Meltdown by Ghost20000

[raw]
made by Ghost20000 for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

LD49-cover.png

Welcome to MELTDOWN!

In this game, your job is to manage a nuclear reactor facility.

You must buy, monitor, and manage nuclear reactors.

To activate a reactor, you add a nucleus to it. The nucleus will catalyze nuclear reactions, which will produce more nuclei.

Every reaction uses fuel and generates heat.

When a reactor runs out of fuel, no more reactions can occur within it.

When a reactor reaches its "heat capacity", it goes into meltdown.

A capture rod only lets some of the nuclei through, but not all of them.

A meltdown can be stopped if the reactor can cool down to an appropriate level, but if the meltdown isn't stopped in time, the reactor explodes and the game ends.

Good luck, try not to die!

Ratings

Overall 246th 3.522⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 279th 3.354⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 92th 3.875⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 11th 4.438⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 392th 3.146⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 283th 3.087⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 281th 3.205⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 4🗳️ 3🗨️

Feedback

ZXCDani
03. Oct 2021 · 20:09 UTC
loved the look of the game and the music, pretty fun!
Chris Dirkis
04. Oct 2021 · 10:54 UTC
A fun simulator, but after I had 4 tricked out reactors and $8k or so I didn't really know what to do. Sure, I could keep making more reactors, but the manual management each reactor requires (refueling, remove rod and add more neutrons if it's out) would have risen, and there was no reason to make more money? Having an objective or automatic management upgrades or both would be rad.
LDJam user 259103
04. Oct 2021 · 11:21 UTC
Was very confusing for me at first, but a creative use of the theme!
🎤 Ghost20000
05. Oct 2021 · 10:55 UTC
@chris-dirkis yeah, the balancing definitely could have used some work.

About the automation part, that was something I considered early on but didn't implement, decided to try to go for pure chaos instead (which would have greatly benefited from balancing). Thanks for the review!
🎤 Ghost20000
05. Oct 2021 · 10:56 UTC
@python-b5 Yeah, having a proper tutorial instead of a wall of text would have probably helped. Thanks for the review!
Moritz14
05. Oct 2021 · 12:17 UTC
Wow, nice work!
PBG
05. Oct 2021 · 12:19 UTC
I second the need for a tutorial. I was pretty confused, and I'm a chemical engineer :p . That being said, it was really cool firing up the reactor, and performance was super slick in the browser. Great visual design, and all the effects really fit together well. It also sounds great. Really nice game overall!
FromTheChasm
05. Oct 2021 · 12:22 UTC
Considering I was accidently destroying a nuclear reactor, this was strangley relaxing. The music perhaps was putting me into a trance. I'm not quite sure I'm built to look after a reactor. ​I was a bit unsure what the capture rod did, but I managed to keep it cool.
Ashley GB
05. Oct 2021 · 12:23 UTC
A neat take on the theme! I think there's some potential here in the future- balancing things out and perhaps offering a mini tutorial stage/video would likely help. Overall great job! :smile:
jeremyfa
05. Oct 2021 · 12:23 UTC
I like the simple graphics and the music/sounds. To be honest I didn't really understand what I was doing but apparently I did produce some energy? The mood is good and probably the experience would be more enjoyable if things were a bit easier to understand, like with a step by step tutorial instead of the text one (but you probably didn't have enough time for that, which is OK for a compo entry). Good job ☢️ !
Grigri Games
05. Oct 2021 · 12:26 UTC
Really innovating game. A Bit confusion at first, but still, well played ! Loved the look of the game as well
PSV Games Studio
05. Oct 2021 · 12:26 UTC
The game is really cool! An improvement would be to make the game money more useful, because over time the money ends up being useless because each reactor requires attention not to explode, and if you buy too many reactors, it becomes impossible to operate all of them.
Lovor
05. Oct 2021 · 12:27 UTC
Cool game. But I don't quite understand the purpose of the game, have not scores or levels. overall nice idea, i like management games like this
LazySeal
05. Oct 2021 · 12:29 UTC
Nice concept. As mentioned above, better (mqybe with some pictures at least) tutorial would be great. It took me about 3 runs to get the idea. (maybe i'm just not nuclear enough >_<)
Recessive
05. Oct 2021 · 12:34 UTC
Nice game, it just lacked purpose. After a few reactors I was lost for cause, maybe adding a "generate this amount of neutrons in this time" objective would be good? Otherwise plays well
greenphox
05. Oct 2021 · 12:34 UTC
I really enjoyed it! Really nice game easy to understand but really hard to master. For improvements… I think that a better tutorial would be helpful and a way to show the player the costs of every action.

Edit: I just found a way to generate infinite money.
Ty Rymer
05. Oct 2021 · 12:37 UTC
After i got how the game worked it was a lot of fun!
![Screenshot 2021-10-05 143741.png](///raw/c8f/f3/z/46f57.png)
Ludokultur
05. Oct 2021 · 12:47 UTC
Super creative and really fun! I think you could either keep pushing this into the frantic management direction or even turn it into a more casual idle-like game with the cool reactor visualizations. Obviously a perfect fit for the theme too! :D
NicMagnier
05. Oct 2021 · 12:54 UTC
It was a bit difficult to undersatnd at first, especially figuring what what we should do at first and what are the various components. But it uses very well the theme unstable because things gets out of hand pretty fast :)
Well done!
Hadik
05. Oct 2021 · 13:50 UTC
Original game mechanics, I like your inovations. Not too horiblle art but next time try invest time more into art. Ohh gosh, very addictive and fun game, this is our winner guys. Average audio, it not bad but not good, try harded next time. Hmmm, somebody have very good idea for this theme, awesome. Overall nice job, I love it.

One last note: I always write down honest review, because everybody need that, not just nice craps with some bullshit, but sometime I will aperceite very good games. So if this review insult you, but use it well :) Anyway every game is counting so :)