Robo Island by JoeShanahan

[raw]
made by JoeShanahan for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

Build robots, perform research, uncover the island, and restore the communications tower to receive "The Signal!"

Screenshot 2026-04-20 231419.png


Merge 3 identical items to create a higher level version of that item. You can get items from places by sending a robot there.

  • Mines (pickaxe) - provides ore -> gears -> robots
  • Beach (shovel) - provides sand -> glass -> solar panels
  • Research (plants) - provides Data, needed for uncovering more of the island.

You can right click on a robot to wake it up, and then give it commands. You must put it back to sleep before you can merge it.


Controls

  • left click - drag to merge
  • right click - give robots instructions
  • Arrows/WASD - move camera
  • plus/minus - zoom camera

Music: Inner Journey - Audionautix


Protip! - merging 3 gets you one new item, but merging 5 gets you two!


I'm stuck, how do I play? * Your first priority should be building a robot. 3 ingots -> 3 gears -> 1 robot. * After that, wake up the robot by right clicking on it * Researching the plants to gain data is useful, that can reveal more of the map * Revealing the map will make it easier to get more robots * Honestly just doing nothing but getting level 3 data (SD cards) and revealing the map will give you so much free stuff


So as ever, the scope was too big, I didn't get the central mechanics working until the final hours, and had to cut most the content. Probably should've known better on a solo jam!

Ratings

Overall 143th 3.977⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 137th 3.841⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 301th 3.568⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 612th 3.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 481th 3.652⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Humor 374th 2.881⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 527th 3.457⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 33🗳️ 19🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 297990
Apr 21st · 09:50 UTC
Very neat game, it feels really polished!
I'm curious what the extra planned content would be? It felt like there could be lots of more challenging unfolding-game like features added on top of this! Escalating costs but upgrades to mitigate that.
🎤 JoeShanahan
Apr 21st · 10:01 UTC
@fredrik-andersson I think the pacing is way off, it's too slow at the start, and then too many resources being produced in the middle. If I were to make it bigger, I think I'd split the work the robots did from producing merge items. You could build up stock inside a mine for example, and then click on it to release it, meaning you don't just constantly have your entire map being filled up.

Also I really wish I'd had time to make the other three robot models, one of them looked like EVA from Wall-E and that would've been fun to animate.
LDJam user 82995
Apr 21st · 17:08 UTC
The merging adjacent objects mechanic is super cool. I could feel myself getting sucked into the game loop after just a few minutes. This could totally be a full game!
LDJam user 260720
Apr 21st · 17:11 UTC
Nice management game!
Kroko
Apr 21st · 17:18 UTC
this was so mesmerizing
nicardo
Apr 21st · 17:22 UTC
nice game, i am curious how much i can merge
MrMastin
Apr 21st · 17:32 UTC
I like the merge mechanic but the progression of the game is very slow
Adam Gallina
Apr 21st · 17:34 UTC
Great submission even if you didn't get everything implemented! The stock feature would have been pretty nice, my only real complaint was how fast the map was filling up at the end - other than that it was pretty satisfying and easy to grasp
Moony_91
Apr 21st · 17:41 UTC
Nice game, I like the style of it and how you can upgrade everything. I don't mind that it goes slow at the start, it gave me time to figure out how to use the controls and finding out what I was supposed to do. I was a little sad when I got to the end, where there was nothing to gather anymore. Could have kept going. :)
danlrk
Apr 21st · 19:20 UTC
Took me a second to figure it out but I really really got into it! The music is sooo chill, I'm vibing.
Kr0tyara
Apr 21st · 21:44 UTC
An addicting resource management type game. The core mechanic is pretty unique, reminds me of Amalgamate by sunil. I think it has some potential!

The game didn't feel really difficult, and even having a limited amount of tiles didn't restrict me that much. (I can't even recall what happens if there is not enough room for new resources. Bots simply stop working?...) Maybe some kind of an 'enemy' could have helped with increasing the difficulty. The UX is great, merging felt satisfying, my only complaint is that sometimes the bot UI overlapped with the tile I wanted it to move towards, so I couldn't click on it.

Also, it took me an embarassing amount of time to understand what I should do to even begin playing :D I assumed I had to drag the tiles on top of each other to merge them, not move them next to each other. But after I got it, I didn't encounter any other difficulties, so even a little tutorial on how to merge things would go a long way.

Overall, I had a good time with this game. Great job!
LDJam user 423872
Apr 22nd · 14:12 UTC
A good relaxing game. This game is addictive!
LCStark
Apr 27th · 16:42 UTC
Pretty cool and relaxing game! Gameplay is very intuitive, and with those nice animations it feels like there's is a lot of feedback on player actions to reinforce it. I liked the 3/5 merge resource increase, and how the resources only merged while moving that specific resource (and not when they were moved due to switching with something else), that gave me some options to move stuff around without wasting stuff on 3-merges.

The robot control UI was a little confusing at first, but it only took a few clicks to figure out. The game looks pretty, I do love the cute little robot! And while music wasn't done for the game, it was a pretty good choice - it fits the feel of the game nicely.

One thing that I was wondering about was if the resources wouldn't be better if they were made infinite. Right now, they are functionally infinite as far as getting to the victory screen goes, so the resource fields depleting doesn't really feel like it's that important. And it's especially well visible with the research / data - after finishing the game I spent some time to deplete all the fields and I ended up with a ton of SD cards with nothing to spend them on. Which reminded me that a couple of times during the game I wished for some sort of trash can to get rid of resources I didn't want to free some space. :D

![screen_scaled.png](///raw/3cc/31/z/733ce.png)

And, despite the warning that there's nothing else after that, I couldn't help myself. 😁

![screen2_scaled.png](///raw/3cc/31/z/733cf.png)

Overall, that's a pretty good jam entry! I had a lot of fun playing it!

Edit
Hmm, looks like images don't work for some reason. I'll see if reuploading them later is going to fix it, as right now it doesn't seem to do anything.
🎤 JoeShanahan
Apr 27th · 16:50 UTC
@lcstark Yeah, the balance is definitely off for how much of each resource you can get, I didn't have any time to play test before the deadline so was completely winging it. If I had just a tiny bit more time, I would've made a whirlpool tile in the water, where you can drop items you don't want. Thanks for playing! :smile:
VenomousMouse
Apr 28th · 08:24 UTC
Nice mechanic and music.
Kit Gorn
Apr 29th · 16:52 UTC
Awesome game, really interesting. At first, I wasn't sure which buttons to press, but once I figured it out, it got really fun. Finished the whole thing!
Mithka
May 02nd · 13:51 UTC
Nice and intuitive game with a cute robot to send off, great UX too
Thoth
May 02nd · 14:01 UTC
cool game with deep and easy experience
Crystik
May 02nd · 14:07 UTC
Very addictive once it got going, the art was simple yet effective and I think the robots look quite cute. I am interested in where you could take this further, and the music was very relaxing for this game :)
noneegy
May 03rd · 13:43 UTC
This is a cool little game. I had fun playing it. The graphic is nice and the music is relaxing. Good job!