LudumData

Lame Duck Delivery Service! by zxeno

[raw]
made by zxeno for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

ss3.png

Welcome to "Lame Duck Delivery Service"!

You're a lonely space delivery person who forgot their stereo at the last space dock. Sadly, there's no way it's still there after you insulted the dockmaster on their bizarre choice of magenta top with red coveralls. It just hurt too much to look at, and now your'e out here in the silence.

LDDS is a mashup between a tycoon game and a top-down space trading/sim game. Upgrade your ship, get more money, avoid asteroids! Maybe one day you'll be able to afford a replacement stereo.

How to play:

  • W-A-S-D are (relative) directional thrusters.
  • Q-E are left/right rotation.
  • R brakes your rotation.
  • F applies extra braking power.

All upgrades cost 1000 'double-doolies ($$)' each

Move from station-to-station to trade cargo. Farther the station is, the greater the reward, similar to TTD games.

Tools used:

  • Unity
  • Rider
  • Aseprite
  • Paletton

Credits:

  • Prgramming : Me
  • Pixel Art : Me
  • Design(?) : Me
  • SFX : Various sources on Pixabay

Author Jam Notes:

Using Unity again after many years and I'm remembering why I hated using it lmao. But it was good to finally get back into gamedev/jamming again and have something to submit. I wouldn't call it done, there's plenty of bugs, it's bare-bones with content, missing music, and really just a lack of variety overall. I've also never, somehow, been good at nailing the gameplay loops and building small enough to properly finish in the jam-window. But I decided to participate as a promise to myself and to get myself back into something I love! I hope I'm actually bringing myself back, because I had so much fun and have really missed this!

Github https://github.com/ZXeno/LDJam-53
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/lame-duck-delivery-service

Ratings

Given 6🗳️ 12🗨️

Feedback

Tom_Oak
03. May 2023 · 14:23 UTC
Hi! I tried playing your game on my monitor (4k, 200% windows zoom) but the intro text and the space stations UI was really tiny and barely usable at this resolution unfortunately...
I couldn't get very far but your game looks nice, the controls work well, and I loved your presentation <3
Congratulations, welcome back ;)
Batisdark
04. May 2023 · 00:19 UTC
Game looks nice and mechanics mostly on point, BUUUUT...

You can load your cargo on the first station, pass it there right away... get 300 double dollars. Repeat for how many times you want. Basically without any issue :(

Things to improve other than that are showing that you actually need to load some cargo at the start and showing ingame how much updates cost. And maybe distance to bases (optional?) so we can pick furthest ones by knowing where to fly. Maybe some color coding for distance would do.

Really nice implementation of thrust mechanic by the way. A bit hard to learn at first, but good once you get hang of it. (btw, not sure you did it on purpose - can't rate your game!)
Substain
04. May 2023 · 07:38 UTC
cool little game, the controls feel good, and the upgrade mechanic works fine. The cargo bug was mentioned already, but at least they run out of cargo, so you need to get to another station at some point ;)
🎤 zxeno
04. May 2023 · 10:33 UTC
Thanks for the feedback! @batisdark I did do a casual entry, which disables the voting. I wasn't concerned all that much about the score, just participation and feedback. :smile: Most of those were things I wanted to get implemented, but just ran out of time.
dungeoneer64
04. May 2023 · 15:00 UTC
This is nice! As others have said, it's easy to drop off cargo where you got it, rinse and repeat - but I actually found that that has its own merits, sort of like a clicker/idle game. The space physics are cool, it's nice that you have a marker that shows you your velocity, helps a lot.
Kazzymodus
04. May 2023 · 18:50 UTC
It's a cute little game! The graphics are simple but effective, and it is quite amusing to drift around a station trying to get in.

One small bit of feedback that I do have is that when you are in a region without asteroids, because the background doesn't move you can't actually tell whether you're moving. At one point I was holding the brakes to test them out, and almost slammed into an asteroid because I didn't realise they were moving me backwards! :D
manioora
04. May 2023 · 22:11 UTC
I like the vibe of the game and the controls are totally fine with me, but yeah - you can farm on one station endlessly, which kind of kills the enjoyment 'cause there's nothing for you to really do. But a very promising concept, with some polish it could be really fun!
chromaticGray
05. May 2023 · 21:24 UTC
Controlling with one hand feels a bit weird. I wasn't sure what I needed to do exactly. Flying through all the stations or something like that? Graphics are cohesive. Appart from the one hand control that I find frustrating the ship steering (even if challenging) is fun. Good job!
OminusGalaxy44
06. May 2023 · 02:14 UTC
game is really cool but the stations are too far apart with nothing between them
kiguel182
06. May 2023 · 10:56 UTC
I like the ship controls but it would be nice to get a little more direction or have space be a little more populated. I liked the graphics as well and the sounds. Nice work
joao-marcello
07. May 2023 · 20:48 UTC
It was not that clear what to do in the beginning and the ship's rotation was a bit too slow...

Liked the graphics and the care you had to add some SFX.

PS: I cannot read the in-game tutorial cause it keeps outside of the screen (my PC resolution is 1366x768)
LDJam user 259103
13. May 2023 · 07:46 UTC
I think this is a good basis for a game. There's not a ton here right now, but what there is is polished and pretty fun. The asteroids ended up not being much of a threat, since they're pretty sparse. The endless farming bug has already been brought up several times but I found it by accident within only a couple minutes of playing.

LD won't let me actually give star ratings. I'm not sure why, but I'll check back later to see if it fixes itself.