LudumData

Intermodal by jotson

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made by jotson for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

INTERMODAL is a logistics arcade multitasking game about moving shipping containers from the ship, to the port, ​and finally to the trucks that will take them to their destinations. Tractors unload the ship and take containers to the storage yard. Trucks take matching colored containers out of the port for delivery.

instructions.png

​​INSTRUCTIONS

  • ​Ships arrive at the port and will stay for 90 seconds
  • Click empty tractors​ to make them go to an empty crane on the dock and containers will be loaded automatically
  • Click ​full tractors​ to make them go to an empty area of the storage yard and drop off the container
  • ​Click a lane at the trucking terminal when the light is green to dispatch a truck to the pickup location
  • Trucks will only pick up a matching color container and will only wait 10 seconds before leaving
  • You lose if
    • A container ship leaves port without being fully unloaded
    • 3 trucks leave the port without a container
    • Or the storage yard is full for more than 10 seconds
  • Good luck!

SCORING POINTS

  • ​1 point for each second remaining when a ship is fully unloaded
  • 5 points for each container that is successfully delivered to a truck
  • -10 points for trucks that leave without a container

Music tracks "Building Inspiration", "Making Progress", and "Rush to the End​​​" by Steven O'Brien https://www.steven-obrien.net/

Made with Godot 4

Link https://jotson.itch.io/intermodal
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/intermodal

Ratings

Overall 197th 3.958⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Fun 257th 3.819⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 117th 4⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Theme 175th 4.208⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 464th 3.778⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Humor 807th 2.375⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 568th 3.529⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Given 33🗳️ 39🗨️

Feedback

StvUP
03. Oct 2023 · 03:12 UTC
The game feels quite solid! Really nice work!
Veridis
03. Oct 2023 · 03:17 UTC
This was a very calming puzzle game, i really liked it and then i got clogged up needing all blue :P
Arnenia
03. Oct 2023 · 03:18 UTC
I really like this one! Very simple control scheme, but very rewarding for being quick and observant. The sound effects are nice, and it has a pretty chill puzzle vibe. Good job!
LDJam user 281060
03. Oct 2023 · 03:20 UTC
Got 700! Really liked the vibe and the general pacing of the game. Wasn't always sure if I had any real choices to make however, it did seem like i just clicked whatever colors I could. The whole thing feels nice and polished.
aevek
03. Oct 2023 · 03:21 UTC
Wow! I really enjoyed this. Totally lost track of time playing it. Very easy to understand but also very easy to be overwhelmed and lose track as things stack up. I scored 1204 and want to keep trying because I know I could do better. Thanks for the game!
Rose
03. Oct 2023 · 03:21 UTC
This is one of the more engrossing games I've tried so far - you really have to pay a lot of attention! It's satisfying when things go well, but stressful when they don't - similar to a real shipyard, I imagine. I managed to get 770 points!

One small piece of feedback - I didn't like the <!> on the trucks that were waiting. It distracted me from keeping an eye on the tractors, and whether the truck was about to get its container or about leave, I couldn't do anything about it anyway!
LDJam user 375382
03. Oct 2023 · 03:44 UTC
Very entertaining game, cute graphics and innovative gameplay. The time pressure is just right. It feels a bit like tetris, as you get bad combinations of colors you run out of space.
treenut
03. Oct 2023 · 14:59 UTC
Nice one! Not too difficult, more a game of endurance, but very fun all the way through. Also love the minimalist artstyle even though it's "unfinished"
SimonCarter
03. Oct 2023 · 16:20 UTC
Very nice game, very polished on every aspect. Felt like rng was messing with me multiple times!

Have a good day.
Ani
03. Oct 2023 · 17:39 UTC
Woah this is so mesmerising to play! It's fun and has great readable visuals. Love the little traffic lights!
dob
03. Oct 2023 · 19:41 UTC
Loved this - very clever. It took me a few tries to get the rhythm, and to realize that I could just leave goods in the storage rather than blowing through trucks I couldn't fill. Really clever, well executed, and fun. The double beep got a little irritating after seven ships, but otherwise I have no complaints. Great work!
walaber
03. Oct 2023 · 23:41 UTC
lovely! at first I thought I wouldn't like just clicking on idle vehicles and everything else was automated, because I assumed I'd rather "direct" which containers are stored where / which ones are delivered to each waiting truck (kind of the inverse of the current control scheme)... but in practice after playing a bit, your design turned out to offer more agency than I anticipated. It is really soothing and addictive to play!
nathmate
04. Oct 2023 · 02:56 UTC
![2023-10-04-135225_1318x756_scrot.png](///raw/102/b5/z/5f7c5.png)
Cool game. Like any design that has RNG integral to it, it would be nice to have some way to control what you get given. Just being able to reorder what is being unloaded from the ships would make it feel less frustrating.

