LudumData

Martian Mind Hunter by tukisboolukis

[raw]
made by tukisboolukis for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

title_thumbnail.png

Play

  • https://tukisboolukis.itch.io/martian-mind-hunter

Harvest those humans' minds to grow your cyber-brain!

You have a limited number of drones. Multiple working together complete tasks faster.

The colonists outnumber you, so you must move carefully. You can queue up multiple commands by holding SHIFT during orders.

Colonists will raise the alert level when your presence is noticed. Your drones scare them and so do dead bodies. You will ALWAYS be noticed harvesting from a powered habitat.

You must harvest brains from colonists to grow your Cyber-Brain and use its psychic abilities to dominate Mars.

While powered, habitats will create food and new colonists. Some colonists are SCIENTISTS with high quality brains.

Watch out for soldiers. When there is no room in a habitat, excess colonists will be recruited to the security force. Some join the service on their own as well.

Happy hunting!

trailer.gif

Controls

  • left click - select unit
  • hold left click and move mouse - selection rectangle
  • right click - order units
  • shift + order - adds order to queue
  • middle mouse click - move screen
  • wasd - move screen
  • hover mouse near screen - move screen
  • scroll wheel - zoom

You get these abilities with enough brains (Will appear in top right):

  • 1 - create a noise ability
  • 2 - create a time slow field
  • 3 - teleport your units
  • 4 - mind control a colonist

Main Credits

  • tukisboolukis - coding
  • TheSmellOfOxygen - art/sound

Other Credits

  • Brad - the death sounds and harvest sound

Tools Used

  • Godot - https://godotengine.org/
  • Aseprite - https://www.aseprite.org/
  • 1BITDRAGON - https://1bitdragon.com/
Link https://github.com/tukisboolukis/ld52
Link https://tukisboolukis.itch.io/martian-mind-hunter
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/ludum-dare-52-1

Ratings

Overall 345th 3.582⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Fun 397th 3.388⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 197th 3.625⭐ 50🧑‍⚖️
Theme 292th 3.875⭐ 50🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 324th 3.81⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Audio 318th 3.318⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Humor 338th 3.068⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Given 59🗳️ 90🗨️

Feedback

Jujus
09. Jan 2023 · 23:14 UTC
This looks really good!
CrimOudin
09. Jan 2023 · 23:41 UTC
This was a fun simple little game. A little weird with the restrictions on drones per kill maybe if I did more with the queued-up commands it would feel better. I liked how you could clean up the bodies and if you didn't it would alert the guards more. I am not quite sure what a lot of the indicators meant.
Rhum
10. Jan 2023 · 07:12 UTC
Nice one! The controls are a bit clunky (or I'm just the worst starcraft player lol) but a rts game in 2 days is quite impressive :D !
LDJam user 9418
10. Jan 2023 · 19:02 UTC
It's hard to understand what is going on here. But it looks neat, have no idea how to defend brain in the end.
Phillip Scott
10. Jan 2023 · 21:59 UTC
Everyone is shooting and there is goop everywhere, fun game the LODs on zone is a nice touch.

Hard to understand everything that is going on and game is very unforgiving :laughing:

Well done!

![image_2023-01-10_215915428.png](///raw/123/b3/z/56013.png)
zSharpFire
10. Jan 2023 · 22:06 UTC
Fun little game, the sounds are a bit clunky but overall nice, would have loved to be able to group soldiers and select them by group like in stronghold
HayriCakir
10. Jan 2023 · 22:15 UTC
Good art, interesting approach to the theme. I liked it!
GhastlyMicrowave
10. Jan 2023 · 22:41 UTC
pretty hard game, there were times when a way to pause or slow down the game would help. It seems that drones can travel together but can't preform all the same tasks together which bugged me a little.
digitaldude555
10. Jan 2023 · 23:09 UTC
Like the art style, agree with ghastlymicrowave I didn't know how many it takes to harvest, also the difficulty shoots through the roof. It's pretty complex for 3 days that's some good work. Just needs a bit of balancing.
pazzi
11. Jan 2023 · 06:01 UTC
Ayyy this reminds me of the good ol' broodwar days.... I'll have you know my actions-per-minute is abysmally low, and I lost all ability to micro after wings of liberty came out haha. The pathing, while simple, feels quite responsive, unlike StarCraft 1 dragoons haha! Great work xD
LDJam user 320031
11. Jan 2023 · 11:20 UTC
very good game, in a nutshell its starcraft + warcraft + stealth = Martian Mind Hunter, very nice the visuals are really uniqe and pretty, the ai is smart, like i had my bot over there and then colonist saw me then went in and came back with a bunch more armed colonists who completely destroyed my bot lol, nice gameplay and very fun
LDJam user 320031
11. Jan 2023 · 11:20 UTC
very good game, in a nutshell its starcraft + warcraft + stealth = Martian Mind Hunter, very nice the visuals are really uniqe and pretty, the ai is smart, like i had my bot over there and then colonist saw me then went in and came back with a bunch more armed colonists who completely destroyed my bot lol, nice gameplay and very fun
DeathBySnail
11. Jan 2023 · 13:11 UTC
had a good time with this one, love the little guy aesthetic
Rincs
12. Jan 2023 · 04:30 UTC
As an RTS noob, this was still pretty enjoyable. Very fun! Kudos all around!! Love the little drones and all the little people. xD
DzejPi
12. Jan 2023 · 06:48 UTC
Impressive for such a small amount of time! Very nice and elegant visuals that felt very smooth and stylish. Surprisingly, I understood how to play really quickly, which is not usual for me as I don't play RTS very much, so great job there! Apart from few tiny things, like squares not always rendering and, I don't have much to add, that wasn't mentioned already. Great job here!
Adamwigs
12. Jan 2023 · 07:27 UTC
It was a lot of fun! Found myself just using teleport once I had it and taking 5 drones in and then ducking out. Probably not the most efficient approach, but no one seemed to get mad I was stealing their brains!
stephen321
12. Jan 2023 · 08:19 UTC
Very nice complete game. I don't see many unit control games so this one stood out to me. I like the minimalistic art style
KingGurke
12. Jan 2023 · 08:21 UTC
Really fun! It might be nice if the drones had a bit more autonomy, like automatically bringing brains back to the mother brain, but I suppose that's part of the challenge. I tried to multitask, lost about two thirds of my drones very early, but then I operated a very efficient strike team of 5 drones, that expanded again once I got the mind control. The only thing I found disrupting my game flow was when I selected drones, but the selection-marker wouldn't show up because of the pixellation. Still, a truly amazing job for that amount of time :)
JeffSobel
12. Jan 2023 · 08:41 UTC
Fun game, even if some of it went over my head!

