CaveBots by quasilyte
It's recommended to play this game on itch.io (
https://quasilyte.itch.io/cavebots). If you want to play it on ldjam embed, use arrow keys to pan the camera, since screen edge mouse scroll works poorly without a full-screen mode.
CaveBots is an RTS where you build your base and repel the attacks. It's an indirect-control game: your units are automated; you can only control the flagship.
My theme interpretation: you can't build at a random place; your options are limited by the designated slots. You have to choose between the options that are available. In this sense, your building space is limited.
Quick how to:
- Start by digging a green block with a Harvester in it
- Find a hard terrain block and dig it
- Build a Generator on that hard terrain block
- Try to get a Patrol bot or build a Turret to defend yourself
- It's free sailing from here
The game gives you detailed tooltips about many things. If in doubt, hover over anything to get hints.

Controls:
| Key | Action | |---|---| | Arrow keys | Pan the camera | | Q, W, E, R | Activate the prompted action (construct building, order unit) | | LMB (left mouse click) | Dig (when hovering on a mountain) | | RMB (right mouse click) | Move |
You can also pan a camera with your mouse by moving your pointer to the edge of the screen.
See the itch io page for more game info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4duMbxKkzr8

| Screenshot 2 | Screenshot 3 |
|---|---|
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| Link | https://github.com/quasilyte/cavebots-game |
| Link | https://quasilyte.itch.io/cavebots |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/cavebots |
Ratings
| Overall | 52th | 4.017⭐ | 92🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 73th | 3.861⭐ | 92🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 105th | 3.731⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 222th | 3.495⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 98th | 3.864⭐ | 94🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 104th | 3.539⭐ | 91🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 191th | 2.57⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 108th | 3.601⭐ | 91🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 84🗳️ | 164🗨️ |
I can't figure out how to properly "respond" to a comment on this site, but oh well.
I'll play your game later, when LD enables the ratings. Because apparently, we can't rate games yet. Or maybe it's just for people like me (new users).
https://www.reddit.com/r/ludumdare/comments/16xgv1k/i_dont_understand_how_to_rate_other_games/
I like the art style.
At first I didn't know what is happening in the game, but after a while it became clear :)
I had a great time playing this. You should be proud!
I think the only thing I was left wanting for was the ability to hold a key to speed up time, especially on replays. Beyond that though, it felt like a really complete game!
Some stories from my playthroughs:
I managed to soft lock myself by having too many energy consumers running around and then my generator bots getting killed at the entry to my base. So the energy balance became negative and I didn't know of an easy way to fix that and had to restart.
Next time, I was more efficient with my energy and switched to spamming Titans after stockpiling some iron. It worked well and I managed to beat the enemy (on easy).
Overall, I had a blast playing the game and figuring out the best strategy! The thing I liked the least was the theme mechanic of limiting build spots. I felt there were not enough opportunities for building static defenses.
Great job!
Everything is fine, the colony is developing, and then enemies come - and now you have an empty cave. Easy to learn and difficult to master.
Very nice visual style. Green blocks with bots are now my favorite :)
It’s just that there is not enough information in pop-ups, so much energy is needed to dig.
The music is simple and captivating. More suitable for a graphic novel or other measured gameplay.
Before the video, I didn’t realize that bots can be sent outside :)
I really enjoyed your visual novel game.
I think I spent the most time in total playing it.
It plays like a strategy puzzle game.
Please try it out; it can be played in the browser.
These are just my suggestions, this is still a super solid and addictive game, I hope it gets better with some balance and polish :)
The same goes for the enemies, they're a variations of a single sprite.
I spent ~1 hour drawing this damn jeep thing just because I wanted mutants to have some vehicles, but it wasn't the best time investment. :D
I'll make sure to check out your game too!
When the patrol bots go on the build sites it obscures what can be built there, but luckily the moved off pretty quickly. But once stuff got going, it got going. Keep up the good work!
The game UI needs to be revamped completely after the jam. :)
Those textbox-style windows were very tempting due to the fact it was super fast to implement them. :)
Thank you for playing my game in return! :3
- One this is that I didn't notice the build blocks straight away and it took me some time to figure it out, or that the titan bots charged the enemy.
- The random nature of building availability made it so I could build factories close to the entrance and turrets and barricades far from it in corners.
Thank you for playing my game in return. :3
Personally, I found it incredibly frustrating to not be able to build the buildings I wanted on each spot. Most of my time was spent microing my leader unit to find new spots to build generators, and every time I found a turret/barricade spot in the back of my base, I cried inside.
