Ol' Booty by omphh
Created in Godot 4
Game
Pirate ships are scattered around these seas. You've been hired by the English Royal Navy to tidy up the oceans. Sail through corpses of previous battles, harvesting their remains. Each item has a price and your ship can only hold so much. Loot all you can then scuttle. Return to the port to bank your booty.

How to play
Keys
- W To accelerate your ship
- S to decelerate
- A / D turn left or right
- Space to anchor
- Q use your compass (Shows you direction to port)
- E use your parrot (Shows you direction to closest Ship Wreck)
Upgrades
3 different upgrade types in game - Cargo - How much weight you can carry on your run - Sails - Your ships speed (Max 10 knots) - Crew - The size of your crew increases the looting speed
2 items available from the shop - Both removed when used - Compass (Q) - Points your way back to the dock - Parrot (E) - Flies around your ship, points towards closest shipwreck
Music and sound effects
- Minor part from Obra Dinn
- Minor part from Sea Of Thieves
- Rest by @valcin
Notes
- Days are 8 hours long (8 minutes), not banking your booty in this time will incour losses
- Don't forget to scuttle a shipwreck after looting
- Godot 4 has problems embedding into Itch/Ludum - Please download and run exe from the zip
Tools
- Created in Godot 4
- Aesprite
Patch notes
v2 - 09/01/2022 Minor rebalances and volume adjustments
| Itch Download | https://omph.itch.io/ld52-ol-booty |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/ol-booty |
Ratings
| Overall | 484th | 3.381⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 632th | 2.929⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 504th | 3.143⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 432th | 3.667⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 418th | 3.595⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 304th | 3.342⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 434th | 3.405⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 19🗨️ |
@svenerik @lori-lou struggled with ideas of how to make each day loop a challenge, thought about adding enemies but decided against it, instead having an 8 minute loop. There is also a health system behind the scenes, for when crashing into ships but isn't on ui or properly implemented.
Some suggestions I have:
* Some sort of visual way to show that the ship is moving when traveling in one direction on the open sea; maybe waves or something.
* A consequence for hitting some things at too high a speed. I liked having to time my deceleration with targets I saw but found I could just slam my ship into wreckages to stop immediately.
* Also I accidentally quit out without wanting by hitting the escape key.
I would have liked to seem my own inventory and perhaps jettison stuff in favour of better items.
I was confused as to how to drop off loot at first. The end voyage button sounded more like it would exit the game.
It is not clear how the compass and parrot work, and they get too expensive to buy after a few days.
I decided to hunt down a kraken after 6 days. I was disappointed.
Sailing around was a lot of fun! I think the ocean itself could have had more detail, both to be more visually interesting (waves, more landmarks like rocks and isles) and navigable ("Oh, I remember seeing that bit before .. go south). You had that idea with the darker zones, so more of that would have been great!
The biggest thing I found myself wanting was more player feedback, like time of day (even a simple countdown timer) and current weight (so that I don't have to go all the way back to port to check). Otherwise, inferring those things from my own sense of time or from what I can't pick up wasn't as fun.
Congratulations on your submission! I think you accomplished a whole lot as a single person!
- The main game loop is kind or repetitive and, more importantly, feels a bit pointless: you can only gain money to improve your ability to gain money. I mean, yeah, all economic strategy games are like that, but they are about optimizing the process, while in this game there's really nothing to optimize: you can't fail at all! So, maybe there should be some threat to the player, some real obstacle for them to overcome using the earned money.
- The ship speed upgrades felt a bit unfair: an increase from 6 to 6.06 knots doesn't feel satisfying at all. Also the upgrade shop said "0.6" speed while the actual increase was "0.06", not sure if that's a bug or something.
- Speaking of the speed, it generally felt a bit too slow: most of the in-game time you just press the W button to move to the next ship.
- It would be nice if you'd be able to see the amount of space you've left on your ship: otherwise it's hard to make an informed decision about what to take from each harvested ship, you have to sort of guess how much space you have.
- At first I thought that "End voyage" is kind of "Exit the game" thing - you'll be shown some stats and then it's game over. Turned out it's more like "End turn" or "End day". Maybe renaming this menu option or adding a hint that it's a natural part of game progression would be cool.
- The animation after you end your voyage, which synchronizes in rhythm with the music, is really cool, but only for the first, maybe second time. When you're deep into the game, you really want to move quickly, so I'd suggest adding a way to skip that animation, have a quick look on your stats, and move on.
Comments help a lot though, will maybe play around with adding your suggestions in the future!