HydroRobia by JoeShanahan
You are a little robot, with a big fear of water
(a perfectly rational fear to be fair - for one who is made of metal)
The place you live is rather prone to flooding, every 10 seconds the water will rise.
Use the environment to your advantage and save all the valuable data disks!

Push boxes and logs around to get them into the right position for when the water rises. You won't be able to reach all the data disks right away, but with careful planning - you'll be able to create your own path to them.

The game was created for keyboard but should work on gamepad too
Assets
The environment is populated with assets from Kenney's game assets, but the character and interactable objects were all made from scratch for the jam. None of the audio was made for the jam.
Trailer
https://youtu.be/oOuWhkOzpz8
beep boop style, beep boop grace, beep boop power in your face!
| Link | https://horsehead.itch.io/hydrorobia |
| Link | https://horsehead.itch.io/hydrorobia |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/hydrorobia |
Ratings
| Overall | 270th | 3.826⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 397th | 3.587⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 410th | 3.522⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 120th | 4.196⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 247th | 4.109⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 350th | 3.275⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 495th | 3.545⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 16🗨️ |
(also the music weirdly reminded me of Luigi's Mansion?)
@mediflect YES! when we decided on the music, I was running around getting Luigi's mansion vibes! :smile:
Thanks for playing the game everyone, and thanks for the feedback! ^_^
The robot was really cute though, and I felt clever for solving some of the levels! The controls are really the thing that bothered me, but if it's fix, I'm sure it would gives a great puzzle! There's already a lot of polishing, and even enough content. It's still an impressive job to have released something as clean and well thought!
The game felt polished overall, except for the floaty character controls and some rather minor issues with the graphics (visible mipmap filtering on the terrain, motion blur on the character, and low res shadow map).
I got stuck on the fourth puzzle (bridge building). It would be useful to have a way to pause the game and enter camera mode just so the player has some time to think. The player would be relieved of some of that pressure which makes their brain not work well. Well, it would at least help in my case :D
As a non-artist, the environment assets felt well-chosen and the character was well-designed. The little animation at the end of each level was cute. The explosion effect was hilarious in a way that juxtaposed everything else. The choice of music also seemed fitting with the game, and the slow-down effect when you were underwater was a nice touch. It helped to add to the polished feel of the game.
Like others have mentioned the controls are a bit heavy/awkward making it a bit hard to do precise movement. I had a rigid body approach as well but went with direct velocity manipulation in `FixedUpdate()`, that way I have total control over acceleration, deceleration and gravity and am not left to the whims of the physics engine. It has it's own downsides so I haven't really figured it out either, may we one day find a perfect way to control the player in Unity :D
The gameplay itself was great, great introductory levels and good ramp up from there. For me "Staircase" was easily the hardest map and I even initially skipped it, even after beating all the other levels it took me quite a few tries to get right (and even then I probably did an unintended solution with jumping from a stacked box on the middle of the map :D). Also pacing wise maybe some lighter platforming levels could have been between the hard puzzles to give the players a bit of time to breathe.
With presentation I feel like you have nailed a very cohesive art style, it all works together super well! The main character is well modeled/animated and even with pre-made level assets the color scheme works super well. Visually I really like the in-game key indicators and the MAX level line, they don't look as jarring as they could
On a small meta-tip I recommend leaving more comments for people as that's what the new Ludum Dare Smart algorithm favors, that way you could get some more players which this game 100% deserves!
I think it's better than we've done in previous jams, much less slippery, but still a long way to go! Thanks for all your kind comments! 😄
@ghostbomb "The handling of a boat" I honestly laughed out loud, that's hilarious 😂
```cs
void FixedUpdate()
{
Vector3 velocity = rigidBody.velocity;
// Not really but you get the idea :D
if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.Left))
velocity.x = -10f;
rigidBody.velocity = velocity;
}
```
That way I can ignore all level geometry and forces etc. not sure if this is the usual way to do it (or if you're even using it :D). I'm just happy it works more consistently than trying to apply forces which is what I did in the past. Though I can see it breaking horrendously if you have physics objects you collide against as then you'll push them with near-infinite force. Like I said it's still under R&D for me too!