Robo-Miners by Wizard
A game in which you control a small number of robotic miners, sent into an asteroid field to mine for ore. However, upper management has decided to cheap out and give you a weak signal emitter to control the miners, meaning you cannot stray far from the outpost, unless you want to explain to your shift manager why you lost the expensive equipment in the asteroid field.
Instructions: move your robot with the arrow keys. Hold space to brake. collect small asteroids to fill your cargo hold, then return to base to process the ore. Make sure not to get hit by stray asteroids on the way back, unless the signal receiver get or hull get too damaged.
Larger asteroids are dangerous. Try to avoid where possible.
If damaged, return to base for repairs.
| Source code | https://github.com/TriDivide/LD59 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/robo-miners |
Ratings
| Overall | 785th | 2.847⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 655th | 2.986⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 800th | 2.5⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 618th | 3.297⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 741th | 2.708⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 424th | 3.264⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 308th | 3.1⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 773th | 2.814⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 63🗳️ | 68🗨️ |
the spaceship is kind of hard to drive but I had fun chasing around the asteroids for a while.
I also liked the backstory you wrote up for the little robots and the company. It added a lot of personality and helped give context to what I was doing.
Since the game is so movement-focused, I think the feel of controlling the character matters a lot, and right now it wasn’t the most fun to move around. I had a hard time staying engaged because it felt difficult to drive, and everything moves a bit too fast for me to comfortably react, especially without something like a minimap to help plan ahead.
I also found the resource mechanic a little unintuitive. I expected the larger asteroids to be more valuable or mineable, so it was a bit confusing and a little disappointing to realize I needed to avoid them while collecting the smaller ones instead.
Your intuition about the larger asteroids was correct, they can be mined, but they are more dangerous, if you hit one three times then it breaks in to 4 smaller boulders. because of the health system you would need to regen back at base to do this though. Due to running out of time I just didn't get around to fleshing this mechanic out much. I had so many ideas that were left on the cutting room floor to get it done, but I should have explained that in the description.
Again thanks for the feedback. can't wait to make a V2 of this game.
I liked the minimal soundtrack. Graphics were good and the space mood of getting stuff done was transmitted.

I also think that a goal would be nice and maybe some kind of enemies or obstacles to get more variety.
But the base game was fun. For me the controls felt fine. Very cool detail: the "destroyed" miners are still floating around, when you control the new one. Found that really nice. :)
I personally like mouth sounds. Wich the music also had that now.
Funny controls I mean hard to get it to do what I want.
Overall slik game .!
I really liked having space to break that made it much more controllable.
Very simple and I would have liked some sort of progression system, but other than that good job :)
The sound effects in it are also very well done.
For example it was not very obvious that ore collect from the ship when it is next to a base
Just lacks a little extra something, I feel, in terms of goals. As an easy fix, at least winning the game after collecting a certain amount, but if you were to keep working on it, then getting upgrades and/or building up the home base more and more after every subgoal is reached would really elevate this game.
As for the movement itself, I think it felt pretty good when I remembered about the spacebar, but for collection I would've liked a short-range tractor beam. It was frustrating to grace just past fast-flying stones. It would've also helped with the big ones—it's tough enough to break one into pieces before it disappears out of range, and if you do succeed, the pieces go flying out range very quickly and so it's not really worth the investment.
I like that you provided a little backstory in the description, and it sets up the signal mechanic well, which was a great use of the theme.
Overall a good and charming game, just needs something IMO!