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CaveBots
CaveBots
By quasilyte
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 52 | 4.01 | 92 | |
| Fun | 73 | 3.86 | 92 | |
| Innovation | 105 | 3.73 | 93 | |
| Theme | 222 | 3.49 | 93 | |
| Graphics | 98 | 3.86 | 94 | |
| Audio | 104 | 3.53 | 91 | |
| Humor | 191 | 2.57 | 81 | |
| Mood | 108 | 3.60 | 91 | |
Comments
jiri-one
2023-10-02 10:22
I really like the concept of this game, However, I think at the moment it is a bit hard to understand what I need to do to progress. On my first playthrough I constantly was out of energy and just having to wait feels pretty bad. On my second go I prioritized generators, which seemed to work better. I believe with all the different components there could be quite some depth in the game. I really liked the graphisc and the music was also nice. Overall very nice game for the jam. :)
@jiri-one thank you for checking it out. I can't figure out how to properly "respond" to a comment on this site, but oh well.
I'll play your game later, when LD enables the ratings. Because apparently, we can't rate games yet. Or maybe it's just for people like me (new users).
https://www.reddit.com/r/ludumdare/comments/16xgv1k/i_dont_understand_how_to_rate_other_games/
2023-10-02 19:08
Very satisfying feeling of making it through the stone piles
owca
2023-10-02 19:24
Wow! Quite a complex game for a Compo. I'm impressed. It has this "just one more block" syndrom ;) I like the art style. At first I didn't know what is happening in the game, but after a while it became clear :)
eroxxie
2023-10-02 21:03
A bit hard but intresting take on the theme!
Very complete and detailed game. Great job, congrats! :smile:
Very nice little game! It doesn't take too long to figure out what's going on, and to try and come up with strategies (building three vanguards and sneaking out to blow up the cars was my strategy... and it nearly worked!)
I had a great time playing this. You should be proud!
Really cool rts, congrats for getting this in the time of a game jam! Addictive but quite hard at first to know what i could "hover over" and interact with
Lots of depth in 48 hours, impressive. I won't let the fact that RTS is my least favorite game genre affect your rating: this game has a lot of polish and is a complete package so it deserves high marks.
owlycode
2023-10-02 21:20
It's impressive to create an RTS during a compo as it involves quite complex programming. I loved the art style that reminded me of older titles like Starcraft. It was a bit hard to figure out how to build and produce units at first. Also I was often short of energy even if I built 4-5 generators.
mcmuniz
2023-10-02 21:22
Oooo really good job! Great job on all the basic resource systems, feels like there is a lot of depth to it. It triggers that itch of wanting to optimize everything lol. I liked that all the blocks were fairly distinct and it didn't take long to memorize what does what. The tooltips were a lifesaver for figuring out each building/unit.
I think the only thing I was left wanting for was the ability to hold a key to speed up time, especially on replays. Beyond that though, it felt like a really complete game!
senso
2023-10-02 21:22
Impressive game, especially considering the limited time. I really enjoyed the inclusion of robots and aliens in the game. Moreover, I found it to be quite relaxing to play.
berin
2023-10-02 21:26
I didn't expect anyone to try and create an RTS for compo, fantastic job! It takes a moment to get what to do, but that a really cool game! It feels really chill for an RTS somehow, but maybe that's because I played on easy mode. The art is well-implemented and the music fits the atmosphere.
Amazing game!
strato
2023-10-02 22:25
This is surprisingly intricate for a jam game. Minor bit of a learning curve but once you figure out what each rock gives you and each machine does it can be pretty addictive. Figuring out the right balance of what machines you need and which rocks to dig is a tough puzzle to solve.
I enjoyed seeing my base get bigger and bigger. I'm not sure what I need to do to win. I'd like to take the fight to the enemy. Reminds me a bit of Z, a super old classic rts. Good job. I had fun
woona
2023-10-03 08:04
Very impressive! I liked how you managed to make so many mechanics to work together. Also, there are so many units moving on screen and the game ran without any issue.
