GAKKI the Water Harvester by ironhandMD
GAKKI, a water harvester droid was deployed on the Arid planet to gather the Water Canisters. No monstrous beasts to battle, no weapons to fire ,only the vast dessert to overcome.
This is my first time to participate in Ludum Dare.
Many thanks to wyver9 for the awesome music
ASWD keys to move
| Link | https://ironhandmd.itch.io/gakki-the-water-harvester |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/gakki-the-water-harvester |
Ratings
| Overall | 659th | 3.091⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 634th | 2.926⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 712th | 2.682⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 463th | 3.621⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 624th | 3.015⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 48🗨️ |
I also really appreciated how there were time limit increase items sprinkled around, since normally a time limit mechanic would punish exploration but instead it gets rewarded here.
Thank you for the experience <3
The only thing that left something to be desired was the UI. It would be nice to have a minimap so I could see where I've been, since I ended up running out of time with 11 left to collect since I wasn't sure where I had already explored, but I suppose that could be a part of the game. Also the dialog boxes either auto closing or having the game pause when they popped up would have been nice, since I had to use my precious time getting to my mouse and closing them, haha.
Overall, though, wonderful game and a great concept. Good job!
A solid first submission. Everything worked, without any bugs, which is a feat by itself (excluding the embedded build, which didn't work for me, so I played the HTML5 version)
The gameplay itself needed something to spice it up. Maybe a timer to pressure you into finding another water source (GAKKI is thirsty), and another mechanic to make the treasure hunting more interesting.
Also, I would suggest you to have a look at RuleTiles in Unity. They can really make a difference in your visuals, because perfectly square repeatable tiles are a little rough. Also, looking at the sprite of the robot, I would suggest you to keep the black outlines thin, one pixel wide. Nice music selection too.
Keep it going with LD!
The game idea is really simple. Maybe a bit repetetive and boring in the core, but I somehow got invested and wanted to beat it. I got lost on the map pretty quickly, but I know that's the whole purpose of the gameplay, so no worries. I really liked those few events that I encountered and I tried to locate them. A managed to find one of the prizes from the event. I wish there were a few more events to find. The upgrades were easy, but really useful -- that's great!
I encountered a few people but only one of them (or maybe two) had some dialogue. I just "ate" a few of animated, jumping stickman, which was kinda funny. I wonder if this was bugged or you did it on purpose, but it had no effect on the game. Perhaps eating a guy could give an extra water container (after all humans are water, aren't they?).
The graphics were fine for a jam game -- no complains here. Of course they could have been much better, but they were fun enough. I couldn't hear the music, as I was playing the game during the university classes -- sorry for that, I'm sure it's great. :D
Overall a nice and entertaining entry. It won't be in my top 5 jam games for sure, but I liked the experience. Well done!
For a first submission, it's cool, I think the game could have been served by maybe having a minimap of where you've explored so far (as @asilvers already said), it felt like you could pretty easily get lost (found myself feeling my way around by following the edges of the map) but of course this might also have been your design intention at the time, so who am I to judge :D
Time wise though it definitely rarely felt like you were under any actual time pressure, as water was often accompanied by another block of time added, but I understand it's hard to balance a game while also making it on a LD timeline!
If there's any "complaint" it would be that for the parts that were not possible to get through at first, it wasn't obvious that you could later break through them and at the time it maybe just felt like this section was intentionally blocked or something, but once you get the powerup it's fine :)
Keep going with LD, I hope to see more of your games!
I'm sucker for these kind exploration games with minimal control set. Just throw me into world and let me choose direction. Main gameplay loop here could be made more exciting with some kind of combat or hazards, but even in current form game mostly entertained me it's entire length.
I really did like addition of those characters, messages etc giving hints. I don't know if I managed to follow those hints though. Expanding passive skills were also good addition, though it was bit hard to know what kind of blocks I was able to break at first.
Also, even though the mechanics are very simple, it's surprisingly satisfying to just roll around and collect stuff :D
2 minor nitpicks:
- not sure what to do after collecting 60 canisters. I would assume that was supposed to complete the game but you had no time to implement a proper win state? Very understandable for a jam game of course.
- the player droid sprite looks like it's almost exactly the size of a one tile but can't fit through single tile gaps between environment solids. This is really not a big deal but details like these are always good to keep in mind since they do have "quality of life" implications (small ones, but still) and are usually easy to fix.
Definitely a great first time entry, congrats!