LudumData

S.H.I.P.S. by PhindieGames

[raw]
made by PhindieGames for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

​Ships Have Interlinked Power Supplies, or S.H.I.P.S., is a simple arcade game. You hold out against the alien forces as long as you can, using only your fleet of four space ships. A controller is required to play, and it needs to be connected before starting the game (sorry!).

The game is developed for the Ludum Dare 47 Jam with theme "Stuck in a loop". The link to the theme is that you control the space ships in a set loop (and I guess on a meta-level, that you can only do one thing in the game ;) ). My first solo game jam entry.

I planned to use WebGL but it does not load for (to me) unknown reason, I suspect it is the controller support :(

Credits:

Background Music: “Chamber of Secrets”, from PlayOnLoop.com Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0

Youtube https://phindiegames.itch.io/ships
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/s-h-i-p-s

Ratings

Overall 1128th 3.276⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Fun 885th 3.276⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 228th 3.879⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Theme 953th 3.482⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 21🗳️ 32🗨️

Feedback

TwoHands
06. Oct 2020 · 19:05 UTC
This is sick, one of the most unique ideas I've come across! ^^
Noirox
06. Oct 2020 · 19:13 UTC
Very fun game idea but I am disappointed that it is controller exclusive. I could fortunately play it (Even though my Button layout was different which was confusing) but my friend was just unable to play it at all.
Secondly, the fact that you lose cannons is not very good game design, it should not get that much easier once you only have one cannon left, I would suggest a shared health bar of 5 for example so that the core mechanic is kept even when you take damage.
Apart from those criticisms, though, I liked the art style and the music, as well as the general idea, the coordination aspect with differently oriented cannons was quite fun. Better in theory than in practice but still a 3.5 overall.
🎤 PhindieGames
06. Oct 2020 · 20:04 UTC
Thanks for the feedback! I agree, most of the problems listed are even on my list :( it's mostly due to a lack of time (and experience) that I couldn't finish it.

I am confused about the button layout not matching. I used the new Unity Input System, which defines the gamepad keys as north/east/south/west, so I figured that would have worked for all controllers.
cad
06. Oct 2020 · 20:59 UTC
Very innovative and sticks to the theme well! My only gripe is that the rotation controls are a little touchy, making it a tad hard to aim. Otherwise looks and feels great to play.
Blue Pin Studio
06. Oct 2020 · 21:20 UTC
couldnt play, dont have controller
Potato Imaginator
06. Oct 2020 · 21:29 UTC
Great game! Really enjoyed it
shubart
06. Oct 2020 · 23:12 UTC
Just a made man could have such an idea ! great job. thank you very much for this unique game
vrerabek
06. Oct 2020 · 23:14 UTC
This is pretty smart. I really like the idea and somehow it was really intuitive to play. For me, the best way to get as far as possible is to keep only one canon and use it :smile:
etrealjunior
07. Oct 2020 · 10:19 UTC
I liked your game my congratulations, I also did one if you want to know, and give me your feedback I am very grateful, this is the link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/resurrection
JakobTheQuizGuy
07. Oct 2020 · 15:04 UTC
I really like this concept! One thing I think you need to fix is that it's actually super rewarding to let 3 of the ships die so you can only control one. Maybe you can add a timer, so when there's only one ship left you can only shoot once per second? I also enjoyed the music, it's got an otherworldly, glimmery feel to it. Good job!
Chris Mulholland
07. Oct 2020 · 21:54 UTC
Hey cool idea! I think there needs to be more reason to keep all ships alive because its much easier to simply control 1 ship. Thought it was a very unique idea, great job! Also I think you LDJam page would benefit from a screenshot of your game
schsam
08. Oct 2020 · 04:24 UTC
I liked this game a lot! I thought the mechanic was fun and the controls were really good. Two suggestions: 1) it would have helped me enjoy blowing up the enemies to have some particle effects / explosions 2) I didn't love how after a ship died I didn't have to press that button anymore (at the very end it became more like a typical shooter).
Magic_mike
08. Oct 2020 · 10:59 UTC
I like the concept! However once you have only 1 button the intersesting part of the gameplay goes away, i think a classic health bar system would work, good job nonetheless
mumaitron
08. Oct 2020 · 11:42 UTC
The concept is cool but as less ships you have it gets easier as you can spam buttons. good job!
Tomssuli
08. Oct 2020 · 18:04 UTC
Weird idea rolling around the buttons :D ...innovative if anything. I would have liked maybe a bit variety, maybe the ships would only be damaged and you still had to push that button too... and maybe there would be bypassing ship that you have to hit to get repair... or something.
Odiovock
08. Oct 2020 · 22:08 UTC
Unfortunatly I couldn't try the game, it wouldn't detect my controler :/
leekanarchism
09. Oct 2020 · 22:07 UTC
I like the idea of making use of the positions of the controller buttons! It did feel that it got easier as it went along, when I was down to 2 ships I could just mash buttons and stay alive forever, which got a bit boring, so feels like it could do with another mechanic to encourage staying alive / progression. Cool idea though, would be keen to see how it could progress!
JoeDev
10. Oct 2020 · 10:39 UTC
I got to 204! This was a very neat concept, it was quite enjoyable trying to get my head around the controls and switching between them (my controller skills are terrible though so I died pretty fast). Once I got down to 1 ship left it got a lot easier because then you can just spam one button, but it was still a fun survival game :)
sanojian
10. Oct 2020 · 10:42 UTC
I found it really awkward, but I am not that good with a controller. It might make a good training game for learning to use the controller better. Once I was down to one S.H.I.P, I could stay alive forever.
Duke
10. Oct 2020 · 11:10 UTC
I couldn't really play it. I don't have an xbox 360 controller around, but a dualshock4 that is emulated as an xbox controller. All games run perfectly fine with that setup but your game looked like it didnÄt like that. The space ships had seizures (moved frantically every frame) and i couldn't control anything. Sometimes shots came out when I used the right stick. And a LOT. The framerate tanked to almost a halt.

