LudumData

Shadow of Archimedes by Eckkert

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

The planet Archimedes is dead.

https://atomotron.github.io/shadow-of-archimedes/

One individual remains stubbornly on its surface fighting to re-terraform. The night is deadly cold and the day is deadly hot, so he has to work while staying in the sunset zone at the edge of the planet Archimedes' shadow.

still1.png

still2.png

still3.png

still4.png

--HOW TO PLAY--

  • The day is too hot and the night is too cold. Stay moving to survive.

  • Build machines by clicking their icons at the top of your screen.

  • Click black slots to place resources in them. Click a filled slot to remove the resource again.

  • One input resource placed in a finished machine will output two resources. (Example: 1 battery placed in a water pump produces 2 waters)

  • There are 4 specific mountains suitable to building terraformers on. Their slots are already visible.

Controls

Run

  • WASD
  • Arrow keys
  • Click or tap to move to spot
  • Hold down to follow cursor

Interact

Click or tap... - On a resource to pick it up from the ground - On an empty slot to place a resource - On a filled slot to remove the resource

Camera

  • Scroll to zoom in or out
Youtube https://atomotron.github.io/shadow-of-archimedes/
Youtube https://github.com/Atomotron/shadow-of-archimedes
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/shadow-of-archimedes

Ratings

Overall 103th 4.123⭐ 55🧑‍⚖️
Fun 283th 3.806⭐ 56🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 107th 4.057⭐ 55🧑‍⚖️
Theme 196th 4.157⭐ 56🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 204th 4.241⭐ 56🧑‍⚖️
Audio 310th 3.765⭐ 53🧑‍⚖️
Mood 123th 4.106⭐ 54🧑‍⚖️
Given 19🗳️ 43🗨️

Feedback

CursedEmbassy
05. Oct 2020 · 23:00 UTC
really cool game. I liked the artstyle! :)
potatopancakes
05. Oct 2020 · 23:01 UTC
This is a super cool concept! This is probably my favorite game I have seen so far today.
05. Oct 2020 · 23:02 UTC
Very cool game! the only thing that it is a little bit confusing. I think it would help a ton to have a tutorial and a indicator of where on the planet you are. Other than that this game is very cool!
Patsui
05. Oct 2020 · 23:06 UTC
+Clever use of the theme

+mechanics are polished and game feel is great

+good atmosphere

-could use some tutorialization since it's a somewhat unique idea

Overall it was intriguing and a really solid entry, well done!
Str0nkyK0ng
05. Oct 2020 · 23:07 UTC
Really cool art style! I loved the concept of having to balance yourself between hot and cold. Personally, I would've enjoyed a little more instruction on what to do, but overall great job!
ARBEX
05. Oct 2020 · 23:08 UTC
Solid entry
🎤 Eckkert
05. Oct 2020 · 23:08 UTC
@Anonymous

Scroll the mouse wheel backwards to zoom out. :)
Rodgems
05. Oct 2020 · 23:09 UTC
Loved the whole mood behind the game. Crafting was a bit ambiguous, wasn't toooo sure what I was making at times, love the concept, would love to see a fully realised version some day!
sneakysushi
05. Oct 2020 · 23:09 UTC
Very good aesthetic and gameplay. Great work! As the previous commenter pointed out though, a bit confusing at first.
Vadzim
05. Oct 2020 · 23:09 UTC
10 overheating/ 10
05. Oct 2020 · 23:11 UTC
Love the concept and the mood, very fun to play with mouse! it could be a great mobile game!
arifacid
05. Oct 2020 · 23:12 UTC
cool atmospehere, cool idea
Misterm
05. Oct 2020 · 23:12 UTC
Like your game: graphics and music are cool. Good Job..
firetwoonenine
05. Oct 2020 · 23:12 UTC
Much harder than you may first think... freezing or burning to death is always right around the corner!

The visuals and sound are excellent. I've not been able to get too far into it because once you get going, you can only really stop moving for about 5 seconds before dying of heat exposure.

