D.R.I.E.D. by JasonD

The Premise
You are a lone robot in the remnants of a ruined city. The world is a dusty wasteland. Fuel reserves are low. Make your way across the barren cityscape before your fuel dries up.
You'll need fuel to reach your goal - without it, you're just a hunk of useless metal. But it's also the only resource worth a damn in this world, and you might need to trade some of it in order to get by...
The Team
Programming : Jason Davey (StrayBasilisk)
Sound : Efilheim (BandCamp)
Art : Jack Pressnell (SomeFarang)
(We teamed up randomly over Reddit / Discord to make this - this is the first thing we've ever worked on together).


| Windows | https://somefarang.itch.io/dried |
| HTML5 (web) | https://somefarang.itch.io/dried |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/d-r-i-e-d |
Ratings
| Given | 38🗳️ | 47🗨️ |
Overall, very impressive! Well done you guys!
This caught my eye because the pixel art looks great, some of the best I've seen on here.
Was also really blown away by the amazing art and audio the other guys put together so quickly!
Did the parts, armour, weapons and mobility help in any way? As in help on the resolution of an event? If I encounter a fight and had armour will I take less fuel damage? It was the only thing that wasn't clear for me. Apart from that great work guys! ^^
The game ended pretty quick though. I had a feeling that you have a lot of space to make it more challenging since replays are pretty quick anyway.
For example the event where you encounter a pack of mutated hogs. The rumour is "There's a pack of wild animals prowling around #LOCATION#. Don't hang about too long!", and the action you select if you trigger that event is "High-tail it out of here". This uses the Mobility stat to determine the outcome.
Edit: I meant to include something about the worldbuilding. The foundation is there, but I'd love to see more of it.
Definitely influenced by FTL and Sunless Sea/Skies =P
I really like it! As I said before the graphics are good. Experiencign the music and sound was pleasant. The theme works well.
Gameplay was simple and there wasn't a lot to tell you what right actions were, but it was more than fine for a jam game.
Definitely my favorite so far.
Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp
Expand the idea and consider making it to full game!
The resolution of every event is tied to a particular resource (with some randomness thrown in), but that was only ever hinted at in the descriptions, rather than pointed out specifically. Might try having it label explicitly which resource is relevant to each event, and maybe remove the randomness from that resolution.
Currently there aren't enough events to fill out the map, so the difficulty in particular is a bit random (you might get lucky and not hit many encounters). I'd like to add a bunch more, and then it should be possible to balance things and allow for more reliable strategies.
Currently the tone/flavour is there, and it's possible to be somewhat strategic and increase your chances of making it through by playing smart, but randomness still rules.
A bit sad that in order to succeed it's best not to interact with anything and not to pay fuel ever - it's generally not worth it
Also, armor and the other inventory parts could be more useful (I've got into gang of thieves twice, neither armor nor pistol have saved me)
Pixel art and music are beautiful.
You're right - currently it's all atmosphere, and there aren't enough events to flesh out the gameplay.
@firellon
For example, that gang encounter... If you ask for a rumour, it's described as "The gangs near #LOCATION# are tough, and desperate - *go armed, or avoid that place*.", hinting that you need weapons to survive. Your "weapons" stat is tied to the odds of getting a good outcome - the higher it is, the better the odds. Since you have a fairly limited ability to plan and acquire resources to increase your chance of survival, maybe I'll remove the random element from the events, so it's determined purely by your stats.
The soundtrack is great, the text and events on it is good. I was not a big fan of some of the sound effects.
This is my favorite entry yet!
I guess the idea is that you have to fail/talk a couple of times to get to know where are the danger zones and how to deal with them? I remember I got hit to death twice by sticking to the middle road, but then I found a combination of low road, then upper and to the highest one to be successful twice!
Anyways, this was really fun and solid for a jam submission, so good job guys :)
The pixel art it amazing - from palette to the tiny little details of each sprite and background scenery. The music is also matching the mood perfectly. Great game - my first 5* of this jam! :)
The game itself is very well put together, with enough content to warrant a second & third playthrough.
Although the music is great, I don't think it fits the 'wasteland' environment. Sound effects were awesome though :D
PS : maybe tuning down a little bit the event sound would help to enjoy the great music
The randomness is a bit unbalanced since it is possible to have no events for multiple consecutive areas.Having markers on the map would be a great wa yto let the player know which nodes are safe and which ones are not.
The game length may be short but there was enough content to want to play twice. I think I length is a good match for ludum dare and it undoubtedly made it easier for you to polish within a short time frame.
Overall, I think you and your team did a very great job. You had a clear vision of what ou wanted to do and executed on it perfectly.
Currently if you buy info/rumours from people, it'll put markers on the map. The idea is that you can gather a bit of info, and try to plan a route which avoids known hazards, or steers towards things which align well with your stats. But again, the map is a bit too sparse for this kind of strategy to be really effective right now (it can increase your chances somewhat, but randomness still rules).
Good job !
You could enhance the experience by adding more unique sfx for every random event and more sequences of pictures to evolve the narrative and the protagonist.