficient enough. :P
- What is the point of moving the captain at all?
- How do you generate power for the ship? Does each work station have a different function?
- How are you supposed to play the minigame? Do you just click on every square? It doesn't make any sense to have green turn to red to indicate success! I played it a few times and the icon didn't change, does that mean I failed?
And some observations:
- It's confusing to use the left mouse button for some things and the right button for other things. You should simply use the left button to do things and the right button to cancel whatever you've selected.
- It's hard to tell what's selected, the green tint could be a bit more obvious.
- It's not easy to tell what each station icon means.
- The word "charge" is used for a number of things and it can get confusing. Robots can charge entertainment stations so they get charged or they can charge work stations to charge the ship, but the ship's charge can also be used to charge the robots themselves. See what I mean?
- I'm guessing the robots are actually lazy monkeys in space suits because, first, they're so lazy they decide where they want to go and don't go there until you tell them to and, secondly, they need to be convinced to follow your orders.
But my biggest question is this: What's supposed to be the point of the game? Is the challenge to simply send the robots where they want to go? Clearly not, because you have a tool to change their minds. But then, what should you change their minds to? I guess you should send them to be charged when they're low on battery and make them work when they're full of energy. But you can also charge them by consuming your ship's energy. Or maybe I can just let them die?
I felt disoriented, I couldn't even figure out what my goal was, much less how and when to use my tools. Another problem is that the minigame feels out of place. If it's supposed to be a fast-paced management game, why does time stop every few seconds so I can solve a puzzle? That suggests to me that the wrench tool is supposed to be used rarely (which I don't think is true), but even then it's a huge break of pace. It reminds me of one of the developers of Diablo mentioning in a talk that playtesters wanted food and cooking to be in game. It's completely out of the focus.
Sorry for my harsh criticism, but playing this didn't feel fun because I couldn't understand the game, even after reading that carefully illustrated tutorial. I think half the problems are in the gameplay design and half in the interface. At least the graphics aren't bad!
Overall, the core idea is good and the game is fine, but it is a bit confusing and tends to be a bit boring after a while. Also, there's no way to quit the game when running in fullscreen x(
Good job for the game, but I'm sure there are some things to improve to make it really good :)
I have to admit that I first tried without reading your post, hoping that it's be intuitive but after my first game I came back here and read the instructions, too bad that you couldn't make a tutorial, still pretty fun for a jam, liked the graphics, neat pixel art!
The minigame is cool too, well done