Life in jar by Ghostik

[raw]
made by Ghostik for LD23 (JAM)
Small alien colony crashed into glass jar. You must take care of them and tell them what to do.
You need to collect enough material to build rocket and fly away.

Think wisely what you will do with your startup materials or you can get stuck.

On start you must buy tools to unlock tasks (pickaxe - mining, fishing rod - fishing etc.) If you upgrade tools, minions will colect materials more faster. If u want more workers working on one task you must upgrade buildings to add. You can get more minions by buying a house.

Controls:
WSAD - camera rotation
MouseWheel - zoom in, zoom out
LBM - to open craftbook and choose upgrades from it
- to set tasks of aliens

Sorry for cutted edges in beginning screen. It`s because of webplayer.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.69 36
Audio(Jam) 3.03 102
Fun(Jam) 3.06 81
Graphics(Jam) 4.06 45
Humor(Jam) 2.49 111
Innovation(Jam) 3.11 103
Mood(Jam) 3.35 57
Theme(Jam) 3.82 18

Feedback

bms
23. Apr 2012 路 15:24 UTC
Nice game, I like the graphics a lot! only problem I had was The aspect ratio was a bit narrow and I couldn't see parts of the scene. well done!
jeroenimooo
23. Apr 2012 路 15:28 UTC
Takes very long to build some cool stuff, but it was worth it :p
hungyg
23. Apr 2012 路 16:31 UTC
great graphics, a bit boring gameplay
馃帳 Ghostik
24. Apr 2012 路 15:07 UTC
Thanks people ;)
jeroenimooo: I admit that gameplay is a bit unballanced :D I didn`t have a lot of time to test it
matthias_zarzecki
24. Apr 2012 路 18:59 UTC
This is great! Love the graphics, and the mood is nive too. It's quite complex, it might take some time to figure it all out. and is in need of some balancing though.

Also, I think the premises of both our games are quite similar :P, Go check it out.
Ace
24. Apr 2012 路 20:00 UTC
Nice graphics, the fading out effect needs a bit of work though. The gameplay was ok if a bit boring, and just what was that black thing that kept passing by?
Overall quite well made.
AlwaysGeeky
24. Apr 2012 路 20:07 UTC
Sweet!!
strega
25. Apr 2012 路 15:25 UTC
A nice quiet game. I liked that I could sort of sit back and watch them work. Is there anything special about the little black one?
MurrayL
25. Apr 2012 路 15:30 UTC
Great game; I especially loved when I found out you can zoom the camera out of the jar!

I thought the pacing was quite good, and the game was very relaxing. I would probably suggest making food more useful, as it just sort of built up and up, not getting used much.
trylle
25. Apr 2012 路 16:08 UTC
Looks fantastic, great concept, but seem to spend prolonged parts of the game snacking while waiting for more stuff. :) Wish there was some more micromanagement to occupy my time. There was also this black texture popping up over my view at start and end of the game. Was worried I wouldn't be able to see the ending.
馃帳 Ghostik
25. Apr 2012 路 18:49 UTC
Thanks again. That "black one" can steal some food :D ...I wanted to create one more task - keeper. If u have him the black creture wont steal. But I had no time to add this to game :/
tacograveyard
26. Apr 2012 路 14:19 UTC
Great visuals. Enjoyed the strategy aspect. I wish things went a bit faster. I walked away a few times to let resources build up. The edges of the screen were cut off. Overall I really liked the game and I think a polished up and balanced version could be a lot of fun.
ExciteMike
26. Apr 2012 路 14:20 UTC
Has a real nice, kind of Pikmin-ish vibe :)
j_peeba
26. Apr 2012 路 14:57 UTC
Pretty cool! I played it all the way through. After figuring things out in the beginning, the challenge was a bit lacking though.
Sanguine
26. Apr 2012 路 14:58 UTC
Cool game! I enjoyed it :)
olkeencole
26. Apr 2012 路 23:00 UTC
Fun relaxing game. I so wanted to explore the environment and wish I could have selected a guy and send him off to parts unknown (in the glass jar). Good story.
jeffz
26. Apr 2012 路 23:27 UTC
didn't like the stock sounds... would have been better if there were original sfx
Square Particle
27. Apr 2012 路 16:04 UTC
Interesting game, love the graphics and idea, but the menus looked greyed out to me even though I could still use them.
Orni
28. Apr 2012 路 09:47 UTC
beautiful gameplay and graphics - definitely one of my most favorite games this LD
Evil Cult
28. Apr 2012 路 10:11 UTC
[Comments and ratings from this account come from various team members]
For me this was an extremely relaxing game. I built right up to the end and got my little guys home! The game is a bit rough around the edges in places such as the camera, the blur effect, the balance, and a couple of bugs, but I think this could be really special with a bit more work. Very well done for getting this done in the time you had.
Jhelle
28. Apr 2012 路 12:19 UTC
Great game, was playing it for atleast 20 minutes before it got boring due to the rocket costing too much.

