Core Weapon by ThatANoNoWord
All of your crewmates are off taking a nap or something. Sadly for all of you, meteors are coming your way! You can shoot them off on problem, but without an engineer, you have to stabilize the ship's unstable core as well. Not only that, you also have to keep track of the 4 different factors affecting your firepower and core stability!

Temperature is the simplest of the factors. Push a button and increase the bar. Don't increase it too high, or else the core will grow out of control. High temperature means high damage bullets that you fire!

Pressure is influenced by a slider. Put up the slider, and the bar increases. Put it down, and the bar decreases. High pressure provides good damage, as well as increasing projectile speed.

Electricity is increased by a knob. Hold and turn the knob clockwise in order to charge electricity! High electricity means high projectile fire rate! Careful about your energy supply though!

Efficiency is increased by pressing one of nine buttons, according to which one lights up. High efficiency means bullets use less energy, so you can spam to your heart's content!

Having the 4 factors being high means that you get greater firepower to deal with meteors. But it also means that the core will grow faster! Occasionally decrease the factors in order to maintain a balance and to keep the core from exploding.
Stabilize the core, destroy the meteors, and manage your resources in this unstable environment!
| HTML5 (Don't choose quit option in menus) | https://thatanonoword.itch.io/core-weapon |
| Link | https://thatanonoword.itch.io/core-weapon |
| Link | https://thatanonoword.itch.io/core-weapon |
| Link | https://thatanonoword.itch.io/core-weapon |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/core-weapon |
Ratings
| Overall | 613th | 3.625⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 601th | 3.547⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 386th | 3.645⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 188th | 4.141⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1146th | 3.094⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 617th | 3.333⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 554th | 3.583⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
But as soon as the player understand how to play, it is a really fun game. Good job
I actually find that the fact that the controls appeared progressively was a nice touch. Maybe some more visual indications on the effects of each slider would be helpful :)

i like the concept a lot (and my game is actually somewhat similar), especially balancing the controls/condition of the weapon with actually using the weapon, but i think the feedback needs to be more clear about what to do to stop the ship from melting down. like for example, some kind of visual hint for the control that you need to use to stabilize the ship for whatever meter is in a bad state.
(+) complex shooting, shooting support & interaction with the core/energy system
(+) more and more functions during game play
(-) the area for seeng the meteors is a bit to small
(-) slow projectiles feels sloppy