NN7 Guardian by Erlioniel
This is a another small cosmic game for Ludum Dare #51 done in 72 hours by three people: Vladimir Kryukov, Roman Danylenko and Oleksii Zinchenko aka stonefromthesky.

Controls & Tips
- SPACE to Prepare for Jump (recall all ships) and Jump
- [1] or [2] to purchase Mining and Fighter ships (working during jumps)
- Jump into new system to run from Enemies
- Mine resources to build more ships and Jump
We want to thank everyone who helped us with this game
Also we need to thank these guys for the awesome tools:
- FMOD
- Font Questgiver by JosephKnight.com
- Signals lib by PixeyeHQ
And we need to thank YOU for playing!
Hope you like this small game. We will be happy to hear your opinion, so please share it with us!

You can follow our next activities in social medias:
- https://twitter.com/erlioniel
- https://twitter.com/roman_danylenko
- https://iamstonefromthesky.bandcamp.com/
| Link | https://roman-danylenko.itch.io/nn7 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/nn7-guardian |
Ratings
| Overall | 48th | 4.191⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 224th | 3.796⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 247th | 3.725⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 160th | 4.134⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 38th | 4.563⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 66th | 4.119⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 806th | 2.409⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 67th | 4.196⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 84🗳️ | 119🗨️ |
Interesting take, but not sure I understand the objective? Is there one, other than just survive? Jumped through a few systems but once I started losing fighters I just got into a death spiral where I couldn't produce enough fighters to actually survive a fight with incoming fighters, and so I would just have stuff picked off every jump.
Really nice art, gives me a homeworld vibe.
Regarding dead cycle - try another round and be slightly more conservative during first few rooms.
The goal is to kill all three waves of enemies. There should be more, but we were running out of time :smile:
Feels polished and while the gameplay is simple it kept me engaged until the end.

