Cosmic Conqueror by MunkeeBacon

[raw]
made by MunkeeBacon for LD30 (JAM)
Cosmic Conqueror is space exploration game made for Ludum Dare 2014 game jam. Build bridges to connect planets and fight crazy alien monsters. The more people you have in your coalition, the more money they make you!

This game had a couple of bugs when we submitted it, hopefully we can iron these out within the next few days with a post submission time release.

Controls:
WASD to move.
Mouse to aim, click, and shoot.
Q and E to rotate bridge parts.
SPACE to board and leave your ship.

Instructions:
Drive into planets to land your ship.

When on a home planet or a conquered planet, you can access the shop and building tabs on the right side of the screen.

To connect planets with the bridges that you can purchase, simply connect the tips of each bridge with the previously placed bridge. Bridges must start off on a planet.

In order for your followers to make you money, their planet must be connected to your home planet or another connected planet. Once they join your group a symbol will appear above their heads.

Apologies for any bugs, we are working to fix the bugs in a post submission time build.

Watch out! The further away you get from home, the tougher enemies become!

Thanks!

POST LD INFO:
This version is simply the original version with a lot less bugs, no new features or anything; just a fixed version for those of you who enjoyed it. (HIGHLY SUGGEST THE POST LD VERSION THOUGH)

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.75 84
Audio(Jam) 3.75 88
Fun(Jam) 3.73 61
Graphics(Jam) 4.05 133
Humor(Jam) 3.15 145
Innovation(Jam) 3.22 270
Mood(Jam) 3.34 247
Theme(Jam) 3.96 44

Feedback

H1S2
26. Aug 2014 · 20:16 UTC
I'm really glad, I came across your entry. It is the best entry i've seen so far. An awesome interpretation of the theme wit a lot of innoavative fun. good job!
H1S2
26. Aug 2014 · 20:22 UTC
and its difficulty is pretty high!
TeamConn
26. Aug 2014 · 23:52 UTC
Cool game. Not the most original but still really fun to play.
RFMTeam
27. Aug 2014 · 13:22 UTC
Pretty tough! Nice gameplay though, and very nice presentation (both for the graphics and the interactive music). Good job!
leafarz
27. Aug 2014 · 15:16 UTC
agree with the people that the game is pretty tough.
but the music is awesome! nice visuals too. very cleanly made!
good job!
RobotFriend
27. Aug 2014 · 19:30 UTC
Great graphics and very fun to fly the ship.
borgi
27. Aug 2014 · 19:34 UTC
Im glad this game does NOT have that planet gravity physics. When I was looking at the screenies I tought it will have that! Nice game! Awesome music! Great graphics! Fun gameplay! Well done!!!
Ventura
27. Aug 2014 · 19:36 UTC
Nice graphics and music. Planets too small I died very soon.
3CGames
27. Aug 2014 · 19:40 UTC
This game's pretty rad, flying around and conquering is fun, the audio and graphics are great!
Joror
27. Aug 2014 · 19:42 UTC
Nice visuals & sounds - could have helped to have a how-to in game. :) Liked the mechanic of shooting 'off planet'. Idea: Adding 'butt first' landing requirement would add a nice little challenge to the rocket flying. ;)
ix
27. Aug 2014 · 19:44 UTC
The presentation of this game was really nice! Firing feels weighty and the music is pleasant and supportive of the gameplay. The lack of minimap forces you to plan and think about the world.

One criticism is that there isn't much to gameplay. Enemies don't do much and humans do nothing. There isn't strategy to bridge building. And there were some minor bugs: buying guns didn't decrease my money and sometimes clicking the side menus makes you fire.
schizokoa
27. Aug 2014 · 19:52 UTC
Loved it \o
Windmill Games
27. Aug 2014 · 19:59 UTC
I really liked how you made the travelling between planets so smooth! Well done.
IsaacL.Balogh
27. Aug 2014 · 20:10 UTC
I really liked this, conquering planets was fun though it would be even more so if I could do more than shoot, finding planets was fun and the audio and graphics are great.
mechabit
27. Aug 2014 · 20:33 UTC
I like the firing weight and the movement of the ship but placing bridges does nothing. I like the idea of having to land butt first. Maybe also add defences like turrets on your captured planets to fight off UFOs?
jjhaggar
27. Aug 2014 · 20:39 UTC
The graphics are very nice :). A little bit difficult
barryrowe
28. Aug 2014 · 01:34 UTC
Great entry! everything feels smooth and polished. I love the bouncing of the body parts and the little ammo casings too. nice touches!
simplesmiler
28. Aug 2014 · 09:20 UTC
Great entry!
kikito
28. Aug 2014 · 12:33 UTC
The parts I enjoyed the most where the graphics and the sound. The gameplay itself was a bit underwhelming.
Chaoseiro
28. Aug 2014 · 13:41 UTC
Nice visuals, nice musics and fun to play :D
In the jam entry I had some problems connecting planets, thus couldn't make enough to buy better weapons :/
kristof
29. Aug 2014 · 08:46 UTC
Nice sleek graphics. Without any aim to achive it was hard to keep up my motivation. But I enjoyed the first planets. Crossings in bridges would be nice.
01F0
29. Aug 2014 · 19:42 UTC
Ah, space imperialism at its finest. ;) You really nailed the theme. Very polished. Great work!!
HoboMechanistic
29. Aug 2014 · 22:20 UTC
I liked the rocketship sound effect :D Cool art style and solid gameplay, nice
reheated
30. Aug 2014 · 17:12 UTC
Fun, with awesome, funny art.
pikkpoiss
30. Aug 2014 · 17:37 UTC
I think you did a great job of blending the exploration / building style of gameplay seamlessly with the combat. Maybe the combat and building could have been deeper but I like how you already had different styles of alien species each with their own behavior. Sound effects, music and graphics all brought me into the Flash Gordon-esque world. Nice work!
mocker
31. Aug 2014 · 18:39 UTC
Great gameplay take on a common concept and great style.
PixlWalkr
01. Sep 2014 · 15:41 UTC
Nice art, Enjoyed playing it!
DeltaF1
02. Sep 2014 · 00:53 UTC
This is really awesome! It's fun to play, has some incredible graphics for a weekend jam, the audio is perfect, it's funny, it fits the theme, and it still manages to be moody as well. I commend you!
frogcheese
02. Sep 2014 · 17:30 UTC
I really liked this game - it's just too bad that the bridge recognition seems a bit wonky. I conquered around six or seven planets, but only got cash from two of them, not counting my home planet.