Some stories from my playthroughs: I managed to soft lock myself by having too many energy consumers running around and then my generator bots getting killed at the entry to my base. So the energy balance became negative and I didn't know of an easy way to fix that and had to restart. Next time, I was more efficient with my energy and switched to spamming Titans after stockpiling some iron. It worked well and I managed to beat the enemy (on easy).
Overall, I had a blast playing the game and figuring out the best strategy! The thing I liked the least was the theme mechanic of limiting build spots. I felt there were not enough opportunities for building static defenses.
Great job!
Not as simple a game as it might seem at first glance :) Everything is fine, the colony is developing, and then enemies come - and now you have an empty cave. Easy to learn and difficult to master.
Very nice visual style. Green blocks with bots are now my favorite :) It’s just that there is not enough information in pop-ups, so much energy is needed to dig.
The music is simple and captivating. More suitable for a graphic novel or other measured gameplay.
Before the video, I didn’t realize that bots can be sent outside :)
it's such a nice game, really impressive for a compo game
@berin thank you for playing my game in return. :) I really enjoyed your visual novel game. I think I spent the most time in total playing it.
@woona 's game is quite cool too. It doesn't have enough ratings yet, which is a pity. It plays like a strategy puzzle game. Please try it out; it can be played in the browser.
crylica
2023-10-03 13:51
This is a super impressive Compo game, the gameplay loop works really well. I haven't seen an RTS styled game like this before and it's a really unique take on the theme. I'd love to see this as a fully fledged game. Some polish/features you could add for a full game: a HP bar for damaged units (instead of hovering over a building) and a progress bar similarly for factories building bots (instead of you constantly checking/hovering over the factory). From an artstyle perspective, I think the patrol, harvest and generator bots all look too similar. Personally I would make the harvest bots smaller, or the patrol bots have obvious guns/turrets. If their silhouettes are unique, it would definitely make them a lot more readable (same also applies for the enemy types). I dislike not being able to choose which buildings to put down, I think more strategy could come from choosing the building types. Add in WASD for controlling the camera instead of just mouse to pan camera (I would also put UI arrow indicators on the edges of the screen when the mouse is close to the edge). I think LMB should also move the Core, if selected on an empty tile. Bots should also avoid stepping on building tiles, since it prevents you from building on the tile because you select the bot instead.
These are just my suggestions, this is still a super solid and addictive game, I hope it gets better with some balance and polish :)
@crylica those are pretty legit suggestions. The bots are so similar due to the fact that I'm not that good at drawing, so I created a couple of unique sprites and then modified them to create more variety. :D The same goes for the enemies, they're a variations of a single sprite. I spent ~1 hour drawing this damn jeep thing just because I wanted mutants to have some vehicles, but it wasn't the best time investment. :D
I'll make sure to check out your game too!
Wow! That was a really fun play, great job on this! When the patrol bots go on the build sites it obscures what can be built there, but luckily the moved off pretty quickly. But once stuff got going, it got going. Keep up the good work!
@scott-cooper patrol bots go like: heeey, look at me, I'm adorable. :D
The game UI needs to be revamped completely after the jam. :) Those textbox-style windows were very tempting due to the fact it was super fast to implement them. :)
Thank you for playing my game in return! :3
ellaris
2023-10-03 14:40
- wow, a really awesome game - One this is that I didn't notice the build blocks straight away and it took me some time to figure it out, or that the titan bots charged the enemy. - The random nature of building availability made it so I could build factories close to the entrance and turrets and barricades far from it in corners.
@ellaris I didn't have enough time to add another tutorial message that would remind the player about the building blocks if they're not noticing them. :D
Thank you for playing my game in return. :3
This is fantastic. I kept thinking I'd figured out all there was and then I'd find another layer of depth. Very well done.
Wow. This is easily the best entry I've played this jam. There's just so much here, and I find myself wondering how on earth you managed to do all this in 48 hours! You got music, sfx, _very_ decent artwork that calls back to the classics, and an RTS that really shakes up some pre-conceptions of the genre.
