Aster Defense by emrod
Protect the Earth from its inminent destruction!
Deploy turrets around the earth to destroy asteroids, Shields to prevent being hit and radars to detect where the danger is coming from. With each asteroid destroyed you´ll earn money to create more turrets.
Camera Movement: WASD / Arrow keys Camera ZOOM: SCROLL WHEEL
Satellites explanation:
SHIELDS -> Stops asteroids. Can resist only 1 hit
TURRETS -> Shoots at asteroid. Limited detection range. Can resist only 1 hit
RADARS -> Huge detection range. Will share detected asteroids to TURRETS in range. Can resist only 1 hit
Good luck!
Sergiogp11 -> Game designer emrod -> Programmer idontkillcoyotes -> Programmer Emaigualmc2art -> 2D Artist The_Fazzo -> Audio



| HTML5 | https://emrodk120.itch.io/aster-defense |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/aster-defense |
Ratings
| Overall | 493th | 3.674⭐ | 111🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 509th | 3.555⭐ | 111🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 595th | 3.408⭐ | 111🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 889th | 3.486⭐ | 111🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 394th | 4.009⭐ | 111🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 498th | 3.472⭐ | 110🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 531th | 3.639⭐ | 106🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 148🗳️ | 279🗨️ |
The idea of the turrets it's that needs radars to target the asteroids.
Once I figured out how to play though, I thought the distinction between shields and turrets was very clever! It was cool how the shields were your only reliable protection, but they were consumable items, so you had to strike a balance between burning through all your cash on shields, vs having an unreliable turret defense :)
Good potential here, I really like the idea.
All said, very fun game!
Lastly, I feel like the audio did an excellent job making things seem echo-y and imminent. Nice work!
I felt the gameplay was a bit too easy, though. I got to the point where I don't think I could lose quite quickly. It would be nice if the difficulty ramped up faster, or if there was a way to 'fast forward' waves like in a tower defense game.
I did notice a slight issue, where sometimes the turrets don't seem to shoot at asteroids, even when they're clearly in range:
I had a lot of fun though! Here's what I ended up doing before I left off: 
We will definitely increase the difficulty when the jam is over because we're not sure if it's fair for the rest of the submissions to do it now.
One thing though, we just updated the live version on itch.io, we fixed the bug where the turrets suddenly stopped firing (yes it was a bug) and I guess now it's even easier with that fixed
We have a lot of ideas to improve the game, and we as a team are really happy how it turned out, so stay tuned for future updates after the jam! :smile:
As others have probably mentioned, it starts off hard and then gets pretty easy later on. I definitely expected the frequency and health(?) of the asteroids to increase over time but I know balance is really hard to get to in a game jam.
Also wanted to mention the Earth is really pretty :smile:
I was able to get to a stable defense with no shields

Good stuff :8ball:

I'm honestly surprised how fun this turned out. If you were to explain the gameplay to me or write it down on paper, I would call it boring. You proved me wrong and made this quite engaging. Sure there isn't any difficulty ramp up, but that didn't stop it from being satisfying to build proper defenses. Difficulty balancing is one of the hardest things to get right in a jam game, and it's ALWAYS better to end up being too easy.
I honestly only have 1 critique that's super minor. The coloring on the buttons at the bottom made me think I couldn't afford or needed to unlock the other choices. Maybe some different colors like red for not enough money, or maybe even just showing their cost, would have helped there. Selecting could make that sprite bigger than the others?
Either way, nice job!
Love them even more of done whell like This one.
@wiredoverload The idea for the audio was to create something similar to Space Invader, but we´ll improve on that lacking of music. Thanks for your feedback!
"*I see a suit of armor around the world*" - Ironman probably
Seems like the difficulty ramp (if there is one?) is extremely outpaced by the effectiveness of your guns, which doesn't let me fully realize my urge to light up the sky with lasers and exploding asteroids.
Overall I really like this entry. It scratched my base building itch, and got me building a giant death ring of lasers and sensors.
Nice work!

I loved this, it was super relaxing and the sounds helped lull me into, not quite sleep but definitely resting. This is not a complaint mind - I've had really bad insomnia the past few days and this has relaxed me perfectly. I'm writing this while enjoying my turret defense music and sipping on some rooibos tea. My only "complaints" are mirrored in the others, there doesn't seem to be any increase in difficulty as time goes on and so this took me a long, long time to build. Then there is the need to move the UI/make it semi-transparent/hideable. The top and bottom bars cover a lot of space (beyond what we see I learned) and at one point I had to wait awhile for the rotation to make placement opportunities possible again despite being able to clearly see empty spots. Either way though, I loved this so much, thank you!
The concept of the game is really nice, it is satisfying to build new defenses objects around the earth in the game :)
The visuals are wonderful (especially zoomed in :eyes:) and the audio is tastefully applied :ok_hand: :kiss:
Great entry!
Other than the game getting wayyyy too easy once you have your first few turrets set up, this is a really cool game! I'd love to see it worked on a little more and balanced out a bit!
Most things have probably been said already, but in game tool tips on the defenses would be nice. And obviously ramping up spawn of enemies. Good mood! Other stuff has already been said elsewhere, so just definitely work on it some more, this is an amazing base to work off of.
Art wise, I like the fact that the Earth turns and isn't static.
Wonderful game

I don't consider it a major issue, since the game is still fun, overall, and it is polished-it could just used some difficulty balancing. Overall, great entry!
I think the game should improve the balance and the economic system so that after the amount of the cost grows depending on the number of items purchased.
Good work!
Very polished too! I've got only one minor complain about UI with turrets/shields placement -- at first it's not obvious where you can place what and where you can't. It's really minor though because it takes just a bit of trial and error to figure it. Overall a very solid entry!
Thanks for coming to my stream! Here's a recording in case you'd like to refer to it https://youtu.be/WudvDztkwdg

As others stated - you should work a bit on balancing and continuously raising the difficulty. It seems most players survive forever on their second try which, unfortunately, conflicts with the theme.
Nevertheless, I like the visuals and the ambiance. This asteroids destruction echo is spot on - super satisfying!

Hello guys! It's has been almost two months, sorry for that but now you can play a more challenging experience, thanks for playing and hope you enjoy it!
https://ldj.am/$294305