Connection Lost by CoTiJeLucie
Puzzle game about connecting places to your network.
Balance signal loss while keeping the routes short.
Each level has its own maximum route length called TTL (Time To Live).
Beat all 8 levels with the highest signal score you can and share the results with your friends :)
Controls: - 1, 2, 3 -> select connection types - left click -> place or move connections - right click -> remove connections - rotate connections by clicking and dragging their arrows - space -> start the simulation - R -> restart level - insert -> show debug view
Tower mechanics:
- Omnidirectional: No signal loss on terrain, low signal loss on distance (slow)
- Dish: High signal loss when overlapping terrain, no signal loss otherwise (faster)
- Beam: Long distance, high signal loss (fastest)
Signal mechanic:
Signal loss doesn't have a target, try to get as big number as possible. Even though it's percents, you can never get to 100%, it's more like signal score.
The final signal strength is displayed on the destination, so you can try to move towers and rotate them around to get the best possible result.
| itch.io | https://cotijelucie.itch.io/connection-lost |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/connection-lost |
Ratings
| Overall | 320th | 3.724⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 188th | 3.741⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 226th | 3.707⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 46th | 4.448⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 526th | 3.534⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 568th | 2.375⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 594th | 3.339⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 41🗳️ | 42🗨️ |
Having trouble figuring out how all the devices work. I was able to get the laser one to go, towers I think I could figure out with some work. No idea how to use the dishes.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun! Great job!
It was a bit confusing at first, and I was playing with the debug ui on. Feels like it's really important to understand that each hop has loss of one turn of TTL and you can only chain so many things. Otherwise the signal would just stop going and it wasn't clear what the reason was. Anyway absolutely great game! Thanks!
Also the BGM is a great vibe.

But hey, I finally found a game that has a similar idea to mine! Nice work!
Here's one of the possible solutions:

Looking back I would include explanation of the towers at least, but I didn't want to have a complicated wall of text and rather wanted the game to be as self explanatory as possible, that's why we didn't end up removing the TTL number from the envelopes.
The signal strength I think would work better if we changed it to Signal Score and just not show the %, since it's just basically "try to get this number as high as you can", while also lowering time and tower count.
The towers themselves work in this manner:
Omnidirectional: No signal loss on terrain, low signal loss on distance (slow)
Dish: High signal loss when overlapping terrain, no signal loss otherwise (faster)
Beam: Long distance, high signal loss (fastest)
If I were to redo the tutorial, I would probably add maps, that already have prebuilt towers with drawn information next to it, explaining how they work.
The final signal loss is displayed on the destination, so you can try to move towers and rotate them around to get the best possible result.