Life On Mars by anstabo

Play a stranded Martian rover trying to survive its inevitable power loss.
*WASD/ZQSD: movement *
Space: Jump
Shift: Boost
Right-Click: Scan
Look for upgrades and batteries to stay alive on the red planet. Keep away from cold shadows; they will deplete your energy reserves.
Please prefer downloading the game instead of playing the webGl version, it is a totally better experience!




| Link | https://anstabo.itch.io/life-on-mars |
| Link | https://anstabo.itch.io/life-on-mars |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/life-on-mars |
Ratings
| Overall | 41th | 4.247⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 138th | 3.951⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 206th | 3.802⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 190th | 4.105⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 10th | 4.728⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 20th | 4.488⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
Sadly, for us the mouse speed was super fast so it was very difficult to look around. Perhaps something was wrong there?
Apart from that cool concept, nice graphics, overall very satisfying to play.
@nella The original rover movement was keyboard based but it was way too clunky, we figured mouse movement was the most intuitive solution. You need to stop the rover to look around which will also reduce the energy drain of the battery.
This is certainly one of the BEST looking games I have played so far, and I have played quite a few games! Exceptional work!
Also, the music slaps!
* The HUD is great. It adds a lot of immersion!
* Sometimes it's too hard to control the rover. But, maybe, that's the point :thinking:
I spent a long time looking a the wheels haha. The bounciness and turn on the wheels looked great.
The controls were a little hard to turn around. I thing that was the one difficulty I had.
Overall a great job.
You guys did a great job. Congrats!
It looks absolutely stunning, and I loved the music choices!
Some controls feel a bit weird at first but it makes it always so cool to get the next reward!
As someone who started playing Crumble on my switch just yesterday, I absolutely loved this one:

I had some issues with the controls, especially after unlocking the wheels, I often struggled to go where I wanted.
The shader when we are in the shadow is nice but a bit strong sometimes, it was hard to see how to go further when in the shadows.
The UI is beautiful and elegant.
Animation is great, the music choice is really nice, that's a really great job. Well done!
Can't tell you how much I smiled once music I recognised from Fallout 3 started playing :smile:
Overall, that's a pretty solid Jam game you made here. Great job!
The graphics are really cool.
:)
I fell into a crevice just after already been struggling for a bit too long to be in a mood to start over from the beginning but I enjoyed it a bunch up until then! Perhaps keeping the collected upgrades on restart or having checkpoints on the pickups would be something. Full scores from me nonetheless!
We had a quite similar idea but stuck to 2 dimensions. Someone in our comments was kind to link us here :)
The sound design and the mood are also really good !
I struggled a bit with the character controller : the game make me want to explore and try to find ways to reach different areas but it's kinda hard to manage to move correctly without turning the robot upside down.
Otherwise the game is very polished and daaaamn those lovely shaders are beautiful !
The very much copyrighted music tho idk. Don't get me wrong I love the tracks chosen, they work very well with the mood but I would say pretty much every game would get much better if they used a Queen song or something.
The hardest part for me was the controls, and how the mouse speed was scaling when playing with full screen.
Good job!
BTW 11 Ludum Dares ago, I made my own space rover entry :-) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/space-rover
I struggled with the very sensitive mouse controls (web version, I don't have Windows), and I struggled when I first got the wheels because I fell off of the platform that would have taken me into the wider open area and had a hard time jumping back up without falling on my side.
Falling into craters was scary.
I enjoyed the tunes. It gave it a campy kind of feel somehow.
Well done!