LudumData

A.M.O.R.V. by zondarg

[raw]
made by zondarg for LD 38 (COMPO)

PromoScreen<em>Title</em>Small.PNG PromoScreen<em>Game1</em>small.PNG

Welcome to my second Ludum Dare entry, called "A.M.O.R.V." Asteroid Miner Omnidirectional Rescue Vehicle.

It's the year 2087 - mankind has begun to mine asteroids for precious and rare materials. The most ressources are found in the asteroid field M211 orbiting a black hole. Unfortunately these asteroids are very unstable, so the miners can call the A.M.O.R.V. to be evacuated in their escape pods as soon as they register dangerous activity. You control one of these vehicles and need to find all the miners on the small planetoids before the time runs out. But beware! The weird gravity and the coriolis forces mess with your vehicles controls, so it is not as easy as it sounds.

Available for Windows. Control with Joypad 1 or Cursor Keys to accelerate and turn vehicle.

Since I started a bit (too?) late (again) not everything is as fleshed out as I'd like it to be, sound effects are missing, the pods look dev-art ugly and the volcanoes and other dangers I wanted to set up are simply not there. Sorry :smile: But otherwise mostly everything should be playable, and the music is also there. Everything done, created, conceived, drawn, sampled, written during these 48hours using the great ZGameEditor, Audacity, OpenMPT and Anim8tor.

Windows Executable and Sourcecode at

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q5ayqu2c2mbubyy/ld38-amorv-v1.0.zip?dl=0

Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-m-o-r-v

Ratings

Overall 520th 2.522⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 512th 2.208⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 418th 2.667⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 263th 3.417⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 498th 2.375⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 163th 3.24⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Humor 451th 1.682⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Mood 501th 2.304⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 32🗳️ 32🗨️

Feedback

psychead
01. May 2017 · 14:57 UTC
I liked the music, it had a nice, fitting 80's vibe. It's nice that you gave a bit of backstory, as well.

I think the idea has potential, but is not communicated well enough.
I could not figure out what affected movement, which made the forces that sometimes made me stand still or drift off seem random. I felt a bit like drunk driving. :sweat_smile:
Multitudes22
01. May 2017 · 23:07 UTC
Nice concept. I liked the immersion of the story. I see that the distortion of gravity is supposed to be a gameplay mechanic, but with no real indication of what that mechanic did or where it happened on the map, it was very difficult to use it to my advantage. I think it definetly has a lot of potential! Keep going, and great job!
CarterCook
01. May 2017 · 23:09 UTC
It's a solid tanklike game! I enjoyed the music too. A lot of fun came out of avoiding the Coriolis effect. The dynamic camera was cool but I wasn't able to finish due to slight nausea. Could be fixed by keeping the camera pointed parallel to the planets surface. Overall, great job!
abhimonk
02. May 2017 · 01:26 UTC
Good work. After reading the comments, I think I understand why the controls felt a little un-intuitive at times: The gravity distortion was intentional, yes? Overall a little repetitive, but I still liked the way everything fit together. The music was great, and fit the space setting very well. Nice job.
Smooth
02. May 2017 · 23:04 UTC
It was a good idea for a game. Ran a little choppy for me, so I probably didn't get a good experience with it :(
craighasdysentery
03. May 2017 · 00:15 UTC
The camera made me throw up. Music was 10/10 though.
Gato
03. May 2017 · 01:54 UTC
Controls were tricky. I got through three levels, but i'm not sure I understood how to go the direction I wanted. I like the music.
adhesion
03. May 2017 · 02:08 UTC
Cool concept, but man those controls/camera! Felt really bizarre at first. By the time I stopped playing (I quit on the 11-pod level) I think I had some vague grasp of how to play but it was still mostly trial and error. There seems to be some consistent logic to the controls but I couldn't fully figure it out. Some sort of indicator towards the last pod would help also, as I was usually just wandering around aimlessly at that point. Great music btw. Nice work!
Mars
03. May 2017 · 16:36 UTC
Really difficult to get into the controls of this game, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. If the thingamajig had been easy to control, then I don't think the game would have much merit to it. However, the steering itself is the challenge, which makes it actually feel like a race against time.

