Power or die by Aterlamia
First ever submission.
I am not fully happy with how much I have done, too many bugs still. But to not let it go to waste here is the submission.
STORY
Because of an accident, you are now in control over the lives and deaths of a colony. Because you have to keep the power going.
Losing condition
Have 0 power either because you don't deliver enough power to sustain your colony or because you are not looking what you are spending and build a building with an to high cost.
Winning condition,
research the perpetual machine to give you unlimited power.
controls
Try to keep your colony going until you have researched the perpetual machine by choosing what to build and when to build it. But be aware new colonist arrive every 2 minutes and they will use energy as well.
Middle mouse button moves the map. The only building clickable at this moment is the science building so you can actually win.
extra information
I jut read the comments, to clarify the game is meant to be fast paced and short and you probably will die a lot, it is meant to give you the feeling of urgency. But after the first colonist arrive the dialog should tell you what to do. If you build a house those 10 settlers will not cost you any energy anymore (but you do pay the energy for the house of course)
Game information
Some information as it is missing in the game and adding it now would be cheating.
What do the buttons mean
What to do
As soon as you start you will get a dialog that tells you what to do but here short the steps
- Build a mine on the coal patch, it should be the only place you can build it.
- The mine will start working but your power is draining faster.
- As soon as the mine has mined a total of 1 coal (coal increments 0.104 every second so wait about 10 seconds. As soon as the power plant kicks in you will neither lose or gain energy and be stable.
- Colonist will arrive. The dialog explains that colonist do not need special houses but every one of them cost energy as long as they live in the central builing. you will see your power drains fast as that is 0.1 energy per person.
- Build a house, houses do cost energy to build and as upkeep however that is only 0,06 energy and can house up to 14 colonists. (good deal i think ;) )
- You are still losing power however the mine produces enough coal for 2 additional powerplants so build one more to be in a stable state again.
- after the second powerplant you are informed that you can research more stuff if you build a science station however the science station will cost energy to build an as upkeep. ALso the research will cost additional power.
- Do what you want, After this you can chose keep playing untill you have nothing more to do. (the map is rather large but hard to explore by only building) or you can research the perpetual motion machine and win the game.
I recognice the game is short and i wanted to add more buildings and researches and difficulties but to little time to implement all.
Bug fixes
In the comments some smaller bugs were pointed out the new builds fixes those
- Fix closing button science station
- Fix restart button (restart take a little bit but the game wil be reloaded)
- add some science station clarity
bugfix v2
- Should fix the instawin issue people are experiencing
Itch io
I do like the idea of my game and i think i can make it more fun by implementing the things i was planninig to. I created an itch.io project page for the newer version https://aterlamia.itch.io/power-or-die Please not that even if it has the ld version now it will be updated so dont use that link for rating.
Ratings
| Overall | 511th | 2.968⭐ | 96🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 563th | 2.637⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 474th | 2.774⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 85th | 3.978⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 386th | 3.076⭐ | 94🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 247th | 3.058⭐ | 88🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 228th | 2.651⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 322th | 2.976⭐ | 86🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 104🗳️ | 104🗨️ |
Also next time consider putting a slider for the music volume and maybe an adjustable game speed.
"your incompetence killed us all" this made me laugh :wink:
Really like the music!
Did you really make the music yourself in 2 days?
The text in the beginning actually made me grin :)
Well done.
**Suggestions and comments on improvement:** Having a tooltip when you mouse over the buildings saying what they do and what kind of resources they produce and use would help a lot!
p.s. check out my game as well please.
It was unclear how to get enough power to be able to build the science station.
@speedysloth99 Yes one of the things i needed/wanted to do is turn off certain build options in the beginning but alas to little time to finish that
later couldn't win at all - just kept running out of power.
Fun but unbalanced.
Joking aside I really like this type of games but the winning condition is really weird, as I said before I won just by putting some buildings up fast and then just using the "research center" usually in this type of games you win by achiving some conditions like amount of colonists, coal or power left. The game really needs more information about the game's elements. But kudos on trying this kind of game, if you work a little more on this it would be a nice one to expand on.
