First Contact 3000 by 23edsa

[raw]
made by 23edsa for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

An idle incremental game about assembling an efficient Deep Space Signal facility to establish a contact with the outer space civilization

Controls: Drag and drop buildings from the bottom panel to the field to build them Drag a building off the screen or on top of another building to remove it and refund the costs

Ratings

Overall 247th 3.827⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Fun 202th 3.72⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 475th 3.316⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Theme 304th 3.95⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 542th 3.51⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Audio 299th 3.592⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Humor 548th 2.417⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Mood 484th 3.534⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Given 58🗳️ 78🗨️

Feedback

FoxEcho
Apr 21st · 09:50 UTC
An incremental game where you need to buy and sell to shift resources around in order to make progress. That feels quite innovative. Having to arrange the positions of the buildings is also interesting. The feedback is clear too. I liked it!
Hexela
Apr 21st · 14:25 UTC
When i realised that you can sell things, tha game instantly became much more interesting. Feels good.
Ungew0llt
Apr 21st · 16:50 UTC
i was a bit sceptical at first because i normaly dont play these kind of games a lot, but after a while i really got into it. The music supports the chilled mood and having this running while watching a show on the side was a nice entertainment
Kureca
Apr 21st · 16:53 UTC
the buy and sell loop feels really fresh, spent quite a lot of time on this
carterjbx
Apr 21st · 16:55 UTC
I love how there are several different currencies that interact instead of just building up a score, it makes the game so interesting. once I had the screen full of buildings my framerate dropped a bit, but it was nothing gamebreaking.
Tori
Apr 21st · 16:57 UTC
Great entry, loved the style, the music, and i think you did some cool twist with the selling mecanic and using all those differents ressources. great work !
nobdspace
Apr 21st · 18:58 UTC
Nice game. At its core it’s basically a puzzle - you just need to figure out the right combination of blocks and build it across the map. Once you unlock the Money -> Energy -> Data -> Money loop, resources basically stop being an issue.
danlrk
Apr 21st · 19:43 UTC
Really satisfying gameplay loop with nice relaxing sounds and music too B) loved this!
jka
Apr 21st · 21:41 UTC
Nice relaxing game. Very polished, didn't run into any bugs, other than the buildings will overlap with the UI on the top if you place them in the top row. Looping music sometimes gets annoying after a bit, but not at all here. It's really nice and chill. :)
Evil Gaufre
Apr 21st · 22:07 UTC
I'm not a fan of gestion games, but this one have focused my atention for about a half of hour... very fun an very well executed :100:
LDJam user 424198
Apr 22nd · 00:33 UTC
An incremental game with calm music and cool sound design, i love it!!!


![Безымянныddvй.png](///raw/609/76/z/722eb.png)
thormoth
Apr 22nd · 02:08 UTC
Fun little game, took me a second to realise i had to drag the buildings to place them instead of clicking them 😅 But a satisfying and well balanced gameplay loop.
alextudor4273
Apr 22nd · 05:38 UTC
very cool, i do like that you have to balance your funds and swap different buildnings, keep up the good work!!
Gecko64
Apr 22nd · 05:53 UTC
Great game, had a lot of fun completing the game with all the different game interactions between buildings. Good job! :)

