Power Rush by Mik3

[raw]
made by Mik3 for LD 39 (COMPO)

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.

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🗨️

Feedback

nusan
31. Jul 2017 · 08:21 UTC
Nice entry, I like the visual, and how you have to use your manual crank to recharge. I didn't find any crystal though, so I couldn't progress. The wall of text at the beginning may be a bit overwhelming at first, it would be great if you can open/close it at any time. Keep up the good work.
CaptainDreamcast
01. Aug 2017 · 09:43 UTC
The crystals are the slightly different colored stones, yeah.

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!
Zelos
01. Aug 2017 · 11:11 UTC
The graphics are really, really good for a compo entry. I also liked that your UI is on your drill. Gave it quite a bit of immersion.

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.
gnerkus
01. Aug 2017 · 11:31 UTC
+++ The graphics are amazing! The game was like a full PS1.5 game.
++ 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.
TheFlyingKeyboard
01. Aug 2017 · 19:13 UTC
Fun game with interesting graphics, but lacks a little polishing(collisions are verry funny).
DaragonGames
01. Aug 2017 · 23:57 UTC
Interesting Use of the Theme, but the range of the drill is to short, so that you spend to much time aiming and it also feels to difficulty. The Graphics look good, but the its unclear your supposed to drill the little rocks, because they fit to well into the environment. Nevertheless Nice Job!
Knatt
04. Aug 2017 · 17:46 UTC
Overall good! I like the idea of this game, and the graphics are great for a gamejam.

The choice to make movement slippery is a little frustrating for me.
Remzo
05. Aug 2017 · 09:51 UTC
Cool concept! The graphics were nice. It was a bit hard to tell what I had to mine, maybe make them stand out more? Also when I did figure it out, it was very tricky to line the gun up so that it would actually mine it. Movement was also a little bit slippery, making it even harder to line up the gun. For the intro, it's a bit overwhelming to have so much text pop up as the first thing in the game. Find a way to present the needed information as concise as possible. Overall nice entry!
fledgeling93
05. Aug 2017 · 11:18 UTC
Charger and tossing crystals feels great, though probably it would be better to let you charge your drill less frequently. Game feel is amazing, all the sound effects and interface is well done. This is a rather difficult game to the point of being almost impossible. I spend just as much field power as I get from crystal usually, so it became a hopeless run suddenly. But the core gameplay is good and feels good
TheCodeFactory
05. Aug 2017 · 16:33 UTC
I don't think so much tutorial text is needed. Cool graphics. Nice entry!
vulpineblazeyt
05. Aug 2017 · 20:56 UTC
I too was overwhelmed by the tutorial text, but otherwise this was a game I could really *dig*.
hungare
05. Aug 2017 · 22:49 UTC
@mik3 Nice game! And lol I liked the ending.

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!
HuvaaKoodia
06. Aug 2017 · 09:50 UTC
The idea is solid. There's a nice timed resource management aspect to it, having to choose which machine to power with each crystal. Unfortunately it is very finicky to play.

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.
Sarrixx
06. Aug 2017 · 11:31 UTC
All in all a fun little game. You should find a way to convey the context of the story to the player other than that huge wall of text at the start of the game, people like me don't read that stuff and just get stuck straight into the game :P As a result of my rebellious play style, I had no idea what to do with the crystals haha :P The crystals and crystal ores/nodes should also be made a bit more obvious to the player that they are what the player is after. I also think the players character controller was a bit slide-y. Good idea though, nicely done!
Lyraedan
06. Aug 2017 · 11:54 UTC
I like the graphics, wasn't entirely sure what I was doing though even after reading the wall of text at the start.

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.
foxor
06. Aug 2017 · 19:17 UTC
I was very confused. I tried drilling a bunch of things, then my drill ran out of power and I gave up.
Yetman
07. Aug 2017 · 00:30 UTC
Failed multiple times till I gave up and read the tutorial text. The game was fun although I can't imagine myself winning it. The art is good and the sound effects were nice. Overall, I enjoyed it.
phantom-lab
08. Aug 2017 · 17:34 UTC
The controls are awfull floaty, but that can't keep me from drillin' drillin' drillin' :D :D :D
Timps
16. Aug 2017 · 09:17 UTC
The opening text was really long, which you've heard plenty of. But it was mostly that it was hard to scroll. The text was king of small and whatever was generating the window, my mousewheel did it a half line at a time. Which was infuriating.

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.
sgt3v
17. Aug 2017 · 10:49 UTC
Very interesting game. Indoor no man's sky with hl's xen like level. Controls are a bit difficult to manage and the long long explanation at the beginning looks a bit scary at first, it could be divided into small tutorials if you plan to keep working on this project. Well done!
tjakka5
17. Aug 2017 · 15:04 UTC
The controls are incredibly floaty, you don't really feel in control of the character.
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
QuantumZen
19. Aug 2017 · 10:08 UTC
Nice graphics. Good idea.

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.
SleepyStudios
19. Aug 2017 · 12:34 UTC
Gave up a bit quickly with this one. I pretty much just blanked the wall of text and started running around only to use up all my drill power. Eventually I sort of figured out how to charge up the drill a little bit but it kept running out of power as soon as it got charged. Very confusing and the controls were a bit janky too.
Manumeq
21. Aug 2017 · 11:24 UTC
Very fun and well though gameplay, although I completed the game, I couldn't figure out how to charge the drill properly. I just had to spam the mouse in circles around the wheel. Nonetheless the game was pretty fun and fresh and graphics and animation are really good, specially the drill debris. Keep it up!