UPLiNK Defender by Logic Monkey

A fast-paced sci-fi defense shooter
Your mission: Activate signal nodes around the mothership to lock onto incoming enemies before they strike.
Defend the ship. Eliminate the invaders. Save the galaxy.

Keyboard Controls
- WASD / Arrow Keys - Move
- Mouse - Aim
- Scroll Wheel - Zoom In/Out
- Shift/Control - Zoom In/Out (if scroll wheel is unavailable)
- E - Upgrade (when docked at the mothership)
- TAB - Menu
Credits
- @wraithind - Programmer
- @logic-monkey - Artist
- @jarye - Graphic Designer
- @sharatin - Sound Designer
Some audio was compiled using sounds from Ocean Conservation Research and NOAA PMEL Acoustics Program.
Completed in less than 72 hours for Ludum Dare 59. The theme was Signal.
Copyright 2026 Studio Pen Dragon.
Ratings
| Overall | 392th | 3.607⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 325th | 3.518⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 734th | 2.768⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 688th | 3.089⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 289th | 4⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 454th | 3.185⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 575th | 2.357⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 540th | 3.442⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
I like the different unit types and it's cool to swarm around your mother ship.
Small improvements could be made on the UI side: for me (at least in the beginning) it wasn't clear when I could buy upgrades (a sound or so indicating that it's fully charged could help a lot already!), and also because there are many other blue lines in the UI it's not immediately clear what is e.g. the health of the mothership and what is static.
Good job!
Gave it like six more tries and I can't beat the boss.
I had the same Problem with that I could not win (maybe im just bad ?)
But over all nice entry to the Jam ^^
1 run - couldn't figure out that E only works on top of the station
2 run - managed to play for a few minuts, but then "signal lost" (I was unsure what was the reason - my hp? base hp?)
3 run - only noticed the beacons thing, but I wasn't sure what it does, so I spent too much time flying around it and lost due to the inefficient play
4 run - I tried my best and it was alright, but then I died again - not sure what was it again, as base HP looked like it's near full
My best score was around 6 or 7 minutes (I didn't have time to pay close attention as my every death was very sudden)
I enjoyed the idea that you can upgrade the base and it's probably more powerful due to the easier multi-shot access. The beacons... I am still not sure what they do. I thought they would damage the enemies on their own, but they seem to allow the station to attack further targets? That's useful, but does it help if your base is already surrounded? It would help if there were directional waves, but I think the enemies go at you at random, so I was not feeling the decision making while activating the beacons. I did it just because I was passing by anyway, so "maybe it could help", but honestly that probably led to my demise as you can only do this much stuff at the same time - my vessel was probably destroyed in the process.
I re-launched the game and noticed that the bottom-left corner mentions the beacons. I am still not sure what "beacon draining time means". Also, I don't know what's the ace repair drone :D
Maybe making the player less vulnerable and moving the focus to the base survival could be the key here. Managing 2 HP bars is a bit overwhelming without a clear UI. For instance, I would like some HP around the vessel, so I can always see it without staring down. Or even better - around the pointer as it's where we're usually looking at in this game.
I might do a couple more runs as this game is otherwise well made. It's fascinating that survivors and its interpretations are one of the good recipes to make a good game loop in the limited time! And I don't think I saw this exact interpretation before (I mean the base + player as upgradable units).
A small onboarding improvement could be to invite the player to move in a direction using an alert indicator on the edge of the screen.
Good job! Nice game!
I played it a few times to get the hand of it. The upgrade menu was in the instructions but it only appearing once you have full XP so that was a bit confusing at first. Good job!
I liked it. I died a couple of times without realizing I could zoom the camera out, but it was still interesting to replay. Thanks!
Thank you all for taking the time to play our little game! Sorry it took so long to reply, lifes been hectic since the Jam.
I realize things were definitely dialed a little bit on the hard side, which I was worried about, but we ran out of time to dial in the difficulty to do some catastrophic things near the end, which is how these always seem to go. I assure you the game can be beaten, though that's easy to say seeing as I'm the one who programmed it, but our artist, who hadn't really played it seriously til the last hour, was able to beat it.
I realize there's quite a few issues, mostly in knowing how the upgrades and Exp works, and for that I apologize. You can only access the upgrades menu by being near the center of the mothership and pressing E, and only when the Exp bar is full. I realize this desperately needed an on screen prompt, but it was an item on my do to list that unfortunately got buried.
I also should have started the game zoomed out, that probably would have alleviated some frustrations.
Not sure on the audio bugs. I've encountered them once or twice after the fact, but only in the web browser. I'll try to include an executable later that'll hopefully alleviate this.
Thank you all for the feedback! The point to these is to learn and improve, and I believe that we have done that.
I wasn't able to finish it but it may be because I wasn't efficient enough with how I managed everything, it's really fun tho!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah my artists did awesome on this one I feel, really happy with the team I worked with. Admittedly the game is pretty dang hard, blame that on lack of time to play test unfortunately. There also might be an issue with the boss killing you when it's not supposed to, but without feedback on things being hit (Again, my bad) it's sort of hard to tell. Regardless, it can be beaten, I know that. Thanks for the feedback!