Wow, that's sharp! I'm loving the art style, ambiance, and slower-pace to the thinking. I got thru the first 8 levels; I'll probably come back to play some more tomorrow!

My main critique is that the font is hard to read. It took me a bit longer than it should of to get into the game, just because I had a hard time comprehending the directions. But when I understood the mechanics, this is a lot of fun! :)

Cool game! The art is really great, especially with the power surge changing its colors. I did find one bug - when you reset a level, it doesn't reset any platforms you built, so if you start with at least 1700 materials, you can fully cover any level with platforms by unlocking advanced buildings, building a platform, then resetting the level!

I've found this to be quite relaxing!

I've also found a bug with infinite platforms, especially making it too easy on the last level.

Nonehteless:

Pros:

- I love the cat on comms
- Pretty subtle and interesting graphics
- Like the narration
- Calming color palette
- Easy to learn puzzle mechanics
- Music in Compo is always a plus, especially this subtle one

Cons:

- Would love a better font usage for text(Did my eyes decieve me, or was I constantly missing an 'i' letter in the text? Was it even there?)
- Not really a con, but minor bugs with infinite platforms and inifinite energy I've found :smile:

Great job!

@mikesalyh @lancival @mikoziq thanks a lot for the kind comments! I'm glad you liked the game.

Being less sleep deprived, I see what you mean about the font! For the sake of accessibility I've made a post compo update to improve it. I hope it should be less unreadable now.

Thanks a lot for reporting the bug with the infinite platforms! ~~I think I'm opting to keep it unfixed, as to not make to many changes after the fact. Plus, it might serve as a help if you get stuck. Consider it my gift to you ;)~~ *I changed my mind, I've fixed the bug. I think it was making people confused.*

For reference, here's a comparison between the old and new font. I've added a link to the original version but for the sake of your eyes, I would not recommend it.


Duuuude, this was a compo game??? Holy shit this is like a full legit game! Well done, it took me a minute to figure out the mechanics of the game but after that it was very intuitive and I really enjoyed the style and audio. Super impressed by how much is in this, but it's all good stuff. Well done.

Great job getting all this in a compo-game. The game was very relaxing and the music was top notch.

I actually like the "horrible font". The game has a nice feel to it... like a city builder in a small puzzle game. Didn't notice until the last level that the platforms don't reset when you reset the level. Also don't think I had any idea what was going on at all until about level three. Would be interested if there's any post-compo work on this one.

Very fun! I like the visual style and using the 10 seconds for resource bursts was a pretty fun take on things. Feels like RTS resource management as a puzzle game!

It took me a bit to figure out just how things work but once I did things went pretty smooth! The items you get later definitely help a lot and once you start to work things out and realise just how important the residential buildings are for everything, it's all very manageable. Adding platforms was a nice touch too, lets you really get things moving once you figure out the start.

Glad I managed to finish this one!

Extremely high quality for Compo. Feels like a complete professional package. Possible winner here. I had a ton of fun playing through. I hope you push it farther. With a few small tweaks. I think you could have a commercially successful product.

Nitpick feedback:
Going forward, I'd change the alarm to something more relaxing. It adds an element of stress to an otherwise very relaxing vibe. It felt like it should really be a pretty sound and some animation of power flowing from the core through the colony.
This game also feel like a really good fit for a "Par" mechanic, like golf. Where there is a target number of flares to win. Would love to have that kind of score displayed at the end.

Overall, I'm floored. Phenomenal work. perfect marks in all categories. Except humor, this game isn't really trying to be funny at all, so I left that one empty blank. (Maybe, opt out of Humor?)

Thanks a lot for the nice feedback! :two_hearts:

@sarah-alexa thanks for letting me know that it was a bit hard to understand at first. I feel like the intro/tutorial is a bit to wordy, and that it's easy to miss the important info. To paraphrase Mark Twain, I didn't have time to write a short tutorial, so I wrote a long, rambly and hard to understand one instead :laughing:. I might try adding a summary of the main mechanics to the description to make it a easier to understand.

@ben-parisi those are very kind words, thank you :blush:. Also, thanks for the quality feedback! I think your suggestions are really good, both regarding the sound and the scoring mechanic. That's a brilliant idea.

In other news, I've made another post compo update. It's a small tweak, and it's in the spirit of accessibility/porting so I hope it's all right. The full screen web build on itch.io is now playable in portrait mode, and should run on phones.


This was just absolutely fantastic! I played this on my way to work this morning on mobile so I’m really thankful you added the mobile version. The idea is solid and the gameplay is really fun. The artwork is just top notch, looks super professional, although if I had some criticism it would be that there is not enough contrast. I’m on an iPhone 12 Pro and playing on the train made it a bit hard to discern some elements. Gameplay wise I honestly had a great time! A job well done

Wow! Can't believe this is a compo entry. Very strong entry all around, especially in the visuals. Great work.