Personally, I found it incredibly frustrating to not be able to build the buildings I wanted on each spot. Most of my time was spent microing my leader unit to find new spots to build generators, and every time I found a turret/barricade spot in the back of my base, I cried inside.
I think that some support for "rally points" would also do quite a bit to help the fun factor. I don't want my generator units to run around outside my base, and trying to time the movement/production speed of Titans to get them to arrive simultaneously didn't feel like fun so much as a chore. I also did miss some of the standby mechanics of the genre, like queueing units for production, selectable units, and some sort of tech tree.
Seriously though, this is an incredible entry. I really hope you decide to take it further! And now, to go play some of the other base building and RTS games on your itch page...
@bloodyaugust yeah that slot-specific building selection was probably a bad game design decision on my part. Having the restricted building slots would be enough. Initially, this decision was made to fit the buildings selection into a pretty small text window so it doesn't get overwhelming. I broke this rule with factories later, giving the player to choose among 4 options. The buildings would require 5 items in that list, which is even more. The UI needs to be completely revamped after the jam.
I plan to re-create this entire game without a rush later. But for now, I guess that's how I managed to do this in time: like all of us, I had to sacrifice some of the things in order to finish the core gameplay loop.
Thank you for your feedback. :3
> And now, to go play some of the other base building and RTS games on your itch page…
I think Roboden is the one you may want to try (it's out on Steam).
recursor
2023-10-03 19:23
Well you sucked me in with the digging and building and kept me playing longer than I'd planned. An RTS is impressive for such a short time frame, and I enjoyed fiddling with this one in particular. Not sure I've seen an RTS done by anyone in any LD turn out this good.
Love to see more RTS) even though I found a theme implementation not that obvious, but I enjoyed how overall unique gameplay loop felt, you really changed many aspects of this genre, and I don't even know how to call it. Main suggestions would be: I can see there's a dead start if you mess up the order in the begging, I don't this it's a good idea for the learning curve. Also marking blocks to differentiate them visualy to know what's inside without hovering would be good.
Build more pylons... I mean generators! Great effort for compo, game is polished and graphics are nice, audio is simple and nice too.
Game play was simple but addictive - I had a couple of turrets do most of the heavy lifting for ages whilst I explored the cave. Main issue was energy and not having enough - well done great game
like it, but tooooo hard?
rcxa
2023-10-04 00:11
There's definitely a learning curve to it, playthrough #2 was a lot more successful than the first one. I really like the music, sound effects, and graphics. It sets a great mood for the game. The game has a good amount of complexity to it considering the limited timeframe to make it, great job! Also, really neat to see a game made in Golang, it's been a while since I followed the Golang community since I don't use it for work anymore. I loved Golang for API development but wasn't aware of any engines or frameworks for games.
morgie
2023-10-04 05:24
I love management games so this sucked me right in and I am about to go play more after I leave this comment. I didn't realize at first exactly how much there is to dig so I may be done rating games tonight in lieu of... this.
Anyways. Controls and mechanics were suuuper intuitive and I honestly got attached to my patrol bots and got sad when they died. :cry: The art style is really cute and I love the designs of all the bots. :0 This feels like a classic, easy to play, and easy to replay game. Really great job and thanks for making an amazing game!
EDIT: I just realized this is compo. How did you achieve this.
@rcxa Go gamedev is alive! :D I created several helper libraries during the last year. The input helper, resources manager, an efficient pathfinding library, Godot-inspired math library for 2D vector and stuff.
Cool sounds! I enjoyed the art and exploring the land!
Took me a while / a few tries to figure out how to start and what was going on - but once I did it was a ton of fun and also somehow really relaxing and kind of stressful at the same time. Music's really chill and the graphics look great.
I wasn't very good but retried a bunch of times whenever I'd try stop I decided to "play one more round" and kept going. Feels really unique.. like a mix of dungeon keeper and old school RTS while very much being it's own thing.
