LudumData

OnFuelDrain() by reizoukin

[raw]
made by reizoukin for LD 39 (JAM)

Screen Shot 2017-07-31 at 23.31.04.png

What do you do when you are running out of fuel? Just get hit hard and often!

What if bullets powered your spaceship? OnFuelDrain() is a game about balancing fuel and health--get hit, and you'll gain fuel. Get hit too much, and you'll die.

Made by Aría Jónsdóttir and Hudson Miears.

Music from Jukedeck - create your own at http://jukedeck.com.

Windows and MacOS builds are both available on the itch.io page below.

Controls

Rotate the ship with "A" and "D" keys. Thrust using the "W" key. Boost using the "Left Shift" key. Shoot by pressing or holding the "Space" key.

Pause / Unpause game with the "ESC" key.

Your fuel level is constantly draining. Getting damaged refuels your ship.

You can trade 1/3 of your health for fuel by pressing the "F" key.

Enemies drop health kits when destroyed.

Enemies spawn based on the games timer.

The game is potentially infinite.

Gameplay Tips

Movement: Your ship maintains its velocity at all times. Thrust forward with "W" to move in the direction you're facing. You may have to work against your current velocity!

Boosting: Boosting will increase your speed at its current velocity. You can only boost when you're thrusting! This is a good way to change directions, but be careful, because it drains your fuel quickly.

Trading Health for Fuel: If you don't have a lot of enemies shooting at you, you might find your fuel is running low. You can trade 1/3 of your health for an equal amount of fuel. Be careful--you can drain all of your health this way!

Don't forget to post your high score in the comments!

Windows https://quietaria.itch.io/onfueldrain
macOS https://quietaria.itch.io/onfueldrain
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/onfueldrain

Ratings

Overall 801th 2.652⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 744th 2.565⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 691th 2.565⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 598th 3.217⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 763th 2.304⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Humor 616th 1.81⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 731th 2.5⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 28🗳️ 15🗨️

Feedback

krishnasism
01. Aug 2017 · 13:27 UTC
Takes me back to the old space shooter games :) Really loved it. The gameplay could have been somewhat smoother. But it's a great game overall. Liked the sounds. Good luck! :D
Remzo
01. Aug 2017 · 13:35 UTC
Interesting mechanic! I didn't understand exactly how to move around. It seemed that turning the ship also speeds it up somehow? Because of that, I didn't really run out of fuel as I was getting shot at a lot.
The music was good and fit quite well, nicely done! :)
🎤 reizoukin
01. Aug 2017 · 13:57 UTC
Thanks for the feedback, both of you! I've added some tips and control info in the post. Glad you enjoyed it!
AlmostCthulhu
01. Aug 2017 · 14:27 UTC
Nice interpretation of the theme. I thought the mechanic was quite unique, and the fuel / health balance was definitely challenging to try to maintain. The controls seemed a bit awkward and unresponsive, but I think that added to the challenge of the game.
The menu could have done with some work as well, but it's functional, which is good.
The enemies definitely did seem to pile onto you, perhaps a bit too much, but the game was fun to play otherwise.
Alexis Cheron
01. Aug 2017 · 17:17 UTC
It's a pretty good game. I think that the controls are hard due to realism of spatial inertia, but that made the spaceship very uncontrollable.
Antti Haavikko
01. Aug 2017 · 18:43 UTC
Already mentioned this on ZedKraze's stream but it's even more obvious after playing it myself, the bullets need to be visually bigger. You're not going for realistic visuals with this anyway, they could be almost half the size of the ships. You can check some awesome shmups like Ikaruga or the Touhou series for reference. Having a dot-like hitbox for them is cool but they were just way too hard to see. I think they were also a bit too fast compared to the player ship movement capabilities.

And speaking of moving capabilities, we also discussed the controls a bit. If feels awkward having all the controls clamped up to one hand when there is no need to use the other hand for mouse.

Really cool music. Overall, good job!
Pedro Romero
04. Aug 2017 · 11:17 UTC
To my is very hard to control. The ship requires a lot of impulse to slow down. Or maybe it's just me, I suck at Asteroids-like games... :cry:
wowods
06. Aug 2017 · 13:22 UTC
The movement is kinda hard to control, I always miss the healthkits after destroying enemy :D
EdwinGameDev
10. Aug 2017 · 02:43 UTC
Good game, i like this stuff! But the controls need to be more distributed, having them all on one side of the keyboard only makes things much more difficult. Good job!
🎤 reizoukin
19. Aug 2017 · 16:20 UTC
Thank you all for your feedback! We appreciate it. If we can find the time we'll revisit the movement and maybe release a postjam version. If nothing else we've definitely learned the value of playtesting! When implementing the movement system, we both knew what we wanted to achieve, and I think that meant that it was intuitive for us while being difficult for everyone else. That's definitely something to consider for next time. In the meantime I hope you've enjoyed playing it!
SMA
19. Aug 2017 · 18:06 UTC
I got 3500 points on my third run. The game's fun, but I didn't find the "hits to fuel"-mechanic impacting the game too much, I found myself using the F-key a lot. I think the game would've been more interesting if the enemy shots were more avoidable but also more impactful (both health and fuel wise). Also, you start moving backwards if you rapidly tap left and right while thrusting.. probably not intentional
Yetman
19. Aug 2017 · 19:51 UTC
That was hard, the thruster is so slow. Otherwise, I had some fun shooting the enemies down. The art is ok (not my favorite but works well). The music is good too.
Natrium729
19. Aug 2017 · 21:42 UTC
I found the mechanic of trading health for fuel interesting, but I never had to do that since I was nearly all the time at full health (I destroy all ships in one line in front of me, grab the health packs, turn 180° and destroy the line of ennemy behind me, and so on).

The inertia was a bit too hight according to me.
TheMonsterFromTheDeep
20. Aug 2017 · 01:48 UTC
The ship does not control very well at all. I found it basically impossible to actually steer, and I could never really pick up a health pack. It's also somewhat hard to aim, even if you're just perfectly still - you rotate too quickly to actually line up with enemy ships.

I think mouse for aiming might be better.

I like the basic idea for the game, but it just so happens that I can't actually pick up health packs, so the fuel for health mechanic doesn't actually matter.

Maybe I'm just bad at arcade-type games.
HuvaaKoodia
20. Aug 2017 · 11:11 UTC
I like the *damage into fuel* gimmick on paper, but in reality it turns out to work too effectively! There are so many enemies after a while that the only thing I needed to care about was health. Fuel was topped off constantly.

I think the problem with the ship thrusters is that there is no effect for them. Spawning some particles would help to see that the thrusters are actually doing something. They could also be more powerful in order to feel less sluggish.

There is some strange camera jitter when being hit. Is it supposed to be camera shake? On my computer at least it doesn't look very good.

Play testing and polish is what you need.
Brickkid512
22. Aug 2017 · 03:38 UTC
This is a very good start for a game. My main problem with the game though is that the enemies tend to clump together and get to you very fast making it very hard to avoid them. Good job though