LudumData

Keep the Fire Alive by stmatn

[raw]
made by stmatn for Ludum Dare 46 (COMPO)

Title.png

What the game is about

Eternal Darkness has risen and covered all of the known world. The only way to battle it is to make a fire and shine light upon it. However there is only little hope, since the Darkness is ever growing.

Screenshot.png

Take command of a small city featuring a huge bonfire. Construct coal mines and transport lines in the surroundings of the city. Keep the Darkness at bay until you have constructed enough propellers that will lift the city off ground and transport it to another place.

How to play

Tutorial.png

On the left screen side you can select conveyors, buildings or demolition.

In the pipes menu you can choose to construct new conveyor belts or turn around existing ones. To construct a new conveyor belt you need to click and drag an existing conveyor node to another existing node or to free space to create a new one. Start your network with a city receiver (First buildind in building menu).

The following buildings can be built: * City receiver: Takes delivered coal into citys storage * Coal storage: Expands citys storage capacity * Propeller: Provides lift for city * Lantern: Emmits light if provided coal * Coal mine: Minies coal from adjacent coal deposits

Important notes

You will need to unpack the zip-file before being able to play. The game requires a working Java JRE or JDK to be installed on your system.

Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/96bahtj33b4uvvw/LD46-KeepTheFireAlive.zip?dl=1
Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/cedlm19m0bgfeob/LD46-KeepTheFireAlive-Source.zip?dl=1
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-the-fire-alive-1

Ratings

Overall 686th 3.271⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 601th 3.188⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 447th 3.396⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 527th 3.667⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 894th 2.792⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 759th 2.326⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Humor 713th 2.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Mood 502th 3.229⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 14🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

Vollfeiw
20. Apr 2020 · 20:53 UTC
Really cool game, fit the theme, spend more time than i thought. Got some trouble getting it worked at the beginning, but it's a pretty cool small tycoon game, could be really interesting on a bigger scale :)
Vollfeiw
20. Apr 2020 · 20:53 UTC
Really cool game, fit the theme, spend more time than i thought. Got some trouble getting it worked at the beginning, but it's a pretty cool small tycoon game, could be really interesting on a bigger scale :)
blotosaur
20. Apr 2020 · 22:08 UTC
Nice one! At first I didn't really get it. Then I understood how great the mechanics are. Really challenging, tho.
BinaryPrinciple
21. Apr 2020 · 01:08 UTC
Nice city builder, tried to expand as much as possible.
Nice mechanics and there's a lot of potential.
Jason Woerner
21. Apr 2020 · 10:59 UTC
Let me start by saying I had a lot of fun with this game. I do need to get my criticisms out, but know that I enjoyed the gameplay and strategy a lot.

Much as I loved the art explaining the controls, they were very unintuitive, and I had to restart the game 5 times before I figured out what I needed to be doing. Once I got the controls down, however, I had a lot of fun. The idea is neat, and forming the node connections was a clean mechanic.
The sounds were very thematic, but they badly needed volume control; the building explosion noise was especially loud and jarring.
The screen was also very difficult to see on a 2560x1440 monitor, so some way to blow the resolution up would be helpful.

Those things aside, I did really like this game - enough to spend the time restarting it 5 times just to get the controls down ;) There's definitely some potential here - good work! (btw, I managed to escape the darkness with WAY too many propellers!)
🎤 stmatn
21. Apr 2020 · 16:40 UTC
Thanks to everyone for your feedback.

