LudumData

Kessler by Melmo

[raw]
made by Melmo for LD 44 (COMPO)

Welcome to Kessler

Kessler0.gif

"A nearby orbital refinery has suffered a catastrophic incident, launching debris into orbit. Prevent debris from hitting your mining platform by deploying charges to deflect the debris away. Charges have a three second fuse: time your shots carefully."

Controls

Mouse to aim; Space to launch a charge. An emergency force field can be activated by hitting Q, although doing so will deplete your power!

Kessler1.gif

Last year, during LD42, I put together a game with, at the time, rather basic knowledge. This year, I had a bit more knowledge to draw on. Ended up throwing far too much at the wall and seeing what would stick - most of the stuff developed for this hasn't made it into the final build (the code is still in there though, if you're curious). As before, learnt a whole lot though; and very pleased with how quickly I've been able to prototype ideas this time 'round (even if they didn't make it in). Less pleased with the actual game. The big lesson from this year? Time management - specifically, how not to.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. Not the best interpretation of the theme, gotta say. Game itself is sorta cosy, though; maybe put the FTL soundtrack on while playing for some ambiance.

Software: Unity, Visual Studio, Affinity Designer, Famitracker, Audacity.

Windows https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CHJCNLSoIZnFHFD2RHohQH9Nd8TI6T6e/view?usp=sharing
HTML5 (web) https://indpc.itch.io/kessler
Source code https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FviNjWOslymlAcD4c0CWCtzrK4AAHCfW/view?usp=sharing
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/kessler

Ratings

Given 28🗳️ 3🗨️

Feedback

Martynas
29. Apr 2019 · 12:34 UTC
Easy to understand mechanic, decent sound and a nice UI. Good job!
29. Apr 2019 · 12:37 UTC
Fun mechanic that you have to push the incoming asteroids away instead of the usual gunning them down, but I was hoping a bit more would happen eventually.
Borys
29. Apr 2019 · 13:34 UTC
Game seems to have much potential, but gameplay is so linear and boring after a while. Anyway, good job!
Seb Jones
29. Apr 2019 · 18:35 UTC
The idea of having to use physics to propel your targets away rather than destroy them is pretty neat, but there isn't enough here to be engaging for more than five minutes. A good effort though!
PixScope
01. May 2019 · 21:21 UTC
I love it !
J_C - One Bit Studio
01. May 2019 · 21:21 UTC
Managed to get 149 points for the first try. I could see myself playing this game from time to time, to beat my highscore. Good job!
Rheel
01. May 2019 · 21:23 UTC
Nice game, I played it for a round, but not more than that. The mechanic of the explosions making the asteroids drift away is nice.
SimplePotential
01. May 2019 · 21:24 UTC
I rather enjoyed this for a few moments. I think maybe a slightly faster rate of fire would be nice. The physics felt pretty good though.
Vinay Rao
01. May 2019 · 22:11 UTC
This game has a really old school vibe to it, which is cool. Exactly the type of game folks would play in the dead of the night with all the lights off, at least until they looked at the clock and realized how much time had passed. I like the mechanic of moving the incoming debris rather than simply destroying it. I didn't feel like I ran into too many situations where using the shield mechanic was worth it. More often than not the trade seemed to be "take one damage to avoid one damage". Could be that I just didn't use it properly.

Pretty fun though. There is a box of old games somewhere in my house that is full of games where this would fit right in.
Duke
04. May 2019 · 15:24 UTC
Cool concept, I like games like yours. The art is a bit plain and I didn't get any audio feedback, but the core mechanics work pretty well. With the feature set you have there, it gets repetetive very fast though. Needs some more variation in levels, weapons and astroids, if you ask me.
A visual shot cooldown timer would've been nice too. I was just spamming space to get as much shots out of my time as possible ;)
Baby Dino Herd
04. May 2019 · 16:32 UTC
Really like the simple, minimalist take on the concept! Managed to get up to 278 seconds. I found that sometimes I would be bombarded with cubes at random and just not have enough rate of fire to get rid of them. The shield concept was nice, but it often wouldn't save more than 1 HP of damage, so I agree with @vinay-rao in this way.

The explosion after the initial shot was what really made the game, for me, adding a whole other dimension to strategy of firing, and getting me to try to push away multiple cubes with one shot. Nicely done!
Jam373
05. May 2019 · 18:07 UTC
Really cool gameplay mechanic. Plays really well too, a lot of fun!
Faelim
05. May 2019 · 18:17 UTC
Really enjoyed playing this -- something about the way it plays leads to a lot of "clutch plays", which makes me feel like a badass. Kind've a cool, if unintentional, side effect.
Huitre
05. May 2019 · 18:38 UTC
It's simple but it works surprisingly well! There's tension, and I like the fact that it's all physics too. Takes a bit of strategy too... well done! The shield is indeed a bit too punishing to be really worth using, there could some tweaking on that side.

And as you're using the mouse for aiming, maybe you could use left and right click for actions as well?