Robot Rescue by Mike Caputo

made by Mike Caputo for Ludum Dare 47 (COMPO)

The year is Stellar Year 4257B and the Starship Odyssey is nonoperational and stuck in a Time Anomaly. It's up to you, Maintenance Robot J7RV15, to repair the engines and break out of the time loop!

Clear rubble and deconstruct equipment around the ship to collect scrap that can be fabricated into new upgrades for you. Tired of time being reset? Fabricate a Time Destabilizer and drop it in a room to create a stable time field around the room - but be careful, a stabilized room won't reset rubble at the start of a time loop! Work your way up to fabricating a nuclear reactor to fix the ship's engine and escape! Keep an eye on your battery in the top right; when it runs out, time will loop!

made<em>with</em>unity.png

Hi everyone! This is my first ever Ludum Dare (and more than that - my first ever game!). I had a hard time coming up with a concept based on the "Stuck in a Loop" theme but... I guess this works? Anyway, had a great time learning Unity, C#, asset creation, and game development this weekend! My goal simple to have something you could play from start to finish by the end of the game jam, and I succeeded on that!

Hope you enjoy this frustrating take on being "Stuck in a Loop"!

Mike C

Controls: W/A/S/D/ - move Arrow keys - move

Youtube	https://ludumdate47-download.s3.amazonaws.com/Windowsx86-robot-rescue.zip
Youtube	https://ludumdate47-download.s3.amazonaws.com/Windowsx86-robot-rescue.zip
Youtube	https://ludumdate47-download.s3.amazonaws.com/OSX-robot-rescue2.zip
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/robot-rescue

Ratings

Overall	481^th	3.079⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	412^th	3.053⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	314^th	3.289⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Theme	377^th	3.421⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	580^th	2.395⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Audio	480^th	2.211⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	288^th	2.579⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Mood	394^th	2.972⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Given		39🗳️	11🗨️

Feedback

Aarimous

05. Oct 2020 · 01:00 UTC

Nice job for you're first time learning game dev. Gameplay is solid, but I would recommend spending more time on UI. I found it jarring to figure out when the rebel would break and when I would be reset. Keep refining the project and see how much polish you can add. Cheers!

Dharby

05. Oct 2020 · 01:29 UTC

I seemed to have run out of battery with not enough scrap to do anything about it. Fun game though! Congratulations on finishing the project, it's a lot of work.

dadiaogames

05. Oct 2020 · 01:52 UTC

Nice job for you’re first time learning game dev!

Listonos

05. Oct 2020 · 02:06 UTC

Managed to finish it, pretty solid entry. especially for a first entry, congratulation! A couple things to watch out for next time, "floating" controls are something that pretty common and should not be that hard to fix. Few audio levels were pretty high, especially for repeating sounds that are not of highest quality it's little jarring. Colliders are usually better smaller rather than larger as you often get stuck around corners.

🎤 Mike Caputo

05. Oct 2020 · 20:52 UTC

@listonos Thanks for the great tips! The audio was definitely rough. I added it near the very end and didn't realize we could mix sound effects using existing tools and samples. Could you explain what you mean about the floating controls? Are they generally considered bad to use in a game?

Listonos

05. Oct 2020 · 22:14 UTC

@mike-caputo If you let off the movement key the character keeps going for a while, that's what I mean by floating controls just to be clear. It's tricky to get it right to be fair, there is a balance to be found between stopping too soon and stopping too late.

Itskdog

07. Oct 2020 · 00:13 UTC

Nice job for your first Jam. I liked how you wrote some background story to the game.

SH80

07. Oct 2020 · 01:20 UTC

You win!

fronwewq

11. Oct 2020 · 16:38 UTC

Great work, especially for a first ever game! Playable through to the end is a massive achievement. There are some really cool ideas in here too, I think you use the loop theme well, plus the upgrade path is clever. At first I didn't like how long some actions took, but I realized later it was to create necessity for the Time Stabilizer. Great job adding an ending cut-scene too. I'd also like to nominate this entry for 'Best Welding Sound Effect'.

c1tr00z

13. Oct 2020 · 13:28 UTC

Nice entry but beginning is way too hard, couldnt even complete it (seems like collect 20 scrap until battery is dead is almost impossible, and this story before ever round is unskippable =()
But for first time is quite good, and i this sounds (i think its your voice?) is cute =) Good luck on your path

🎤 Mike Caputo

14. Oct 2020 · 03:25 UTC

@c1tr00z Thanks for the feedback! I think I needed to make it clearer that your scrap carries between time resets. Otherwise it's nearly impossible to get the battery upgrade in the first reset. Great point about the unskippable intro. I added it towards the end and didn't even think about it!

staircase27a

16. Oct 2020 · 11:11 UTC

Very nice game for a first ever game. I had a few issues getting through the doorways as you seemed to need to position the robot very carefully to make it through the gap. Other thank that it was a well designed game.

hunttis

19. Oct 2020 · 14:24 UTC

Nice work on making a playable game on your first Ludum Dare! It took me two non-submitting LD's to finally submit something playable!

A few things (some of which you might already know):
- Always make stuff skippable :D Especially since the game is REALLY HARD!
- The "cutscene" was really small on my screen, but the actual game was fine!
- Unity has a minimum and maximum scales for text, so you can support more screen sizes
- Unity also supports exporting a browser version. It's the easiest way to play a game (no need to install anything for the player), so you should use that. Then you don't have to worry about different platform builds!

Screenshots:

Really tiny UI: https://huntt.is/images/robotrescue1.png

The game itself looks fine though!: https://huntt.is/images/robotrescue2.png

Again! Congrats on making a playable game, I couldn't get very far before dying :D

tetha

20. Oct 2020 · 16:59 UTC

All in all, nice job. Just add a mute button next time, the sounds had very fluctuating volume for me and that wasnt easy on the ears to say the least. but besides that, simple and solid gameplay.