Erebot by aevek

You play as an Erebot, a small utility robot sent to Mars to help finalize preparations for the first arrivals at the new human outpost near the Erebus crater. Unfortunately, your Erebot has sustained serious damage to its battery unit, and is now entirely dependent on solar power.

Remain in the sunlight and navigate the Martian surface and attempt to reach the repair building to restore power to your robot.
Gamepad and keyboard/mouse supported.
I'll post OSX and linux versions as soon as I can verify that it works ok on those platforms. If you're willing to test out a build for me, let me know how to get that to you. My twitter is @Aevek if you want to get in touch.
| Source code | https://github.com/jacobmcleman/Erebot/releases/tag/LD39 |
| Windows | https://aevek.itch.io/erebot |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/erebot |
Ratings
| Overall | 36th | 4⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 129th | 3.571⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 15th | 4.233⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 6th | 4.488⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 26th | 4.273⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 259th | 3.023⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 282th | 2.429⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 46th | 3.905⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 55🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
There are a few awkward bugs you probably know about. In one place, because the shadows seem to be cast by an object floating in the air. The result is that when the shadow hits the top of the robot, it isn't necessarily hitting the ground, so its not very intuitive when you are in shadow or not. You have to watch the solar panels, not the robot's wheels.
There is also an issue with buttons not resetting when you die. This means you can get stuck if you fail a puzzle (for me the bridges stayed down after I died, so I respawned stuck on the wrong side of their shadow!
I liked the puzzles and the feedback from going in the shadows was great. Great achievement for 48 hours, better than many steam games.
@frostdragonliz I'm pretty sure you can hit the button again to re-raise the bridge! I also agree with the shadow hitting the solar panel! It took me way too many tries to notice the solar panel was in shadow, where my robot wasn't! In retrospect, it should have been obvious the panels needed light and not the robot, but it's kinda hard to tell when the camera is so zoomed out.
Which brings me to my main complaint, the camera always felt way too zoomed out, or way too zoomed in. Sometimes it really interfered with the puzzle. Adding some type of manual zoom function would have avoiding the problem. Whenever a pop up occurred, it blocked the top 1/4th of the screen, which made it hard to see what was coming up, and I ended up having to wait for it to go away. Thankfully, there's only a few.
Other then the camera, I don't really have many complaints. The game is just a really solid package. I feel the game could be the start of something bigger.
-The player realizes what to do within 1 death, no tutorial needed.
-It did take me a bit to realize it was the solar panels that needed to be in the light, I thought it was a hitbox issue at first. Once I realized this, it just made it better because I've never seen a variation like that before so I really like that touch.
-Well thought out puzzles. You really explored different ideas on the mechanic and made me look forward to each one.
5 stars
Overall this was one of the best executed and most fun games I have played so far. Well done!
I enjoy in solving it.
However, as others say, sometime the camera position will go to some awkward place/scale and I need to suicide to reposition it. Actually that's cool I can have some way to resize my camera HAHA so it may not really need to be count as a problem.
Overall it's a great puzzle game!
I wish the camera were a little closer to the player character. It seems like I'm looking behind myself more than in front of myself.
Overall a nice gameplay mechanic and the hit detection seems precise for the most part but I had a few instances of not being sure why I died one time and lived another time - a closer camera would help in the narrower areas.
For me the desert rocks aesthetic really shines though so great job on the look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7tjZVPE7J8
Thanks for being part of the stream :)