5 Minutes by o_sim

[raw]
made by o_sim for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

The plants core has become unstable. The emergency shutdown will take effect in 5 minutes. You need to keep it functional until then.

Good luck.Screenshot_5.png

Here are some tips if you are struggling(SPOILER ALERT!):

Combine "Stable temperature" with "+50 °C; -2 °C/s" to reap the benefits without the downside.

Combine "Stable temperature" with "+4 °C/s; -1 bar/s" to get free pressure reduction.

Combine "Set temperature/s to be the same as pressure/s" with "+4 °C/s; -1 bar/s" to reduce both temperature and pressure at the same time.

Use "Set temperature to 50%" when temperature is close to 100% for maximal value. You can set it up with "+4 °C/s; -1 bar/s" or "+50 °C; -2 °C/s".

Ratings

Overall 371th 3.263⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 377th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 374th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 149th 3.921⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 205th 3.632⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 296th 2.583⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 256th 3.25⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 12🗨️

Feedback

VarunDevs
04. Oct 2021 · 08:51 UTC
GG!!!
PashaLoban
04. Oct 2021 · 12:37 UTC
Fun game
squimmy
04. Oct 2021 · 13:15 UTC
I like these kind of "control panel" games!

Unfortunately, I couldn't work out how to survive for five minutes :(

One suggestion I have, if you revisit this game after the compo, or make a similar game in future, would be to add plenty of feedback when activating buttons and flipping switches. A satisfying "click" sound, a light turning on, a fan humming to life, these kind of things make even the process of interacting with the controls fun, and also make the game easier to understand. For instance, part-way through my first play-through of this game, I because confused as to which toggle switches were set to "on" and which were "off", since the two modes look so similar.
🎤 o_sim
04. Oct 2021 · 22:55 UTC
@squimmy Great feedback, thank you!
Weirdybeardyman
05. Oct 2021 · 00:03 UTC
Very cool, I really liked the aesthetic, just some audio and more intuitive control switches would be nice, it wasn't 100% clear what each button did and I had to keep re-reading them.
LDJam user 178331
05. Oct 2021 · 00:11 UTC
This is tough!! I'm surprised how stressful this game is without much gamefeel. I like the idea of having certain combinations of buttons having more benefit, so it's half understanding which parameters to increase or decrease while also keeping in mind options you have from your cooldown buttons to get out of a bad situation. The only things I had issue with were the text-based unit measurements. It would always take me a few seconds to read "C/s" or "bar/s" and relate that to temperature and pressure. Recognition is much faster when using colors and/or symbols, so (as an example) representing temperature with a fire or thermometer symbol would have made that easier. Although, perhaps the text measurements was meant to add to the panic and confusion, which if you're trying to encourage that atmosphere then I'm all for it!

Another issue that @squimmy pointed out is that the sprites for the on/off switches do not make it obvious enough whether it is on or off. The lack of audio is also a shame, but I can't really blame you when we only had 48 hours.
🎤 o_sim
05. Oct 2021 · 13:26 UTC
@weirdybeardyman Thank you for your feedback! Yeah I struggled a lot with making the descriptions as short and understandable as possible.
🎤 o_sim
05. Oct 2021 · 13:34 UTC
@justcallmebb You have a lot of great points, thank you! I think using symbols would really help, shame I didn't think of that.
lesinvisible
08. Oct 2021 · 13:06 UTC
The game was a first a little too complicated to get everything under control, but after that everything is fine. I am big fan of this retro pixel graphics.
fortey
09. Oct 2021 · 04:59 UTC
Interesting idea, pleasant game.
dev693
09. Oct 2021 · 23:00 UTC
Nice combination game. Audio would have been nice and a better visualisation what each button does. It's kind of frustrating to read through the actions while time is running/temperature or pressure is increasing :-) but else :thumbsup:
vizitas
09. Oct 2021 · 23:19 UTC
Fun game. Best I got was 33s left. Very hard, tried my best to optimize, but could not figure it out, I think what tripped me up was "temp\s = pressure", for some reason I thought reducing my temps would reduce the pressure as well. Very fun idea tho.
The-Vecter
10. Oct 2021 · 07:44 UTC
Nice game! I woudl have liekd some music or sound effects, but the pixel art was clean and I liked the idea of adding more buttons and options the further the game progressed!
🎤 o_sim
10. Oct 2021 · 15:15 UTC
@vizitas Yeah, it's the other way around, reducing pressure/s also reduces temperature/s. I unfortunately choose too low resolution, so the description had to be very short and some of the buttons are confusing. Thanks for the feedback!
Apples_mmmmmmmm
11. Oct 2021 · 03:12 UTC
Came pretty close, but didn't quite make it the 5 minutes in my 3 attempts. Pretty interesting to try and work out the timings and relationships between all the button functions. The graphics are nice, and the game would be even more atmospheric with some sounds relating to the increase or reduction in each of the fields, as well as some BGM that develops along with the dangerous situation.
Update: Won on my 5th attempt, just barely haha.
🎤 o_sim
11. Oct 2021 · 13:39 UTC
@apples-mmmmmmmm Thanks for the feedback! Music which would progress alongside the game would be amazing, unfortunately I am pretty bad at music(plus I ran out of time). Good job on winning, from the other comments it seems I made the game quite hard.
LDJam user 250825
14. Oct 2021 · 20:23 UTC
Neat concept! First I failed due to there not being a fast way to reduce pressure but after trying it again I quite like that feature. I got further when I tried to keep the pressure from increasing by keeping the middle toggle enabled most of the time which makes the game more tense in other areas!