The balance between simplicity and depth is really good here.
LDJam user 377546
04. Oct 2023 · 07:48 UTC
A ton of of fun! The missing yellow containers messed it up for me 😄 Score: 711 with 8 ships unloaded.
benjamin
04. Oct 2023 · 11:09 UTC
I would be fun if each lane can only spawn 2 colors, so you can try to get a specific colored truck by emptying the good lane.
CobaltJT
04. Oct 2023 · 12:34 UTC
Okay, I get it. It's about multitasking and being fast. Was a lot of fun when I finally figured it out!

The RNG might need a bias. At some point I was left with only red trucks and full storage with no red containers. Not much you can do in that case :(

The visuals, even though simple, fit the game really nice. So does the sounds. Great game!
Yskuma
05. Oct 2023 · 13:09 UTC
I love the aesthetic of the game, both the graphics and sound, and ended up playing a few rounds.

My main criticism would be that it seems to be very RNG heavy, maybe you could have less storage space and make the boat input and empty truck amounts for each colour always equal? (Unless they already are and I'm just rubbish at the game? :smiley:)
LDJam user 236586
07. Oct 2023 · 16:53 UTC
I'm one of those people who, when reading board game instructions, it may as well be in another language. I just have to figure it out by playing. I read the isntructions and when the game started it took me a minute to wrap my head around all the moving parts.

Once I did though, this was a lot of fun! Would love to see some leaderboard integration because I'm curious what sort of score a shipping container savant might get. I ended up with 411 on my first playthrough.

I really enjoyed the simple but very readable graphical style, and everything felt very responsive. I never had any questions about what was happened when I clicked on something, or what was waiting to be clicked on. So really fantastic UI!

I'm gonna have to come back to this one again :)
Avi
09. Oct 2023 · 10:51 UTC
Loved the graphics, animations, and the hecticness of this game! Btw I played this on my cell and it worked quite well!!

I think this would be fun to watch a bot play this as well -- could be like a little digital art piece, watching everything flow the way it's supposed to in the most efficient manner :)
Rongo Matane
09. Oct 2023 · 20:27 UTC
Loved it, really played for a long time. I read nothing but the games workings were very clear very fast, only help could be initially to show what's clickable until the player got the first few containers shipped. First run i ended because i had too many empty trucks, but in the second run i felt like i became a pro. Got into a great flow of sending out trucks early because i knew a fitting container is leaving the ship now.
Especially when one color was dominant the pressure began to mount - seeing your storage rise and rise while desperately waiting for a green container was exciting. I'm not sure if i follow the comments about RNG - it probably could use some rubberbanding, but on the other hand you also want to build towards people really needing to utilize their storage and strategically delaying the shipment of some containers.
Sound was great too, music very pleasant and calmly fitting.
Love it, excellent entry! Could see that built out with a few small systems to be a small game on steam (or mobile, but who likes to make mobile games).
![Unbenannt.png](///raw/122/3/z/60184.png)
Dan Miller
09. Oct 2023 · 21:42 UTC
Very pretty! I enjoyed this game, as soon as things started to get a little bit more backed up I had to really start strategizing. I'd love to see some way to start automating more of these little guys :)
deadjolly
10. Oct 2023 · 00:06 UTC
Very chill game. Somehow, between the art and audio, gave me SimCity vibes. I was a little confused by the lose state, but I really enjoyed the aesthetic and chill vibe the game has. Music and sound effects worked well to add to the experience!
Skosnowich
11. Oct 2023 · 06:36 UTC
Very much enjoyed the game. Got really stressful at some points. The music and the sounds worked in perfect harmony together. Sometimes I had the feeling, that the music was playing in the same rhythm as the honking trucks and was accompanied by them - but maybe I just got a little bit lost in the game there.

The simplistic graphic style plays really well with the game.

In the end I got drowned by blue requests. Looking at the last ship, it saddens me a lot, because I see a lot of blue containers there.

![Screenshot 2023-10-11 082440.png](///raw/c31/z/602a1.png)
SnekOfSpice
12. Oct 2023 · 15:09 UTC
I wish there was an in-game tutorial to ease the player into the game loop, but outside of that, this felt really clean! It got so hectic at the end, but throughout the mechanics were really clean!

I do like the addition of 2-dimensional info with color/dot count for the different types of cargo, but with how uniform the squares were, it took me a few rounds to figure out that it was 1:1 correlated, and not that I had to watch out for matching color AND number. Less ambiguous alternatives might be letters for the colors (BRYG) or shapes? but that's a minor thing. Overall, this was really cool with a very minimalistic control scheme :3
Le Don
19. Oct 2023 · 14:25 UTC
This is a fun game! I felt I was just a bit too depended on the RNG and it might be nice to have some form of control, but also it's basically an endless runner with an highscore at the end, so the RNG aspect should be fine. For my perosnal taste I thought the background music went a bit too hard, but otherwise the art and soundeffects are great.
zimny11
20. Oct 2023 · 21:53 UTC
This is way harder than I initially expected :D Well done. As other people mentioned a bit RNG heavy, but for sure fun to play. Well done!