Great game. Boggles my mind to think you made it in the competition. Great work :D
@thaprofesional my inspiration mainly comes from a game called No Heroes Allowed also known as "What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?" series. :D
The Dungeon Keeper is of course is another one that can be considered to be a somewhat similar game in genre.
As for the old school RTS: I'm a big fan of those. :)
A very nice little game. I am not that good at these games but I feel if I keep playing around with it I may win soon xD
As others mentioned, it's a bit hard to get going due to the complexity, with some trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't but the rules are clear and transparent so it can be learned with time.
I also like the pixel art, feels real nice.
Won it at easy now :D
Got to say, would be nice to get energy constantly instead of wait for a package once in a while. Or at least have some timers so I know when it's coming. Having more timers for building would be nice too.
Really nice looking game, and it played pretty well! I found it a little hard to get my head around what I was doing at the start - it took me a little while to figure out I had to build a factory to then build the bots for example. But once I got the loop down, I found it quite simple to keep myself going!
I was defeated :( I was always out of energy. It didn't seem like I had much agency about what bots I could find; it was almost always generators and I needed turrets or patrol bots.
I love the cave excavation mechanics, and the AI + pathing was great. Didn't run into any issues, well done with that :clap:
Excellent game. All the tool tips made it relatively easy to pick up.
dingbat
2023-10-05 00:39
Very interesting game. AI, destructible terrain, building, resource management and more! As an RTS type game I think the only complaint I would really have is I don't see a lot of expression/strategy to the game. Sure you can choose which blocks to break but your buildings seem limited to certain areas and the patrollers do most of the attacking for you. All together though very impressive game!
Wow this was very impressive, I really like the approach to a small RTS. The AI and enemies all behave very reasonable, finding out what does what was interesting, I really liked playing, fantastic job!
kasmilus
2023-10-05 07:06
Well that must be the most addicting game I've played so far. Spent way more time on it than I should have, I've got kids to take care of!
Really the only complain is that I see no end condition? Am I meant to destroy enemy base? Is that even possible? It's really fun game, it looks and sounds good. It's amazing :)
@kasmilus there are two end conditions:
1. You lose if your Core is destroyed. 2. You win if you destroy the enemy base.
It's possible to destroy the enemy base in the late game, when enemy sends out more units than they can produce. This is an opening. Build several Titans and they'll attack the enemy base. You can assist titans with your Core if it has some Vanguards to cover it. There are other strategies, but this tactic is the most safe one: defend the base until the enemy is exhausted.
You can win without Titan units: make dozens of Vanguards instead. You don't want too many of these before you're planning to do an attack since their energy upkeep is high.
Impressive work! I cant imagine how you managed to finish all this in 48 hours.
tvorojok
2023-10-05 13:42
Увидел в индикаторе, поиграл, классная и масштабная работа, крутяк!
milq
2023-10-05 14:17
An incredible game for a compo version! Implementing an RTS is no easy task, so my congratulations on your programming ability. The game is a bit confusing at first, and a tutorial at the beginning would be appreciated, but it's understandable that 48 hours may not be enough time for that. Once you get used to it, the game is sheer joy to play. Amazing - congratulations on creating a great game!
peco
2023-10-05 15:07
Very impressive that you did this on your own!! Enjoyed carving out space and building a base. It was fun to learn how things worked. I think the pace could be a bit faster. I couldn't tell why certain tiles would let me build specific buildings. Also the titan would never get built even when i had enough resources.
Good job!
@tvorojok it doesn't compare to the game you managed to create during this jam. My only excuse is that we're in different leagues. :D The King is Watching is already quite famous around here. :)
@peco every tile has a randomized buildings bound to it. In the retrospect, it was a bad game design decision.
In part it's due to the limited UI I used in the game: having 5 options in the list would be quite overwhelming, so I decided to go with a 2-item lists that are randomized.
The bad part is that it doesn't really make the game better. It just allows me to fit the options in without making a more complex UI system.
Note that a unit selection in the factory is already 4 items and it's quite inconvenient to use. It wasn't even meant to be a 4-item list, but then I came up with a Titan unit idea, so I had to add "just another one" to the list.