Either way it's a really great idea, with an impressively slick presentation. Could easily be expanded as well - like adding enemy spaceships and defense structures, or sending invading armies across bridges and whatnot. Really cool.
🎤 MunkeeBacon
02. Sep 2014 · 22:14 UTC
@frogcheese I am aware of the wonkiness of the bridge connections, I tried my best to fix it in the postLD version but there are still a few minor problems. And we actually have planned adding space combat! Thanks for the kind words, we have been working on the game every day since the dare and have a lot of plans for it's development.
davisan
03. Sep 2014 · 14:00 UTC
Very nice! So many planets. The conquering is fun. Loved the polish in the guns and movement. I think keyboard shortcuts for buying/view map would be great. Congrats!
SketchyGalore
03. Sep 2014 · 19:36 UTC
Best jam entry I've seen! Absolutely wonderful presentation! I could easily see this being made into a full release with a bit of polish!
ShadowStryker
04. Sep 2014 · 01:57 UTC
I don't really know why, but I really liked this game. Perhaps it was because of the adventurous feel it had to it or something...
SoulGame
04. Sep 2014 · 01:57 UTC
You got it. Amazing entry, I think the best of the 110 I've rated. Concept is awesome, arts are very neat and consistent, gameplay is surprisingly smooth, interfaces are polished and intuitive enough, sounds design is fitting perfectly... I regret I couldn't figure out how to properly connect planets. I did buy bridges and connected my home with other planets but nothing happened.
According to me, the main flaw for now comes from the fighting system : lots of collisions glitch especially when a lot of characters are colliding. Getting hit is not very clear. Recoil is not very handy because it affects camera. Finally I miss some shooting enemies, I apologize if there are any, didn't find them. Shooting enemies on bigger planets could bring the game to the next step like a real rogue-like space shooter adventure.
P.S : Come on! You could have us re-spawned on main planet when we die!
🎤 MunkeeBacon
04. Sep 2014 · 09:51 UTC
@SoulGame

A buncha bugs were fixed with the post LD, and even more have been fixed since the Post-LD Release, you now respawn on home planet and enemy collisions are better!
Dietrich Epp
05. Sep 2014 · 03:04 UTC
The graphics and audio are great, and the combat has a solid feel to it. Unfortunately, you can die so quickly just by landing on one of those planets with bats, and I built a bridge three times between two planets that were really close to each other but they never connected.
udo
05. Sep 2014 · 11:33 UTC
I wasn't able to access the shop (OS X, post LD build). Is it supposed to just pop out on the right? Maybe you should add a keyboard shortcut to activate the shop or something.

Nevertheless, this is one of the nicest LD games I saw this time around. Good job!
🎤 MunkeeBacon
05. Sep 2014 · 14:09 UTC
@udo Thank you for the comment! And that is very strange, I am able to access it just fine.
NicePenguins
07. Sep 2014 · 17:40 UTC
Very well made ! Love the space background ! The non-combat mood is great !
Moosefly
12. Sep 2014 · 14:23 UTC
Played the original version, so I don't know if any of these problems have already been fixed:
- People spawning outside of planets
- Collisions going wonky because of the pushback (aliens clipping trough each other etc.)
- Bridges not always connecting, despite being visually connected

Nice atmosphere and juiciness. The gameplay, even if a bit buggy is also nicely varied, albeit a bit too slow (because of the broken bridges I guess).

Anssi@MooseflyGames
klianc09
13. Sep 2014 · 12:33 UTC
Simply amazing exploration game. The graphics are wonderful and the music switching depending on the action is great.
Flying around with the spaceship is also really satisfying.

Just make combat more engaging and varied and the planets a bit bigger. Then you got yourself a real gem of a game.

It would also be cool to open map mode (essentially Build mode) from any conquered planet, to make it easier to add your newly conquered planets to your federation.

And when you shoot and quickly change to map mode, you can watch your shots fly through space until they hit an enemy on another planet :D

Also I experienced some lag after exploring the map for a while. Maybe caused by more and more objects being generated?

PS: You commented, that my game isn't working on your machine. Could you maybe start it from the console and provide me the error-message, to help me troubleshoot?
Jupiter_Hadley
15. Sep 2014 · 18:19 UTC
Love the graphics though I wasnt sure what to do! I included it in part 27 of my Ludum Dare 30 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) http://youtu.be/DOSk1bi234E
🎤 MunkeeBacon
15. Sep 2014 · 18:45 UTC
@jupiter_hadley

you might have known what do to if you read the instructions?
🎤 MunkeeBacon
15. Sep 2014 · 18:50 UTC
regardless, thanks for playing.
SnoringFrog
15. Sep 2014 · 23:36 UTC
I didn't do too well, but I loved the game. I'd probably have played this for a quite a while if I wasn't in rush-mode to get a few last games played and rated before judging ends.