Inspired by the relative success of a good friend in LD37 (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=47185), I decided to attempt LD39 this year, and, as I have work on Mondays, to go all in and attempt the Compo.

Running out of Power was one of the few potential themes where I didn't have some sort of idea of what I'd like to do. As a result, I ended up looking towards my first game experiences, as well as some of my favorite, and settled on a game taking place in space, inspired by early memories of playing Galaga with my father. Taking design cues from games such as Luftrausers, Downwell, and Asteroids, I decided on making a game with a highly limited pallete, and a focus on movement mechanics. I made the decision to forego combat mechanics entirely, as I liked the idea of a spacecraft floating nearly helplessly through space. Originally using battery packs to replenish power, I changed course to using satellites, which made a bit less sense but not only looked better, but allowed for a fun radio wave visual that would help in pinpointing the objects.

While proud of having finished a game that, in my personal opinion, was even fun at times, I nevertheless had some regrets. The first of which related to the game's sound. From the original conception of the idea, I had decided to go with sound limited to a background beeping, inspired by multiple satellite scenes from various movies. I enjoyed the sense of loneliness this lent to the game, and the cessation of the sound upon the destruction of the probe only emphasized this. However, when showing the game to friends, they found the beeping highly repetitive, fatiguing, and rather annoying. If attempting this again, and in future iterations on this game, I'd probably try something else with the soundscape.

Finally, the game itself is much too hard. Barely finishing all the mechanics and graphics in time (the Game Over and Score were added within the last half-hour of the Compo,) I never really had time to balance. The result is a highly punishing experience, where a single wrong move or even simple bad luck can result in a game over within seconds of the start. The planetary bodies' gravitational pull is especially punishing. I myself can barely breach 2500 points. With more time, I'd definitely spend an hour or two finetuning the game to make a fun, rather than frustrating experience.

Nonetheless, I do enjoy what I ended up with, and during the jam I had numerous ideas for ways to refine and improve upon the original concept. I plan on continuing to work on this game throughout the next year or so, and hopefully release a final version as a commercial product.

The game can be found here.