Feels like Homeworld ported to a GameBoy Advance.
Aesthetically it's absolutely amazing. Really consistent, beautiful art across the whole thing, the music (sounds like Mass Effect!) is awesome.
I can't tell if it's actually tough or if I am just bad at it, but I keep death spiralling and running out of resources :D
Very satisfying game. Wish there were more types of units and mb it needs a bit of balancing, but as for jam entry it's super cool
I however felt like the gameplay was not enough involving : I kinda got bored waiting for my miner to colelct that space dust... Maybe havinga manned turret to keep us entertain whiel waiting or something like that could be nice !
I wish it had some factor to make it more re-playable as I'd love to play this more (different levels / modifiers to make playing it again a different experience).
What this game needs in my opinion is some clear visualization of goals and progress. When I got to about 15 miners and 15 fighters, I was feeling that I topped out because my miners would pretty much strip a system of all its resources in one wave while my fighters effortlessly destroyed the first wave of enemies, and then I would just spend all my profit on jump preparation. I was convinced this was it. But then I just decided to see what would happen if I kept fighting instead of fleeing, and I suddenly won.
It would be great to at least see how many jumps you've made. Maybe have the ability to upgrade my ships, heal the mothership, gather resources for some kind of super-weapon and then progressively build it and defend it from intruders and worry about having to leave the whole thing behind and start over, the concept is so flexible and so easily extended with this kinds of features. I would really love to see a post-jam version or even a full game with this mechanic and aesthetic.
Thanks for an awesome entry!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1609823066?t=4h37m3s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
I really enjoy this game setting and visual, seem to great job done
Same I can say to gameplay mechanics. Amazing
@rubentipparach thanks! It's not _that_ bad, but probably we just know the balance and got used to it :smile:
@furano @urggann @Orendil Ye, cannons and other level-ups are something which we though initially to add, but time was the main constraint for us, didn't manage :sob:
@teddyreid try to farm a first few jumps more and just evade contact with enemy. It will ease up the gameplay
@eugenik didn't get about humor, but okay :smile:
@sirdorius ye, small issue happened, sorry for that :sob: Hope it didn't affect the experience a lot
Regarding the progression etc - it's something which is absolutely reasonable the next thing, more ship types, more room types, some mothership upgrades. But to be honest we were rushing so badly that we sacrificed additional features in favor of getting something more or less complete.
Fun fact btw that the game didn't have any UI a few hours before the end :smile: It was the last thing done.
Anyway nice to hear you liked it and hope you enjoyed your time in it. And again thank you for such a nice and warm feedback!
And wow, the UI looks even more impressive now that I know the fun fact, hahah
Хлопці - молодц :v: Україна понад усе!
At first it was a bit awkward to get used to a gameplay, but till the time i`v realised what should i do, my health was just at 30 points!!! but i still managed to survive additional 10 jumps, till the system with not enought mining asteroids((( but it was really fun, and my next atempts were much better)
The game just has it`s own style) And mood thankfully to the ambient.
PS It was so painfull to missclick and left your guys behind(( wish there was defence system on a ship itself
PPS Слава Україні хлопці) Дійсно крута гра!
\* Replaying now I may have misinterpreted the controls and that it's more automatic than I thought. I do think that this could be a good foundation for a full game though, with more interactions and maybe some mechanics borrowed from something like FTL. Again, really great work!
I would have appreciated a little tutorial, because I'm apparently not good with understanding the description of how to play xD but it worked out! Well done (:
I had a lot of fun. Keep up the good work :)
I didn't want to stop playing!
It is a bit hard to follow what is going on the screen. Most of my ships were getting destroyed by pirate ships but it is hard to gauge how quickly that will happen. The solution is obviously buy more fighters but even then I was loosing ships and I felt I had no control over it. The player could use some options to react when inside systems.
But overall, a solid jam game with gorgeus art and music. Great work!
Also, clicking with the mouse gives a feedback, pressing 1 and 2 does not really.
Gameplay: I liked it very much. It's very easy to learn, yet finding the right balance of fighters, miners and timing is pretty hard. Especially since things get tougher quite soon. Leaving behind miners by jumping too soon adds to the thrill.
A bug I noticed: Sometimes miners won't leave the, let's call it "mother ship". In that case the game is lost as no jump can be acquired. I played it quite often, so it even happened in the very first level.
Оч круто, навалить контента и можно релизить :)
Really great jam game!
I think with some added unit varity and different enemy types this could really but a fun full game. I want to play more!
The only part where the game fell flat a little was the gameplay loop, which I distilled down to letting the miners do one round of mining, letting the fighters beat the first batch of enemies, preparing for jump, waiting for everyone to get back in, jumping and buying more miners.
The fact that fighter ships didn't accumulate damage between jumps meant that there was never any need to buy more as long as I gtfo'd before the second wave of enemies, and the lack of random variables in enemy spawns meant that the gameplay became repetitive until I decided to buy a bunch of fighters and managed to beat the game.
While this aspect makes it a game I wouldn't complete more than once, everything else about the game works well, and putting in more variety, not just in enemies or their spawns, could make it more replayable.
Preparing for a jump wasn't explained quite well enough, unless I missed that info, so for the first few attempts I kept leaving all of my ships behind, though I got the hang of it eventually. Obvious in hindsight, but you know, assume the player is stupid and all that.
Overall I really enjoyed the game though, and the assets, sounds and polish were definitely beyond the usual game jam grade. Good job!
The audio-visual experience was a treat, too!
Thank you guys! That's pretty kind words from all of you and we glad you've enjoyed this small creation. We are thinking right now about a full-size game based on the prototype, but that's a long shot and if you want to follow us - please check out tweeter or you can follow even on LD. I think it's not the last time we are participating.
@bytekeeper thanks for reporting, there are some issues (we are aware about them), but we decided that it's not blocking to play the game, so we didn't change the game after jam. We don't think it's actually fair to the event. Hope they didn't ruin your experience and you had quite a fun time playing our creation.
@eyedromeda hi dude, you are right that we have to work with gameplay cycle to make it slightly more complex, but in scope of jam it was hard to make it more complex and balance everything. Regarding fighters & accumulated damage - that's actually was the change we did, because we thought that player might not read, that the fighter is damaged already and it will be pretty annoying that some fighter are dying fast. Other feedback makes sense as well, but it's easy to agree now, in the moment we were sorting issues by priority due to time cap. Anyway hope you've enjoyed it!
Superb entry, keep it up; looked great, played great, sounded great! :clap:
this game is already polished, but with some improvements, it can be absolutely awesome!
Loved the pixel art and simple music.
Good job and congrats!