> Also the titan would never get built even when i had enough resources.
This is weird. I wonder how can I reproduce this. The game usually gives you an error sound as well as a notification (a flying message around the factory) when it can't build something.
@milq this is my first subjectively successful RTS for a short jam. Usually, I fail to implement all the necessary mechanics for the core game loop. But this time, the game is fundamentally simple: you can only control one unit directly, the enemies are just attacking in waves, etc. So I had some time to actually get things done.
good stuff! i could see this being expanded upon : ) I felt rather safe fairly quickly, so tweaking the balance to make players feel a bit more in danger might be a good next thing to try!
@mickey-sanchez try beating the game even on normal. :] Perhaps you're a seasoned RTS player and easy difficulty is not enough to match your skills.
The end-goal is to destroy the enemy base. The difficulty is "easy" by default, to make it more accessible. You can attack by sending out Titan units (use factories to build them) and/or by sending out your core with an army of Vanguards (they follow the core outside).
The normal difficulty is what I can beat quite consistently.
The hard difficulty is almost impossible to win, but it can be treated as a survival mode. If you can survive for ~25 minutes up there, you're a champ. I can only win on this one if I cheese a bit and destroy the enemy camp before they get crazy strong.
@mickey-sanchez now I know what your avatar means: it's a bust! :D
(I just played your game)
(This comment will probably age poorly)
jinbu
2023-10-05 20:27
The game was pretty good. After understanding how to produce more energy, the pace was more enjoyable
This game is simply impressive. I cannot believe that much content was created in 48 hours. Well done!
Lovely game and a ton of complexity and content for a 48 hour entry. Very impressed, lovely work!
This game is great! I don't normally enjoy rts style games, but I think your game is really fun! Impressive amount of complexity for a compo :)
allenski
2023-10-06 03:13
Really great game! Impressed with the depth with units/building :D
neowedge
2023-10-06 09:21
This game is very fun and it has a lot of content for a jam. I'm really impressed with the result. I'm not sure how I win and how I lose. I was going to try a massive attack with titans (to see if they would destroy the enemy base, even though they have no HP), and then I suddenly lost :(.
Anyway the game is really good, I spent 45 minutes in a match and I'll try again later hahaha. Congrats!!!
@neowedge I didn't have enough time to add some essential contextual hints. :D I tried to use the tooltips as much as possible to make the onboarding a bit better, but I think I overdid it a bit (with these "dig complete" messages that have ~zero meaning). I could spend 30 mins more to add more important messages like "hey, you still haven't build a generator! you can build it here >points to the cell<".
You lose if your Core unit is destroyed. You win if you destroy the opposing base. The Titans are indeed a way to siege the opponent, but it's not as easy as sending a couple of these.
The game also has a progressing difficulty. Unless you're winning in a 15-20 minutes span, it will be much harder to win afterwards (requires a lot of efforts and maybe a little bit of cheese).
neowedge
2023-10-06 12:17
hahahaha ok! I'll play it again, thanks for the advice ^^! And congratulations for the great job!
@neowedge I'm planning to play the Ink Souls later today. :wink:
nilan
2023-10-06 18:00
Seeing an RTS game in a 48-hour competition was nothing short of a miracle! And to top it off, the game had a solid gameplay and impressive visuals, which is the style I really love.
When I first started playing, I was a bit confused and it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how the game works, but after that, it went smoothly.
Overall, I believe this game has great potential for expansion, and I am looking forward to more updates. Well done!
@nilan I do have a lot of plans on this game after this compo. :) I'll have to rewrite the entire game from scratch though, because the code is a mess right now. :D
I really don't regret getting my hands dirty with this game, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to finish in time. I wish I could make the onboarding better and polish the balance a bit better, but oh well.
yngvarr
2023-10-06 20:18
Making a strategy game is hard in general. Making a strategy game for compo? Well, you're the brave one! :)
I can't say much about the game design, since I'm not exactly a target audience, but I found these little bots and enemies and the way they navigate quite charming. I didn't dare to pick a harder difficulty level and maybe that was my mistake, but from what I saw, the game has a solid foundation and if you keep building on top of the ideas, you may end up with something epic (just don't literally build on top of the code you have, we all know how jams go :D).
