The Void by mortus
The space is not infinite and we are literally running out of it! Evacuate everyone (and everything) you can before The Void gets you!
-= CONTROLS =- Left click to select spaceships, right click on people or cargo to pick up, on planets to unload. Hold left shift or left control while clicking to queue your orders.
-= OBJECTIVE =- Evacuate at least half of your population during every round. Later rounds become increasingly harder. Unlock upgrades by evacuating more stuff. Get highest score and post it in the comments!
-= NOTE =- Music and main menu icons were taken from free open sources.
| HTML5 (web) | https://mortus.itch.io/void |
| Windows | https://mortus.itch.io/void |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/the-void |
Ratings
| Overall | 50th | 4.074⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 116th | 3.794⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 40th | 4.044⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 26th | 4.368⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 99th | 4.309⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 93th | 3.875⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 538th | 2.696⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 37th | 4.125⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
Ah btw, the graphics is very very pretty!!
Overall it had a very nicely executed concept and it was a fun fast-paced strategy game. Good job!
Queuing commands was an essential feature once I had a lot going on, and I really appreciated that. I made it to Sector 10 and evacuated 100% of my population there. The game was a cool mix of intense time pressure and puzzling things out, so it kind of drained me and after 10 sectors I called it quits because I just didn't have another 10 in me!
Strat-wise I definitely focused on pop vs resources, since that was the immediate gameover threat. But maybe I should have built up my tech by being a bit more ruthless? I didn't get too many of the ship upgrades, though I did get the mine/factory ones, and that fed into me getting the ship ones. I did focus early on that +1 ship since that's kind of key, but it wasn't too much of a commit.
Very nice combo feeling of pressure vs planning, wrapped in an excellent and tasteful presentation. Well done, this is an entry you can be proud of!
I absolutely love the game. Usually, attempts at real time strategy games for LD fall flat for me, as the decisions get easy and it all is just eh, but this one was pretty good. But boy, would I kill for a pause. I understand that modern rts mechanics like control groups are out of scope, but you should replace those with pause. After around level 15, I was limited by how fast and accurately can I click at small objects (which I hate to do and suck at), not by my resources. It was simply frustrating to see 5 ships idle while I try and queue up as many people to rescue as I can for the one ship I have selected. And I never knew if I queued up to save the people on the planet or whether I missed by 2 pixels and didn't queue that up! It just became more fps than rts! Also, at the level start, I could not look at the whole map and carefully decide where is it optimal to build new ships and which people need evac asap. I knew the clock was ticking, fast. I just delivered the first resources I saw to the first factory I saw. It didn't feel like rts at all. I didn't optimize my resources.
I would enjoy this game about 5 times more if there was a pause possibility. Please, make it happen. I know it cannot be that hard.
This. Game. Needs. Pause. Everything. Else. Is. Perfect.
All in all, Well done !
This is fine, but in accordance with [the Ludum Dare rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules), **you must OPT-OUT of the respective categories, since it would be unfair for you to be rated based on work that you did not actually do during the jam.** You can still change this setting now.
Quoted from the actual submission page (which you should have read):
> **Opt-out of categories here if you and your team didn't make all your graphics, audio, or music during the event. Many participants are making original graphics, audio and music from scratch during the event. As a courtesy, we ask you to opt-out if you didn't do the same.** Also, some games are not meant to be Humourous or Moody, so you can choose to opt-out of these too.
For more info, see https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules
That aside, this game definitely has a lot of good potential! Though I must admit, I was pretty confused when I received this sector layout:

It definitely took some used to getting the hang of the game, but it was pretty fun after I understood how to work it! It's rather punishing at the beginning, especially since it drops you right into the heat of things with no time to formulate a plan of action. Once you start getting the upgrades things start to snowball pretty quickly and it gets much easier.
I actually think this would have done very well as a "campaign"-based sequence of missions instead of an endless wave-based survival game. That would allow you to ramp up the difficulty gradually as well as introduce new upgrades, and it would allow players the chance to retry a particular mission if they failed. Just my 2 cents though.