Salvage Dogs by James Dunlap

made by James Dunlap for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

Salvage Dogs

The world is now a wasteland. The only way to survive is to keep moving in a dog eat dog world. To do that, you have to have wheels. Battle other vehicles to collect the components needed to ensure your survival and incorporate them into your new mobile home and base.

Controls

This game supports Gamepads and Keyboard

Gamepad:

Turn with the left stick

Move the camera with the right stick

Right Trigger adds forward throttle

Left Trigger adds reverse throttle

Right Shoulder brakes

The bottom (south) face button fires your weapons

The top (north) face button will flip you back over if you wreck

Keyboard:

WASD or ZQSD - Turn/Throttle

E - Brake

F - Flip back over

Space - Fire

Mouse - Orbit the camera

In Build Mode:

LClick (RT) - Place or Remove

RClick (LT) - Toggle Remove Mode

R (Right Button / B) - Rotate Block

E (Up Button / Y) - Change Block

X (RB) to swap between build and drive mode

Gameplay

Fight other vehicles to knock the components off of them to add to your vehicle and make it stronger. Then, start it all again.

Screenshots

Contributions

James Dunlap - Coding

Anthony Dunlap - Coding

Cameron Dunlap - Graphics

Oliver Richmeier - Music, SFX

Samantha Dunlap - Graphics

Link	https://lonewolfstudios.org/ld58/Windows.zip
Link	https://lonewolfstudios.org/ld58/macOS.zip
Link	https://lonewolfstudios.org/ld58/Linux.zip
Soundtrack	https://oliverrichmeier.bandcamp.com/track/salvage-dogs-theme
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/salvage-dogs

Ratings

Overall	734^th	2.816⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	623^th	2.947⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	442^th	3.175⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Theme	726^th	2.842⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	536^th	3.325⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Audio	425^th	3⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	430^th	2.882⭐	19🧑‍⚖️
Mood	693^th	2.889⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Given		15🗳️	18🗨️

Feedback

Winter2277

Oct 07th · 00:39 UTC

Some very fun chaos in there. It was quite hard but I managed to get to a point where I defeated all other enemies, except one who kept spinning in the air. I'm not sure how to get to build mode though, do we need to wait 4 minutes for the timer to run out? The concept of modular vehicles where you can break off chunks of each other in a PvP setting is quite interesting though. I'd love to revisit this game if I had more info on what to do to get to build mode. Cheers!

Cameron Dunlap

Oct 07th · 00:47 UTC

@winter2277 Yeah, you enter a test zone after the 5 minute round (or all other cabins are destroyed). Press X while in the test zone to build. You will have some of the components you've destroyed directly, and all components which have detached from the cabin by extension.

triggthediscovery

Oct 07th · 00:50 UTC

It's really cool vehicle building tech, but the game doesn't really show it off as well as it could. The 5 minute level timer is kinda killer since the enemy AI gets lost and you just have to wait the timer out. I liked that it was a more experimental concept, jams are a great place for those.

jver422

Oct 07th · 01:50 UTC

could really use some feedback for scoring hits and being hit

optimatica

Oct 07th · 07:40 UTC

Building your own battle vehicle is quite a cool concept.
To make it feel better, the turning radius of your car should be decreased quite a bit, and the timer shortened.

Cisco

Oct 07th · 15:39 UTC

Amazing graphics and great music! The gameplay is a bit hard, but I’m sure with some tweaking it could improve a lot.
Thanks for the game!

tardis2snej

Oct 07th · 22:15 UTC

Enemmies are too agressive for me haha or maybe I didn't get how to defeat them. I believe I was shooting but it's hard to figure out your progress without any indication if the enemy is hit and how much HP left.
Interesting movement though, I like the way cars collide. Cool idea to take away pieces of car, but once you lose your wheels there's nothing else you can do really and have to watch your car being eaten by the others.

