Pill Sub by Nikolas van Rus

[raw]
made by Nikolas van Rus for Ludum Dare 56 (JAM)

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Take control of a tiny bionaut as he embarks on a perilous journey aboard his trusty Pill Sub to save a patient in critical need. Manage the vital systems of your Pill Sub: repair malfunctioning computers with a screwdriver, patch up hull breaches with a hammer, and always keep the engine fueled. But beware - menacing viruses lurk around every corner, ready to strike!

  • Use the Fuel Can to refuel your engine
  • Use the Hammer to repair holes
  • Use the Screwdriver to fix computers

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(All sounds and music are sourced from Freesound)

Ratings

Overall 377th 3.71⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Fun 317th 3.66⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 437th 3.429⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Theme 660th 3.53⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 382th 3.91⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Humor 759th 2.617⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Mood 445th 3.622⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Given 46🗳️ 84🗨️

Feedback

luoqing
08. Oct 2024 · 13:44 UTC
FUN,But why not wsad
PeterLeBagarreur
08. Oct 2024 · 13:44 UTC
Really nice game, loved the graphics and enjoyed the simple yet effective audio!

Didn't quite understand what I had to do on the first 30s but when I got my hand on it, it was quite a fun experience!
VinogradovIvan
08. Oct 2024 · 14:16 UTC
A fun game, matches the theme and has a good balance. Took me a few tries to get how things work here. Pretty nice!
Thaunter
08. Oct 2024 · 18:56 UTC
Nice game and concept, but I it was quite hard to me! ^^'
Whysguy52
08. Oct 2024 · 19:17 UTC
yeah this was really really fun. i love FTL and LiaDST ship management games! a little hard but i almost won. WASD please
Lélek Hunor Kadosa
08. Oct 2024 · 19:20 UTC
Fun and well polished game, nice work. I would love if there was some images inside the pill with the tutorial image. I instantly forgot the tutorial when I started the game
dreo
08. Oct 2024 · 19:55 UTC
enjoyed your game, love this type of gameplay.
and somehow your created great atmosphere. really feel that i am alone somewhere in nowhere and if anything goes wrong i will be dead the moment after. depressing, hits, love it.
🎤 Nikolas van Rus
08. Oct 2024 · 20:04 UTC
(Deleted)
barryrichter
09. Oct 2024 · 01:06 UTC
Overall really fun and a super cool take on tiny creatures being the inner workings of a pill.
GoogleFrog
09. Oct 2024 · 09:52 UTC
Nice game. The balance is really important, too slow and there isn't much to do, too fast and it feels impossible, but I think you nailed it.
TentacleDream
09. Oct 2024 · 09:56 UTC
Well, it was fun maneuvering around broken devices. For me personally, the gameplay wasn't developed enough and the rules of the game weren't changed enough, but overall it's a pretty fun game. Good Job!
Gaalsien
09. Oct 2024 · 16:34 UTC
Great game! I really enjoyed it. However, after a few minutes of repetitive gameplay, I lost interest... Is there an end to it? After a few more minutes, I closed the game with 94 health points left.
firellon
09. Oct 2024 · 17:21 UTC
It feels like it could use some automation and managing the crew with a mouse, sending them to various tasks rather than having to go there yourself... The game is fairly tough, but I enjoyed it!
tomrijnbeek
09. Oct 2024 · 17:24 UTC
Well polished and well balanced game. It would be nice if the difficulty scaled a bit better. The two guns always broke at the same time, so having some randomness introduced there and maybe make the game scale in difficulty a bit faster would be great. I think the game would also have gained a lot from slightly more feedback when you do an action in repairing. Overall though, I loved the consistent art style. The entire game felt coherent and the controls worked well. Easy to learn, hard to master.
LDJam user 388078
09. Oct 2024 · 18:25 UTC
Always love to see Godot 🚀
fabula_rasa
09. Oct 2024 · 19:51 UTC
Took a few tries, but I finally managed to cure the patient.

![Screenshot_2.jpg](///raw/732/a2/z/68589.jpg)

Difficulty progression feels nice. Art is good and there is a lot of attention to detail. Controls work well, and the collisions are well done as well - I never felt like I'm stopped by some invisible piece of wall or something :wink: The whole experience is really well-polished. Nicely done!
JHax
09. Oct 2024 · 22:34 UTC
It's a challenging game, but it's really fun! I think I would have liked a way of upgrading things so they break a bit less often, but that's just down to my own preferences really.
WiNic
11. Oct 2024 · 12:55 UTC
it was fun to play around. I would have liked if you can just press the key once to repair stuff over time instead of spamming the key.
I also noticed, if you press space after you are dead, you can continue the game even though you are dead. You can then just repair the engine and refuel it and win regardless (look at top left health)![space.png](///raw/28d/06/z/68966.png)
Conor Wilson
11. Oct 2024 · 12:57 UTC
This is my favourite game that I've played in the Jam so far. Super simple and challenging concept executed really well. The balancing has been done excellently to make it a challenging but doable game.

