Space Station Alpha by kjscott
Description
Keep yourself, it, and a decaying space station alive by buying yourself enough time to escape.
Controls
Desktop
Arrow keys to move/interact/repair/pickup:
- move (will automatically open and close doors)
- interact (walk into yellow object to get sensor readings, recharge power, call for help, launch lifeboat)
- pickup (walk into yellow tool to collect to fix help broken environment, used with scrap)
- pickup (walk into yellow objects to increase power, o2, scrap, ammo)
- repair (walk into objects to repair them)
X key to perform the following actions in priority order:
- shoot gun (bullets are rare, use sparingly)
- interact with environment (activates sensor readings, recharge power, call for help, launch lifeboat)
- repair first closest broken object (starting top left going to bottom right)
Z to discharge oxygen (this makes the area breathable and doesn't reduce O2 when you move so long as there are no holes)
Z+X to quit game
Mobile
Very similar, except Pico-8 creates a virtual handset for you.
O button represents the Z key in the format
Quick guide
Hints
- Go south immediately and grab everything
- There should be enough oxygen early on that you can pick it up anytime you see it
- There are often multiple routes to everywhere
- Ammo become more frequent about half way through the game, avoid to begin to with!
Objects
- All interactable objects are yellow
- Broken and non-interactable objects are light purple (didn't have time to distinguish the colours)
Icons
Tools
Sample Gameplay
Source code
Source code can be found at the same place where you can play the game, underneath the game by clicking on "code"
Source code can also be found in .p8 format (open with any text editor) on google drive as ld46_station.p8
Pico-8 owners
Full game can be downloaded by this picture
Post LD46 development
Planned updates
- Add screen to give additional information as to what everything is and does
- Change the colour of non-functional objects (probably to dark blue) to avoid confusion between items
- Give the player the spacesuit to begin with to stop needless early deaths
- Allow player to pickup one spare O2 tank which is automatically used when out of oxygen
Planned bug fixes
- Fix camera movement to scroll with player
- Fix UI in one place
- Fix movement bug where if you are maxed out with scrap and try to pick some up, next movement fails
Potential updates
- Have all major damage randomly generated at start of the game rather than being hard corded in
- Multiple difficulty levels (3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 station)
- Create each part of the station in a modular way to allow game to randomly put them together to create a more randomness and repeatability to the experience
Retrospective
I did a little retrospective of the game over at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/space-station-alpha/space-station-alpha-retrospective
WARNING
If you skipped down to here to find the link read the description!!. It will help a lot to understand how to play and what's going on. I didn't have time to implement an in-game description of everything.
Ratings
| Overall | 477th | 3.479⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 661th | 3.122⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 414th | 3.428⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 757th | 3.392⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 324th | 3.719⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 451th | 3.17⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 288th | 3.521⭐ | 96🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 199🗳️ | 216🗨️ |
Either way I really like the art and sound. I'm a space guy and a survival guy so I'd love to see this fleshed out more.
The space setting was executed very well and fits the theme good!
The aliens are dangerous and fun to avoid.
👍enjoyed it very much!
Really great work;
I did not manage to finish the game, it is hard. (but expected for a survival horror game)
Reminds me of Dead Space :)
Good Job !
As feedback, I think this game would benefit from a checkpoint system, i.e. save when you get the suit. It's short, but it's a bit frustrating to go back to the menu to try again.
* Like what IronyGames had said. A checkpoint system will help a lot.
* Some of the stuff I want to fix are behind objects and looks impossible to fix... If those help with o2, that's a problem.
* I thought the same blowtorch can be used continuously since it's an item that appears alongside the suit and such. Apparently not... or rather it feels it's not.
* At some point I thought I could sacrifice some energy and o2 in place of the lack of ammo. Definitely not the case.
* The moving UI was actually pretty jarring, in my honest opinion.
I want to see this as a full game honestly! Great job~!
@fiakaiera, I agree with you about the UI. The UI moving was partially tied in to how the camera would pan when moving from screen to screen. At the same time I was going to have the camera pan with the players movement I was going to make the UI stay static but it was not feasible to rework the code in the time I had left so I left it as is.
I felt like there was little point in energy towards the end of development, oooooh... Now that I think about it, I could have coded it so that if the alien gets to you but you still have energy that's drained first...! doh! That would have given it more use and a kinda last stand backup. Will definitely see about that post-ludum.
The things that need fixing behind objects should be fixable by pressing X, as it will scan all 8 tiles around the player and try to fix things nearby. However in the rush I may have missed the placement of some objects and rendered some tiles unfixable.
@ironygames, I had thought about a save state but that would have been too much to do with Pico-8 and the time I had given what I was doing. So you were looking for something to revert back to just skip the intro part it might be doable.
I want to like it but it feels so confusing! I love the look and also when I survive more than 3 rooms. But it seems you run out of bullets at once (one bullet at the start?), also repair parts are hard to come by.
Obviously balancing takes time, so for 48 hours this is really great!
