Unstable Machinery by mechanicallife
Info
As society expands, some poor guy has to maintain it all!
With your job as the "Pipe layer" It's your duty to assure that all settlers have all the different kinds of crazy colored water that they demand!
Lay down some pipes, mix some colors together and have and have a slightly stressful evening! I'd love to see how big your settlements can get!
Controls
keyboard
- Wasd for movement.
- Hold Space to pull hoses and handles.
- E for construction menu.
- Q for destruction menu.
- Z to zoom out.
controller
- Left stick for movement.
- Hold A to pull hoses and handles.
- X for construction menu.
- B for destruction menu.
- Y to zoom out.
- RB to choose building to construct.
Screen shots
You can see the color mixing wheel in the top left corner!
| Link | https://niklas-landberg.itch.io/unstable-machinery |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-machinery |
Ratings
| Overall | 835th | 3.463⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 796th | 3.385⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 491th | 3.558⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1257th | 2.92⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 19🗳️ | 32🗨️ |
The graphics look great, the building functions are all interesting, and I really like that you used the CMY convention so the colour mixing is really easy and intuitive.
Also, I like getting through the tutorial, and the game just opening up into a massive area.
Had some minor issues getting stuck in pipes, and the controls took a little while to get a hang of. But overall really liked it. Nice work.
А так интересно, спасибо!
I must admit though that it took me some time to figure out how the machines worked. More feedback on how the player's actions affected the machines might have helped here (sounds, particles, indicators...). Also, I would have liked the tutorial messages to stay on screen, as the cognitive load is quite big at the beginning and I forgot my goal at least twice. :sweat_smile:
Oh, and I loved how the game looks! It's not the art style that I'd have imagined for a game like this, but that makes it more special in my opinion.
Congratulations!
Your game idea is super cool and has a super vibe, something between a Zachtronics game and OpenTTD. I can totally view how the city will grow bigger and bigger and I'll have to manage tangling up pipes everywhere. But I think controls are an ABSOLUTE pain in the ass. I don't see how controlling a character add much to the game as a "god view" à la Sim City would probably fit better the gameplay (I'm interested to know the reason you went that direction).
To be clear, it's very good entry, just a bit sad to not be able to fully enjoy the experience.
We had discussions about having a character or not and the first iteration didn't, but we wanted the core mechanic to be about managing the ever changing needs around the world and having it one click away in God mode didn't add any tension or feeling of instability.
With a character there is more stress to run around and fix everything and how to organize the pipes and minimize run distances becomes a more strategic part of the game.
We had a stretch feature of adding bridges that could be placed over pipes to create highways and access roads but unfortunately time ran out
I finished the tutorial and upgraded a building once, but then nothing else changed, so I guess I won. :)
I liked the physicality of the pipes.