This game is an excellent concept, all that I think it really needs is a difficulty tweak.
PrimalShadow
05. Oct 2020 · 23:13 UTC
really cool concept
snowinn
05. Oct 2020 · 23:14 UTC
This is a really cool idea ! I love the artstyle as well it looks amazing for a game jam game and the music with the art sets a nice atmosphere. Next time, I would include a tutorial or better instructions, because I died a few times trying to figure it out ;).
Great job!
Blind Lemon Games
05. Oct 2020 · 23:17 UTC
Love the mood
strandgear
05. Oct 2020 · 23:18 UTC
Really cool game! Arts, animation,music are so perfect for the game atmosphere and mechanics so interesting!
mmason
05. Oct 2020 · 23:26 UTC
A fantastic jam game, well put together and challenging, but able to be finished in a reasonable amount of time
6smith
05. Oct 2020 · 23:29 UTC
that was a really fantastic experience! i went in without reading the description and i was still able to figure out what to do with only a little trial and error, and eventually i beat it! really interesting mechanics and take on the theme, nice graphics and music, good minimal UI. the only thing i would suggest is maybe an icon on the machines to indicate what they produce. really awesome fulfilling experience, good work you guys!!
Théo Guerin
05. Oct 2020 · 23:31 UTC
amazing game! i spent thirty minutes on it without even realizing it ^^' always like "oh come on one more try"
wujood
05. Oct 2020 · 23:32 UTC
I re-terraformed archimedes and i liked it! There were some glitches with the UI at times, but overall a very polished and challenging game!
Cieroceramics
05. Oct 2020 · 23:33 UTC
just incredible. I spent a long time playing this, and I think I will spend more.
I wasn't sure exactly what structures did what. but I feel like the ambiguity was part of the fun. I also took advantage of a glitch to get more than the fair exchange of raw materials :P. all in all, outstanding job.
Ina
05. Oct 2020 · 23:34 UTC
Great Graphics and Atmosphere. Took me a moment to find out what I'm supposed to do, but that was the fun part in this game. Really awesome game.
Fryer
05. Oct 2020 · 23:49 UTC
I didn't understand that you could click the icons at the top to build structures at first. I thought they were inventory slots or something, but after overcoming that misunderstanding I started getting resources and slowly rebuilt the planet.

One thing that'd help a lot would be some sort of indicator on the machines you build showing you what resources they give you. I kept forgetting which machine did what, and the silhouettes weren't giving me much of a hint about what to expect, so I wasted a lot of resources at the start.

Numbers showing how many of each resource you have would also be nice. The floating trail of icons gets a bit crowded after a certain point.
Wikers
05. Oct 2020 · 23:54 UTC
very vet very nice job!!!!!, it has a lot of potencial!!!
BellringerQuinn
06. Oct 2020 · 00:02 UTC
Really amazing job! I just wish there was a tutorial.
Anant Ahuja
06. Oct 2020 · 00:03 UTC
Took me a few restarts to get the game but absolutely loved it. I played it till the end and found it fun. Amazing visuals but the guitar riffs sealed the deal for me. Honestly big part of why I played the game till the end was because of the music.
Federico Giorgi
06. Oct 2020 · 00:27 UTC
I could really play this for many hours. I had to take a few rounds to understand the mechanics, ma after that, they game felt fantastic! The art style is really unique
cax
06. Oct 2020 · 00:28 UTC
Cool graphics and feelings when playing, pretty slow progression but gameplay is very meditative thats why it's still cool
Aurath
06. Oct 2020 · 00:28 UTC
Excellent. The only things I would change would be to make it clearer what the function of the machines was when they are placed on the ground.
BakemonoMori
06. Oct 2020 · 00:40 UTC
REALLY AWESOME, I HAD to finish it!! So here I am! Maybe, you could have had a pause menu, but after that, really fantastic!
Zashers
06. Oct 2020 · 03:45 UTC
I liked the ambience of the game, very moody. If the mechanics were more forgiving then it might be more fun.
AlekM
06. Oct 2020 · 03:48 UTC
Great concept and it has a lot of potential.
Ree Rolph
06. Oct 2020 · 14:33 UTC
Oh wonderfully done. Beautiful, evocative, interesting. I'd say I'd like to see more of it, but it felt perfectly formed. Good work!
makiyoshi
06. Oct 2020 · 19:29 UTC
Awesome! I really like the audio, it's very juicy, and the graphics are very clean-looking and pretty. At first I felt overwhelmed by everything that was going on, but when I grasped the mechanics a little better it felt very compelling. The use of the theme is great and the concept is really interesting. My critique would go to the overwhelming start (adding a tad more of in-game info would've been nice) and the player character moving too fast, lol. The temperature also rises and lowers a little too fast for me, I kinda wanted to build the machines and appreciate all the game's artwork with less of a hurry. All in all, I think you did an awesome job, congratulations!
necauqua
06. Oct 2020 · 20:09 UTC
Very good audio work, and I also liked the style, minimalist silhouettes are just what you need for this type of game.

