The Unstable Zone by Joror

Can you find your way back?
Your mining ship got sucked into a wormhole while exploring The Unstable Zone.
Tips!
- Head to the Top Left (North West) for more story!
- Some enemies contain Unstable Matter! Don't over-kill them.
- You can loot enemies and objects by using your tractor beam to pull them to your loading zone (blue)
Controls
Ship Movement - Strafe with AWSD - Rotate with Q & E - Mouse to aim - Hold space to rotate towards mouse
Ship Tools - Toggle weapons & tools with 1 2 3 4 - You can repair yourself with tool 4 - You can grab & store with tool 3 - Fire current tool with Left Mouse Btn
Info - Check status and materials by hovering over space objects - See your current cargo at the bottom of the screen
Communications - Fly in range of places to open up communications dialogs
| Link | https://joror.itch.io/the-unstable-zone |
| Link | https://joror.itch.io/the-unstable-zone |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-unstable-zone-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 417th | 3.759⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 765th | 3.411⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 810th | 3.25⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1073th | 3.167⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 264th | 4.179⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 593th | 3.188⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 120th | 4.107⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 38🗨️ |
It took me an _embarrasingly_ long time to find out that the green dots contain unstable matter. And an even _longer_ time to find out that the more aggresive ones contain more, so I shouldn't just shoot it.
That was _after_ I failed to notice for the longest time, that, to collect stuff, I should position my ship so that the little blue field that is coming out of the same part of the ship as the blue beam is coming from, is the only intake.
At this point I had already shot the majority of the green stuff in the level, so I started again.
I got further along, so I thought I might actually see the end of this game, it took me a while, but now I have collected almost half of the unstable matter ... which was about one or two minutes after I noticed that the more cargo I hold, the more inertia and less top speed the ship has.
Then I accidentally got sucked back into the far part of the level by the stream.
At that point I had been playing for what felt like a really long time, so I stopped.
(At some point I might attempt a third playthrough, going back and forth to the AI, like in my first attempt.)
I'm not sure how much of this is on me, and how much of this is on the game. (On the one hand, the scanner indicates that the pirates have unstable matter --though in my defence the info screen doesn't always show up and the capital U is in dark geen on darkish grey--, but I don't think it specifies anywhere how the tractor beam works.)
Some other remarks:
- Dialogue system should have a back button: I wasn't able to get back from the rest of the conversation without closing it and opening again. (Closing the dialogue isn't obvious either.) Also the QBits wheren't shown on every screen that I might want them on I think.
- Not sure if on purpose: The very large crate can't be illuminated (but does show up breifly when disintegrating).
- Control scheme is really nice, feels very intuitive.
- Idea for the tractor beam: Make it the entire side of the ship, not just a small part.
- Why can I turn the light-tool off? What purpose does that serrve?
- When tractoring, sometimes objects disintegrate, other times not. And as I rewrite this from my notes, I think that that may be because the also receive damage from bumping against my ship?
- Another thing that isn't mentioned, is that the nanites need raw materials (and not, for example tech-part ones -- or even it being free).
- At some point I got some debug info to show when I pressed a key I think? Little white boxes with numbers on 'em. I thought I might check it out later ... but then I forgot they key and/or actions that lead me to that :-p
- A very small detail, but I noticed the tech counter is stuck when sucking in parts with the tractor beam. It still counts them properly, and dissapears, but the number (unlike the raw mat) doesn't go down in the info box. Maybe that's only when combined with raw mat though?
This time I didn't have much time to polish gameplay / learning curve, and it shows. I will add your troubles with looting / resources to the Tips section, might even add them to the Help page in the game.
(maybe I should start the game with the help page?)
I guess my main concern is understanding the goal of the game. I gather that I'm in some cavernous place, but not sure what I'm doing there or what is expected of me.
Flow-stream graphics were on my to-do, but didn't get to it :(
maybe there should be more visual difference between weapons, but with the time limit it's a good work already.
I liked the mixture between more hectic shooting and the slower paced exploration part with lighting your way and sometimes getting into a flow taking you to places you're not really sure what to expect. I can imagine some kind of more horror-ish setting with this whole buildup.
Overall a great entry, good job!
It took me the longest time to figure out how looting works - first I thought that the "blue zone" was the little blue box at the helm of the ship. Then I read @remco's comment which helped a bit, but it still felt like nothing is happening in the blue zone - it certainly didn't help that when I fullscreened the game, the inventory bar at the bottom disappeared :)
Nonetheless, this is a very polished title, that I would love to see expanded into a fuller game. Well done!
I didn't get that there is the blue zone to harvest when using the attract beam
I was at 50 unstable matter to the end (I suppose ?) and I tried to find another creatures but, nothing happen :sob:
(I don't know if this is my browser, but after some time, the game started to be really slow, like high usage, but nothing warnning me in ressource usage)
I didn't realize at first that I had access to multiple beams and I _think_ I eventually ran out of things to mine, so I got stuck at some point and couldn't upgrade any parts of my ship. Still, I really enjoyed the game and I think this could work well as a nice and relaxing game if you decide to expand on what you have now.