Cameron Dunlap

Oct 07th · 23:14 UTC

@cisco Unfortunately, a lot of time was spent on getting fundamental systems like building and car controls to work-- a lot of which made it implausible to nail down the AI, given the state of flux. Half of us were unavailable to do testing and development on Monday, so unfortunately how things are now are how they will be. There's definitely a lot of tweaks that could have been made, and likely would have if more of us were available to work through balance tweaks.

Thank you for trying our game! I thought yours was pretty neat as well (and it also has amazing graphics).

gamesplusjames

Oct 08th · 01:48 UTC

Wow, there's a lot going on here but it's a really cool idea. Building the vehicle was a lot of fun. I really liked the whole artstyle vibe too. Great job!

Ciphereo

Oct 08th · 06:42 UTC

The model is very detailed. The game is a bit challenging for me, but building the car is a very interesting part.

Myezko

Oct 08th · 14:57 UTC

the camera can go out of bound and getting softlocked is pretty easy. Other than that, pretty good ig

Hank Ather

Oct 09th · 20:50 UTC

This was a super ambitious project, great job on getting it together!

Definitely challenging, it would have been nice to have a 'give up' button or something when you get totally wrecked, rather than just have to wait out the timer unable to do anything.

The art style's great, really dig the low poly low res textures aesthetic!

ACartlidge

Oct 09th · 23:43 UTC

Really cool idea! I love the graphics and the ambition of the game! And the music totally slaps that was awesome. I really I think the round timer was rough, at some point I was just a cabin of the car and I was balanced on an enemy and had to just wait there for 3 minutes lol. Nice work!

dumchevdev

Oct 10th · 11:57 UTC

Well done! Amazing graphics and great music <3

oxbuddulaj

Oct 10th · 13:08 UTC

When it's a first round with simple opponents, 5 min is too long because AI are easy to be disassembled or bugged. I had to wait for 3+ min before reaching the next level.

I understood only from the comments how to reach build mode and design my own vehicle. It's not obvious at all neither from the page description, nor from the in-game interface. Looks like you made really cool mechanic - build mode - but hid it behind the lack of UI and the round timer.

Nice vehicle unit design and landscape textures, those are really eye-candy!

Thanks for the game

Eugenik

Oct 10th · 15:10 UTC

groovy game! thanks!.

Anthony Dunlap

Oct 10th · 15:48 UTC

@hank-ather Thanks for the feedback. A lot of ideas were scrapped due to time constraints. Many of the annoyances, such as having to slowly wait for your inevitable demise, were due to a lack of playtesting, as we only had an hour to do so with a feature complete game.

@oxbuddulaj The game is supposed to skip to the next level if all enemies are completely destroyed, but we underestimated how hard it was to actually accomplish that task. In early development, we considered letting the player build at any time, and spawning enemies in waves, but had to stick to a build phase due to how abusable it would be to build during combat.

Liu Qinying

Oct 11th · 03:21 UTC

great！

ryusui

Oct 11th · 04:45 UTC

Feels really unfinished? Mostly I found myself driving around and shooting at enemies to no effect (enemies kept shooting at me, too, but they didn't really do anything either).

Eventually I got stuck on a piece of terrain and had to wait out the timer which...took me to a desert with a "press ESC to skip" prompt? And then another level started, and I realized the game doesn't have an in-game menu or anything so I had to Alt+F4 to exit.

The vehicle controls are likewise frustrating. It's impossible to effectively give chase because it handles like a block of granite pushed around on an icy surface: acceleration and deceleration take forever, and your turning radius is less reminiscent of some kind of speedy post-apocalyptic death kart and more of the RMS Titanic.

If there was a collecting/building game in here, I didn't see it, and I've got no idea where it would've been.

Samuli

Oct 13th · 20:47 UTC

I was not able to kill any enemies. I shot them as much as they shot me, but just I kept getting destroyed. :(

YibiRabbit007

Oct 15th · 13:48 UTC

Bug report

![屏幕截图 2025-10-15 214547.png](///raw/afd/36/z/6f671.png)

It seems the map has a lot of these pits. I just accidentally fell into one, and then a car came after me. I couldn't save myself through any actions, which is frustrating.