LudumData

theColony by falstro

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

A group of colonists have exhausted their last resources. In a desperate attempt to survive they gather all they have left to construct a spaceship - the Colonia - to forage for food and material among the neighboring planets. There is enough food to survive for five days. Gather materials to upgrade the ship, or food to feed the hungry. Be aware that as planets' resources are depleted, only an upgraded ship will be able to reach more food in time.

  • W - forward thrust
  • S - minor reverse thrust

  • A/D - turn left/right

  • Space - Open map

  • E - Enter orbit around planet

Use the mouse to transfer food and/or materials to your ship while in orbit around a planet. Food and materials will be transferred to the home planet automatically when docked there.

The planets (location, size, color, name, and contents - but not the mesh) are procedurally generated, but the seed is currently fixed.

There's currently no "win" condition. Just try to stay alive as long as you can.

This was my first project with Unity, and I think it turned out alright :)

feh<em>2560421</em>000002<em>Screenshot (51).png feh</em>2560421<em>000005</em>Screenshot (19).png feh<em>2560421</em>000004_Screenshot (15).png

Edit - Known Bugs:

  • If you get to really remote planets the orbit menu is shifted off screen and you might not be able to click the "leave" button any more. I thought I had fixed that, but looking at the code, I apparently forgot.
  • The sliders sometimes bug when entering the orbit menu which can result in a negative cargo load
  • Entering orbit with the map open produces an ... interesting ... effect ;)
  • Gameplay balance is off, should probably reduce the amount of available resources overall.
  • The "New game" button to restart the game doesn't seem to properly regenerate the map (it should be destroyed and recreated), and it appears some planets will have incorrect amounts of resources - possibly remnant from the previous instance that didn't get properly deleted (obvious workaround is to quit out of the game and restart it).
Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/f8n6bdoqco6vn9a/source.zip?dl=1
Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/916skf16qmm46k0/theColony_windows.zip?dl=1
Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/iaytol5fd61nagw/theColony_linux.zip?dl=1
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/thecolony

Ratings

Overall 193th 3.8⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 352th 3.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 518th 3.3⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 703th 3.475⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 171th 3.975⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 669th 2.421⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 137th 3.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 32🗳️ 5🗨️

