FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD38 → Aether Mine

Aether Mine

By merrak

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1123.7224
Fun2423.2125
Innovation2163.2724
Theme1653.6824
Graphics464.2125
Audio1763.1923
Humor4141.9318
Mood1073.6123

Comments

oxlander 2017-04-25 09:40

Just played your game on Stencyl, had to make sure I leave a comment here so I don't forget to rate your game well!

2017-04-26 11:11

Lovely graphics, nice game!¬ I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation [video series](https://youtu.be/MygbzdcNT_8), if you’d like to take a look :)

zzcalvinzz 2017-05-02 01:31

I Love this game. The graphics and the music combine to make a pretty sweet atmosphere. Really solid entry!

epicsoft 2017-05-02 01:34

It's like Matrix, I like this

rick 2017-05-02 01:54

I like the idea, too bad your sim city idea was a little too ambitious but I can see where this can go. At this point it's a little repetitive and needs some balancing. But overall nice job getting all the art, sound and mechanics in! The game actually sucked me in for a good 30 minutes :smile:

landosystems 2017-05-02 01:57

Nice graphical style and music. Took a little while to sort out what order to build things in. It might have made for an interesting twist to have to protect the structures that are being built in addition to the ships that are docking. Once I figured it out it was pretty fun, good work!

kantieno 2017-05-02 02:00

Good entry! Hope you expand on it further. The only thing really lacking was the audio. Was a good time otherwise!

maldo19 2017-05-02 15:29

It's easy to see the ambition that this game has, It has a nice mood and I really liked the graphics. The audio was a little weak but it really fits. I would like to see this one grow more as it's a really cool base game. Just let your ambition grow a little more. Good job!

tmw 2017-05-02 15:30

I think its a perfect game in 48hrs. One thing I missing is a deconstuct button, because I totally failed the early building plan :D Btw I am very satisfied with this game, I can honestly say: Good job! I would play this game more if you'd upgrade it. :thumbsup:

aumbra 2017-05-03 07:03

Very fun and looks great too! Will be playing more of this.

drestuff 2017-05-03 07:07

I enjoyed the mood of this game and ended up playing it way longer than I had expected. I think you succeeded in making a sort of mini sim city! I would have liked the build menu to always be present instead of having it pop-up and cover most of the game but other that :ok_hand: :sparkles:

spinaljack 2017-05-03 11:28

I like this entry, the audio is by far the weakest part. Would have liked a speed up and sell button though.

cosine 2017-05-03 15:34

This is a m a z i n g! It's not often that I see a fully polished game with interesting and complete mechanics and features! I looove the graphics, it really showed me (I also made an incremental game) another direction I could have gone in, as far as being fully graphical. The UI looked very futuristic. :)

Some things I would improve: - Please add a fullscreen button somewhere. I was constantly scrolling up to see the "status line" up top and down to see my resources. - It'd be nice if it told you that you couldn't build when you clicked the build menu, rather than when you click on where you want to build. Just so I didn't waste time trying to build things I can't build.

EDIT: I can't stop playing. But now I have to, unless you can let me build a nuclear reactor. Screenshot 2017-05-04 at 9.30.23 AM.png

hethsin 2017-05-03 17:07

Love the graphics, really nice job.

cheesymoo 2017-05-03 23:07

Great game.

Good graphics, nice music (although the looping is kinda weird), and overall the gameplay is a game that I would normally sink hours into.

I spent all my money on building turrets and making nice apartments for space hobos to live in, and they can't hit a damn red ship to save a shipment of Aether!

attrition 2017-05-04 04:56

Really love the graphics here.

merrak 2017-05-04 05:06

Thanks, everyone, for the comments! :smiley:

I'd like to leave some responses:

@landosystems, @Rick, I agree this project was a bit too ambitious for 48 hours. This was my first LD game since last year, and I forgot just how short 48 hours is :sweat_smile: The original plan was to defend the structures and incorporate a "happiness" stat where workers who feel safer work more efficiently, more merchants will arrive, etc. Structures could be destroyed, but you'd also have some choice of where to venture. Deleting structures is surprisingly complicated, which leads me to...

@TMW, I thought about including a deconstruct/sell button, but there's a quirk in how structure data is saved that made me nervous about debugging the feature within the time limit.

For those curious, the colony data is stored as a graph, which includes nodes that represent built structures and "buildable spaces"--the latter of which are created when a brace is put down and deleted when something else is built. Looking back, I don't think it'd be too difficult to recompute the locations of the "buildable spaces" nodes... but it's one of those things that got dropped when time began running short.

@cosine, both sound like good ideas. Fullscreen would've been easy, but the thought didn't even cross my mind. A future version of this game should definitely support it, though. There are also several UI improvements I'd like to make, including a better build menu like @drestuff mentioned above.

@CheesyMoo, the turrets have to reach a pretty high level to be effective. Part of the reasoning was that there's a much higher cash bonus for protecting a leaving merchant than you receive in sales. I would've liked to have gone in a different direction with the red ships, but ran out of time as mentioned above.

occultone 2017-05-04 05:08

I could not get the game running. Is there a way to package it up to be playable without the engine?

merrak 2017-05-07 04:51

@OccultOne, Are you referring to the source or the playable game? The playable game is Flash-based, and the source is a Stencyl project export.

chaseplays 2017-05-08 01:34

Great graphics, music, and gameplay! I loved this game!

merrak 2017-05-08 04:25

@Chaseplays Thanks!

@Cosine I just noticed the screenshot edit. That's awesome! :thumbsup:

I didn't think about upgrading the solar panels until it was too late.

vladik-plays 2017-05-08 18:09

Very great game. I like the concept of this mines. Good work. Here's my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/fixville

pascalman 2017-05-10 14:58

Game has best art! Good job!

psilon 2017-05-12 19:39

Great game, i like it very much. I played a good amount of time with it. My only problem was the slow money earnings, or the upgrade costs. And i had not find a better energy generator.

cosine 2017-05-14 23:22

@merrak I actually like that you have to build new solar panels, because otherwise you'd only have 5 panels and upgrade everything (so your station wouldn't look as cool). There just needs to be a reactor for when you're me :) (I'm screenshot girl up there ^) Similarly, I like that you have to wait the same amount of time for population no matter what, it kind of puts a limit on your exponential growth. On the other hand, it's really frustrating :)