Scrapjunk Couriers by reBTF
Edit (7/8/17): Updated it to run through browser and stopped it from crashing at the end of the game.
Deliver good across space with the dodgiest spaceship around
You are the commander, or I guess more accurately the power distribution system, of the shoddiest, thrown together spaceship around. It is your duty to deliver your goods as fast as you can and in one piece.
Using your limited power you must juggle between powering your engines, creating ammo, building up your shield, repairing your ship and attacking incoming enemies who want to get their hands on your precious cargo.
how to make gif smaller plz
Drag power around to systems with left mouse button. Hold H to show the annotation of the systems. Press F to toggle fullscreen.
This was made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 39 - Running Out Of Power. I had to start a day late so I'm only entering it in the Jam.
There are a number of systems that go cut due to the short timeframe. I had planned a whole system of selling your goods to unlock and upgrade your ship, you could catch debris flying past with your net, you would have to keep goods frozen or locked up with power, open your door to dock with stations to deliver the cargo, etc.
My favourite part of the game is the system of creating ammo then launching it by powering and depowering the net and the way I planned to also have it collect debris.
I'm going to try to get an HTML5 version running but initial signs didn't look promising.
Thanks for taking an interest in my game.
| Windows | https://rebtf.itch.io/scrapjunk-courier |
| HTML5 (web) | https://rebtf.itch.io/scrapjunk-courier |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/scrapjunk-couriers |
Ratings
| Overall | 186th | 3.727⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 151th | 3.636⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 88th | 3.788⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 160th | 3.909⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 637th | 2.938⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
Sucks that you weren't able to finish all of the systems in time because a few of them are just there doing nothing but I'm willing to look past that.
My only real criticism is the fact that you basically have infinite time between combat encounters if you just turn off the engines. This does give some down time, but it also means I always have adequate time to repair, refill ammo, and put up shields between fights. Perhaps having some encroaching force you're running away from would've provided some tension even during downtime. Having an in game timer is a nice touch though, so optimization is at least encouraged, if not required.
Overall, this is a really great entry and I had a blast playing it. Excellent work!
It was a fun FTL-like, even if quite easy to beat: enemies were quickly destroyed and I basically never ran out of ammo. Of course, given some additional systems, balancing them all might be more difficult (and more rewarding).
Anyway, the basic mechanics _works_, and it was interesting to figure out how fast your ship can reach the goal. I might give it another go!
Nice graphics, nice execution, pity about not having any sound but worth playing regardless!
The only real problem the game had that I could criticize is that It didn't explain what half of the rooms did. Perhaps with some tooltip or even an icon on each room too signify what they did i would have been slightly less confused about it. :)
overall, great stuff! loved the bug-net thrower!
Thanks for the game! Nice job!
Excellent simplification of the FTL gameplay, I really loved playing it. While it's not clearly stated how rooms work, trial & error works well for figuring things out, so I would not consider it an issue.
The net weapon is a really weird weapon for a spaceship, but in terms of gameplay it's super clever, so nice job. I would have loved to see what you could come up with for the other rooms, but for an LD entry it's already interesting enough to play, and balanced enough to make it really fun.
So yeah, great mechanics and great balancing for a truly original take on the spaceship management genre. Too bad you could not submit it for the compo! I'm sure you'd have gotten super high rankings as a compo entry.
I'm a huge fan of Faster THan Light, and i'm getting it's vibes from this! Altough, it has it's differences, so it doesn't feel like a copy at all. Personally, i really enjoyed how the fire mechanism worked, having to wait for the net to actually pick up the ammo before firing... It was a simple mechanic, but it added a different feel to it all.
Keep it up! I got all the way through it, and my only complain is not having more. The lack of systems made the combat and the travel really easy to figure out and deal with, but i know it's just a time issue.
Btw, after ending the game, it crashed and threw an error window. When the time it took was displaying, i minimized the window to write this and then happened.
"FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of StepEvent0 for object obj_win: Moving to next room after the last room. at gml_Object_obj_win_Step_0"
I had already ended, so it didn't affect the feeling of the game... And we had similar issues with ours sometimes xD Hope it isn't anything too crazy and you can figure it out! I'd like to see a more fleshed out version of this.
Best of luck!
I guess the code itself is the built in GML but because of the short timeframe it's very hacky and not particularly versatile.