Cataracta's eco-friendly adventure by Ponzis
Hey guys, we're Mana-tee and this is our first Jam. Ponzis is doing most of our code development work with help from Buzzbyte and Lihpten. OliviaMay did all the backgrounds and most of the sprite work with help from Buzzbyte and Lihpten. McCheeseBob did the music/audio.
Cataracta is a watering robot and must keep their plant alive after the spaceship ran into an asteroid. As the only remaining piece of life it is very important to keep the plant alive. Click to move around and pick up items. Use the spacebar to drop items. If you have the non-web version, press esc to close the game.
A fully functional version 2.0 is in the works for post-jam.
Changelog
- 1.0 Original version
- 1.01 Allow users to escape the program with the ESC key
- 1.02 Enabled camera player tracking. (Submitted to Jam)
- 1.03 Fixed item persistence bug between scenes.
- Fixed crashing from null pointer exception in last room lever
Ratings
| Overall | 2411th | 2.757⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2492th | 2.257⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 2101th | 2.797⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2080th | 3.153⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1946th | 2.987⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1157th | 3.111⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1925th | 2.076⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1988th | 2.892⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 70🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
too bad i can't take the flower with me..
I updated the game build to fix that issue.
Congrats on successfully completing your first Jam!
Love the concept of a robot taking care of a flower on a spaceship though :smile:
I don't really know what to do in the game, at all... I just walked around aimlessly, carrying and dropping the flower when I felt like it. Since I never quite figured out what to do, WAIT. I just read the comment from @cataclysmicknight saying that you can walk to the right! One sec...
Ok no I still have no clue what to do. I walked through a few rooms, found a big flower, and then went back to the start somehow. Since you didn't have time to add explanations in the game you could add clear instructions here on Ludum Dare so that we have a hint of what to do.
Anyway, the art is simple, but nice, I especially like the animation on the little player robot! The movement works well, and the music, while only playing shortly after entering a new room, is fresh and fits the game, I like it a lot.
However, there are a few simple things you could have done to have raised the quality of this game significantly (with only a small amount of extra time). Since this is your first game, and you seem very keen on joining again in october I'll give you some tips for if you would do a similar game next time!
* The player sprite should save it's last direction, so that it doesn't flip every time you stop if you moved to the left.
* Sprite sorting can be difficult, but in a game like this, sort sprites dynamically through their position.y value. Higher y values should give a lower (I think) sorting order, to make them go further back. Add an offset to the y position to make this more configurable, since you should sort by the "feet" of a sprite, not the pivot.
* There is a Pixel Perfect Camera package from Unity that fit games like these really well (we used it for our game) so that the pixels scale up perfectly. This, combined with turning AA off would fix the lines that sometimes appear between your background sprites.
* Make everything you can as clear as possible. There is no real way of knowing that going right leads to a new room. The elevator door doesn't open. Dropping an item keeps it in the exact same location, so you only notice that it is dropped after you move. These things should be made obvious with animations, sound and such.
* The transitions are very jerky, save the camera position relative to the player upon starting the transition, and then place it at the same relative position upon ending the transition.
* The default blue Unity background is ugly, if it was the same blue as the window, it would have looked WAY better (and reinforced that it is space)
And remember, stupid people like me will play your game with no background whatsoever in what the game is (except for what you tell me). Try to reserve some time for at least writing some text on the game page, or if possible, make a tutorial/text in the game to tell the player what is needed to know.
I have no doubt that your next game will be much better (my first one was absolute trash...) so keep it up! Remember that small games made well are often better jam games than big unfinished messes. You were also 5 people, and with some more experience next time, you should not need "ran out of time" as an excuse. Prioritise, focus, and most importantly cut unneeded features. I'll start following you guys just because I want to see what you do next time, don't let me down!
Also, feel free to @ me here with what I'm supposed to do, so that I can give it another shot!