Running out of Space

call-me-nutty 2018-08-13 14:01

Simple premise has some potential. I think what this game is lacking is gameplay variety. It gets a bit repetitive after a while moving boxes from one spot to another, maybe adding in another conveyor belt with a seperate drop off point to create chaos and force the player to make more decisions. I really enjoyed the music in this game in particular, really catchy and gets me hyped. If you want to I say, keep working! You can definitely make something really fun and hectic here.

tomeks 2018-08-13 14:12

Scr1.jpg

I think I managed to break the game, this block just follows me and cannot drop it anywhere, this happened when I picked up a block that was close to another one. Otherwise cool simple idea, like to touch of recorded voice messages :)

digital-bacon 2018-08-13 21:24

Thanks for the comments!

@call-me-nutty: Since this was my first jam, and I was working solo, I decided to keep the game as simple as possible and add extra features later. There were plans for more variety -- different size crates that would slow the robot down, power-ups to make the 'bot faster, explosive crates that would cause havoc if not got rid of in time -- but by the time I uploaded it was 2am and I was falling asleep at the keyboard! I _really_ like your idea about more conveyor belts though. The music I found on OpenGameArt.org, [DST Tower Defense Theme](https://opengameart.org/content/tower-defense-theme).

@tomeks: That was a bug I came across sporadically, but was never able to chase it down in time. I couldn't reproduce it regularly enough to know what causes it. Voices were again from OpenGameArt.org, by [Winter Walrus](https://opengameart.org/content/announcer-voice-pack-general-phrases-female); the actual voice is [Aimee Smith](http://www.aimeesmithva.com/), an Australian voice-over artist.

bungalow 2018-08-15 11:33

This game is really nice and the graphics are pretty good

digital-bacon 2018-08-15 11:48

Thanks @bungalow, all the graphics are "programmer art". I did originally plan on using graphics from places like OpenGameArt.com, but it ended up looking inconsistent. I figured it was between to go for a minimalist yet consistent look so ended up using all my own "art".

angela-k 2018-08-16 09:36

The screen shot above explains my play through experience perfectly. With some polish it would be pretty easy to get a grasp of and get into. I liked the sounds:)

ryanjavanshir 2018-08-16 13:58

A little buggy (to be expected of LD) but otherwise a cool concept and enjoyable game! You could do so much with this simple concept if you took it further, upgrades, more delivery tracks, walls etc. Well done!

enrius 2018-08-16 16:45

I like the music, in my opinion its a simple game, i like the concept, have the potential to make it more fun ;)

willowblade 2018-08-16 16:57

I had a good laugh with trying to elegantly move the crates :D overall I think this could have used some more polish of your core functionality.

digital-bacon 2018-08-17 13:06

Thanks for all your comments. Definitely needs some extra polish, and I've been getting some great suggestions for extending the gameplay. The bug shown in the screenshot was hard to recreate so I couldn't track it down in time for submission. One of my colleagues mentioned he ended up with a ring of crates surrounding him as he ran around the level which added some extra challenges for him since he couldn't pick up any other crates.

I think I'm definitely going to keep working on this :smiley:

hauo 2018-08-18 17:58

A simple game with easy to understand-gameplay and a fitting theme. What's missing here is testing and polish, it's sadly way to "raw" in it's current state. The largest issue is that sometimes you just lose without reason. Secondly I would have liked a bit more "style" to the art and presentation! Take some time and add a few fitting textures or try your hand on some nice pixel-art. It does not need to be anything complex, but right now it has no personality, it would really help with the mood and feel to the game without even changing the gameplay.

digital-bacon 2018-08-19 05:34

Thanks @hauo!

zicboy 2018-08-19 06:20

Awesome game. I was pleasantly suprised with the overall mood of the game. Hope you develop a post jam version for this!

flaterectomy 2018-08-19 07:26

A simple and clear concept. On my three attempts I kept running into a bug where I'd pick up a crate that I then couldn't out down again. It just stayed with me, and I could pick up new crates as if it wasn't there. On the last attempt, it happened twice, so I had two crates blocking me (they did still back up existing crates on the conveyor belt, and that's how I lost.) I was playing the HTML5 build.

