Running out of robots

zachary-shah 2017-08-01 21:42

I like this game for how it is at the moment!!! please check out mine!!!! (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/crazy-power-rush)

jordanfb 2017-08-03 02:58

That was pretty fun! I sometimes had difficulty figuring out what station the robots wanted to be sent to (the circle with the blue right side?) and I kinda felt like it could have just been a single screen with no need for the main character who got shoved around a lot, but I kept playing it, so add some music and it could be pretty catchy!

stefvanschie 2017-08-03 14:58

That's quite a fun game. I feel like the player character wasn't really necessary and overall just annoying. Also the icons could be a bit more descriptive as it's sometimes kinda hard to tell what's what.

silkworm-sweatshop 2017-08-05 23:44

Great, a bunch of entitled millennial robots :P. This was a really cool little management game I must say. The addition of the reprogramming minigame was a nice touch too.

brazmogu 2017-08-09 16:19

That was kind of obfuscating, and took some figuring out. And I also feel the human character was mostly unnecessary; in fact, they only served to move the camera around and then I had to move back to center to keep working. :P

I like the idea very much, though. Maybe this could be more interesting if the robots had their own movement, so you had to "convince" them to move onto more important things and hope they'd be efficient enough. :P

petzi 2017-08-09 22:31

Sorry, but I had a very hard time playing your game, it's really confusing. Here are some questions that come to mind:

- What is the point of moving the captain at all? - How do you generate power for the ship? Does each work station have a different function? - How are you supposed to play the minigame? Do you just click on every square? It doesn't make any sense to have green turn to red to indicate success! I played it a few times and the icon didn't change, does that mean I failed?

And some observations:

- It's confusing to use the left mouse button for some things and the right button for other things. You should simply use the left button to do things and the right button to cancel whatever you've selected. - It's hard to tell what's selected, the green tint could be a bit more obvious. - It's not easy to tell what each station icon means. - The word "charge" is used for a number of things and it can get confusing. Robots can charge entertainment stations so they get charged or they can charge work stations to charge the ship, but the ship's charge can also be used to charge the robots themselves. See what I mean? - I'm guessing the robots are actually lazy monkeys in space suits because, first, they're so lazy they decide where they want to go and don't go there until you tell them to and, secondly, they need to be convinced to follow your orders.

But my biggest question is this: What's supposed to be the point of the game? Is the challenge to simply send the robots where they want to go? Clearly not, because you have a tool to change their minds. But then, what should you change their minds to? I guess you should send them to be charged when they're low on battery and make them work when they're full of energy. But you can also charge them by consuming your ship's energy. Or maybe I can just let them die?

I felt disoriented, I couldn't even figure out what my goal was, much less how and when to use my tools. Another problem is that the minigame feels out of place. If it's supposed to be a fast-paced management game, why does time stop every few seconds so I can solve a puzzle? That suggests to me that the wrench tool is supposed to be used rarely (which I don't think is true), but even then it's a huge break of pace. It reminds me of one of the developers of Diablo mentioning in a talk that playtesters wanted food and cooking to be in game. It's completely out of the focus.

Sorry for my harsh criticism, but playing this didn't feel fun because I couldn't understand the game, even after reading that carefully illustrated tutorial. I think half the problems are in the gameplay design and half in the interface. At least the graphics aren't bad!

jimbly 2017-08-09 23:49

Neat idea! I couldn't figure out why I was sometimes failing the minigame (just time?). I lost too many robots pretty early and was just left with 2 diligent workers, but that wasn't enough, I think =).

linky439 2017-08-15 09:48

The idea is quite good but the game overall is a bit confusing. First of all, I think everything should be done with the left mouse button instead of switching between left and right. Then, the robots often start a task, but stop in the middle of it meaning you get no power at all. I didn't truly see the difference between entertainment tasks and the other ones, but that might be just me.

Overall, the core idea is good and the game is fine, but it is a bit confusing and tends to be a bit boring after a while. Also, there's no way to quit the game when running in fullscreen x( Good job for the game, but I'm sure there are some things to improve to make it really good :)

valphera 2017-08-15 10:34

The concept is great, I like games where I get to control some units but it's rare to have to give them power to do a task and not just the task to do. I have to admit that I first tried without reading your post, hoping that it's be intuitive but after my first game I came back here and read the instructions, too bad that you couldn't make a tutorial, still pretty fun for a jam, liked the graphics, neat pixel art! The minigame is cool too, well done