Solar Grid by svntax



Begin gameplay as a single solar module, starting with nothing to connect with or defend yourself with. From this helpless starting position, use the energy you harvest to branch outward, fortify your defenses, and survive as long as you can.
When you run out of solar modules, the game is over.
To defend your solar modules, you connect them to combat modules. These combat modules resupply their ammo at a fixed rate, and also require energy input from the solar modules.
Both building modules and shooting require energy, which is obtained by connections to solar modules, even indirect connections as part of a larger circuit. If you have a combat module that is not connected to anything, you cannot build a new module starting from there or shoot it even if you have energy elsewhere. You need access to that energy through a connection.
Controls: - Q: Switch to building solar modules - W: Switch to building combat modules - E: Switch to building connections - Left click: Selects a module, or unselects if you click on empty space. - Right click: Builds a new module or link based on your current choice of q/w/e. - Spacebar: Shoots if you have a combat module selected.
To build a new module, select an existing module with left click, then right click within the range circle to build a new one. To connect two existing modules together, left click a module, then right click another module within range.
| Youtube | https://svntax.itch.io/solar-grid |
| Youtube | https://svntax.itch.io/solar-grid |
| Youtube | https://svntax.itch.io/solar-grid |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/solar-grid |
Ratings
| Overall | 596th | 3.421⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 739th | 3.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 525th | 3.211⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 662th | 3.184⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 245th | 4.026⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 93th | 3.947⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 728th | 3.132⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 15🗨️ |
Beside of all that the graphics looking nice and the music and sounds are great. The kill-sound is a bit loud maybe. Overall I like the idea, it would need a bit more polishing / balancing at the end. Well done!
The guns seem totally useless seeing that you have to control them manually, and can only control one at a time, and you have to put your focus away from building solar nodes to control them.
On the other hand, the solar nodes are cheap to build, and building them allows you to build more of them more quickly.
So I ended up optimizing the fun out of the game. I could go on forever by just frantically building more solar nodes.

I liked it though, the music is nice and changing around some things could make it a really good time waster (also yay godot), but this is not it.
The controls weren't the friendliest, it felt confusing having to right click to build, also having to click the connection every time i wanted to build something.
Selecting what to build with Q W E seemed a bit awkward, and firing guns was a bit of a pain.
In my opinion, if you could make the buildings auto connect to each other, and being able to control all the turrets at once would make the game so much better. Also a little bit of a grace period before wave one so you can get your things settled would be a welcome improvement.
The graphics and music were nice :)
- I wasn't sure what the meter did, it seemed to have no effect.
- Ditto connectors.
- Took me a while to get comfortable with the controls.
- The art was really nice, especially the enemies, but generally the vibe.
- Music was cool. Wish the explosion sound didn't totally interrupt it though.
- Maybe with some balancing, auto-firing combat nodes, resource management... it would have been an awesome game.
I liked the audiovisuals, still, they were cool (though destruction sound effect volume could be toned down a notch).