IRON DAWN by danvil

[raw]
made by danvil for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

The Quantmind has achieved consciousness. Prevent it from exterminating humanity! Unity_1EI2IYSPG1.png


The Ludum Dare Release is a bit incomplete. Some features just didn't made it. I continued to work a bit on the game and created release V1.1. New features: * Resources: They were in V1 already, but unbalanced and thus in V1 armies are "free". Now they cost resources. Robots need iron and power. Humans need pops, food and power. * Better game balance * Game over / win screens

PLEASE GIVE RATINGS BASED ON V1.0. If you are curious what just a couple more hours can do check out 1.1 afterwards.

Ratings

Overall 288th 3.325⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 227th 3.342⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 320th 3.1⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 455th 2.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 385th 2.925⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 174th 3.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 150th 3.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 285th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 18🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

ugly_robot
04. Oct 2022 · 14:08 UTC
Wow! RTS for a jam gam?? Such courage!
I am truly shocked at how well you were able to pull it off! The early game was an intriguing process of learning the map, and establishing strongholds away from the enemies center. The midgame was a frantic, micro-heavy defense against the steamrolling android horde - one which I barley survived. The late game, the enemy seemed to have it's overlord shut down? They did not pursue my 2 remaining human strongholds, and just froze in their many cities, killing them off. I was, slowly but surely, able to retake the few power plants and mines that had not been wiped out, as well as killing every last android squad - the remaining droids put up no resistance.
I only wish there was an end screen - still not sure if I won or lost.

I absolutely loved the voice lines - and you did a great job naming the different cities (I fought hard to hold 'Coal For Future'). The multiple camera angles - the fun 'mini-game' of getting an enemy to latch onto a high-health unit, only to sneak behind and flank with a low-health kill squad. Incredibly impressive entry - super well done!
thedude3600
05. Oct 2022 · 23:12 UTC
Cool Game! Im always Surprised when I see RTS entries in a game jam, takes a lot of skill to get the mechanics working in 3 days, I think! Congrats on the completion! Audio had me laughing! One thing I think might help is if the buildings that were captured produced units automatically that way we can focus on where to move them to, or to move production to a centralized location? or allow to queue productions. Trying to juggle both moving units and selecting production sites to make sure they are producing distracts from the overall game, I think. But otherwise, good job!
testsubject06
05. Oct 2022 · 23:25 UTC
This was very ambitious for a LD48 game. I couldn't tell that any of the resource nodes other than factories were doing anything, or even worth capturing. I also noticed that the enemy units were nearly twice as powerful as my own.

The game also never explains what the Quantmind Activation is, or what the beeps are. So it was very hard to grok what was happening. The only reason I won is because the AI just stopped after around a minute of play.
Jimbly
06. Oct 2022 · 23:20 UTC
Looks like fun, but the interface appears to be getting cut off when running fullscreen (at 16:10, 2560x1600), and pressing alt-enter goes to windowed mode, but at the same resolution. If it doesn't handle non-16:9 resolutions, a quick fix to start windowed at 1920x1080 would be appreciated and probably work on more devices by default =).
rsninjadev
07. Oct 2022 · 04:57 UTC
Fun game, had to restart a few time to beat it but I got it eventually (I think). This is a really good start, it just needs lots of little things polished, I would of liked to see: progress bars on the map for training, a highlight around troops/buildings so you know what will be clicked, tutorial/control info, something to show what farms/nuclear plants do, the ability to select more than one troop, and maybe a training button above each factory/city so I don't have to click 2 things each time, just bunch of little quality of life improvements that would make the game more enjoyable to play essentially.
LDJam user 260723
09. Oct 2022 · 06:49 UTC
Quite impressive that You made a simple RTS in 48 hours. As previous comments say, the game could use some quality of life improvements, and there are some bugs related to resolution (both in the original and improved version). But the game is fun to play and quite challenging too. Good work!
Rolly
09. Oct 2022 · 10:08 UTC
Making all the sounds yourself is always a great idea!The cows and chickens sounds made me laugh :D!

It's quite ambitious to make that kind of game in a game jam, but you perfectly handled this and it works pretty well! Now on the downside, it usually takes some time for the player to understand what's going on - and I have to say I didn't understand at first. I noticed that I could click on buildings, and some had a button to train units. After 20 seconds or so, the gameplay became clearer.

I'm not sure I understood the "Quantmind Activation" thing. I think something was happening every 10 seconds, I noticed the robots became stronger over time, but I don't know if it was happening at random, or if I could foresee the opponent actions.

I won the first time because (or what I think is the cause) the only city of the opponent got destroyed, and it couldn't train any more units. I understand that balancing is pretty difficult, even more with this kind of game. I started the game again and found it more interesting.

In short, I would say that it needed some kind of tutorial or explanation. But otherwise, that's a very nice entry!

Good job!
stmatn
09. Oct 2022 · 13:58 UTC
Nice idea! The low-poly style looks quite fitting for a strategy game like this. The gameplay was a bit strange though. At first I wasn't sure what to do, but figured that out quite quickly. The AI seemed way too overpowered and conquered the map without me having a chance. Strangely it stopped at some point. That gave me the opportunity to retake the places that were not destroyed and kill all enemy armies. The process of srmy creation was quite tedious, because it required lots of clicking. Some hotkeys or autoproduction would be nice. I liked the different sounds, which reminded me of classic RTS games like C&C :) All in all good work!