Everything's Unstable by Yskuma
It’s your first day of your new job at the state nuclear power station! Keep up with the increasing power demands while stopping the place from falling apart around you. Featuring a reactor simulation written by genuine physicists. - Move with WASD, hold space to interact with things. - Fix parts to keep the reactor going. - Raise and lower control rods to slow down and speed up the reaction. - Pump more coolant in when you’re running low.
Written in Java using LibGDX. Mostly ECS (Ashley) apart from a few naughty global objects.
- @Kerrindor: Code, art and sound
- @Sim137: Code, art and equations
- @Yskuma: Code, code and code


| Link | https://github.com/Yskuma/LudumDare49 |
| Link | https://livelyspark.itch.io/ludum-dare-49 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/everythings-unstable |
Ratings
| Overall | 1129th | 3.222⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 789th | 3.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1067th | 3⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 236th | 4.083⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 870th | 2.889⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 479th | 3.361⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1106th | 3.056⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 10🗨️ |
Fun!
One last note: I always write down honest review, because everybody need that, not just nice craps with some bullshit, but sometime I will appreciate very good games. So if this review insult you, but use it well :) Anyway every game is counting so :)
Yeah, we probably shouldn't have assumed people would know how the control rods work. You lower them into the reactor to slow the reaction down and raise them out to speed the reaction up. The reactor is actually running a semi accurate simulation that takes into account all sorts of variables including the heat capacity of the reactor and coolant... this is what happens when you let a physicist design game systems.
In hindsight we probably should have made the pump for adding coolant back into the reactor more obvious too. It's pretty key to making it to the end of the game.
I liked the concept but it seems without playing numerous times, you won't experience all the fun little dialog or events that happen. The ones I were able to see were quite humorous though, so nice job on the writing :)
Fun concept, but I wish the implementation and instructions were a little clearer.
First off the coolant bar doesn't have enough contrast for me to able to tell from a glance what it's at and the font for the percentage is rather small.
A mini-map would have been nice to know where the failures are occurring, it would also have been nice if things like the coolant pump were not spread across the map and behind walls where I have to take a super roundabout way to get there making it feel unfair.
Other than that the sound was pretty good the art was appealing there was a slight flickering of the tiles when I moved but I quite enjoyed it.