Super Earth Spacer by OWC
About:
Genre: shooter, builder
🌌 Usually in games we find ourselves in the worlds already created by the developers with set rules, objects, enemies, etc. But in our project everything is different. You are in space, on a tiny island 🏝️, but with a set of building materials 🧱. Your task is to build a world around you 🏗️, and then - to defend yourself 🛡️ from all those who will try to capture this world. But be careful: before each round you need to spend all the building blocks 🧱, but not all of them are equally useful and safe.⚠️
Links:
HTML5 (web): https://toadfly.itch.io/ludum-dare-54
How to Play:
- Build blocks around you to expand the game world.
- There are three kinds of blocks in your inventory...
- One you can walk on.
- The second ones create enemies.
- The third ones deal damage to you (if you step on it).
- Before each round you MUST spend ALL the blocks available to you.
- Arrange them competently in any way you like to make it easier for you to survive in the world you have created.
- The battle starts automatically as soon as you spend all the blocks.
- Kill enemies to get more building blocks.
- Expand the world you have created cycle by cycle.
Controls:
- WASD - movement
- Left Mouse - shooting
- Arrows (left, right) - switch building blocks
- Left Mouse (in building mode) - create block
Authors:
- Kiryl Tkachou - code
- Sergey Fockx - art & music
- Alex Pilipchuk - concept & design
Sounds used during development:
For the provided sounds we are grateful to freesound users: mojomills, Unfa, Theogobbo, D4XX, JakeAMT, BranndyBottle, JustInvoke, carrigsound, Anthousai, The DweebMan, brandondelehoy, benzix2, NXRT, JustInvoke, Hard3eat, nebulasnails, wesleyextreme_gamer, Fupicat.
Ratings
| Overall | 60th | 4.2⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 108th | 4.033⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 243th | 3.767⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 409th | 3.867⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 69th | 4.483⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 614th | 2.786⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 373th | 3.759⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
I think the difficulty of the game is on the lower side. Early levels do not really pose any threat to the player and they feel quite long when enemies just spawn and instantly die. Everything will get harder as the progresses but I think the pacing is slightly too slow for a game jam where people will most likely only spend a short time with your game.
It would have been cool to be able to reposition tiles during the building phase. Not old tiles but the ones you were currently placing. It would have opened up more tactical opportunities when building. It took me a while to realise that you can switch what tiles you are about to place.
But overall, a very solid package. Neat graphics, good sound (selection) and interesting mechanics!
My suggestions:
- much shorter rounds with enemies spawning more frequently
- more agressive enemy ai
The game did get a little samey after a while, perhaps more monsters/blocks appear later in the game but since nothing new appeared after a few waves I felt I'd seen the extent of things. The waves themselves felt a little long, and things moved slowly so the action felt a little low on action.
But all in all, very nice work!
Unfortunately the design is pretty questionable, from the get-go it's kinda easy for the player to abuse the level design system to spawn all the enemies far away where they can't get to you, there's little incentive to actually build interesting levels and I think the biggest problem is the enemy designs don't quite work with the concept. It would be much more interesting to have enemies that could spawn, destroy or transmute tiles, so the level is changing not just because of the player, which would also mitigate the player being able to create kill traps. Another strategy might be to have enemies get stronger if they are close together to punish kill boxes. Leaning into mechanics along those lines would really elevate this from a juicy jam game with nice art to something much more exciting to play.
That's strictly a design complaint though! Everything else is great! It's solid and I have not much to say on anything other than the design because every other part of the game is so solid! Awesome work!!
Game lagged a bit at high enemy counts, sometimes bullets would hit you during build phase.
Kinda felt like unlimited space lol, easily made a giant walk zone and crammed all the bad stuff in 1 corner. Only died when bullets stopped rendering properly haha
You have something cool !
I love it, i play it and... I loose... But anyway, incredible job! :heart:
The core loop though is lacking imo, the enemies aren't really a challenge and it felt like it got increasingly easier since you had so many dirt tiles you have to place.
With a more limited amount of (non dangerous) tiles it would be more challenging.
I only died since the game was lagging/stuttering at some point, maybe due to too many enemies.
Getting a more limited amount of tiles and more tiles to interact with enemies or the player and then this game is so polished.
All other aspects feel so polished though! Really well done!
Love the addition of the leaderboard, it's the thing that kept me playing) Gotta be first!