Also your theme interpretation is pretty on point, well done.

Tip of the hat for HTML5 (especially native and not like Unity or something).

--

To answer your question from my game - I did not use WebGL because I didn't have much prep (I would've loved to). I was just drawing to a canvas, and it has text rendering.

To answer your question even better - I did GL text rendering in the past (successfully) and you for sure need some library(ies) for ttf parsing and positioning because fonts (glyphs and their positions and uv's) are stupid hard and complicated.
🎤 Eckkert
06. Oct 2020 · 20:15 UTC
@necauqua One strategy I was considering, although we didn't have nearly enough time for me to try it, was rendering text to a hidden 2D context which could then be uploaded to the GPU. In modern browsers, it is easy to get data out of canvases and in to textures with the ImageBitmap thing, although Safari does not have it yet. (There is probably another way but I didn't research far enough to find it.)
necauqua
06. Oct 2020 · 20:18 UTC
@eckkert, funnily enough, this is a viable form of caching, I think Android does that - render some text to a texture and then just use that texture (instead of 2 triangles per letter).
🎤 Eckkert
06. Oct 2020 · 20:23 UTC
@necauqua Oh, I mean more than caching - in the browser it is possible to render text in a 2D canvas like you did (with builtin browser APIs), and then transfer the data to a texture in a WebGL context like we're using. That removes the need for your own code to handle fonts.
Wouter52
06. Oct 2020 · 21:36 UTC
I played this game longer than I was supposed to haha, I liked it a lot. First I did not understand how to get the resources, but by picking them up and putting them into the contraptions I learned they generate new items. The art style is gorgeous Well Done!
Potti
07. Oct 2020 · 10:04 UTC
At the beginning I overlooked the fact that I had to build resource machines, I wasn't quite sure what the inputs for the machines were at first, though it is reasonable well communicated through colour (maybe a tooltip when hovering would have been nice).

Good take on the theme.
Trexxak
07. Oct 2020 · 14:25 UTC
![ld_s2a.png](///raw/98b/d2/z/396ef.png)

YESS! I finally made it :D

The minimalistic artstyle is incredible, the perfectly fitting score music is an instant favourite for me!
Concerning the gameplay, I would have liked a pause screen maybe, as it's pretty painful to start anew when you just made enough progress to reach the endgame, but at the same time I think I understand that it would run against the leitmotif's grain of an endlessly spinning, incredibly dangerous world.

I did encounter a graphical bug though. Sometimes when building or feeding a machine, the icon would not change to display you just filled up the corresponding slot.

Other than that - congratulations, you again succeeded in creating one of my favourite games :D Thank you for your amazing work!
aviv871
07. Oct 2020 · 14:36 UTC
Graet entry, I really liked it!
nice take on the theme.
Good luck!
Mekuri
07. Oct 2020 · 15:27 UTC
I really loved this game. Took me a while to get it, but once I got I was hooked. I haven't beaten it yet, was close once, but I'll definitely go back and do it. Got a tiny bit tedious when you had to run around to get back to your 'base', but I suppose the idea is to build in multiple places- Tbh though, this is probably the game I had the most fun playing so far- So very good job, and thanks for sharing :-)
Codeman1010
07. Oct 2020 · 20:18 UTC
This was amazing, I was really felt like the 'loop' was the real champion of this.
🎤 Eckkert
07. Oct 2020 · 20:49 UTC
@trexxak We would have liked a pause button too - unfortunately it was a casualty of the deadline. ;)

@mekuri Personally I like to have separate coal, water and metal bases, built 120 degrees apart. I agree about the running though, if we had had more time to polish the gameplay, we would have made the planet a bit smaller.
Matootsy
24. Oct 2020 · 11:30 UTC
It took me a lot of time to understand that we can build structures while clicking on the icons at the top. (I had to read more the HOW TO PLAY) before starting ^^ Anyway. Very good post apocalyptic mood. Nice sound atmosphere, and I like how the ressources are following you. The concept to go right to cool down and stop before freezing is interesting, but at the end, I'm just walking/stoping all the time. But it's a nice entry. A good concept and a nice experience well in the theme.