Space Freight by KingMatthew
Take control of your cargo ship and deliver the goods to space stations! Be aware, though, as pirates will try to take your precious cargo! The more cargo you have, the more pirates will want to steal it! Upgrade your weapons to defend yourself. Its dangerous in space, but you got a job to do!
Controls : W A S D : Movement Left click OR Ctrl : Fire Weapon
How to Play : Go to the Space station at the start, and load up on however much cargo you think you can take. I recommend only a small amount (below 19) as your weapons start out weak. Below the button to load your ship, it tells you which number station you need to take the cargo to. Just follow the arrow at the bottom of the screen and it will take you to the station you need to deliver to. Survive the pirates who try to take the cargo! Shoot them and take as little Hull damage as possible. They are faster than you, so you can't run from them! Once you get to the station, unload the cargo to receive your pay! Use this money to repair your hull and get better weapons!
Known Bugs : -Sometimes the stations will tell you to deliver at station 1, even though you must deliver to station 0. Just follow the arrow and you will be fine. -Sometimes it tells you to deliver to the station you are currently at. Free money I guess!

Post Mortem : This game turned out much better than I expected. Every other game I made for ludum dare had one or two assets that I did not make. This time, I made absolutely everything. That is a big accomplishment right there! Anyway, my goal for this game was to make it as polished as possible. I believe I accomplished this goal, except for two avenues. 1. I should have spent time on a tutorial. All I have now is a how to menu with a screenshot of the game. 2. I should have spent a lot more time on balancing the game. I spent almost no time actually PLAYING the game. I should have, because right now some parts are way to easy, and other parts are impossible. The Pros: I believe the graphics are pretty good considering I have very little artistic talent. I like the art style I ended up with. I also like the idea behind the weapons. As you upgrade certain aspects, it actually changes the type of gun. I only wished I could have elaborated on that in the game more. Overall, I had fun, and it is a good game in my opinion! (Once I balance it)
Software Used :
Unity = Game Engine
Paint.net = Artwork
FamiTracker = Music
Thanks for Playing!
| Windows | https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vpj26etx3n0zvfg/AACYebtVINpj9GWFsRkXtalLa?dl=0 |
| macOS | |
| Linux | |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/space-freight |
Ratings
| Overall | 720th | 3.289⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 728th | 3.132⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 627th | 3.105⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 482th | 3.526⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 654th | 3.35⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 508th | 3.026⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 746th | 2.563⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 711th | 3.105⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 19🗨️ |
@steve-johnson : I don't own a mac, and I never have, so I have no idea how to get it working. I will keep the download link up for now, maybe I can figure out a fix.
@nax-89 : At the bottom of the screen, there is an arrow that points to the station you have to go to. It would be much appreciated if you tried to play again!
I'll definitely come back and play this if you can upload it in a more compatible/standard archive format like zip or tar.gz.
I'm just going to take the Linux and Mac download links down until I figure out how to fix them. I don't want to waste anyone's time by downloading bad files.
I finally figured out how to add screenshots to this page! That button was hard to find.
My main issue is that shooting the pirates is extremely difficult, I know that you're supposed to be a cargo ship, but having a rotating cannon or something would be really useful. Nice game though, good job!
First time I didn't get it and I follow the arrow to the next station without freight..^^
I think it could be great if we didn't have the choice of the freight. I would have added a first mission without pirates. The cargo and the difficulty could increase over time.
Weaving through the asteroid fields at full speed is much more fun than slowly turning around terminating the pursuers. As such it is a shame that such a tactic doesn't really work for a multitude of reasons:
* The camera is very close to the action, no way to see the upcoming asteroids at high velocity. If the camera zoomed out based on current speed you could even have asteroid collisions deduct hull points (as they should!)
* Less agile bandits. Zigzagging works occasionally, but most of the time the bandits hit no matter what. Trying to trick them to hit asteroids would be interesting too!
* A distance calculator for the next station. Maybe running for it should not be completely viable all the time, but once relatively close to the station I might want to risk it. Currently these is no way of knowing how long it takes to get to the station, so no such decision can be made.
The audiovisuals are crude. Kudos for making it all on your own, but I'm not going to lie about the quality. Might as well list more issues, eh:
* Different styles for all the elements. The ships are pixelated with about 4-6 flat colors, the GUI is 3 flat colors, the asteroids have texture with even more colors, and the background is rendered in much more realistic style than the rest. It just does not jell together.
* Scaling and rotating pixelated graphics. It does not look good when sprites drawn in the same style are scaled differently. The pixels should have the same size for every object. Rotation can work, but then you need to make sure each sprite uses the same filtering method. It seems the space stations use bilinear filtering while the ship use point filter.
* The music and sounds use annoying, chirpy, 8-bit'ish instruments. This might just be me though.
Good effort and it works, yet more practice on the presentation front is needed. When learning it is useful to look at successful examples and try to mimic those, just to get the techniques down. Later you can then apply those techniques to create your own things.
Overall: *Below average (2.5)*
Fun: *Below average (2.5)*
Innovation: *Average (3.0)*
Theme: *Average (3.0)*
Graphics: *Bad (2.0)*
Audio: *Lousy (1.5)*
Humor: *Bad (2.0)*
Mood: *Average (3.0)*