Space VIP: The Needyon Ambassador by Rein
You are a highly-trained intergalactic-relations officer tasked with escorting a critically important alien VIP to safe location. The nature of their species requires that they never be alone or else their body will begin to break down, eventually exploding violently. For unknown reasons, distractions like watching TV can slow down this process. Unfortunately for you, this mission requires maximum secrecy, which means you are the only person able to maintain the ship while keeping the VIP alive...
Programming by Chris Hutchinson and Robert Ramsay. Audio by Evan Witt. Hull breach model by Chris Hutchinson.
Level assets and alien model purchased from the Asset Store.
Game created in Unity.
CONTROLS:
WASD - movement
Left Shift - Sprint (can't if both hands are full)
Left Click - Interact with highlighted item.
Space - Jump!
HINTS:
Take some time when the game starts to familiarize yourself with the ship before things start falling apart. Especially how much the Angst bar increases as you run from location to location.
Power - The special TV the Needyons requires a tremendous amount of energy to power. There isn't enough power to run it and any other subsystem on the ship, so be very careful when turning on the Oxygen or Shield subsystems because without a distraction the Needyon gets upset much more quickly.
Patching Holes - Small breaches can be covered with duct tape (which you have on you) by left-clicking when standing close and looking at the hole. Large breaches follow the same process but require you to be carrying a large patch first.
Large Patches - Large patches can be found in two rooms on the ship: the storage room by the reactor light puzzle and the maintenance tunnel (as soon as you enter the large hallway leading to the bridge look to your right).
Reactor Light Puzzle - The light above the switch you flip gets toggled. What happens to the lights next to that one?
WARNING: the mouse sensitivity in the web player is really high for some reason.
Ratings
| Overall | 1487th | 3.378⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1975th | 2.936⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1396th | 3.205⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 890th | 3.8⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 935th | 3.311⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 831th | 3.189⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1263th | 3.375⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 51🗨️ |
As for cons: 1) Lack of context control hints makes it difficult to understand what to do (and it makes you press every single button to find out required). 2) Too random events. Generator failure happend for me only during one try. As for me, it should have been mandatatory at some time point, so every player would have similar experience.
I wonder if this is exacerbated by me running this on a trackpad (Mac OS laptop)... the camera look speed was dizzying so I had to drag my finger *very* slightly to look around, and sometimes I'd rotate like 720º in an instant and get confused about where I was, haha.
Anyway, this really does *look* like an amazing game. I'll try it on another machine later and hope I have better results.
As for patching holes: The small ones are small enough that some duct tape can cover that up, which it turns out you always have on you. The large holes require a patch though, and there are two rooms with stacks of patches. These are definitely areas where being able to do playtesting mid-jam would yield tremendous dividends.
It is fun to manage between the ship and the VIP, but I think that the percentage of the VIP goes too fast, indeed, I could only do one repair at time and I had to return to see the VIP whereas other issues appeared at the same time, it was kinda frustrating. Furthermore, I think that some UI hints of where the issues appeared on the spaceship could help to play faster.
Anyway, good work !
I think a minimap or pointer isn't strictly necessary, but an image of the layout of the ship would help a lot. That said, the ship is strangely empty yet busy. As in, there are rooms that have a lot *stuff* (chairs, desks, lockers, etc.), but those rooms doesn't have anything you can do in them (besides fix holes). Because there's no reason to remember those rooms, it's harder to keep a mental picture of the ship. Of course, adding more gameplay takes more time, so instead you try making the ship smaller. With that you could make asteroid fields more dangerous without feeling impossible, and make shields a viable option.
I would have liked to listen to the music more, but I had to turn my volume down after being deafened by a hole right next to me.
Overall though, the game makes good use of the theme and when things line up there's hints of *Overcooked* or *Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime* in there!