Battery Buisness by Smoofy
You are a robot with a horribly bad battery, which you must refill as much as you can to delay inevitably running out of power.
My first game jam, hope you enjoy!
Whilst I may be 12, judge me like I'm older.
Credits in side bars of the Scratch Project

| Link | https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/670030387/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/battery-buisness |
Ratings
| Overall | 1148th | 3.119⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 873th | 3.214⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1110th | 2.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 740th | 3.619⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1000th | 3.238⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 909th | 2.579⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1190th | 2.925⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
This is actually a solid good time. I really like the art, it's so simple, yet so clean. I would only remove the outline from the bolt signs in order to blend them with the rest of the style.
The gameplay loop is really solid for something done in Scratch. You managed to scope well and do the game in time, so well done1
One pro tip for future jams and games you publish publicly overall: Try not using assets like songs or graphics from elsewhere, it might ruffle some feathers because of many legal reasons. If you don't manage to make your own, at least try to find ones that are free to use. For music and sound effects I'd recommend https://freesound.org/, it's got the vast amount of sounds and some music samples free to use for your project and for the graphics (and generally everything) you can find many asset packs on https://itch.io/game-assets .
Overall, well done. Keep on making games!
It's not easy to make a game that fits the theme in such a short timespan, and it's always impressive when someone so young manages to submit an entry. You did a good job!
I'm 18 and have been making games since I was about your age, here's some of my best tips:
- **Start learning how to code in game engines as soon as you can,** it might seem scary but it's definitely worth it. I use Unity engine for my games, but I'd recommend you start with GameMaker Studio. Follow some tutorials on YouTube (I learnt GameMaker from Shaun Spalding www.youtube.com/c/ShaunSpalding) and maybe try recreate some games you've already made in scratch with code!
- **Don't delete any of your old games.** You might one day look back at some of your games and think they're cringe or bad and feel like deleting them. Don't! Every game developer starts somewhere and it's always fun to explore the experiments you made when learning game dev. For example, here's my first ever game I made in GameMaker:

When I compare it with some of the images from my newer games, I see how far I've come and that makes Game Dev really worth it.
My final advice is to have fun, you're young and already a very talented developer. I wished my games looked as good as this at the age of 12. Hope some of this helps you in your game dev journey and I hope to see your next game in Ludum Dare 51! :smile:
I do share the sentiment of others about the usage of audio, since in this business it can get you in a *lot* of trouble due to stuff having copyright protection (though I imagine if Toby Fox came across this, he wouldn't mind too much considering this is your first time and you do source his work). However, for future jams, you can find a lot of [free](https://www.free-stock-music.com/) [audio](https://freesound.org/home/tosacceptance/) [online](https://incompetech.com/). Be sure for look for the licenses on them, or if you can't find any, check to see if the website has an FAQ section that talks about what you can do with stuff from the site and what they ask for in return (some creators/sites ask for credit in the game, for example). The safest license for anything (audio/music included) is CC0, or Creative Commons 0, which is a license that makes them effectively public domain. They are safe to use for whatever without any strings attached, but its still nice to give credit to the person who originally made it.
Overall, good job. Considering it sounds like you'll be moving on to another (more liberating) game engine at some point, it'll be interesting to see what you make next.
Sometimes the bolts spawn in or very near to the robot, so you can't evade them. Maybe you could improve by only spawning blots with some distance to the player.
I also used Scratch to make games a couple of years ago. Nice to see someone using it to make jam entries!
Only thing I would have liked to see is some score or "you kept robot alive X seconds" on the end screen so I would know how good I have played.
Good work, scratch is a good starting point in coding.
You managed your time well and did not run out of it. Next time maybe try something bigger :slight_smile:
(by then you might have even started learning a new engine)
When you're ready to learn a new engine, check out Godot! That said, what is really important is finding an engine that works for you so you can focus on making games- I wasted much of my game development youth struggling to learn the latest and greatest game engine instead of actually making games.