![Screenshot 2026-04-22 155252.png](///raw/08f/84/z/7239c.png)
ursagames
Apr 22nd · 06:01 UTC
Very satisfying idle game! The popping sound is rather pleasant as your buildings produce, starts to sound like popcorn going off. Having the screen full of buildings definitely feels good.
TermiGht
Apr 22nd · 06:07 UTC
It is an interesting idea. I loved the retro artstyle!
Saffwong
Apr 22nd · 09:55 UTC
Really liked the vibes of this game, very relaxing. Reminds me of older flash games. :D
Viktor Kovachev
Apr 22nd · 09:58 UTC
It was quite interesting. I liked the retro style and the idea that buildings next to each other boost each other. However, I faced a problem where I didn't know what to do when I bought the first and second buildings with all my money, and nothing else was generating income. It took me a while to click on the buildings to sell them, and the mechanics of dragging them outside the map didn't seem obvious to me. Nevertheless, it's a decent game with a well-developed theme.![Снимок экрана 2026-04-22 115459.png](///raw/285/86/z/723f2.png)
VerttiXPertti
Apr 22nd · 10:01 UTC
Great stuff. Shuffling in and out different buildings for different needs was fun. More strategy than many other idle games.
jk5000
Apr 22nd · 10:03 UTC
A simple and pretty fun little game. It could have used a bit more difficulty. But overall a well made jam game. Well done.
parkuhrmd
Apr 22nd · 17:13 UTC
Great game! I had a little trouble understanding which building affect which other buildings positively or negatively. maybe some form of visual indicator that shows that a building is being negatively affected by its neighbour would be helpful. Also, a graph showing if a resource is depleting or increasing over time might help figure out what to build next. Otherwise, this was engaging and kept you interested the whole way through! Also the sounds were very satisfying!
🎤 23edsa
Apr 22nd · 18:07 UTC
@parkuhrmd great suggestion. Considering all the feedback and overall interest, I think eventually we should make a full game and use all of this great advices
dan-whiffing
Apr 22nd · 19:22 UTC
I always love a game where I get full resell value so I can reconfigure things. Adjacency bonuses are fun, though the UI for explaining and showing active bonuses could use some work so players can tell more easily from a glance what bonuses each building is getting, and what productivity/consumption actually mean. Music and sounds are simple but effective, didn't get tired of the music for my 10 mins of gameplay. Progression is paced well, finished before I got bored. Nice work!
Abiral
Apr 22nd · 20:19 UTC
great game, and the music and sound effects was catching.. i feel it can be a great idle game.
PokeyDem
Apr 22nd · 23:04 UTC
Nice game! The graphics style reminds me of Factorio a bit. Core mechanic with the scaling is pretty cool and hooked me for some time. Also, I think it would be a nice improvement to display how many resources are generated/consumed per second
Batisdark
Apr 22nd · 23:12 UTC
Really calming experience - music and sound effects added quite a lot to that for me! A bit stretched out in terms of goals, I think, but figuring out optimal positions was part of the fun anyway, so maybe its ok.

You can hard lock yourself at the begining with how much money you have vs desire to make progress faster (aka not enough for broker!). So there is something to watch out for!

I would wish negatives and positives would somehow be displayed more clearly on buildings - it was a bit hectic to check each building one by one... but that is something maybe could be improved on later if time and desire to do so allows :)
stuckne1
Apr 22nd · 23:16 UTC
Alright, I beat it! Pretty cool, one thing you could do is add a time for how long it took to make first contact.

I had to restart after I realized you would get hard locked.

I thought the adjacent effects was interesting.
🎤 23edsa
Apr 22nd · 23:39 UTC
@batisdark @stuckne1 You can refund any building if you drag it off screen or on top of other building. Thanks!
Batisdark
Apr 23rd · 00:55 UTC
Ahhhh! I didn't realize that! actually neat that you can!
nyxkn
Apr 23rd · 09:11 UTC
Pretty cute game! Very simple but as usual these games can be rather addicting. Overall idea and execution was neat, and gameplay flows well. Main complaint would be the UI looks unpolished (for a game where ui is used a lot!). The actual in-game art looks good, so with some ui polish it would look and feel pretty great overall!
Jiamu Zhao
Apr 23rd · 12:32 UTC
I love your sound effects! It's a blast to play.
LDJam user 425464
Apr 23rd · 13:25 UTC
What a fun experience. UI could ofc use some polish, it was little tiring to check how the buildings interact with each other so even just color coding positive and negative effects could help but besides that i enjoyed the experience alot. Nice clean design and excellent balance.
rynti
Apr 23rd · 17:00 UTC
Enjoyed this til the end =) thanks for making it, the music also gives a very nice mood, and I loved figuring out good layouts to get the best bonuses.
LDJam user 246128
Apr 25th · 21:07 UTC
Very nice core loop & stylish implementation! Edge rows of buildings though overlap with interface, so some z-index magic is required (I had to avoid top row to be able to read interface).

Was really fun to jiggle buildings and balance numbers, flipping bonuses etc.

Great work!
WormKingBoo
Apr 26th · 02:50 UTC
Very relaxing and satisfying to play! The graphics work well and I enjoyed the music. The gameplay was simple but fun and I was able to make it to the end of the game. Nice work!
![Screenshot 2026-04-25 214819.png](///raw/57a/56/z/72bba.png)
aniretti
Apr 29th · 12:21 UTC
cool idle game! at first i was confused, because i have 0 money, but then i read comments, that you can sell buildings and so i can continue to play!
Surfa
May 02nd · 16:44 UTC
Was a good game. These idle games are not my cup of tea but I see that this was well made and had a good progression path. I would have liked a bit more from the UI elements but I understand the time constraints in a game jam. Overall good effort.