Armistice by frenchie
Captain, your mandatory assistance is requested to quash the rebels. Build your ship and own the skies. Command will provide you with whatever parts it deems necessary to complete the mission. You'll start with nothing and assemble yourself. All parts are expendable but the cockpit. You've been warned.
How to beat the first puzzle: !> Put the thruster above the cockpit so that your cockpit doesn't get destroyed
Controls:
Build mode:
(Compo edition): Select your part from the right. Click place and drag it to the desired spot (or click the spot directly if it's empty). Click an occupied spot and then use the remove or rotate buttons at the top left as desired. Once your ship has a cockpit, click to combat to proceed to the battle!
(Post-Compo edition): Select your part from the right. Left click an open slot to place it. Left click an occupied slot to rotate the part, or right click to remove it. Once your ship has a cockpit, click to combat to proceed to the battle!
Combat mode: - WASD: strafe - QE: rotate - Space: attack
Tips: - This game is half physics sandbox, half puzzle, and half arcade. Different levels exercise different halves and require different approaches. - Every thruster only fires in one direction. Plan out your thrusters relative to the center of gravity for best control. For example: putting your forward thrusters along the center of mass will allow you to move forward without rotating. - The only thrusters that can rotate are those that are facing sideways. Put these far from the center of mass for maximum effectiveness - More parts means more mass. More mass means more thrusters required for the same acceleration! - Don't be afraid to press the "give up" button! Sometimes all you need is a little tweak :wink: - You got this! :smiley:
Post Compo Changelog: * Simplified ship builder - removed buttons, drag/drop and use left/right click instead * Added particles for projectile hit effect * Partially fixed UI scaling * (Post-Compo Easy Mode build only) Modified the thrusters so that they can fire in any direction, giving much greater control over the ship's movement and greatly reducing the difficulty of the game's puzzles. Play this mode if you can't beat the normal mode!
Ratings
| Overall | 27th | 4.026⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 20th | 4⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 70th | 3.868⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 208th | 3.513⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 87th | 3.882⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 151th | 2.941⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 224th | 3.212⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 36🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
The concept is awesome. Each level is just freeform enough that it feels like there are many solutions. I laughed out loud at the enemy that was using my original strategy (guns blazing, spinning in place).
Great job!
Answer: build the ship backwards. Engine on top, cockpit behind it. Not even touching each other visually. But this configuration for some reason blows up the other cockpit and you go to level 2.
So after that initial frustration, this game is GREAT! Physics puzzles and space combat are my favorite things, you should check my game out too. Also physics and spaceships! Not so much combat though.
The steering is not obvious at all. The instructions say Q and E rotate, but they don't seem to do anything? I think the strafe keys don't try to smartly figure out which thrusters to fire, they just fire the thrusters that are pointed a certain direction? I wound up with most of my ships being controlled backwards. But it kind of didn't matter, just flailing around worked well enough on most levels.
I particularly liked the level with only two thrusters and one narrow opening on the other side of the enemy ship. That's a good puzzle, more like that would be nice. Just more, I would keep playing this one!
edit: i'm going for the source code then
edit:after 20 minutes of trying i blasted the enemy cockpit!
edt:fiished
this was a blast
@tohubohu Glad you were able to get past the first level! I didn't realize how confusing it could be until I started getting this feedback!
@ogre Nice job figuring out the puzzle! For rotation, you'll need to make sure you have thrusters that are pointed sideways and are not aligned with the center of mass. There's a decent amount of "real" physics here, for better or for worse! Thanks for the detailed feedback! I'll be sure to check out your game!
@Anonymous - I'm guessing you got stuck on the first level. You lose when your cockpit is destroyed, so make sure you put the thruster in front!
One minor nitpick is that it would have been nice to have a minimap or some way of knowing which way the enemy ship is when they end up offscreen and you have to maneuver your 2 booster ship towards them.
Overall great entry!
Couldn't get past the level with 2 enemies because of the mentioned problem, but then again I'm probably doing something wrong. Will definitely come back to this to try again.
Edit: Came back and finished it xD
Think that other commentators already write all about your game, so I am here just to say that you do amazing job for 48 hours
**Congrats on beating it!** I made the game a little harder than intended, and I'm impressed by the tenacity of the LD crowd to bust through my poor design and come out on top :fire:
For all future souls who feel lost, I've now included a Windows build with an "easy mode" which takes a lot of the challenge of effective thruster placement out of the game :angel: Good luck!