E.T. Eats by Reef

Deliver food to hungry customers as an extraterrestrial gig worker.
You have 60 seconds to deliver food to as many hungry customers as possible! Fly over a food truck to pick up an item and quickly deliver it to the hungry customers calling from their apartment building windows.
Use the arrow keys to fly, picking up and dropping off food items will happen automatically. This game was made for Pico-8. You may pause and with the 'Enter' key.
This was intended for the Compo, but I ran out of time. Sorry, there is no sound or music!
| Link | https://dreif.itch.io/et-eats |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/e-t-eats |
Ratings
| Overall | 713th | 3.463⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 498th | 3.536⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 845th | 3.054⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 317th | 4.161⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 337th | 4.054⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 780th | 2.76⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 826th | 3.269⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
Only feedback from here is that it would have been nice with WASD controls as well, as arrow keys on my laptop are tiny and sit next to page up/down keys that move the entire page.
It'd also be great if the player could tell which indicators pointed to distant windows, and which pointed to close-by ones... right now, the route 'optimizing' is largely guesswork, but indicators that changed size or opacity based on distance could let player skill really shine.
Nicely done overall!!
@jepjoh2 sorry, by default Pico-8 doesn't let me freely map the controls, though there are a few tricks. A gamepad should work though if you have one! Thanks for the feedback.
@breadstick Those are all ideas I had in my notes, and even had art for, but didn't have time to properly implement. I really enjoyed how this game started coming together at the end and think I'll find time to properly finish what I intended in a post-jam version. A distance indicator is something I'll have to think more about, it would introduce an additional level of skill that it's missing right now. Thanks for the feedback!

Beautiful pixel art and the movements are easy to master.
Add some soundtrack and SFX and it your game will be perfect.
Good job!
@poppy-entertainment thanks for the feedback. I didn't get time to play test or tune much.
@jampla-games A tutorial and levels of increasing difficulty and complexity was planned, but I always run out of time in LD!

I like the blocks of windows that keep things varied without being fully random. We just relied on randomisation for our window placement.
@alpacalypse Thanks for the comment. The delivery bubbles are intentionally partially off-screen. I'll have to consider whether this is the right choice, or if there is another clearer way of communicating that information without blocking too much of the screen. Funny you mention random windows! I started making completely procedurally generated buildings but quickly realized it would take too much time, so I tried to make the buildings somewhat unique so the player wouldn't get lost.