Signal Steward by PBG 2026-04-20T06:41:24Z
Very cool concept with the camera and the 2.5D, never seen in it done in this way :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → lanatra
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | Signal Lost | compo | 101 | 3.61 | 3.52 | 3.42 | 4.30 | 3.21 | 3.31 |
Very cool concept with the camera and the 2.5D, never seen in it done in this way :)
Nice aesthetics, agreeing with aou that more feedback would be appreciated. I also kind of expected the enemy to be pinged by the radar, leaving a kind of "radar ghost" where it was spotted; however it felt more like appearing and disappearing rather randomly.
Have you tested the game without the battery mechanic? For me, it feels like there's a kind of conflict between slow creeping horror feel and "let's move as quickly as possible to the next battery"..
Similar problems as the other commentators; I often wasn't sure whether I should do something on the ship, what other actions I had (is there a switch to turn off the light??) and what the best strategy for talking was.
However, very neat idea and theme. By chance, have you watched or read Project Hail Mary? :D
@greedy-merchant I totally see the idea; after all if you give everything away there isn't much game left. However, as a player, I'm kind of afraid to just press random buttons (what if I flood my sub or shoot the monster by accident?) — so that's kind of the conflict here I guess.
Without spoilers, Project Hail Mary has a kind of a very similar thing to your game as a very central plot point, so I think you'd enjoy it a lot :)
For me, having everything exposed at the beginning is a little overwhelming, making it demotivating to get started. But I'm not hugely into puzzle games, so maybe I'm just not the target player :)
Quite a neat game. Needed a bit to figure out what to do when and how, but I know how annoying and complicated tutorials are, so really don't want to complain here. After a while, I lost a bit of long-term motivation; it just didn't feel that growing the colony would really be "worth it", if you catch my meaning. Still, kept me playing for quite a while, and cool interpretation of the theme!
PSA: toggling fullscreen moves the buildings around relative to the zones, so decide how you want to play at the beginning :)
Also, is there a language toggle?
...and I wondered what the hot dogs were for. Should have known...
Cute game. I wish I could set signals per track, so I can give one train the go while stopping another, at the same junction. I think the first level could have been way simpler (less junctions) to get a feel of the controls. Loved the time control, really neat way of giving the player a chance to set the mood or difficulty level they want.
Juicy gameplay! Sometimes a bit hard to see what's going on with the splatter dead enemies leave behind, but maybe that's part of the gameplay :)
Not sure you can do anything about this at this point, but the game preview here on ld crashes on start with "Uh oh If you're seeing this error, it means I can't find your index.html file."
Hey, congrats on finishing. What does the number in the box actually do; what does "light time on" mean? I cannot get the east/west traffic light to switch to green no matter what number I put in (the north/south works). Can you elaborate what to do?
Neat concept — very Bladerunner (as mentioned above by @andrian ) — however, instantly losing (yet being able to restart) felt tedious rather than punishing in an interesting way.
Neat idea! I wish the player would be more "forced" to actually listen closely to the audio (I exclusively worked with looking up letters on the chart visually, since I had no chance to get the audio first try).
Also I think it needs a bit more of a meta game loop or larger goal, like, *why* am I decoding random words in Morse as a player?
@sirplop Mini Motorways (and Mini Metro, which is from the same developers and even better IMO, if you're into these kind of games) was definitely a big inspiration. Thanks for the kind words :)
Haha @mr-flower kudos for playing the game further than I ever did myself, hah! I'm not much of an audio guy, so I admit I neglected sounds (there aren't any effects, it's not a problem on your end). Will do next time :)
Thanks for the feedback!
@fassenberg fair points, I actually had a lot of trouble with the difficulty; turns out game balancing is hard :D
Thanks for the feedback :)
Definitely a fair point @zirrrus . This is probably what I'll adapt first if I get back to the game :)