Here's my playthrough:
https://youtu.be/LB3BW91Ps4A
@yngvarr ah, I can see that some of the mechanics were not that obvious due to the lack of a proper tutorial.
You can build factories on some "hard terrain tiles" and produce units there. This is the main iron resource sink in the game.
Thank you for recording a video. These things usually show me the way people interact with a game and where their intuitive flow breaks.
wad
2023-10-06 22:43
Good game. I found the sounds a bit harsh and would have liked more space.
2023-10-07 01:19
Nice game. Love to see an RTS game even if I can't control the units. The fact that I can't spam right click, shift queue commands and that everything relied on contextual hints was a bit annoying. But what I absolutely hate is that you can't build whatever you want and that "keys to building" changes foreach tile you can build on. Nonetheless well done!
Fun! Ended up spending way more time with it than I expected. The simple income management and exploration were just enough to sustain the game. I would have appreciated a little more predictability in my units' behavior, especially the vanguards. They seemed to sometimes follow me, sometimes not, and it was hard to coax them to go anywhere. When I finally mounted my attack against the enemies, they refused to stay close enough to my titans and I ultimately lost. Enjoyed the challenge anyway. :)
Would have also appreciated even a simple event feed, just some text in the corner that says when my units are getting destroyed.
@caeonosphere Vanguards are quite sloppy, that's correct. :D It takes them 4-10 seconds to gather around you, usually. So if you want to gather them for an attack, you would need to stay outside for a while, then they'll come.
The reason behind this behavior is that they only check what to do every once in a while, so they don't end up chaotically running in circles. There are much better ways to achieve that, but I was not spending a lot of time on the individual bot's AI (every one of them has a dedicated behavior). :D I'll definitely revisit this weird mechanic after the jam.
P.S. - I hope you enjoyed my rocket jump strats for your Sampler game. :D
nyxkn
2023-10-07 14:32
Very nice game! I easily get lost playing these type of games forever. I played for a while but not sure if it was even possible to win. Enemy base restocked quite quikly, and titans felt a bit underwhelming. Overall, energy was a hard cap on smooth gameplay. I'd have generators everywhere but I'd still be energy starved all the time, making me have to just wait to do things. Which breaks the flow and the fun. I think with a bit of a better resources balance it could be quite fun. It's pretty nice to see all the bots run around. Even though they all seemed to be very inefficient. Anyway, great entry overall! With just some gameplay balance tweaks needed to make it shine. Menus were also very pretty. Well done.
this is a neat little experience
Great comprehensive game. Well done!
I really like how the game escalates! I just wish i could choose where to build what. Some turrets in the front would be cool, maybe it could go in the direction of a tower defense! Well done!
@2thegamechanger it would be a different game if you could build at any spot. It would create a single best strategy: just make the entrance heavily guarded and that's all. Just like in any other defense game.
I probably wouldn't keep the randomized slot buildings, but I like the limited building spots idea. You can just extend the entrance by digging deeper and when you find the right combo of blocks, you build a main base around that. This means you need to adapt to the environment and what the game gives you.
At least that's my view on things. I really don't want to see ~every base setup to be the same.
@quasilyte yeah good point! I meant that building options at those spots are randomized. For example sometimes I really want to build generators but only get factories or smelters. Since energy is limited it incentivises building near the entrance in the early game though. I have to try again to build a deliberate maze. Upgrading stuff or merging robots or so could also work very well in this context I think.
But very nice and well functioning concept, i could see this on steam with just a few maps or upgrade layers! Super well done!
@2thegamechanger yup, the randomized per-slot selection was probably a bad idea. :D
I thought it was cool, but nah. It just makes things more annoying. Maybe if ,you could spot the "kind" of a building spot that would be better. Like some spots can have only utility buildings (like generator and smelter) while the other one can have military buildings (factory, turret).