I'm not sure if I appreciate the randomness of placement on the conveyor belt. When a crate *did* happen to spawn at the bottom and I could pick it up from the side, that was a big help. But when it didn't happen for a while, I just felt unlucky.

It was obvious that the loss condition was crates backing up on the conveyor belt only because I read that beforehand. There's no clear in-game indication, like for example a blinking effect on the affected crates for example.

The graphics are clear, but one of my pet peeves is large amounts of grey on screen. Grey has its place, but a sexy colour scheme will immediately improve the look of your game.

A pretty nice entry though, and I hope my comments are useful.

digital-bacon 2018-08-19 10:14

@zicboy: That's the plan!

@flaterectomy: Thanks for the comments, anything constructive is useful! That is a known bug that several people have mentioned; I think I know how to fix it and I'll try and get that into a post-jam version next week. You're the first person to mentioned the crate placement, which I implemented to get a bit of variety in the crates. I might just tighten up the "spread" and/or limit it to the crate's rotation on the conveyor belt. Duly noted about all the grey. I initially wanted to have all sorts of marks applied on the floor to break up the monotony (possibly even hazards like pools of spilled chemicals) but ran out of time.

flaterectomy 2018-08-19 11:20

@digital-bacon yeah, time is the monkey wrench. :grin: Variety in placement is good, but if the variety it can seem fair, or at least not stand out as unfair or unlucky, that would improve things. Then again, I *am* the only one that mentioned it. :wink:

speedysloth99 2018-08-19 12:00

Cool game! It was very simple (Which I liked), and the way the player's sprite rotates is a nice touch. The collisions were a bit buggy, but it didn't matter too much. Overall, great job!

digital-bacon 2018-08-20 10:17

Thanks @speedysloth99, I was deliberately trying to keep it simple: first game, first time using Unity “in anger”. I’m planning on continuing to develop the game so hopefully I’ll get the bugs ironed out.

rahim-pxr 2018-08-27 01:05

Nice game, I hope to see more updates and improvments sooner. If you don't bother take a look at our game when we focused on Graphics and visuals and see the results that we got: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42

samusoidal 2018-09-01 23:36

Certainly a good first jam! Here's how the score breaks down.

FUN: While I definitely had a good time playing, the game itself didn't seem fair in that the boxes would just keep piling up and I wasn't fast enough to stop them. Perhaps some powerups would have fixed this. I didn't encounter any bugs and the controls were fluid and easy to pick up. 2.5/5

INNOVATION: I didn't see anything unique mechanically here, so 1/5.

THEME: I've seen this interpretation of the theme a lot during this jam, I give it a 1.5/5.

GRAPHICS: For 'programmer art' it's actually pretty consistent and easy to look at! I've seen some pretty atrocious art this round, and while not super polished, yours is still a step above. I gave it a 2/5.

HUMOR: I'm not sure if there were any jokes at all in this game. I did get a laugh out of the Game Over voice clip because I thought it sounded like Counselor Troi from ST:TNG. 1/5

MOOD: I didn't get any feeling out of this one. 1/5

I wish I could rate you on audio, I really appreciated the fact that each part of the game had audio, right down to the voice clips and beeping when you can't pick up crates. I would have given you a 2.5/5 for that.

OVERALL: It's a solid jam effort, and the beginning of something hopefully much larger. Compared to most of the 'first time jam' games I've seen out there, this one stands out for not being overscoped, detail in audio, and of course, a WebGL build :wink: 2.5/5

Good job on your first jam, you should be proud of your final product!

digital-bacon 2018-09-02 11:56

@samusoidal Thanks for the feedback!