Compactory by Nate954
Factory planning in a compact space! You must route all packages to the correct exits by designing conveyor paths.
Boxes must keep moving! If a box's entry point gets too backed up, you will lose!
Space is limited! You'll have to be clever if you want to have a fully functional factory!
Controls:
- Q: select basic conveyor belts (moves boxes in the indicated direction)
- W: select splitter conveyor belts (moves boxes in one of 2 directions)
E: select bouncer conveyor belts (bounces boxes over one space)
Left Click: place selected conveyor
Right Click: delete conveyor at mouse
Space: pause game (great for planning, you can still modify your factory while paused)
- Z: quick restart
Some Notes:
To create conveyors, click and hold on the grid space you want it, then drag in the direction it should point. It takes a little getting used to, but once you master it you can quickly create complex conveyor lines.
Deleting conveyors actually just marks them for deletion. Marked conveyors will be removed once there are no boxes on them.
Box receptacles have a powerful suction! A box of the correct color will be swept up by a receptacle if it passes by.
Boxes take time to be processed! You can't funnel too many boxes into the same receptacle, you'll have to split up the load to keep things flowing.
The game is a little rough around the edges because I wasn't able to start until halfway through compo, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!
Changes Since Submission:
- Fixed mouse input not working after the game is resized
- Winning allows factory to run forever
- Splitters are a little more useful
- Small visual tweak to help identify reason of loss
| Windows | https://nate954.itch.io/compactory |
| Source code | https://github.com/Nate954/Compactory |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/compactory |
Ratings
| Overall | 64th | 3.92⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 18th | 4.12⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 34th | 4.06⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 14th | 4.385⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 184th | 3.692⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
After about 15 to 20 runs I finally won. Towards the end, I was pretty much just hoping that the new routes work with the belts I built so far. Also, my factory wasn't *technically* fully functional, because I had to manually split a belt once in a while.
Aaand, I just found out about the possibility to pause the game. That made things a bit easier :). It would be nice to have all the controls on the left side of the screen. I got another very nice factory which works cleanly and rigidly. But why, oh why does it pause when it says that my factory is functional! I want to see my baby move! I want my number of boxes go up indefinitely! What did I make the factory for if not to make a number go big?!
I didn't really find a good use for splitters - they just mess things up. You didn't use them in your example either.
Also, kudos for small download size. That's why I don't even care about the lack of sounds.
Gameplay-wise, I'd really appreciate an "erase" button... which I now realize you do have! (In-game instructions would be great)
Still, it's really fun to play, and clever as an idea. The gamplay is very intuitive (as in you can know *almost* all the controls without requiring to read about them), and it runs very smoothly. Great job!
Seems pretty highly dependent on where the random points spawn... first run they were in really inconvenient spots, game two (screenshot attached) they were practically right next to each other.
Pretty good level of polish for compo game, would have liked to see sfx and maybe more usability/feedback stuff but overall strong. This would be awesome to see at larger scale with more tile types.
Really great work with the game design! Although I found myself not using the splitters, they get hard to predict and break most things if you've got a working belt.