Amazing game! I loved the visuals, mechanics, audio - basically everything. I really enjoyed the freedom in later levels, and focused more on building optimized cities generating tons of energy & gems(?) than building the gate network I was supposed to build :) I did encounter some bugs besides the aforementioned non-resetting platforms glitch: I had a bug with the numbers where digits sometimes disappeared for no reason, and building stuff during a surge kinda messed some of the SFX for that surge. Other than that, incredible entry!

Excelent game ! I also found the platforming bug but it's not a big deal as it only costs money, you can tell yourself as soon as you have a factory that you could have built them in this game. No ?

Waiting for the surge is long, this is my only criticism (but it's the theme...)

The graphics are superb and so is the sound...
So far my favourite game of this LD. (And it's a compo :dizzy_face: )

Nice gameplay! It was confusing at the beginning, but became pretty addictive! I really had fun with this game. Also cool graphics, very fitting audio... Good job!

Gate Network 51 is complete.

Such an interesting game. At first I was expecting to get an RTS, but once I started if felt like a puzzle game, but then resource mining was introduces and suddenly it feels like RTS. Such a nice mix of genre and very interesting use of periodic energy burst, like it's not just do something in time or game over, but it's part of the puzzle.

Love it, good job!

There was this only bug that platforms don't get reset after restarting level.

Very polished game - Great work getting such nice graphics / animations / sound / gameplay together in very limited time! The tutorial / instructions were very good too.

It would be good to have some sort of scoring or urgency - maybe a level needs to be completed in a specified time, or maybe you get more points for completing it quickly.

OK, first off I'm blown away by how much you did in under the compo constraints. Second, the puzzle/strategy mechanics felt really original. Third, the art style is beautiful. I probably don't need to count all my positives, but trust me, there are a lot. There were a number of little things I kept thinking "Oh, I wish that highlight was a bit clearer", or "I'm not sure about the balancing here" etc, but then I had to keep reminding myself - this a jam game! It's a testament to the quality of your work that I was treating this more like a full game in my head. The extent to which you've manged to get an original puzzle idea into a game with this level of depth, that looks this professional, with a playable tutorial is extraordinary. Great, great work!

A really impressive entry for a compo! I am really impressed by both the quality and quantity of what you achieved in such a short amount of time :o

What engine did you use (if any?)? Did you have a any pre-jam cosebase (no judgment at all, I'm just trying to comprehend how people like you manage it ahah)?

Last point, I found your puzzle design quite clever. Most level looked really dumb at first until I stumbled on unsuspected issues and troubles and had to rethink my whole design multiple times ahah

Only issue for me was that it was quite laggy on my phone using the html5 version. But it's not a recent phone by any mean so nothing surprising here.

Thank you all for the very kind comments! :heart:

@jag good point about the contrast! I've mostly viewed the game on a monitor indoors, but I took a look at my phone on my way to work today and you're right, the readability could definitely be better. The blue did not show up well.

@furano Thank you, that's a good question! I'm quite happy with my setup, so I don't mind sharing some info :)

I don't use any "game engine", but I have my own set of tools that I've slowly been building over the years. I work in C, since I'm very comfortable with the language, and I have a collection of libraries that I've built for my own personal use. They're mostly undocumented and they lack a lot of features, but I feel very productive using them since I know them inside out. Apart from a base framework for graphics and file system tasks, I guess the main things I use are:

* A system for hot reloading code. Whenever I change a source file, the game code is recompiled into a dll that replaces the update function of the running game. This means that I can tweak stuff very easily, compared to having to restart the game constantly.

* A simple ui system with immediate mode functionality that I can use to quickly build debug interfaces. Here's a view of the "level editor" I set up for this game. The ui system is used for the gray panel to the right:

* A built in "sprite editor" that lets me paint directly on any sprite while the game is running. It's a very limited system with a palette of just 32 flat colors, but I've found a style which I like and the immediate feedback is worth a lot in my opinion. Here's a crappy sped up gif of me scribbling on the rock sprite, then playing around with the colors.

* I've been trying to learn a bit more about audio so I spent some time this summer writing a weird realtime synth engine. This was the first time I got to actually use it, and there are some things I want to fix, but it worked quite all right. It's also embedded in the game, so I can easily switch to it with a hotkey while the game is running.

