Incident on Outpost 17 by irwatts

:INCOMING TRANSMISSION:
:globewithmeridians: Sector Command Bulletin SD93304:15
:warning: Sector Warning: Astrophage Activity Detected :warning:
Local patrol dispatched to investigate distress signal from Outpost 17. Communication with patrol has been lost. Astrophage activity detected in the area. Rescue unlikely.
:END TRANSMISSION:
Summary
Incident on Outpost 17 is a twin-stick shooter. How long can you hold out before the floor is eaten out from under you?
- Defend Outpost 17 from the Astrophage onslaught. Select between the machine gun, shotgun, proximity bomb, and devastating sweep laser.
- Stop the Astrophages before they eat the outpost. Enemies will eat floor tiles when they come in contact with the outpost.
- Defend the outpost with your life. Astrophages are only interested in eating the outpost. Your soldier will fall if the floor tiles beneath them are eaten. Game ends when the soldier has fallen.
Controls
Controller (Intended Use) - Left Stick: Move - Right Stick: Aim - Right Trigger: Machine Gun - Right Bumper: Shotgun - Left Trigger: Charge Laser - Left Bumper: Proximity Bomb - Start: Menu/Pause
Software/Tools
- Unreal Engine 5 (We used Lyra Starter Game as a base)
- JetBrains Rider
- SideFX Houdini
- Adobe Photoshop
- Toon Boom Harmony

| Link | https://irwatts.itch.io/incident-on-outpost-17 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/incident-on-outpost-17 |
Ratings
| Overall | 800th | 3.318⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 979th | 2.85⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 899th | 2.921⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 314th | 4⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 548th | 3.643⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 754th | 2.5⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 925th | 2.975⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
Also, using all weapons at once is crazy hahaha
One thing that took me by surprise was the download size, almost 700mb O.o is it just because unreal? It also made me install some C++ redistributables hahhaa
The game itself is straightforward, simple. Somewhat frustrating, as I have used mouse, is the poorly visible cursor and the fact that its distance from the ship affects rotation speed, making it more visible or limiting how far it can be moved would have helped the gameplay in my opinion.
Opening options during the game doesn't pause it
I liked the special effects and the fact that I had unlimited shots. The proximity bomb and shotgun were great fun.
Well done!
I did find one bug. The timer on my first play had 3:38:78. I'm not sure how that happened. But it's a minor thing.
Appreciate the clean assets and deep settings menu but suspect some more gameplay, like an upgrade shop for different guns to experiment with would further things along great.
The Camera is a bit too close up resulting in the starting island almost immediately doomed a good 3rd of is as you simply cannot see the threats approaching from all sides.
@smoe @willianfhs Thanks! Unfortunately we ran out of time and couldn't get to audio for this one. Next jam!
@winter2277 Thank you!
@pinky-toast Nice job! Since we started with Lyra Starter Game, file size started pretty large and we didn't get a chance to reduce it.
@drlizard Thank you for the detailed feedback! We started with Epic's Lyra Starter Game template, so we inherited a pretty robust settings UI. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to flesh out the control options to the level we wanted.
@don-fouts Thank you!
@teashna Thank you for playing! We just added a new version 1.2 that gets mouse support working better.
@g33zer I think that's the high score so far! The menu system is something we inherited from the Lyra Starter Game template from Epic. That would indeed be quite the effort to accomplish over a weekend!
@don-shinski Thank you! We just added a new latest, 1.2, that fixes the turning issue you experienced.
@chengnan17 Thanks for playing! We couldn't get mouse support implemented fully in time for the jam edition, but our post-jam version has it working!
@steamhat Thank you for the feedback! Camera distance tuning is something we'll look at for future updates to the game. We wanted visibility to be a bit limited but it might be too much.
This was as good as I could do. The enemies were spawning faster than my rate of fire at that point, so not sure anyone could do much better. There was some strange bunching up on the left side that I maybe could have taken better advantage of?
That asside interesting attempt at a twin stick shooter, some unusual but fresh visual style to this one, weird choice to have enemies be clouds but it kinda works and it's neat.
Lack of mouse aim was a bit of a pain, had to go dig up my controller to play, the control scheme is kinda wonky and optimal play is to hold the shoulder buttons and triggers down permanently which is pretty uncomfortable to say the least.
The overall concept is interesting, losing floor tiles as enemies approach is a cool idea, but the enemies are so easy it never really came into fruition for me, I just slaughtered wave after wave, and since they don't target me in any way there's not much need for moving around. Eventually I quit because I was bored not because I lost :(
Some good ideas both design and visual wise, but really needs more polish and iteration to turn it into a proper game, very half baked sadly.
P.S wheres the JUICE!? sound and screenshake and hit feedback! Juice is like oxygen to a twinstick shooter!
Great job smashing out a game in a weekend and submitting! Congrats!