Malthus and The Rocks by Defrag
Quick Itch.io Link: https://jclayton128.itch.io/malthus
Have fun either dying of hunger or succumbing to space rocks! MatR is a real-time engine-builder/tower-defense game where you extract resources, conduct research, and build defensive turrets in a few slots on the Earth. Comes with a tech tree and increasing difficulty.
Use UP/DOWN, LEFT/RIGHT arrows to manipulate game. LEFT/RIGHT generally rotate the Earth or change between build options. UP/DOWN toggles modes. Holding DOWN will build the selected building (provided the prerequisites are met). Holding UP on certain buildings will Harvest their resources.
Due to time limits, I couldn't get any audio in there. Sorry.



| Itch.io | https://jclayton128.itch.io/malthus |
| Github repo | https://github.com/Jclayton128/LD54 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/malthus-and-the-rocks |
Ratings
| Overall | 219th | 3.448⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 251th | 3.19⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 64th | 3.914⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 170th | 3.724⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 166th | 3.552⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 192th | 2.558⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
A low-hanging fruit improvements I can think of is to put symbols over the buildings so they're easier to identify at a glance, especially from the zoomed out view. The flag for the empty spaces do this and are good.
- After losing and restarting, some of the planet's state was carried over into the next round, like crater and building positions.
- After playing for a little while, the game will sometimes get stuck in the "asteroid defense" mode with no asteroids on screen. I think it's maybe triggered by getting hit by too many asteroids? I had a strategy for a little bit where I would invest no resources into turrets and just rotate the planet so asteroid impacts always landed on an existing crater.
Even if I run it in a full-screen mode, it's not scaled properly.
Is it a web-export issue?