@endurion I added the two objects you need to find to win the game into the guide to make it a bit easier to understand and figure out what to look for.
Super hard game but kept trying one more time to beat it, unfortunately i couldn't but will probably try in again.
The graphics really worked and sound effects really helped bring the space station alive. I would be interested to see how this game would progress.
Great job!
The concept idea is amazing! The game looks nice, and plays nicely, and the athmosphere really feels tense!
Well done!
Great achievement for a compo! Very well done!
I played for like 10 minutes first, and after 3 minutes of exploring and dying, I found the manual for the icons, which was much needed help indeed.
For the remaining 7 minutes, I repeatedly scrolled down when I saw an object whose icon I do not recognized.
After a while I started to get the logic behind the game, but some I still didn't get, which made me frustrated, and stopped playing it :\
After 2 minutes of started writing this, I started playing again. This is the moment I realised that I don't have to repair i.e. the radio or the terminal module, I just have to find the working ones. This changed my approach a lot.
With every death, I'm a bit better, and know the mechanics a bit more. But maybe I still not understand a few rules. Maybe I do have to repair a launch module. But how?
Hmm, now I released that in the menu there is an intruction panel, which I couldn't open at first play because I didn't know what key would open it. And after that my eye just ignored it. Now that I managed to open it, it's clearer that I have to find a beacon and then wait. So I will definitely try again with this info :laughing:
The atmosphere is great, when I first stepped to a room which was literally open to space, I got scared. Which is amazing, because the graphics is soo minimal, but it still got me convinced that I'm in outer space.
I like explore games, but maybe nowadays I'm too used to "hyper-feedback" games. Nowadays I give up much sooner, and learn slower in non-straightforward games.
But sure it is enjoyable. How I stepped into the game for the first 3-4 times, and how I step in now, is much different. Maybe after a while I will try again, and maybe even escape :smiley:
I think what causing the issue with my sessions is that it's a deep dive. I see so many thing I don't understand. Anyway nice entry, I've already written too much :)
Will check out again later for sure!
The experience was smooth and polished. Well done!
How you managed to get in very few pixels, also more colors for the different things would be nice. I'm looking to see this game later
Also, when I moved my person too fast the audio seemed to get garbled a bit, but maybe that's just my computer.
Nice job, it was fun.
Also a lot of the times I'm not sure why things happened... like why I am trying to pick up an ammo, and it got fire immediately, but not sure which direction.
A lot of items look confusing and I never understand why I needed it other than plug holes. Discharging oxygen is never useful since you can't ever plug the walls and doors stay open most of the time. Random spawning monsters makes the game even more complicated.
That being said, it's probably very well done and has lots of stuff. And I am liking it a lot.
If you can trigger the radio, having a small room where the O2 isn't used up as you move around can mean you don't suffocate to death at the end. It's utility is not helpful in most cases but sometimes it is.
I'm thinking I should update the icons some more to explain a few other bits of the game. Thank you for the feedback, gives me a place to look at updating things tomorrow.
1. Fixed bug of players dying really quickly (gave everyone the spacesuit to start off with)
1. Fixed bug of players being killed by unseen alien (prevented alien from coming through grill while player is on it - hopefully)
1. Fixed bug of players not having feedback of what things do (provided in-game description of icons in icon form... closest I could do within the games existing functionality)
1. Fixed bug of players not being able to move for one turn after trying to pick up scrap when already at max capacity
While this might not fix all of your individual issues I hope this might go some way to resolve some of them so you can get a little bit more out of the game and experience some of the later areas and survive to explore for longer.
Any additional feedback I'll see if I can incorporate into potential bug fixes.
But it shows that a lot of effort went into this and for that I applaud you :smile:
I couldn't get very far but if you are able to fix some of the things you weren't able to during the compo, this could be a very solid game.
Nice looking and sounding entry though. I hope other people can have more fun with it than I could
The game is pretty hard to understand at first, even with the instructions. As you play, however, you slowly learn and remember what each thing does, it gets a little bit easier every time.
I have one question about the gun - does it let you kill the enemies? I've shot one with all my bullets, but all it did was move it one space back.
All it all, it's a really fun game to play! I enjoyed it very much. ;)
A new version is slowly being worked on, it has an interactive tutorial level which you can explore and get a bit more first hand understanding of how everything works and eventually randomised 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 layouts you can choose from to play.
The post-jam version will make this a bit clearer (i hope) with a more extensive tutorial level and expanded description.
I think this game would be more playable with a smaller set of objects. It was hard for me to keep track of what's what. In any case, there is a lot going for this game, and the graphics and sound combine to create the right mood.
I don't think I could really enjoy getting into the gameplay. Which is a shame, because it seems like it should be right up my alley. The art and sound is great, in all its minimalistic glory. And I really liked the exploration aspect when you don't yet know where things are.
The whole description and iconography was thrown in to minimise the lack of time to have a proper tutorial through everything and try to keep within the rules of the competition.
Thank you for taking the time out to try th game and provide feedback, I am certainly working to try and address those issues.