I can't rate the game like this. Maybe this is a known issue? Any way to get this fixed somehow?
alpharock6
11. Oct 2020 · 09:26 UTC
Oh this was super fun! I was able to get pretty good at just rolling my thumb in a circle around the buttons and got a pretty fast fire rate going :P Nice touch on having each weapon explode into a circle of bullets when it is hit, really helps give some breathing room if you were overwhelmed enough to receive a hit! Nice entry, great work :)
ZebraInFlames
11. Oct 2020 · 13:30 UTC
Had fun playing this one although I struggled with the controls at first. Then I realized it's an effective strategy to just rapidly press all the four buttons in succession :D
🎤 PhindieGames
11. Oct 2020 · 14:36 UTC
@duke Someone else had also reported their controller not working. I'm sorry to hear you also ran into some issues. I am not exactly sure why this would happen, I used the new Unity Input System in hopes it would work for all controller setups. This is my first jam - are bug fixes allowed after the deadline? I might still not be able to fix it though :( I don't have DS4 controller myself to reproduce the issue.
Inferture
13. Oct 2020 · 11:24 UTC
It was simple but fun ^^
There is an [free asset](https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/network/dreamlo-com-free-instant-leaderboards-and-promocode-system-3862) that allows you to have online leaderboard (I think if you intend to do some other score-based games, especially for game-jams, it could be useful). I used it not so long ago and it still worked at the time, hopefully it still does ^^
asfdfdfd
13. Oct 2020 · 18:57 UTC
Cool little game mechanic. Nice entry.
Lichead studio
16. Oct 2020 · 18:40 UTC
Looks good.
ashashza
17. Oct 2020 · 20:18 UTC
This was really interesting. I think it's a clever concept.

I started playing with much lack of coordiantion and trying to time and hit each of the buttons. Nice idea of have ships destroyed when hit. Left with 2 ships I just started mashing those 2 buttons and life got much easier...

Eventually I wondered "wouldn't this just be easier with 1 button?" so I let my 2nd last ship die and started mashing X like crazy. That worked suprisingly well. :)

Initially I thought that there was a negative feedback loop becuase as ships died, it would get harder to defend. But I found that's not true. Then I kinda wished that after a certain number of kills that ships would grow back which would push me to start using all 4 buttons again.

Nice jam!
🎤 PhindieGames
18. Oct 2020 · 18:11 UTC
@ashashza Thanks! I definitely noticed this myself too, but found myself out of time. If there were a few more hours, I would have tackled that issue :)
figueroass27
19. Oct 2020 · 14:47 UTC
i love the fact that you can lose ships, it makes you press the buttons in new interesting orders. You could counteract it getting easier the more ships you lose by adding a small time between attacks that really only hurts you when you have 1 ship. Also i think being able to move all of them even when theyre not active would be good because if you fire too quickly they might get stuck pointing the same direction. All in all a great concept thats really fun!
Matootsy
25. Oct 2020 · 14:26 UTC
Interesting concept. I like the idea of loop between the 4 characters. The synchronisation is difficult to manage. It's a good game to work on coordination. It's very helpfull that when a character is dying it throw a donut of bullets around him that kills the enemies ^^ But in fact at the end, when only 2 characters were remaining, it was very easy to shoot everywhere around me while I always push the 2 buttons at the same time and make an infinite round loop with the thumbstick. Anyway, it's a good prototype well in the theme!