Love the retro 3d cellshaded graphics. One of the better entries I have seen so far. Good job!
unicornpooping
28. Apr 2012 路 12:24 UTC
Neat!
Zaxuhe
28. Apr 2012 路 13:00 UTC
Sorry, not able to play it because unity does not work on linux
galman
28. Apr 2012 路 13:24 UTC
Amazing game! One of the best games so far. I don't have anything else to say :-)
Muu? (lanoiadimuu)
28. Apr 2012 路 13:37 UTC
Interesting game. Nice graphics and background sounds. I didn't finish it because it's gameplay was slow and i got bored after 15 mins.
Maybe something like defending from enemies could have improved it.
Lawrence Esswood
28. Apr 2012 路 13:59 UTC
Great little game - played it to the end. Would have been cool if the rocket had shot off. Otherwise one of the best I've seen.
summaky
28. Apr 2012 路 14:18 UTC
It is too slow for my machine :'(
馃帳 Ghostik
28. Apr 2012 路 15:18 UTC
I am happy for so much good criticism :)
@Lawrence Esswood : It actually had shot off. You just need to look carefully ;)
BlackBulletIV
28. Apr 2012 路 21:39 UTC
Some very nice graphics, and interesting, albeit slow and sometimes grinding, gameplay. Well done!
nornagon
29. Apr 2012 路 08:43 UTC
Pretty :) Wish it'd been a bit more guided at the start though.
bompo
29. Apr 2012 路 08:48 UTC
Nice graphics! But gameplay is too slow and without challenge.
chrismcr
29. Apr 2012 路 09:02 UTC
Could've done with some kind of threat - looks like that's what the guy in the cave would've been if you'd had time. I thought it was really cute though! Also, your game is like the happy opposite of ours - cool that someone else went with the "escape alien world on a rocket" idea :)
MrDanH
30. Apr 2012 路 21:10 UTC
Quite a relaxing little game to watch, although it was mostly a waiting game while the guys were collecting resources
otaviogood
01. May 2012 路 05:35 UTC
Wasn't completely clear what I was doing. Game seemed to go by very slowly without a lot of choices of what to do. Looks cool though.
Alexandre
03. May 2012 路 08:48 UTC
Very nice game, fun to play, and good graphics/mood!
mooosh
04. May 2012 路 02:13 UTC
played it all the way through. this is really great! super relaxing and a nice game to just spend time in. great job.
gregdevice
04. May 2012 路 03:53 UTC
Outstanding! Really enjoyed all of it. I kept waiting for something bad to happen (the little black critter attacks!). Just a peaceful little game.
Geti
04. May 2012 路 05:43 UTC
Enjoyed it, though the end dragged on a little waiting for the 500 mats to pile up. Ran well enough on my crappy 64MB GPU laptop, so props for keeping it mostly optimised ;)
thegreystudios
12. May 2012 路 06:50 UTC
Visually very appealing and great theme integration. :) A bit to slow and I had some problems with the UI:
If you use a 4:3 resolution the "X" in the building menu is cut off making it impossible to close.
The second thing: After you constructed the tools the icons are replaced with a checkbox. That makes it hard later on to know what is what. Simon
tcstyle
12. May 2012 路 07:31 UTC
What an awesome game. This has great potential to become a real big and complex game. The graohics and sound are great. The controls work well.