The Crunch by ProAFKboy
In the year 1856 A.C. (After Core) apocalypse is imminent as the long feared big crunch is starting, luckily, in the year 0, humanity was able to extract the energy in a black hole to build The Core: A giant construction that is able to expand the universe by shooting out a massive wave of energy, the only problem is that, now that it's needed, it's also out of fuel (how convenient) your goal is to bring aboard the remaining life in the universe to gather enough oil to power The Core. Good Luck.
Mechanics:
Controls: Left and right key to turn; Space bar to release from orbit, allowing you to fling yourself to another planet;
Fuel: You can release collected crew members on green planets to gather oil, when the oil is collected, it goes directly to your fuel tank. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FUEL, turning uses a lot of it and when you're out, you can only hope that you enter an orbit.
Crew: You can add lifeforms that are found on planets to your crew. Click the plus symbol in the top right corner to add lifeforms to your spaceship and the minus symbol to release them onto a planet to gather that precious oil.
The Core: In the middle of the universe there is the core, when orbiting around it, you have the option to deposit fuel, when you have deposited a certain amount of fuel, the core will activate and re-expand the universe (this means you win). The core has a self-defense mechanism that destroys anything but authorised spaceships (against meteors and stuff) this means that any planet that touches it gets destroyed.
The Crunch: While flying around, the universe is shrinking around you, anything that goes beyond it get's destroyed. Your goal is to stop this from happening. (touching it means instant death)
Planets: There are random planets scatterd around the universe, these planets can contain lifeforms to help you gather the oil on green planets. Planet's will get absolutely annihaliated when they come in contact with the border or the core
Team: - Rik ProAFKBoy Fabri (Programmer/Music) - Max MutsKun Mouling (Artist/Thinker of Ideas/Motivator of the Programmer/Writer of the Description/Tired)
Special Thanks: - Annemie Rik's Mom Bossaerts (Provider of Nutrition) - Youtube Autoplay (Music While Working for Distraction)
Tools Used: - Programming: C++ & Allegro - Art: Piskel ( https://www.piskelapp.com/ )
Have Fun and good Luck.
Changelog:
V1.0 - Initial Release
V1.1: - Changed music volume because players didn't like it and neither did I OwO
| Windows | https://1kawaiitomato.itch.io/ld42-the-crunch |
| Source code | https://github.com/1KawaiiTomato/LD42 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/the-crunch |
Ratings
| Overall | 919th | 3.088⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 886th | 2.925⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 458th | 3.313⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 691th | 3.381⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 798th | 3.112⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 542th | 2.985⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 664th | 2.456⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 642th | 3.073⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 78🗳️ | 63🗨️ |
Oh and I believe the minimap can still be improved by showing the universe boundary.
The fuel consumption and scarcity felt unbalanced to me; I was always running out of fuel even if only had to do small course corrections. I didn't really hit a situation where spending the time to drop crew members on a planet helped me in the long run - it would take too long even if I had a decent number of crew members there. I also never had the opportunity to worry about the space in my ship. If the fuel was balanced better (perhaps if turning cost less fuel, to make discovery more fun and less frustrating) this could be a really great game.
It would be neat if the HUD could distinguish planets with lifeforms and oil from those without - I sometimes felt like I would waste time investigating a planet which turned out to be unhelpful. Also, once I saw a planet on the HUD that was outside of the crunch; that was a surprise!
Great work on this! Despite being unbalanced I still enjoyed it. I often felt like I was rescuing people from annihilation as I took them off planets just about to be crunched, which was neat. With some more balancing it could be spectacular!
Also (I think that) the planet you saw outside of the crunch is the point where all planets go if they die... I asked Rik if this couldn't be avoided but he said it was most time effective, before the release, the point was located within the crunch so you would at times fly into a random invisible planet xD.
But anyway, i'm happy you liked it!
After seeing it, it gets better, you start paying attention to your fuel and such, and it's cool !
However, at one time, the music went ULTRA LOUD for a few seconds, it was weird !
All in all, cool concept, and well done for such a short time period!
@johannimations I hope you do!
@cromo yeah, with the shortage of time we really didn't have time to test playability all that much (seeing as the game is randomly generated), we're lucky that players are able to finish the game as it is! but still thank you very much!
Anyway it's a cool concept, nice work!
Some very little issues : at the beginning, I was wondering about how to get on the orbit of a planet, because I was afraid of crashing on it ^^ may be it would be easier if the trigger zone was a little bit bigger !
Also it would have been great to see the shrinking zone on the map !
Anyway, great job guys :D
Aiming your ship when you fling off planets can be kinda hard as you're mostly going off the tiny minimap. If you do any more work, maybe add the ability to zoom in and out so you can judge distances that aren't too far just in the main screen.
Awesome work folks!
Yes we know that the fuel consumption is pretty high but my friend tried to shift some variables around and it became almost too easy, planets would spawn with lots of fuel and there would just be no challenge.
But anyway, glad you liked it!
Keep up the good work fella's!
The game is really hard, I only veeery barely won on my 3'rd try, and it was SUPER FUN. I was originally a bit skeptic of the game when I the LD page, but oh my was I wrong. 5/5, keep it up guys!!
Anyway, thank you for playing!
I have rated your game, but all of my feedback was captured in the stream. It was close to the end.
You can hear my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299357576?t=09h26m15s