Space Delver by commodoreKid
"In a galaxy far far away, everyone visits a merchant once in a while. That's where the worlds connect.."
*DOWNLOAD LINKS ARE UNDER THE WEB PLAYER.
**READ TIPS UNDER THE WEB PLAYER BEFORE YOU START PLAYING.
***YOU CAN PLAY ON WEB PLAYER BUT WE WOULD RECOMMEND YOU TO DOWNLOAD. IT MAY GIVE A BETTER VISUAL RESULT.
Space Delver is a Ludum Dare Jam result developed by Jan Szczepanik-Dzikowski and Anil Demir. Programming done by Jan, graphics done by Anil. Rest is done collectively.
It is a game of space exploration, mining and trading. It is playable but unfinished. Our aim was higher than what we achieved here. We want to go on developing and release a full game later. Let's list the features that are in the game right now and the features we planned but couldn't manage to implement.
GAME FEATURES
- You can dock your station and check your upgrades, store transactions or federation newspaper.
- You can move and rotate.
- You can open your map and check the complete map of galaxy.
- You can scan your surroundings by your radar. The asteroids appear on your map and minimap by doing this. The planet icons change colors according to the material they have on them.
- You can mine on planets and asteroids.
- You have to turn back when you are low on fuel or to empty your cargo hold.
- You can sell what you have collected once you are docked at your station. You can also buy materials that are on sale.
- You can upgrade your ship when you're still docked if you have required materials on you.
- You can charge warp and travel at light speed.
- You can shoot lasers or rockets once you upgraded your weapon.
- Your shield deflects asteroid hits but if you hit hard, you explode when your hull integrity is over.
Platform: PC
Game Engine: Unity3D
FEATURES THAT WE PLANNED BUT NOT IN THE GAME
- News changing every day and affecting the game.
- Ship stats showing on upgrades tab
- Bounty hunting
- Combat with other ships, stations, pirates
- Last weapon upgrade, laser cannon
- Moving ships around the space, cargo ships that can be docked at while they move.
- Asteroids explode when you shoot them.
- Game over screen
- Custom input (even gamepad support)
- Save/load game
- Galaxy borders
- Ongoing story
- Pause menu
- Better sound effects
You can see the game controls in main menu.
Enjoy the game as it is. Hope you will like it :)
Note: Linux/MAC versions are not tested but built for convenience.
*DOWNLOAD LINKS ARE UNDER THE WEB PLAYER.
**READ TIPS UNDER THE WEB PLAYER BEFORE YOU START PLAYING.
***YOU CAN PLAY ON WEB PLAYER BUT WE WOULD RECOMMEND YOU TO DOWNLOAD. IT MAY GIVE A BETTER VISUAL RESULT.
Space Delver is a Ludum Dare Jam result developed by Jan Szczepanik-Dzikowski and Anil Demir. Programming done by Jan, graphics done by Anil. Rest is done collectively.
It is a game of space exploration, mining and trading. It is playable but unfinished. Our aim was higher than what we achieved here. We want to go on developing and release a full game later. Let's list the features that are in the game right now and the features we planned but couldn't manage to implement.
GAME FEATURES
- You can dock your station and check your upgrades, store transactions or federation newspaper.
- You can move and rotate.
- You can open your map and check the complete map of galaxy.
- You can scan your surroundings by your radar. The asteroids appear on your map and minimap by doing this. The planet icons change colors according to the material they have on them.
- You can mine on planets and asteroids.
- You have to turn back when you are low on fuel or to empty your cargo hold.
- You can sell what you have collected once you are docked at your station. You can also buy materials that are on sale.
- You can upgrade your ship when you're still docked if you have required materials on you.
- You can charge warp and travel at light speed.
- You can shoot lasers or rockets once you upgraded your weapon.
- Your shield deflects asteroid hits but if you hit hard, you explode when your hull integrity is over.
Platform: PC
Game Engine: Unity3D
FEATURES THAT WE PLANNED BUT NOT IN THE GAME
- News changing every day and affecting the game.
- Ship stats showing on upgrades tab
- Bounty hunting
- Combat with other ships, stations, pirates
- Last weapon upgrade, laser cannon
- Moving ships around the space, cargo ships that can be docked at while they move.
- Asteroids explode when you shoot them.
- Game over screen
- Custom input (even gamepad support)
- Save/load game
- Galaxy borders
- Ongoing story
- Pause menu
- Better sound effects
You can see the game controls in main menu.
Enjoy the game as it is. Hope you will like it :)
Note: Linux/MAC versions are not tested but built for convenience.
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.57 | 151 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.64 | 122 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.24 | 268 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 3.71 | 247 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.46 | 364 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.14 | 325 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.64 | 127 |
| Theme(Jam) | 2.90 | 496 |
Let me know if you get a download up. I'm on the LD IRC channel as plash and on Twitter as @komiga.
Happy testing!