I think that some support for "rally points" would also do quite a bit to help the fun factor. I don't want my generator units to run around outside my base, and trying to time the movement/production speed of Titans to get them to arrive simultaneously didn't feel like fun so much as a chore. I also did miss some of the standby mechanics of the genre, like queueing units for production, selectable units, and some sort of tech tree.
Seriously though, this is an incredible entry. I really hope you decide to take it further! And now, to go play some of the other base building and RTS games on your itch page...
Having the restricted building slots would be enough.
Initially, this decision was made to fit the buildings selection into a pretty small text window so it doesn't get overwhelming. I broke this rule with factories later, giving the player to choose among 4 options. The buildings would require 5 items in that list, which is even more.
The UI needs to be completely revamped after the jam.
I plan to re-create this entire game without a rush later. But for now, I guess that's how I managed to do this in time: like all of us, I had to sacrifice some of the things in order to finish the core gameplay loop.
Thank you for your feedback. :3
> And now, to go play some of the other base building and RTS games on your itch page…
I think Roboden is the one you may want to try (it's out on Steam).
Main suggestions would be: I can see there's a dead start if you mess up the order in the begging, I don't this it's a good idea for the learning curve. Also marking blocks to differentiate them visualy to know what's inside without hovering would be good.
Game play was simple but addictive - I had a couple of turrets do most of the heavy lifting for ages whilst I explored the cave. Main issue was energy and not having enough - well done great game
Anyways. Controls and mechanics were suuuper intuitive and I honestly got attached to my patrol bots and got sad when they died. :cry: The art style is really cute and I love the designs of all the bots. :0 This feels like a classic, easy to play, and easy to replay game. Really great job and thanks for making an amazing game!
EDIT: I just realized this is compo. How did you achieve this.
I created several helper libraries during the last year.
The input helper, resources manager, an efficient pathfinding library, Godot-inspired math library for 2D vector and stuff.
I wasn't very good but retried a bunch of times whenever I'd try stop I decided to "play one more round" and kept going. Feels really unique.. like a mix of dungeon keeper and old school RTS while very much being it's own thing.
Great game. Boggles my mind to think you made it in the competition. Great work :D
The Dungeon Keeper is of course is another one that can be considered to be a somewhat similar game in genre.
As for the old school RTS: I'm a big fan of those. :)
As others mentioned, it's a bit hard to get going due to the complexity, with some trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't but the rules are clear and transparent so it can be learned with time.
I also like the pixel art, feels real nice.
Got to say, would be nice to get energy constantly instead of wait for a package once in a while. Or at least have some timers so I know when it's coming. Having more timers for building would be nice too.
I love the cave excavation mechanics, and the AI + pathing was great. Didn't run into any issues, well done with that :clap:
Really the only complain is that I see no end condition? Am I meant to destroy enemy base? Is that even possible? It's really fun game, it looks and sounds good. It's amazing :)
1. You lose if your Core is destroyed.
2. You win if you destroy the enemy base.
It's possible to destroy the enemy base in the late game, when enemy sends out more units than they can produce. This is an opening. Build several Titans and they'll attack the enemy base. You can assist titans with your Core if it has some Vanguards to cover it. There are other strategies, but this tactic is the most safe one: defend the base until the enemy is exhausted.
You can win without Titan units: make dozens of Vanguards instead. You don't want too many of these before you're planning to do an attack since their energy upkeep is high.
Enjoyed carving out space and building a base. It was fun to learn how things worked.
I think the pace could be a bit faster. I couldn't tell why certain tiles would let me build specific buildings. Also the titan would never get built even when i had enough resources.
Good job!
My only excuse is that we're in different leagues. :D
The King is Watching is already quite famous around here. :)
In the retrospect, it was a bad game design decision.
In part it's due to the limited UI I used in the game: having 5 options in the list would be quite overwhelming, so I decided to go with a 2-item lists that are randomized.
The bad part is that it doesn't really make the game better. It just allows me to fit the options in without making a more complex UI system.
Note that a unit selection in the factory is already 4 items and it's quite inconvenient to use. It wasn't even meant to be a 4-item list, but then I came up with a Titan unit idea, so I had to add "just another one" to the list.
> Also the titan would never get built even when i had enough resources.
This is weird. I wonder how can I reproduce this. The game usually gives you an error sound as well as a notification (a flying message around the factory) when it can't build something.
Perhaps you're a seasoned RTS player and easy difficulty is not enough to match your skills.
The end-goal is to destroy the enemy base.
The difficulty is "easy" by default, to make it more accessible.
