Ballistic Skylines by invader
Construct futuristic cities in this cross-genre city-building artillery game!
You control an advanced gun that can shoot cryo-dust capsules for building construction. Use it to build your cyberpunk city.
The gun is capable to teleport to other places with teleport capsule (it costs 5 ore to do so - use Up and Down to select the capsule type).
The city is periodically got hit by meteors, that create rubbish and destroy buildings (they can hit the gun as well, leaving you without some of your ore!). You can't build a new building on rubish! Use destroy capsule to get rid of those.
You start the game with a single Scoop that collects ore from meteors when they hit it. You can build additional scoops, but it costs 50 ore and require a lot of free space.



Post-Jam version contains little-bit tuned gameplay, updated visuals, and atmospheric effects to provide more of cyberpunk mood.
Controls:
Left-Right Arrows - aim the gun
Up-Down Arrows - change type of capsule to shoot
Hold Space to charge and release it to shoot
Shift - shoot automatically with the force of the last charge (to place the shell in the same place as before)
< > - move camera
Tools: JavaScript, Vim, Aseprite
| HTML5 (web) | https://ingwar.itch.io/ballistic-skylines |
| HTML5 (web) | https://ingwar.itch.io/ballistic-skylines-plus |
| Source code | https://github.com/invider/ballistic-skylines |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/ballistic-skylines |
Ratings
| Overall | 939th | 3.063⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1094th | 2.583⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 701th | 3.217⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 406th | 3.826⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 609th | 3.438⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 656th | 2.729⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 861th | 2.4⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 782th | 3.045⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
The only nitpick I have is that it almost felt that I should not shoot my buildings to the sky - rather just shoot them as low as possible. I guess if there had been some terrain or obstacles blocking the way I would have thought otherwise.
But overall, nice game with clear thought put into the idea!
But all in all its a cool idea. What did you use? Plain Javascript?
but I don't understand benefit buildings, I think it's only for high score.(or might be i didn't read proper instructions)
if big buildings gives some more ore or some other functionality than it's good(This is just suggestion :smile: )
It would be nice to have a map or a type of overview where you can see you skyline grow.
But the pixel art is clean and the mechanics are good! (the lack of money can make things quite difficult tho)
Nice job thus said. (;
I found the game to be kindof slow-paced. Meteors would hit, at first pretty frequently, but then it seemed to taper off, and the game got really slow at that point. Collecting more resources was (literally) hit or miss, and mostly miss. I managed to build a couple of buildings, and once I managed to clear debris with a destroy capsule, but it sure wasn't easy to get on target. I wasn't sure what to do with the other types of shot. What is Teleport for?
I think if the shots moved more quickly, it would help the pacing and make the game more fun. Also, if the shot power level remained what it was for the previous shot, it would be easier to correct and get on target with fewer wasted shots.
Lastly, when space ships flew by, I thought at first that I was supposed to shoot them, but they don't seem to have any collision actions, so I guess not. Oh well, that could have made the game more interesting, if there were friend and foes flying above, and maybe the friendlies dropped supplies to you or helped in some other way, and the enemies would steal from you or do damage unless you shot them down...
Sure, the resources are collected randomly - that is the whole point of a weird situation when meteors are destroying your city and creating rubbish, but at the same time when hitting the Scoop providing you with resources. You can get more resources by placing additional Scoops.
Teleport is to teleport your gun to a different location.
You can use Shift instead of Space to shoot with previous charge, so you actually could place many shots in one place (e.g. build a single building).
As for the flying cars, it is just a visual prop like cars in SimCity - the traffic just reflects the population your city has.
I used Shift a lot, it makes things waaaay easier, really nice touch by adding this command in the game!
Lastly, I liked the visual feedbacks the players receives as the city starts growing, like more cars flying over. It's subtle, but adds up to the atmosphere.
Congratulations on the entry, you have managed to create a fun game, with a good scope and a nice level of polish!
Anyway, the game is cool, good work :v:
It's kind of relaxing to play it; Sort of like a builder game, but with the obvious set backs to keep it interesting.
Imagine my horror when I launched my first scoop and shot it too far -- right off the screen. :grin:
Building vertically isn’t very exciting. How about pressing space when the capsule is in mid air to deploy the construction element which then falls down gripped by gravity? The elements could also attach to other elements allowing for horizontal construction.
The last interactivity issue is running out of ore. The only way to get more, via scoops, is completely luck based. I would prefer the destroy capsule to collect ore when removing rubbish. It would either need to be free to use, resulting in spam, or the penalty for running out of ore increased from nothing to utter destruction. Alternatively a little bit of ore could be added to the bank every 10 odd seconds or so...
The promo screenshot with a vast cyberpunk’ish city and smog evokes nice retro Blade Runner-ish feelies and looks much better than the actual visuals in motion. This is mostly caused by having to start building the city from scratch. The empty triangleoid (I found the zoom keys!) looks very plain and due to the lack of challenge and general sluggishness of the build progress I never got to the mega city stage. Shame (on me too)
Not a fan of the beeps and boops. Ambient music alone, or style relevant music, would have been a better fit.
City building and artillery is a near incompatible combination, inconvenient at least, so points there!
Overall: *3 (Average)*
Fun: *1.5 (Terrible)*
Innovation: *4 (Good)*
Theme: *4.5 (Great)*
Graphics: *3.5 (Above average)*
Audio: *1.5 (Terrible)*
Humor: *2 (Bad)*
Mood: *3 (Average)*