Special thanks to @jason-woerner for the details. I'm at the same time happy that you retried 5 times and a bit embarrassed that I made you wase that much time for something that should actually be explained better. Your detailed feedback is really valuable. I did not think that much about sfx volume and screen size and din not realize that thes could be potential issues. It is nice to hear that you played until winning :)
alex457
22. Apr 2020 · 08:51 UTC
I really like the idea and the concept, but I had too much troubles understanding how controls work. I think I got my first proper coal income only on the fourth run. The button images are not very telling, maybe having some tooltips would have helped. I think there is a lot of potential, I feel one can spend a lot of time optimizing the delivery chains :)
Jason Woerner
23. Apr 2020 · 21:28 UTC
@stmatn No need for embarrassment, I was really impressed that you were able to put so much into a game in such a short time. I would love to create this type of game for a jam, but I feel like it would take me much longer to get all the mechanics working. I entered a less complex game (pickup materials and drop them off at a tank in the middle of the room) and the #1 complaint in my comments was people did not understand the controls and what they were supposed to be doing. I think that's a really common theme with jams - we spend so much time getting the mechanics working, we don't have time to make a tutorial. The one thing you can do, is make a little tutorial out of game. Maybe whip up a couple of explanation images showing basic proper setup to get people started. Anyways, again, don't feel bad about it - I played so much of the game because, despite not understanding it at first, it was a really fun idea and I was happy to experiment until I got it down =)
meelo
25. Apr 2020 · 01:01 UTC
This game really stands out with its mechanics - the idea is really cool and the mechanics seem to work really smoothly. I, like others, had some difficulty understanding what was meant at first (the first time I saw the help screen, it was very overwhelming. Then I tried to play and quickly ran out of coal without accomplishing much) - but by the second time, I figured out what was up. The coal-moving mechanic reminds me a lot of the energy mechanic in one of my favorite games: Harvest: Massive Encounter. Once I figured out the controls, I enjoyed myself, creating a little network of coal miners, though I think I would have enjoyed more challenge - which could take a whole lot of forms (e.g. more expensive things to construct or more complex production lines, or just having enemies or some other disruption to the clockwork nature - I could imagine tendrils of darkness occasionally showing up, but maybe being repulsed by propellors, or something?). It's a very nice start in any case.
Kaisean Games
26. Apr 2020 · 14:34 UTC
I especially like these kinds of games, and this one was executed very well.
Especially for the compo game.

Now, I always try to find some ways to improve and will try to share my thoughts with you (as a result of a several attempts to play).

I don't really understand how my city can lift off. At certain point I've exceeded the weight with the lift, but nothing happened so I am not sure if I got something wrong, so this goal is not clearly communicated.

The other thing I've noticed is that you are not checking whether a coal mine is in the darkness and show it's capacity even when it is. I think no popups should show for the coal that is in the darkness.

The last thing is that I really wasn't sure how to put more coal into the city. I've put several of those nodes that put stuff into the city and the influx was so slow I wasn't sure if it was working properly.

But other than those small points, I really enjoyed this game.

Keep up the good work.
Kaisean Games
26. Apr 2020 · 14:43 UTC
oh, btw. You can change the links to end with `dl=1` instead of `dl=0` so that the automatic download is initiated when clicking on the link.
candlesan
27. Apr 2020 · 05:32 UTC
Sweet. I love Factorio and this reminds me of a night/day/flying take on factorio as a game jam project. Really love where you're going with this. I like that there's coal everywhere but you need the light to expand outwards. The propellers with lift is an interesting spin (HA! Spin! Get it?)

Would love to see a post-compo version of this with more buildings, and a sound FX pass.
eduardogacn
28. Apr 2020 · 06:33 UTC
good game
Gorka
04. May 2020 · 19:58 UTC
Nice entry. The darkness kinda snuck up on me on my first playthrough, as I really underestimated its growth, but it makes you learn from your mistakes.
I'm gonna repeat what others said, I'm not sure how to use the lift to move around or when it's possible or not to build conveyor belts.
Still, as a survival city builder, it's consistent and reminded me of the creeper world series.
Space_man
11. May 2020 · 07:08 UTC
Cool game, I enjoyed building up a base. It took me a couple minutes to figure out what everything did, but once I got it I was able to get a nice little mine network going and start expanding. It would be nice if it was more clear what the propellers do, I wasn't sure if each one had some effect or if I just needed to build some unknown number of them.

Enjoyed the game overall, great job!