You can attack by sending out Titan units (use factories to build them) and/or by sending out your core with an army of Vanguards (they follow the core outside).
The normal difficulty is what I can beat quite consistently.
The hard difficulty is almost impossible to win, but it can be treated as a survival mode. If you can survive for ~25 minutes up there, you're a champ. I can only win on this one if I cheese a bit and destroy the enemy camp before they get crazy strong.
(I just played your game)
(This comment will probably age poorly)
Anyway the game is really good, I spent 45 minutes in a match and I'll try again later hahaha. Congrats!!!
I tried to use the tooltips as much as possible to make the onboarding a bit better, but I think I overdid it a bit (with these "dig complete" messages that have ~zero meaning). I could spend 30 mins more to add more important messages like "hey, you still haven't build a generator! you can build it here >points to the cell<".
You lose if your Core unit is destroyed.
You win if you destroy the opposing base.
The Titans are indeed a way to siege the opponent, but it's not as easy as sending a couple of these.
The game also has a progressing difficulty. Unless you're winning in a 15-20 minutes span, it will be much harder to win afterwards (requires a lot of efforts and maybe a little bit of cheese).
When I first started playing, I was a bit confused and it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how the game works, but after that, it went smoothly.
Overall, I believe this game has great potential for expansion, and I am looking forward to more updates. Well done!
I'll have to rewrite the entire game from scratch though, because the code is a mess right now. :D
I really don't regret getting my hands dirty with this game, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to finish in time. I wish I could make the onboarding better and polish the balance a bit better, but oh well.
I can't say much about the game design, since I'm not exactly a target audience, but I found these little bots and enemies and the way they navigate quite charming. I didn't dare to pick a harder difficulty level and maybe that was my mistake, but from what I saw, the game has a solid foundation and if you keep building on top of the ideas, you may end up with something epic (just don't literally build on top of the code you have, we all know how jams go :D).
Here's my playthrough:
https://youtu.be/LB3BW91Ps4A
You can build factories on some "hard terrain tiles" and produce units there. This is the main iron resource sink in the game.
Thank you for recording a video. These things usually show me the way people interact with a game and where their intuitive flow breaks.
Nonetheless well done!
Would have also appreciated even a simple event feed, just some text in the corner that says when my units are getting destroyed.
It takes them 4-10 seconds to gather around you, usually.
So if you want to gather them for an attack, you would need to stay outside for a while, then they'll come.
The reason behind this behavior is that they only check what to do every once in a while, so they don't end up chaotically running in circles. There are much better ways to achieve that, but I was not spending a lot of time on the individual bot's AI (every one of them has a dedicated behavior). :D
I'll definitely revisit this weird mechanic after the jam.
P.S. - I hope you enjoyed my rocket jump strats for your Sampler game. :D
Anyway, great entry overall! With just some gameplay balance tweaks needed to make it shine. Menus were also very pretty. Well done.
It would create a single best strategy: just make the entrance heavily guarded and that's all.
Just like in any other defense game.
I probably wouldn't keep the randomized slot buildings, but I like the limited building spots idea.
You can just extend the entrance by digging deeper and when you find the right combo of blocks, you build a main base around that. This means you need to adapt to the environment and what the game gives you.
At least that's my view on things.
I really don't want to see ~every base setup to be the same.
But very nice and well functioning concept, i could see this on steam with just a few maps or upgrade layers! Super well done!
I thought it was cool, but nah. It just makes things more annoying.
Maybe if ,you could spot the "kind" of a building spot that would be better. Like some spots can have only utility buildings (like generator and smelter) while the other one can have military buildings (factory, turret).
I'll get rid of it after the jam, when I'll work on a proper game based on this.
Thanks for the game and great job!
Cool game, and nice work playing a lot of games!
From a technical perspective, this is clearly a very impressive effort for 48 hours, and it's great to see a more long-form game as opposed to the short-form blasts you usually get. From an actual gameplay perspective, however, as much as I want to enjoy this, I'm afraid it's just not clicking for me. I dunno if it's a you problem or a me problem, but I've tried this three times now and it ended the same way every time.
You can build generators on these hard terrain blocks.
There is ~50% chance that some tile will have a Generator building available.
Also, you can dig some tiles for free even without the energy; read the tooltips to find them.
Every action in the game require a tile to be focused. So hover over a hard terrain tile to get a context menu. It will list the options as well as the hotkeys.
As a last resort, you can watch the gameplay video attached to the itch io page. It should explain some of the things.
:dvd: :dvd: :dvd: :dvd: :dvd:
I'd love to see you continue to develop this.