LudumData

lone alien by Verbante

[raw]
made by Verbante for Ludum Dare 58 (COMPO)

play with only the mouse

you are a lone alien find and collect friends, where is waldo style use alien technology to make it easier (press buttons in the bottom console to activate them after unlocking) your friends will give you all kinds of bonuses how many friends can an alien have?

wih_4.gif

I've made little fixes after the jam has ended but I will not change intended features of the game.

v0.1.1: - Don't focus on new humans if you don't have any ufo to capture them - Keep errors after stage end - Show Stage correctly after lvl 10 - Captured cart cover image

v0.1.2: - Fix restart bug - Correct power effect area

v0.2 (postjam): https://verbante.itch.io/lone-alien (gameplay overhaul + sound)

Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/lone-alien

Ratings

Overall 17th 4⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 10th 4⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 23th 3.974⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 4th 4.474⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 29th 4.158⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 21th 3.778⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 46th 3.794⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 1🗳️ 2🗨️

Feedback

Endurion
06. Oct 2025 · 04:50 UTC
Lovely idea. At the first few stages I saw no difficulty at all, but after 6th the similarity of humans hit hard.
Well done :)
tweekus
06. Oct 2025 · 07:09 UTC
Nice idea and beautiful graphic)
At this moment this is my favorite :heart:
jk5000
06. Oct 2025 · 07:13 UTC
A simple and fun gameplay. The visuals is pretty good. Some music and sound effects would have been great. I don't understand the upgrade system. But overall a gooood compo game. Well done.
nekowei
06. Oct 2025 · 07:28 UTC
Having an alien collect human friends is such a fun and clever twist. The PICO-8 art style feels classic and charming, and everything runs smoothly. Well done!
birofio
06. Oct 2025 · 09:29 UTC
cool game, i saw a post of this game and i wanted to play this. now that i played it, i'm happy because this is so fun! good job making the game!
birofio
06. Oct 2025 · 09:29 UTC
cool game, i saw a post of this game and i wanted to play this. now that i played it, i'm happy because this is so fun! good job making the game!
Wouter52
08. Oct 2025 · 18:20 UTC
I made 11 friends! 🥰
Love your game! It could use some sound effects though. I developed a technique that I look for other potential friends when one was in the processed of being beamed up. Was that an intended strategy? I can't believe how many little humans you made! Did you create them all by yourself? Or is there some technical trickery going on?
🎤 Verbante
09. Oct 2025 · 07:54 UTC
@wouter52 Heya thanks!! Yes the strategy was intended tho it makes the game a bit easy right now. I'm making a post jam version where the strategy remains but I made the difficulty a bit harder, so it makes more sense. Humans are made by combining 2 body types, 16 hairs and some random colors for clothes and hair. Glad they felt like many.
gonutz
11. Oct 2025 · 05:27 UTC
Nice Pico 8 game! One thing: when I lose once, then restart, I will lose right away all the time. You seem not to be clearing the flag there :-)

I made 21 Friends :-)
Man, this gets pretty unforgiving after level 20 when you cannot reset errors anymore :-)

Great concept and execution! The upgrades are cool. At first I did not get what the shrinking is about but when everybody is crowded at the same place shrinking them does help to tell them apart. Very cool that you can still distinguish between everybody.

This is a really really cool entry, thanks and keep up the great work!
gonutz
11. Oct 2025 · 05:48 UTC
Oh man, now I died on stage 30. That is also the stage where Pico 8 gives in and gets stuttery :-D
pe4Q07
11. Oct 2025 · 11:09 UTC
I thought we'd be unique in our interpretation of human collecting but there is a few games that do so as well. I like the VFX of abbilities you added, certanily adds to the overall picture, keep this stuff up
LDJam user 411567
11. Oct 2025 · 15:23 UTC
nice idea, sadly the restart doesn't work. as others said seemed a bit too easy
sslees
12. Oct 2025 · 04:26 UTC
When I saw this I realized how perfectly a UFO game fits the theme. Well done for that, and nice job making such a clean and easy to understand UX. I was able to figure out how to play really quickly. I love how the friends were sometimes easy to confuse, but very fair because they were in fact different. I saw something about 2-player support? Is that real or just something built into pico-8?
Phobos001
12. Oct 2025 · 05:22 UTC
Fun game, made it to around Stage 13 before I started panicking and lost. :sweat_smile: Wish there was some audio, maybe a few confirmation or feedback sounds, nothing fancy. Great work though :thumbsup:
🎤 Verbante
13. Oct 2025 · 13:42 UTC
@gonutz Hey glad you delved so deep in to the strategy of it 30 is crazy! Also thanks for letting me know about the restart thing I fixed it now
🎤 Verbante
13. Oct 2025 · 13:43 UTC
@letmebeme thanks for letting me know, it's fixed now
🎤 Verbante
13. Oct 2025 · 13:47 UTC
@sslees Glad it felt fair. I woudn't not be lyin't if I told I put some checks in there but you can always one of the identical twins to tell them apart :D. The game doesn't have any 2 player support so it's probably a pico-8 thing. It is easy to take input from different players but not with mouse.
LDJam user 243193
14. Oct 2025 · 12:07 UTC
I've survived 12 stages without errors and no powerups but it gets ridiculous with more people to collect.
Anyways, nice human ab... collection game! I like how friends are integrated with upgrades.
epb9000
16. Oct 2025 · 19:46 UTC
Made it to stage 11, then I got too slow. I like the unlocks, though I don't understand the benefit of the shrink ray admittedly. Seems like it would make it harder to find friends to abd--- meet.
bentglasstube
17. Oct 2025 · 03:08 UTC
Really fun game! I love the random humans styling, it was super fun to look for your friends in the pack. I made it to stage 23 before I misclicked too many times :angry: . Honestly my only complaint was that there was no pico 8 chiptunes to jam out to while I played. Nice work.
Electric Sun
Oct 18th · 04:25 UTC
This is really fun! I love the graphics and the different designs for the humans. However sometimes I could get all the humans back-to-back before they start moving again, so adding in a quick cooldown after selecting a human could add in some nice challenge.
Wouter52
Oct 26th · 07:34 UTC
Whouw, congratz on the great results! 🥳

These are your best ones yet, right?
🎤 Verbante
Oct 26th · 11:50 UTC
@wouter52 Yeah!!! Thank you