Life is Money by Mykola
Life is tough. You need money to do anything. Reaching financial freedom is extremely challenging.
You are an indebted piggy bank with a couple of cents in your pocket. Useless expenses and countless bills don't let you get to investment opportunities and financial literacy. You have never been so far away from your dream of having 1000 coins deposited on your bank account. Or have you?
Use what's left in your pockets to throw it in da face of pointless spending or avoid it all the way. But be carefull not to end up with empty pockets, since your life is literally money. Catch profitable investment opportunities to refill your budget. Borrow from the bank under crazy interest rates to prolong your suffering. Put your tough-earned coins on a deposit account to make them work for you while you are chilling around (and try not to waste money on useless stuff meanwhile). Any strategy counts as long as it puts you out of financial misery. Life stuff, huh?

Manual
But really, the game is a combination of a space shooter-like and a financial simulator. Simple to get on track, hard to master.
In game you have two kinds of resources: cash (money) and bank account balance. You can freely move money between them, but keep in mind that negative bank balance will constantly drain your cash based on credit interest rate, while positive bank balance will add to your cash according to deposit interest rate.
It's okay to have negative bank balance as long as you can sustain it, but if your cash drops to zero - the game is over. That's life. On the other hand, you win when you can live of your interest, that is when your bank account deposit reaches 1000 coins. Get the highest score among your friends by sustaining the largest cash amount.
Wastefull expenses and countless invoices (redish stuff) will try to absorb you. But you can shoot your cash at it and who knows what useful things they might drop back. Collect investment opportunities and dollar bills (greenish stuff) to refill your cash.
The game difficulty adapts to your game progress and style of playing. See if you can uncover all the relationships and how the system works.
Controls:
move - arrows or WASD
shoot - space or left mouse button
borrow money from the bank - left alt or right mouse button
deposit money to the bank - left ctrl
pause / manual - esc
Credits
The font was developed by Jakob Fischer at www.pizzadude.dk and used under the free license.
All the rest of the contents were developed from scratch during the game jam by Mykola Herasymovych.
Notes
In case the web version doesn’t work in Chrome, try using Mozilla Firefox.
| HTML5 (web) | https://kolebas.itch.io/life-is-money |
| Windows | https://kolebas.itch.io/life-is-money |
| Source code | https://kolebas.itch.io/life-is-money |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/life-is-money |
Ratings
| Given | 51🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
Play and rate mine plz. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/lifeforms-in-space
Nice job for a jam!
@kaleido, @rocketraccoons thanks! I tried to explain the game mechanics in the game description and in a short in-game manual when you press Esc button, but I guess it's not that clear. Basically, the more money you have, the faster you are and the more dynamic the game gets. So in the beginning a good strategy would be to borrow around 20 coins from the bank with the right mouse button or Alt button just to speed it up. But make sure not to take too much, since the interest deductions will kill you quick. :slight_smile:
@cheebz thanks a lot, really glad that you liked it!
Never got more than 0 in the bank account (which is too relatable), but the game itself is a lot of fun!
Also, the UI on the pause screen overflows. I think you can fix this during judging because it's technically a minor bug fix, allowed per the rules.
I do see a lot of games this jam that combine life and ammunition or special moves rather than as currency, and this seems like the same. You are shooting currency, but i still know that i'm "shooting" my life, not using my life to purchase anything.
Otherwise it's pretty good. I'd like to check back and see if there's improvements after judging is complete.
@shaolin-dave, thanks for the detailed feedback.
1. Delay/cancellation of death. This behavior was rather intentional, since the point of the game is to always keep some cash in your pocket. But in case you lack some couple of coins, you can always borrow it from the bank, which would help in a situation like you described.
2. UI overflow. Good point, haven't really tested it on different resolutions, will try to fix it shortly.
3. Life as currency. You're totally right. Initially I planned to add a feature to increase your stats / skills for the money, but had to reject it due to the lack of time. Another feature I did implement was borrowing from / depositing to the bank account, which kind of gives another angle to look at the idea of currency.
Anyway, thanks a lot for your comments, I'll definitely consider them during the next update!
Also some kind of background texture would make it look a lot better.
Otherwise good job.