Space Harvest by MachWerx

[raw]
made by MachWerx for Ludum Dare 52 (COMPO)

Guide a growing civilization of bunnies for the voracious space cats who will arrive in 10,000 years ... to harvest. Are the bunnies doomed to be prey to the space cats? Or will they find some way to escape their destiny? Their fate lies in your hands.

Space Harvest screenshot

There are 4 evolutions of bunnies:

  • Normal bunnies -- need you to harvest carrots for them. If there is a sufficient surplus, the bunnies will breed like ... well, you know.
  • Smarter bunnies -- can use tools, which make them more productive. You will still need to harvest carrots and ore from the mines for them.
  • Autonomous bunnies -- can harvest carrots and make tools for themselves. But you control the proportion of bunnies that work on carrots and mining.
  • Sentient bunnies -- can perform research. Researching can lead to a new civilization level, which boosts productivity and improves the productivity of all future tools.

Notes:

  • The graphs are all log graphs, which means that constant linear increases look like they plateau.
  • Mining and research at higher levels requires more and more bunnies.
  • Pay attention to the graphs. As the population tapers off, you can shift bunnies towards other efforts.

Also, a hint for the end:

  • One way to get to the highest civilization level is to set research to about 10% (and equal levels of carrots and mining) and then leaving it there until you mine one big mega tool. After that, you'll see a population explosion and you won't need any more tools.
  • I added a "Shift-G" cheat code to get 100 more gems.

Ratings

Overall 174th 3.46⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 189th 3.28⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 169th 3.32⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 143th 3.76⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 229th 3.22⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Audio 119th 3.396⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 84th 3.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Mood 230th 3.043⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 318242
09. Jan 2023 · 03:20 UTC
I really liked this one, very well done. It would work well as a mobile game.
Vasco Freitas
09. Jan 2023 · 03:32 UTC
Interesting variation on a clicker game. It was fun to mess around with the sliders and see the result in the graph, though I admit I didn't really know what I was doing most of the time. Research increases mining speed which increases carrot harvesting speed, I suppose? It was a bit confusing but may have potential.
LDJam user 279233
09. Jan 2023 · 03:34 UTC
Cool game! I like the spinning planet visual :)
Joel Davis
09. Jan 2023 · 04:05 UTC
Fun game! I like the population feedback loop idea and the graphs were great. Would love to see some representation of the bunny civilization on the planet or some kind of character for them. Fun idle game!
muriel
10. Jan 2023 · 00:13 UTC
Jaja as someone who is a junkie of Adventure Capitalist and all this games where you need to accumulate resources I loved it, it is impressive how addictive this things are to me XD. Good job :)
ArtsyOmni
15. Jan 2023 · 01:50 UTC
Pretty different genre of game than I would've ever expected, but it's definitely a welcome change of pace. Can't say it's the kind of game I'd typically go for, but I'm glad this one was made. The music was fitting, and the different "levels" kept me engaged. The sound design was also smartly built, with different sounds for each of the different industries maxing out.

Given that I'm very art-focused, I think adding some fun character imagery that reflects the population growth might've made this a bit more attractive to players like me. Just an idea.
Matt Rix
15. Jan 2023 · 02:44 UTC
It's a neat idea for an incremental game to integrate graphs on screen as an immediate visual reference.
MilkWine
15. Jan 2023 · 04:07 UTC
Interesting concept. I'd like to see some sort of "end" condition past unlocking all the bunny types (maybe at 1 billion bunnies?) Fun music.
🎤 MachWerx
15. Jan 2023 · 04:38 UTC
@milkwine there is another end condition! If you get the civilization level up to the max level, the bunnies learn interstellar travel. There's a hint about it at the end of the description above.
Phlip45
15. Jan 2023 · 08:22 UTC
As a fan of clicker games, this one was really cool. Having real time sliders to adjust was very neat. I liked once I first got the sliders learning a little bit of a rhythm to get farm the fastest (as best I could find anyways) which was Carrot, Carrot, Carrot, Mine, repeat.

I also like how this sort of gameplay could be expanded and used in a proper mobile style game. During active sessions of playing the game you would be mixing around on these different sliders like some sort of cosmic carrot DJ. Then when you go to idle mode you would want to find the right balance of sliders to optimize whatever resource you happen to be going for. Definitely cool the possibilities presented.
Mika314
15. Jan 2023 · 20:51 UTC
It is a Cookie Clicker-like game with a fun premise. It is actually fun to play. The music is a little bit repetitive but the sound effects are solid.
Itskdog
15. Jan 2023 · 20:56 UTC
I liked the sliders for the game although at first, I didn't know they were sliders. Would like to see more choices for upgrades to try different thinks.
amarokczukay
16. Jan 2023 · 12:51 UTC
it was nice to see that at some point you didn't need to spam LMB haha it's nice having to change sliders the best way possible to maximize bunny population, however the game was too short, and after they got access to research, there was no upgrade to go for sadfully
🎤 MachWerx
16. Jan 2023 · 20:45 UTC
@amarokczukay thanks for trying it out! There is one last goal, which is to try to use the research to get the bunnies to the max civilization level so they can escape the horde of space cats. If you'd like to try for that, you can use the "shift-G" cheat code to skip the first sections.
minjutin
16. Jan 2023 · 21:30 UTC
Funny music but I wanna know what space cats do with 1million rabbits. Ending 5/5
BlockyBear
16. Jan 2023 · 21:31 UTC
Simple and fun
Jimbly
21. Jan 2023 · 03:55 UTC
Really cool! Graphics and audio tie everything together nicely. But, I'm confused, why am I _helping_ the bunnies? Who dares stand in the way of the Space Cats?

It got a little tiresome clicking to harvest the carrots, would have liked one fewer iterations before getting automation (I probably should have used your cheat, but that felt like... cheating). I really enjoyed managing the sliders after that though =).
NekuSoul
21. Jan 2023 · 12:29 UTC
Small game but with the perfect length and amount of mechanics. Nice application of the theme as well.