I've never been good at these kinds of games, but it's clear the work and effort that went into making this. Great job putting out something so robust in such a short amount of time!
LDJam user 8951
12. Jan 2023 · 10:51 UTC
Oh how I missed RTS games. You're one of the few that comes to this jam with this genre. Love it!
Glaikunt
12. Jan 2023 · 13:38 UTC
I won! Big RTS fan so really enjoyed your game! Had a few bugs on the way aroud submitting the brain and one play through it kept trying to go up the top right. Regardless of those issues I really enjoyed my playthroughs. The art & music are spot on. The gameplay elements are really fun. I even felt it was a bit to easy because I wanted to play more xD great job!
LDJam user 258850
12. Jan 2023 · 13:59 UTC
This is amazing! ^^ 5/5 love it. Definitely deserves a developing for a full release.
bcmpinc
12. Jan 2023 · 14:26 UTC
I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to select my drones. Their selection box is not always visible. After that it was sweep in with all my drones, sabotage, steal a few brains, go back and repeat. Other than the mind control I didn't use any of the special powers as this method worked really well. The alert went up only twice. At the end of my run there was a bit of gunfight, but other than that, I had no difficulty completing the game. The controls of the game felt really smooth. Drones responded fast and usually did what I wanted them to do. The only complaint I have is that there wasn't really a reason to ever visit a dome other than the nearest one.
Justin_C
12. Jan 2023 · 14:33 UTC
Interesting and ambitious game!

I got all of the unlocks fairly quickly, but from there it wasn't really obvious to me how to win the game.
CemKaanU
12. Jan 2023 · 15:10 UTC
Needs a little bit ux as it is hard to pick up and confusing at times. still great concept overall!
asfdfdfd
12. Jan 2023 · 19:46 UTC
I feel like i'd need to harvest new brain for myself, e-he-he.

Nice and complex entry!
chompdev
13. Jan 2023 · 01:39 UTC
Just got to the end! That's a fun little RTS idea, and the stealth mechanics are a cool way to modify the normal RTS build/collect/wait formula. The abilities gained over time are a cool idea, and kind of remind me of the hero abilities in Warcraft 3 or something. Great work on adding so many cool features in a short jam! :)

![score32.PNG](///raw/044/42/z/56532.png)
Metzkermeister
13. Jan 2023 · 14:46 UTC
I sadly didnt get to finish the game because my drones kept getting stuck.
Though I am quite impressed how polished this is considering the scale of the project.
As an RTS player I have to say that the way the pixel graphics are being scaled really hurts the gameplay, at least unit selection indicators have to be properly visible at all times, ideally all info elements
SmelJey
13. Jan 2023 · 16:40 UTC
It is unusual to see RTS game on the game jam and I know on my own experience that it is hard to polish in given time, yet you did a great job! The main points which to improve are
- Zoom (it looks a bit messy when camera is close)
- Labels above enemies and their bodies are unreadable when there are several of them in the same place.
- Units selection is not always visible on far zoom
LDJam user 2431
13. Jan 2023 · 21:05 UTC
Thank you very much for the feedback. We just changed the selection box around the drones, so hopefully they are a little easier to see now.
shimmerscale
15. Jan 2023 · 22:47 UTC
Cool concept! I liked the somewhat goofy narrative :)
Hawkin
22. Jan 2023 · 01:24 UTC
This is incredibly implemented for a jam game! I think the graphical style really sells it. Even if the mechanics are straightforward, the _systems_ you put in place are really impressive. The RTS style felt good, although I mostly felt like I was micromanaging groups. Moving back and forth between the colonies and the brain was a little tedious, so I wish there were a way to "auto return" a unit. After a bit, the gameplay felt like a bit of grind, so I feel like it needed some sort of automation or progression to accelerate it (beyond the powerups, which were helpful!).

All in all, this is one impressive entry. Really enjoyed the music, too!
svemir
27. Jan 2023 · 03:07 UTC
Very well polished game, cool ideas for power ups but I only really used the teleport and mind control. The selection of drones was really smooth and easy to do, although much harder when you're juggling a few groups of them at once. Lots of fun to avoid the ever growing patrols, too. I did only really target the top two bases though and not sure what the incentive to go for the lower bases was.