I'll get rid of it after the jam, when I'll work on a proper game based on this.
I really like this one. I love how well the game allows expansion an increasing complexity. The one thing that I'm not a huge fan of is the energy system, as it just feels like Im sitting around a lot of the time; maybe a way to speed up time or something like that would help. Great job!
dxk2294
2023-10-09 01:26
Wow, this entry was phenomenal. Definitely in my top 3 played so far. I completely lost track of time playing it, so much fun! I never won, since I never quite figured out how to make vanguards work. But I see now in the comments that they just take a while to rally around you. Might have to give it another go :wink: Great job!
I really enjoy this game. I play until I win, hehehe. In the beginning, I didn't understand how to gain energy, but I noticed that the green blocks provided me with some bots, and I had to choose the best ones. I love the concept of automation and growth as I strive to eliminate all enemies. Good job! I genuinely believe this game has the potential to grow and become a fantastic real-time strategy (RTS) release. Keep up the excellent work!
nevernox
2023-10-09 23:20
Seemed complex at the first glance, but I got hooked very fast and game turned out very fun RTS :) I really like the gameplay mood, but agree with some of the comments that it would be great to choose any building on buildable tile! Very impressive work for compo entry, one of the best games of this ludum I've played so far. Thanks for the game and great job!
tommy
2023-10-10 17:41
I'm really happy to see an RTS, an even more happy that it's a really good one. The gameplay is very solid and there is plenty of depth for strategy, which I love. Thank you very much for this entry!
There's definitely a lot of information to take in once you start playing, but once you figure out what you're doing it really clicks! I really liked the art, though I think the music and sounds could be better. I think the music could use some less reverb-y synths and a beat. Even a very simple 'kick, snare, kick, snare, kick, snare, kick, snare' type beat would help.
Cool game, and nice work playing a lot of games!
f1krazy
2023-10-13 12:42
I can't get the hang of how to play this game. I need more Generators to be able to power more bots, but I can't find any beyond the one you get at the start of the game, which completely gimps my progress. The game tells me I can build on the harder stone tiles, but doesn't tell me *what* I can build on them or *how* to build on them. Most of the game seems to be spent either standing still or getting out of the way of your bots, while you wait for your energy to recharge at a painfully slow rate so you can keep hunting for more Generators. And to clarify, I'm playing on Easy difficulty.
From a technical perspective, this is clearly a very impressive effort for 48 hours, and it's great to see a more long-form game as opposed to the short-form blasts you usually get. From an actual gameplay perspective, however, as much as I want to enjoy this, I'm afraid it's just not clicking for me. I dunno if it's a you problem or a me problem, but I've tried this three times now and it ended the same way every time.
@f1krazy I'm sorry that the tutorial isn't good enough in the game. You can build generators on these hard terrain blocks. There is ~50% chance that some tile will have a Generator building available. Also, you can dig some tiles for free even without the energy; read the tooltips to find them.
Every action in the game require a tile to be focused. So hover over a hard terrain tile to get a context menu. It will list the options as well as the hotkeys.
As a last resort, you can watch the gameplay video attached to the itch io page. It should explain some of the things.
oillen
2023-10-17 23:58
This is one of my favorites in this jam, also found Assemblox on your itch, which was great to play, too. I dont realy know on what I could nitpick here, sometimes the RNG of the build places can make a bad start, as soon as you can get a hold and figured out when to produce the big bots you will win reliably.
:dvd: :dvd: :dvd: :dvd: :dvd:
kairuma
2023-10-21 01:08
It's a little complicated for my taste but I still really enjoy this game. I'm a little surprised this is a compo game, it is very polished and fun.
I'd love to see you continue to develop this.
morgie
2023-10-24 15:46
congrats on the ranking!! :D and thank you for the super detailed feedback on our game it made me really happy that you enjoyed it, especially the writing/humor since it was my first time writing for a game. i cant wait to see what you make in future jams!