Deep Mech Salvage by bearcage
You're in a waterworld type situation — all the old cities have flooded out, and you're part of a salvage crew that dispatches mechs to the seafloor to recover scrap from the old civilization.
The game is played in runs. When a run begins, you drop from the boat into the sea. On the seafloor, which is an isometric map, you control a mech with twin-stick shooter controls (8-way motion on wasd, aim on mouse). Your mech has a main weapon and an alternate ability, and everything you interact with on the seafloor is done either with those, or by moving in close proximity to it and (sometimes) staying there "long enough". For a quick boost of speed, you can dash!
On the seafloor, your task is to return as much salvage as possible to your surface ship. You do this by extracting salvage from the environment (shooting things, primarily), then once your mech's cargo bay is full, calling a retrieval pod from your surface ship down to you. Once it arrives, you can unload your cargo, refill your mech's oxygen, and modify your equipment. You then choose either to end your run by riding the pod back up, or you press on and try to keep salvaging. The longer you stay down, the harder the challenges.
The seafloor is dark, lit up by the player's mech lights and certain hazards.
The seafloor itself is divided into zones, separated by a longer bit of roadway. Going from one zone to another resets the contents of the previous, for the next time you go back to it.
On the seafloor, your challenges are:
- Pre-calamity defense turrets
- Booby-traps left by rival salvagers, like mines
- Wildlife
And you can get scrap from:
- Destroying challenges
- Breaking open sealed pre-calamity buildings
Known Issues:
- macos builds are not signed (we don't have a paid apple developer account), but apple has instructions on how to run them anyway
- The first launch is slow (preloading takes a sec!)
Update: We've added another link to a "Director's Cut" version below, with a few features and fixes we couldn't get done in the jam weekend. Please don't use that to rate us, but if you liked the game and wanted to see what a little more polish does for it, give it a whirl!
| Jam Version (Windows) | https://ludumipsum.com/ld57/download/3661 |
| Jam Version (macOS) | https://ludumipsum.com/ld57/download/3662 |
| Jam Version (linux) | https://ludumipsum.com/ld57/download/3663 |
| Jam Version (Web) | https://ludumipsum.com/ld57/play_version/3659/index.html |
| Link | https://github.com/ludumipsum/ld57 |
| Director's Cut | https://ludumipsum.com/ld57/play/index.html |
| Build Log | https://ludumipsum.com/ld57 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/deep-mech-salvage |
Ratings
| Overall | 241th | 3.794⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 260th | 3.635⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 446th | 3.229⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 398th | 3.76⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 53th | 4.52⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 571th | 2.451⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 285th | 3.823⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 83🗨️ |
My problem is that i never figured out how to refill my oxygen. The tutorial says that the elevator is supposed to do that, but it never did. And since I can't prevent my oxygen from going down, my run can only last a couple minutes. I don't know if this is a bug or if I'm just missing something, but I feel like I'm missing out on most of the game here. There are a dozen different weapons and abilities to try out, but it hardly matters if I only have 60 seconds to use them.
In case this is a bug, I am using the web export with Chrome.
Make sure you step the whole way inside the elevator (equipment menu will pop up) and the oxygen meter should get refilled.
If you were playing shortly after publication there was an accidental link to an older build, which has been corrected!
Had a great time, hope to do it again!
Can't get markdown link to work: lospec.com/palette-list/bluberry-6
Aside from that, incredible visuals, all the pieces come together nicely for a really fun shooter!
The mines were a bit overwelming, lot of them and basically invisible.
The fact that it looks like the enemies respawn + the 02 meter made me not want to explore. I instead stayed near an elevator because I was constantly needing to refill my O2, and full on parts from the enemies nearby.
Lastly I would have loved a little bit more feedback when killing sharks, like a little particle or have them blink when hit.
The shotgun and multi-missile felt soooo good to play. Well done !
Great Game overall !
I wish garages where a bit more visible, but maybe that's just me
The locked weapons in particular are 100% unfinished content, no way to access those. At one point the vision was for you to start with only basic equipment and unlock more in return for scrap, but as the deadline loomed it turned into being a loadout selection from all implemented equipment.
love it!
It’s got a lot of potential as a vampire-like experience.
The only thing I missed was a clear goal — something global, or at least per level or wave.
I had a bit of trouble aiming exactly where I wanted (especially on fishes) and I think I drove over every single landmine, they look very hard to spot. Overall a really nice entry, congrats!
**Please use original versions for ratings, the Director's Cut has additional work after the jam deadline**
The only thing I would've like to have had was some sort of indicator where the closest beacon was when you had 50/50 scraps since you could pretty much go anywhere.
I did feel like there should have been a bit more progression involved before having alternate abilities/weapons, though...it felt a little overwhelming at first. :thinking:
Personally I only played about 2-5mins because with how dark it was + the small colour palette made it pretty hard on my eyes, and then the mines on top of that didn't feel great cause they were even harder to spot.
Overall good mood and art, not my kind of thing unfortunately.
I played the jam version first & then tried the director's cut; it's nice to see that you'd already fixed up some of the complaints I would've had, like making the mines glow.
Like others have said, it is pretty hard to see - and I think that's partly due to the amount of noise in the environment art. While it looks good, I think reducing the amount of dithering and random detail in the environment would do a lot for making some areas much clearer & easier to navigate. That and maybe using a more consistent pixel scale for assets.
The shotgun & both missile types felt good and satisfying to use, I think the rifle feels a little too slow/limited.
Like @flinge said, I'd love to see a version of this with a greater sense of purpose.