After the first attempt, I got a little better at the controls, and that's when I could tell where you were going with the game. I think that is the games biggest weakness though, that the controls don't feel intentional at first. At first it feels like they're just bad, but as I started getting the hang of it I realized that overcoming the steering issues was the core of the games challenge. If that had been communicated a little better, I think you would have fewer people complaining about the controls.

The music was great, it really set a spacey mood for the game. It also felt pretty retro, which mashed well with the graphics. While the graphics weren't amazing, together with the music they kind of reminded me of those good old DOS-era 3D games, so they weren't all bad.

Overall, a pretty decent game, I liked it!
cogcomp
03. May 2017 · 17:45 UTC
Nice 3D view. The asteroids feel huge! The controls are a bit tricky to extent that they feel buggy at first. It gets a bit better, but I think they need to be a bit more intuitive. Good work!
secret-tunnel
03. May 2017 · 20:40 UTC
Holy shit those N64 vibes. Nice work!
OccultOne
04. May 2017 · 00:54 UTC
I Played this on Livestream Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6NTcovuI0
(The game seems to have bugged the Livestream and it didn't record the game. The Audio is there)

The Camera controls were really bad and I wasn't able to play it. When I was pushing the up Arrow, it was just spinning the camera around randomly and made me mad/frustrated as I tried.
🎤 zondarg
04. May 2017 · 21:17 UTC
@occultone @cogcomp @mars @adhesion @gato and all the other commenters above, thanks a lot for your kind words and constructive critique - and sorry if the controls are a bit too hard to master, if I come round to do a post compo version I will certainly lessen the difficulty a bit (or make it adjustable?) - and fix the patch near the asteroids poles where you will only turn but not really move, yes - that is a bug I think. Then a distance meter and coriolis sensor should be there to ;)

Maybe a hint: It is much easier if you do not try to go in a straight line but do left/right waves as if being on rollerskates or surfing the gravity :) it is such a small world that there are no straight lines anyway.
feltip
05. May 2017 · 22:18 UTC
Hard to control but music and idea is great. Tighten all of it up and could be wicked. Good job! :)
oultrox
05. May 2017 · 23:08 UTC
I liked how the controls were tried to be put, but I think a trust button that wasn't on the analog stick would've done a much better job, since sometimes turning requires you to be moving while turning the stick is really hard to manage well, taking that aside I somehow really liked the game, reminded me a lot of old PS1 games graphically and that's charming :)
ryte2byte
06. May 2017 · 18:08 UTC
I couldn't play a ton of this. Yeah, the camera. Even putting that aside, the controls. I mean, are the controls getting wacky in some specific way? It feels more like fighting gimbal lock than a game mechanic. There's also no indicate when its kicking in leaving me to wonder if its me or a bug or what the game is supposed to do. Kudos on finding time to get some music and backstory in there!
Prototyke
09. May 2017 · 00:10 UTC
I like games that you have to control based on gravity, but it felt like I was magnetized to a surface with multiple other sources pulling too. It honestly felt terrible and the camera was a mess. The concept of a spaceship is a messy gravity zone picking up miners is a cool idea, but I think you just aren't quite far enough to make it really good. I liked the music a lot though, and the backstory gave it a lot more life.
XenosNS
09. May 2017 · 14:38 UTC
Very nice. Controls were tough to figure out but managed with trial and error. Nice music.
RockhopperGames
10. May 2017 · 14:33 UTC
Well that was a trip and a half! I have to ask, was the movement initially a bug you decided to keep as a feature, or did you plan for it to be like that from the start? Personally, I enjoyed the game, but I think a more abstract theme would have suited it better. Of course, that might have been hard given the theme of the Dare. The music was excellent, by the way!
Jupiter_Hadley
13. May 2017 · 16:29 UTC
Interesting game! I found the movement to be a bit odd. I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSWOUTubUBM
csanyk
20. May 2017 · 01:14 UTC
I couldn't figure out how to play. At first, the arrow keys seemed to move my saucer, but then after a short distance it seemed like I got stuck and slowed to a halt, then the only thing that the arrow keys did was change the camera angle.