I started the game with a template file that has all the intialization for the different libraries, serialization/deserialization of data and stuff like that. But all the game code was (of course) written during the weekend. I wrote it all in a [single c file](https://www.vidarnel.se/code/file?name=apps/ld51/game.c&ci=1c91d713b70c0c13) and most of the code for the game was in a long (1100 lines) update function. It's kind of a mess, but I only had to keep in all in my head for 48 hours :laughing:

Wow, sorry for the long post! I like writing tools and I guess I got exited when you asked me about them :blush:

Anyway, thanks for playing the game and taking the time to comment, I really appreciate it!

Thanks a lot for the detail explanation.That was really interesting!! Your set of tool is really impressive! I understand now how you can be so efficient in that short time span.

I'm now especially interested in that synth part, will have to look more into it ahaha.

Good game. I really like the graphics here. The gameplay is good too, but I think it gets more difficult too slowly.

And I don't think there is a sense to place more factories. It's expensive to run and it's a big risk (I lose few times when I did so :laughing:). This makes more resources, but you don't have any deadlines, so you don't need to get resources quickly. So, it's a risk without a good reward.

There is also a bug, after restarting the level, placeable platforms stay.

Anyway, good job! You did a really big effort here.

@amolker Thank you! You're right about the factories. I guess if there was a score based on how fast you completed a level, building more factories might be useful. But at the moment, there's really no need to build more than one. :sweat_smile:

I fixed the bug with the platforms by the way, thanks to everyone who reported it!

This is a superb entry! It has a super high level of polish for a compo game. The art is great, I like the sounds.

The game play is great I really enjoyed the last level. one small observation is that I am unsure how easy it is to understand that you can bank energy.

I want more levels :laughing:

Amazing job well done!

The art, music and mood are so good! Not to mention the gameplay is fun ad unique! I read the sprite editor post and its so amazing and fascinating! This game is on another level, wow!

Awesome job! I really enjoyed this! I love the idea of having an energy pulse every 10 seconds and harvesting it by building things and then using it up. And that you tackled it as a puzzle game too was fun. Really great stuff!

I don't know if anyone's pointed this out, but there's a slightly annoying bug when you pick up buildings. If you accidentally drag across other buildings it switches to the most recent. Which would be fine if there were a single turn undo button, but having to restart because you accidentally dragged the wrong building gets a little obnoxious.

OVERALL THOUGH this game is goddamn incredible. I played through from start to finish and enjoyed every minute. Amazing job!

This was a fun little puzzle/city builder game, with great presentation. I hit some bugs when I tried to do this in the last level though:

In particular, the power-down sound never finished and began to run continuously. I think there's also some uncommunicated soft caps on energy production & storage.

I'mve very unclear on the math behind the power. It seemed like I kept building more and more power stations and nothing improved. Looks and sounds good however.

Thanks a lot for the comments!

@confusedsoph I hadn't noticed that, thanks for pointing it out! It's so easy to overlook things like that when playtesting your own game, so I'm happy you brought it up. I'm glad you enjoyed the game nonetheless. You're very kind, thank you!

@alpacalypse Haha, wow :rofl: That's amazing! I love the screenshot. I never thought to test that many buildings at once :grin: It looks like pure chaos. Thanks a lot for letting me know about the problem.

@ruruie Thanks for the comment, that's very good to know! I can imagine it being a bit confusing, there could definitely have been better communication about this in the game. The way it works, though, is that you have a maximum cap on the energy. So if you build 8 generators, each producing 4 energy per surge, but the max cap is on 10 energy, then most of what you produce will be wasted. After that, the buildings will consume energy. So even if your generators are theoretically enough, the energy cap will get in the way. On later levels, there's a building that lets you increase the cap, the "battery". So in order to sustain a large colony, you will need both generators and batteries.

Again, this is not explained very well in the game and it's very helpful to know that it was confusing. I will think more about how to communicate it if I decide to do a post jam build of the game once the voting is over. Thanks for playing and taking the time to comment, I appreciate it.

Great compo game! A bit confusing at the beginning but after I read all the details of the different buildings it started to make a lot of sense! :P Sounds and music are awesome and perfectly fit the game. Very good puzzle/strategy game. Well done! :)

Awesome atmospheric game, and especially impressive for a compo entry! And it was awesome welcoming you to the stream again today! Here’s the VOD if you want to check that out again:
https://youtu.be/JWDRP3KwO-E

@erkberg Thank you so much for playing my game on the stream! I had a lot of fun watching and I glad for the feedback you gave, it's very helpful.

Very impressive entry! The audio was really good and added a lot to the feel of the game. The post about your tools/process was cool, people like to see that kind of stuff! I'm curious to know more about your process to compiling for web/mobile. :smile: keep on making games!

This is really well done! It's super polished and it looks and sounds great. I liked solving the puzzles, and the animations when starting and finishing a level are perfect. The whole mood of the game fits well, and I like how you used the theme. Overall, really nice job!