Power Rush by Mik3
A game in Unity3D made for Ludum Dare 39.
You play as a miner trapped in a cave-in, who has to mine crystals out of a cave around him and use them to fuel a shield generator, that is running out of power, which is keeping him alive and a teleporter, that has ran out of power a long time ago, which will allow him to eventually escape the hastily designed cave.
And you must achieve this with a hand powered mining drill, which is... you guessed it, constantly running out of power.
Are you man enough to crank that charger crank?
Let's find out.
(You can use +/- on the numpad to adjust mouse sensitivity)
Note: After seeing the comment of the person who wasn't able to mine any crystals, you need to aim the drill at the crystal deposit, the deposit looks like a small round lump sticking from the ground, the first one is right in front of you, when you start the game.
| Windows | https://mike-.itch.io/power-rush |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/power-rush-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 558th | 2.854⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 601th | 2.475⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 325th | 3.1⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 210th | 3.725⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 192th | 3.625⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 354th | 2.744⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 431th | 1.939⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 290th | 3.05⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
I liked that the stones actually crushed you after time runs out (didn't like that it made the game crash though). Takes some time to figure out, but once you get it, it' a solid game.
Did you model all that in 48 hours? I'm seriously impressed!
The tutorial text is a bit too much for a LD game, and I'm sure most people will just scroll down to the controls.
You should've hidden the Windows mouse cursor, because I kept exiting the game window and could barely play the game with my two monitor setup. I kept clicking on the second monitor by accident which minimized the game.
I also think it's really unclear what the crystals even are. That needs to be much more obvious.
Other than that I really liked this. A bit of atmospheric background music would've been cool, but I felt immersed anyway.
++ The UI on the drill was brilliant design.
x I couldn't figure out how to mine the crystals. Maybe I gave up too soon.
x There was a lot of tutorial text.
This was an excellent entry. Thanks for the great game.
The choice to make movement slippery is a little frustrating for me.
Things I liked:
The Gameplay- I like a good FPM (First person miner). I found it pretty fun actually. It's not extensive, but it got a little tense when my shields got down low and I was desperately looking for rocks to mine. I also enjoyed playing crystal basketball into the pipes :)
The Art- I thought the art was awesome! That's the whole reason I clicked on your game in the first place. The particle effects for the rocks and the shield were really cool, and I liked how you made the world although kind of small look visually appealing.
Things I didn't like:
Polish- The game didn't feel polished to me. The movement lag, the drill not matching the cursor, and the text screens bothered me a bit (they weren't that visually appealing/ it was too much text). I wish you would have taken more time to polish these issues out. Granted I was impressed by the gameplay, it just needs fine tuning.
Overall, really well done. I hope you score well!
Crystal deposit look like rocks and they are also very small. When I tried mining one in the very beginning it didn't seem to do anything, so I tried the big rocks next and was stumped until I came back here to read the comments.
The problem with the drill is that it does not mine at what the cursor points at. It mines what the drill model points at. Either the drill needs to point directly where you look or the crystal ore should be much bigger making it impossible to miss accidentally. The deposits should also look like big lumps of crystal to make the difference explicit graphically.
Throwing crystals into the pipes is a funny idea, but then one of the crystals got stuck in the side of the blue pipe. That was the last straw for me.
Polish, polish, polish. That's what you need.
The character liked to slide around though and I wasn't able to aim the gun. Ontop of this im not entirely sure what the whole charger thing was about. I liked how it was done though.
It needed some on screen text to tell me what to do. I skipped over the controls the first time through and a prompt on how to charge would have been great.
Apart from that, this has been my favourite LD game by far. I loved playing it.
Annoyances: character moves too slowly, it definitely needed to be sped up a little. The hit box felt off and I got snagged on rocks a few times.
Aiming the drill was a huge nightmare and I had to reshuffle myself every time.
Tossing the crystals was so much fun, but a few times they got caught in the top of the tube and I needed to get a second one to dislodge it.
Teleporter should have let me walk into it, jumping there felt weird.
And the crystals didnt stand out enough. They were never hard to find (nothing else was the same size), I just felt they should have been coloured differently.
All in all, this was amazingly well done.
You've hit something great with the UI on the drill and the recharging mechanic. There was a lot of variety in how you played.
You should absolutely continue this, it was top notch game design.
Walls stop you down completely. period. You're just stuck and have to move backwards.
The aiming also feels odd.
The graphics certainly look interesting but nothing can make up for awkward gameplay.
I stopped after getting a crystal stuck in the odd tube.
The sound effects are kinda neat
Took me a while to figure out cranking, but I'm sure you've got it included in the post-compo tutorial. fortunately, I didn't have throw the crystals into the tubes, you can just walk up to them, the crystal goes in and then trowing it counts.
Game would benefit from music.
Good game, definitely. Probably top 20% of what I've tested.