+1 For good tutorial :)
The story was well written, and the explaination clear and funny.
But the gameplay didn't reflect that. I could only build one thing in the beginning and not the things I needed most. That made it frustrating.
Original music! I haven't heard something like it, it's unique and not in a bad way.
A little rough around the edges, but you've made a good foundation here, so it would be a shame to let it die. Refine it and I'm sure you'll have a superb game!
Besides that, i think the idea of the concept is a real great one, i especially like your soundtrack + graphics you did a really great job on them :)
Well made game, cool art design and well written dialogs. Congrats.
I could spend an outstanding amount of time playing it, but unfortunately, my incompetence killed us all T.T.
The concept of the game is cool, a numbers balancing game. I feel like the entire map thing doesn't add to the game itself - the important things are how the numbers change when you build this thing and that, and those consequences are completely left out of the UI, leaving the player to guess at the outcomes, which doesn't work well. I think if the whole game worked without the map like one of those clicker incremental games, it would communicate and work much more easily to a player.
The concept of "stable power" also was very vague and needed to be clearer from the beginning.
Has potential but lacking in the ability for the player to understand what's going on.
Great game :)
Some bugs I encountered:
- I was not able to buy a science station and thus couldn't finish the game. ;(
- If you place a building (power plant) on a tile at the left border it won't show up.
The music is nice, it adds to the dark atmosphere of the story.
The story is well told, the narrative gives you subtle hints, like when the player responds to "you have the knowledge about this and that" and we say "that was a long time ago". That is a very nice touch. I also like the text box presentation with the guy in it. This is so much better than a plain text box, it gives you so much more. Good job.
Overall a nice entry, keep up the good work!
@gonutz yeah i am not a native speaker also too little time made it that i did not read everything as good as i should. I did not notice myself that the text was too small but then again i knew what was there.
@mortus yeah problem is i had to many ideas and there should have been other building/researchers also colonist should start to want food ect ect unfortunately too little time. I agree that balancing is one of the biggest problems i have. And i agree a skip would have been a wise thing to add
@bocodillo i agree the curve is a bit weird that is why the win condition is pretty soon as after a while the game is too easy at least you should be able to finish the game. I definitely will try to implement all my ideas into the game as a post ld project. Partly to learn and partly because i had too many ideas that are just not implemented. And i personally think would make a way better and complete game.
@coomzy strange that you can not do more. After you place 1 miner you need to wait a bit until you have enough coal to start the powerplant. After that you should get an event to build some more stuff. So not really sure what goes wrong for you .
1. The bulldozer generates coal. Build one over the rocks at bottom right
2. After 10 seconds, the colonists arrive. Build a hab. You need 1 hab per 14 colonists
3. Build a power plant. The power plant consumes coal and gives power
4. Do not build the science fac or research now, it eats up your power
5. Now the game becomes about juggling your power plants / bulldozers to make sure your power/s is positive, while making sure power doesnt drop below 0. Eventually you'll build dozens of plants giving you tons of power, then you can build the science fac
I liked this game, it's rare you see a resource management game on a hex grid in an LD. Good job!
@ethan-kennerly thank you for your comment and if you are wondering what you need to build and what it does take a fresh look at the updated description i hope this will help explain things a bit better. I would have liked to put all that in game but time ran short.
if build 2 mine in start game, then not come Colonist( (coal changes to 0)
It is a pity that it is allowed to build something and go over zero (Current power 140, build house -> -10 Game Over)
Nice game!
But if you build two miners before the amount of coal reaches 1, then the rest of the tutorial won't trigger and you're doomed to fail.
This is very impressive for a game made in two days. The music isn't annoying and the dialogs clearly explain what to do and why.
I enjoyed this game. Well done.
A little bit simple but fun and cool :)
Nice tutorial too, that really helps.
Good job, congrats!