Feedback

KieranCoppins
20. Apr 2020 · 01:38 UTC
Loved the art style of the planets and the ship! Super addicting game and would be interesting how many days I could survive. I don't know if this was an intended mechanic but I found it easier to put all the food on the closest planet so whenever the colony was starving I could grab a load from the nearest planet that seemed to have infinite storage. Only thing I'd suggest is some visible ship upgrades and a jet effect that suited the style of game. But other than that, super fun game.
🎤 falstro
20. Apr 2020 · 11:09 UTC
@kierancoppins Thanks man! Yeah, redoing the jet effect was the very next thing on the list that didn't make the cut. The infinite storage is quasi intended - I wanted to limit it to the original amount the planet had, so you could use them for logistics chains (but not infinite storage), but I honestly simply forgot to do that. The visible upgrades to the ship were on the todo list, but weren't quite as close to making the cut like the jet effect was :D
Week of the agents
20. Apr 2020 · 19:56 UTC
Pretty good, stylish, music fits game atmosphere. A bit easy but I know how hard to balance game at last few hours.
Some problems with canvas elements in choosed resolution. The reason is why I never use canvas in unity.
One tip - use dl=1 in the end of dropbox links for instant downloading.
🎤 falstro
21. Apr 2020 · 14:47 UTC
@week-of-the-agents oooh thanks for the tip about the dl=1 didn't know that. I tried updating the links but it doesn't seem to save it for some reason [edit: never mind it was just slow to show the updated links]. It's my first project with Unity - what is the issue with the Canvas? I tried resizing the window and messing with it and it looked decent enough to me, and I didn't bother to look further.
Week of the agents
21. Apr 2020 · 16:22 UTC
@falstro Canvas and its elements are not like other unity objects and causes problems for different aspect ratios and they lost proportions or positions even with anchors. So I usually develop my own UI elements from sprites and other standard objects.
Elektroney
25. Apr 2020 · 22:06 UTC
GJ Keep it up man!
Gildar76
26. Apr 2020 · 00:08 UTC
Great job. Loved this game. Wish I'd made something similar.
Arefnue
26. Apr 2020 · 00:23 UTC
Nice work!
Nimphious
26. Apr 2020 · 00:31 UTC
Was great. Stopped being able to play when the UI for a planet broke and I was unable to close it because the button ended up below the bottom edge of the screen. Had fun up until then though. I spent so many points on engines trying to find interesting planets!
Gaming Night
27. Apr 2020 · 12:55 UTC
Nice game! Really liked the low-poly style of the ship and the planets. Controls are smooth and make the game pleasant to play (not only the ship, but also the switches from game to map and to menus, with the zoom effect). I found the game a little bit too easy, but I guess balance was hard to make with such an amount of planets.
🎤 falstro
27. Apr 2020 · 15:20 UTC
@nimphious Thanks man! I appreciate the feedback! Yeah it's one of the bugs listed on this page - I thought I had fixed it (the camera for the planet UI is moving with the map), but as soon as it got reported I went back to check and apparently in my tired state I had somehow scratched it off my todo list as done despite not being fixed.
🎤 falstro
27. Apr 2020 · 15:22 UTC
@gaming-night Thanks for the feedback! And yes, the balancing is off, it's definitely too easy (though I have managed to lose a couple of times by being lulled into false sense of security). ;) I didn't really have time to do a lot of play testing. I think reducing the amount of food and materials overall would've been a good first step.
EternalXP
08. May 2020 · 11:12 UTC
Man I love this game. It just seems so well done. The ship steering is perfect. The animations are great. The art is cool and the mechanics are interesting. The music suits the gameplay and even though the gameplay is a bit repetitive it is kinda addictive. It has a sort of Cookie Clicker vibe. All around a fun game.
tompudding
11. May 2020 · 22:04 UTC
Great visuals, I loved the clean polygons of the ship and planets. The music is great, and the feel is just right. The game itself is not very engaging to me at the minute, I think it could use a few additional mechanics for the player to balance perhaps?
SnowToast
11. May 2020 · 22:29 UTC
Looks and controls great
Game-mon
12. May 2020 · 12:56 UTC
Great game! Visuals are great. Gameplay itself is pretty fun. I think adding a clear goal or a motivation to explore (find an item, rescue someone, discover a certain type of planet...) could be interesting. But for 48 hours it's already a very nice and polished experience. Congrats! :)
randomhuman
12. May 2020 · 13:43 UTC
Very nice art, I like the variety of planets. The map overlay is cool as well. There's not much challenge to it right now but what is there is well polished.
Honey Pony
12. May 2020 · 16:58 UTC
Neat little game. I like the vast amount of space you have to explore, and all the unique planets and their names. I think I mostly just find that the game goes too slowly--it took me half an hour to build up a reasonable amount of engine upgrades and cargo space, and then I decided to try exploring the outer planets and got softlocked on the orbit menu :(

There are two things that annoyed me. The first is that it was sometimes absurdly difficult to actually enter into orbit around a planet, especially with the upgraded engine. I think that the range where E will put you into orbit should be expanded a bit. The second is that the engine upgrades didn't feel like they really did anything. I could notice a difference once I had like 10 upgrades, but I couldn't notice the incremental change of each one. I feel like there is probably some way to make the engine upgrades feel a little more meaningful.

I also think it would be nice if the map would either tell you how many resources were left at planets that you already visited, or at least marked them if they were completely out of one or both.

All told, I had a good amount of fun playing this (enough to play for half an hour!) I think it could just be more engaging with some gameplay rebalancing and some tweaks to some of the mechanics.
🎤 falstro
12. May 2020 · 18:11 UTC
@honey-pony Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, sorry about the soft-lock :see_no_evil: I wrote about it in the "known bugs" in the description, and I haven't had time to fix it. I know I fly through these descriptions when trying the games so I don't think many people saw that note. Definitely needs some balancing too, that's for sure.
Honey Pony
12. May 2020 · 18:23 UTC
@falstro I actually did see the note but forgot about it. At least it was fun to see one of the outer planets... :P