I really think you should develop this into a full experience after the jam :)
TheSmellofOxygen
11. Oct 2024 · 12:58 UTC
I really enjoyed this. Nice atmosphere with the calm music and cannons, but still the tense rush to fix things. I wish there was a little warning right before a station would break down, like some light smoke/sparks,a least some of the time. I could see the game being expanded a bit by adding some more proactive player choices, like setting a course or having players choose different ailments they're sent in to cure and having a slightly different kit for it. The progress bar at the bottom could have been announced at the beginning, since it's clear some other commenters didn't notice it, and I certainly only paid attention after I was 90% done, after thinking to myself "Why do I fix the engines, do they make me go faster?-- OOOHhhh"
Big Cyckos
11. Oct 2024 · 13:06 UTC
![W1.PNG](///raw/144/d4/z/6896b.png)
this game shows why it is not worth saving money on original parts.
The title should be on my workspace when I'm on vacation.
Overall fantastic game good job congratulations :v: ~Socio
LyaMgtt
11. Oct 2024 · 13:41 UTC
Looks absolutely stunning, love the clever mechanics as well ! Well done !!
Chuckiee
11. Oct 2024 · 14:54 UTC
I saw someone mentioned +1 would appreciate WASD controls. Very good resource management/sacrifice game. Couldn't cure the patient but once you start a run, keeps you busy and focused. Gfx seemed a little too small, would be nice if there was a full sc. option. Very nice entry overall :clap:
damdoshi
11. Oct 2024 · 16:05 UTC
First game was quite short but the second one got me halfway. Patient cured 149 killed on third game.

I like the concept of having to manage a ship. Mechanics here are simple but efficient - and more important - they give ideas, they are inspiring.

Graphics are nice - but maybe a little too small x')
Jonathan Vinesar
12. Oct 2024 · 16:53 UTC
For some reason the task bar at the bottom stopped even though the engines were running and the fuel was full, I thought eventually something would happen, but I let the ship go down after killing 366 viruses. Not sure what went wrong, but ignoring that I thought the game was pretty fun! Maintaining the ship was overwhelming at first, but once you understand the flow of things, you can keep the ship alive endlessly. I think this would be a fun game with multiplayer and some sort of control station to move the ship. Nicely done overall though!
osh.studio
13. Oct 2024 · 07:03 UTC
Such a cool atmosphere you've created! Loved my little pill man, I'm realising looking at these comments that my progress bar was not working, I was pretty confused as to the end goal, but still thoroughly enjoyed myself! Got 134 viruses, would also have loved a full screen option, was quite hard to see everything as it was so small. Managed to save the sub from a few near misses, very fun! Great submission!
Recher
13. Oct 2024 · 09:34 UTC
The idea of a pill inside a patient's body, instead of a classical spaceship is really cool.

I took a little time to realize we can swap the tool. We are not obliged to puth them back in the place they were.

The graphics are really nice, with little details like shelves, screen, etc. But the walls should be more visible compared to the rest. I banged myself on the wall at the lower floor, because I didn't even realize it was there.

It was too hard for me, I did not save the patient, but I see some people made it, so I guess the difficulty is well-balanced and progressive.
Aspeon
14. Oct 2024 · 04:21 UTC
This was really neat! I'll echo the suggest to push the button once or hold instead of having to mash to repair/refuel.
Prunus Padis
14. Oct 2024 · 10:56 UTC
Reminds me of barotrauma with trying to keep the ship intact. Little hard, but i expect with more play it would be easier. Simple and efficient entry for Jam and could be easily expanded with more mechanics.

I disagree with others that the inputs should have been hold, but you should give more feedback and make the spamming feel more rewarding, or let us hold the button :D.

The ship could have been little more easier to visually navigate or if you wanted to go with the "you must learn the ship" maybe have different sized ships. I also would have liked to have maybe "empty" rack/s in the ship to make the swapping the tools mechanics more clearer and for more options for strategy.
Lussard Studio
14. Oct 2024 · 16:58 UTC
Really nice game ! The pixel art is beautiful ! the game is kinda stressing and make you want to retry to see how far you can go. Great concept and good polish. :rocket: :rocket:
Tomssuli
17. Oct 2024 · 18:15 UTC
Great little game. I liked the pacing where you had to move around to ship. This reminded me of Lovers In Dangerous Space Time and FTL.

Nice pixelart, good music and fitting minimal sounds. Overall I liked the aquatic mood. Good work!

![pillsub.png](///raw/a34/d1/z/68ec6.png)
smiley405
22. Oct 2024 · 20:24 UTC
The game concept is really good. I wished there was a hot-key just to zoom in/out the camera relative to the player. Enjoyed playing it.
Yanato
24. Oct 2024 · 14:00 UTC
Cool and complete game!
Jcourt
25. Oct 2024 · 02:50 UTC
This was fun! I thought the art worked very well, and the gameplay was good.

Things got out of hand very quickly for me - as soon as a turret broke while I was on the other side of the sub, I couldn't repair it in time to avoid taking a ton of damage.