Nitpicks:
- The music didn't repeat! Normally I'd be okay with that in a space game, but I dunno, it just didn't feel right. Maybe a lower, less musicy ambient piece would do well when the music is between shifts.
- I can't really criticize the movement because I think it's meant to be difficult, but it'd be nice to be more maneuverable if you have low or no cargo. I'd at least like to be able to turn a bit faster.
- Warp speed is awesome, but (AFAICS) there's no way to respawn when I inevitably crash into something or run out of fuel.
1. Music should loop now
2. Fuel bug fixed (changed '*' to '/' and it works :) )
3. Fixed a texture filter graphical artifact in the menu
4. Resources regeneration fixed (another typo)
5. Station menu shows up on startup now
This is a very good game, I can see playing this more if finished. The progress of upgrades vs. getting minerals was extremely tight. I never once felt that it was impossible.
We are happy to see some of you really got into the game and liked it.
For future updates, you can follow my Twitter account, it will be the most convenient way I guess.
https://twitter.com/commodore_Kid
Thanks a lot.
I would say maybe making it more obvious with how fast the ships going would be handy.
Disable the warp drive to start with as well (introduce it later or upgrade?).
When I tried to use the warp drive I didn't understand how far it would go.
If you dock then either open the store automatically or have the menu option appear.
Graphics were very polished. I have mixed feelings about the marker font and the ui/cash amount font.
Audio was excellent and fitting.
Only problem I had was that the [x] in the upper-right corner of the dock-station menu was a bit misleading/unintuitive. I kept trying to click it to close the menu before I realized I was supposed to press E.
I really loved the mood (relaxation music is awesome in space) and the cam. movements are so cool :)
Definitely not a jam game, but something to develop more to make it a complete great game !
Keep going, and thanks for the experience :)
And thanks for adding me to your list!
- Went to the moon, harvested some deuterium, went back to the station, sold it, didn't get any money. Went back to the moon... eventually ran out of fuel and never made money.
A little hand holding could be usefull here :)
Also I think you moved your resources to the station, not sold them to the market or you were low on fuel and all the money you earned went to refueling the ship.
There is a lot confusion right now. We tried to implement many features as possible and couldn't think much about the user experience. Sorry about that :)
Right now working on a release version btw.
I think better idea about "what is my next goal" could have helped me on the first time. I wasn't sure. I think the yellow arrow was pointing to random direction on the first time...
And secondly, it would be good if station "popup" would open automatically when you get to the station. Now it was ... pure luck that I happened to hit the correct key.
I liked the market system: selling more goods reduces the prices... although I wasn't sure what to do with the money. Earned some of that so that's good. (I skipped the lengthy introduction texts, naturally :D)
I liked the controls and the docking and the zoom-in/zoom-out made me feel like being in control of a small space miner ship.
Really nice entry, very well done. There's so many ways how this could be further developed:
- build your own station
- pirate ships (might not fit in the game theme actually, I'd rather keep this about explorations & mining and such)
- Solar storms and other events
- Some sort of missions
- Different planets, more asteroids, more different resources
- Tech tree (mine things that can be further processed in some sort of factories).
And... so on.
Liked a lot.
I know it is hard to get a grab of everything. We got a lot of feedback so we can try to develop those missing points now.
Almost all of what you wrote as what should be added to the game is already in our list above in the description and we are trying to add those features nowadays after the jam.
P.S. The money is just for having upgrades in this version.
Thanks!
But great game overall ;)
@Lvyn: The speed never dies out like floating in real space unless you put a force in the opposite direction. We really like the feel of this kind of control. However adding a dampener upgrade for the release version that can be toggled to act like an artificial friction but it will be only used in combat since it will give a control advantage but will consume lot more fuel than normal.
Thanks for the comments :)
Very impressive amount of content.
It's a bit complicated because there are a lot of controls and informations at the beginning. It might be great with a simple tutorial to start with! Graphics are interesting. :)
@liquidminduk: Thank you :) We try to keep that feel in the version we develop right now.
@sephyka: Thanks! We will definitely add a tutorial phase to the game.
@Crocanti de Pollo: Glad you liked :) Watching fuel is one of the key points in this game since there are no gas stations to buy fuel in space. At least not many as in our world :D
@mechabit: Thanks for trying out. I got the same exact situation and it got me thinking about a rescue beacon too :)
@Sheepolution: Thanks for trying out. As I told on stream chat, we will add a tutorial to the game but we want to keep the ship controlling mechanic as it is. It will require a little bit of player skill. Other than that we will have a dampener upgrade which applies a little force in the opposite direction like there is friction. Still, it will be for combat situations mostly because it will consume more fuel than normal. The game is kind of hardcore and requires player to spend more time on.
@Cake&Code: Thanks :) We don't want to tweak the controls but we want to make it easier for player to understand how it works. Plus a dampener upgrade to your ship whenever you want to open an artificial friction force.
@cstudios: We are thinking about all those bits while developing right now. There is a stock market logic in it, when there is more demand, the resource sells cheaper. Thank you very much for playing and kind comments :)