Ionfall by T90.

made by T90. for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

Ionfall

Short post-apocalyptic suvival management sim. You play as Ire, a girl with a nagging AI partner living in her shoulder projector and a certain obsession to fix wind turbines in a long dead world.

Explore forgotten locations. Balance energy output and turbine integrity. Collect scrap and data, maintain and upgrade your equipment and shelter. Uncover the truth of the world.

Controls: Point & Click.

UI guide.png

Move guide.png

Screenshots

screen1 (4).png

screen3 (2).png

Changelog (0.7.2, hotfix): 1. Fixed missing character sprite for Sol. Thank you @deo-art! 2. Fixed missing sound effects on some actions 3. Refined ambient dialogue UI with character avatars 4. Fixed expedition log doesn't auto-scroll to latest entry 5. Fixed stats not resetting after death 6. Minor spelling fixes 7. Fixed one of the music tracks not starting at right moment 8. Fixed ambient dialogue stacking 9. Minor animations adjustments during turbine repair and upgrade 10. Fixed absent visual cue on low sanity 11. Fixed linux build not having all the files

Changelog (0.6.1, hotfix): 1. Fixed fail state not triggering at 0 Sanity. 2. Fixed fail state not triggering when energy drops below the required level. 3. Fixed auto-pause not activating during random expedition events. 4. Fixed a rare issue where the ending dialogue would fail to start. 5. Fixed expedition titles and background images not updating correctly by location. 6. Fixed music tracks not switching where they should.

Future plans! A lot of things remain to fix and polish: - Add remaining sound effects - Further improvement of character animations - Further refinement of ambient dialogue UI - Sanity can go over maximum capacity after events in expeditions - Starting conditions doesn't match the opening dialogue (make proper tutorial/onboarding) - Missing proper Shelter UI - Multiple issues with expedition screen UI - General UI and polish improvements - …and many smaller fixes to come

Thank you for trying our game!

Link	https://t90team.itch.io/ionfall
Link	https://t90team.itch.io/ionfall
Link	https://t90team.itch.io/ionfall
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/ionfall

Ratings

Overall	434^th	3.463⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Fun	576^th	3.037⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	474^th	3.13⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Theme	637^th	3.179⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Humor	495^th	2.74⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Mood	364^th	3.589⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Given		31🗳️	32🗨️

Feedback

Skylone

Oct 07th · 21:14 UTC

Cute characters :slight_smile:

rynti

Oct 07th · 21:23 UTC

Crazy how polished of a game you guys achieved in such a short time! Mood was immediately great, loved the art & music. Gameplay was fine, I felt a bit confused at first until I got the hang of it.

Unfortunately I let energy get below 4, and it gave me the game over screen while my character was already fixing the energy. Didn't really get why energy needs to be above 4 - that was really surprising to me as a player (I'd expect that I had to keep it above 0. If you need it to be 4, then it should be clearly marked or something).

Nonetheless, very good entry =)

Melomaner

Oct 08th · 12:43 UTC

Interesting concept, but it’s not clear what you’re supposed to do :) And after I lost, nothing reset — I had to reload the game.

NiceKot

Oct 08th · 13:11 UTC

@melomaner yeah, we didn't manage to do proper onboarding/tutorial. And the reset after losing fix will be in our next patch. We plan on releasing it today.

Thanks for playing our game!

Wuppos

Oct 08th · 13:35 UTC

This game really felt like it had a lot of depth lore wise. All the unexplained locations and characters give it a mysterious vibe which I really enjoyed :D The art was also very well done. Gameplay wise I was a little confused about my goals. It was also not super clear where the numbers at the top came from, or what the numbers below the turbines meant, but I figured this out after some time. I think a more clear goal and more feedback to the player would help this game a lot.

Really well done though! Very cool what you managed to make in a weekend :D

Jadener

Oct 08th · 19:51 UTC

I really liked the graphics, game and setting that you made!

stefaink

Oct 09th · 19:47 UTC

In love with character design

Eugenik

Oct 09th · 20:36 UTC

The colour palette is the key, living for it.

Caer

Oct 09th · 22:21 UTC

I loved the narrative and world building in this game--it felt so polished! I'm not sure how you'd do it differently, but I sometimes found myself frustrated by the long delays between actions--it makes sense, since time is a valuable resource, but I wonder if there'd be a way to reduce the pauses...

Asieke

Oct 10th · 05:47 UTC

Pretty fun game, keeping energy up seems to be pretty difficult.

Bea

Oct 10th · 18:56 UTC

This was cool! Are there a lot of artists on your team? It was neat to see a lot of different styles.

d-demetori

Oct 10th · 19:37 UTC

The game definetly looks great, feel like needs a bit more introduction what each part does, otherwise for this time period great game! Nice art and sounds

NiceKot

Oct 10th · 21:03 UTC

@bea Portraits of characters are drawn by @Deo-Art. All UI, animated character on map, map itself were done by @Yanato

We also used AI for location backgrounds in expeditions, so we had to remove our entry from "Art" category. Still, thank you for appreciating Deo and Yanato's work.

WetBurritoSupreme

Oct 10th · 21:14 UTC

I kept it going for some time (~20 minutes) but kinda ran out of steam. Tight game loop and the random exploration was interesting, but I think a little more work on the balance and speed of the game could really help it out. Nicely done on the whole vibe though, it very much felt like a complete game world!

NiceKot

Oct 11th · 16:10 UTC

@wetburritosupreme yeah, thanks for your feedback. We thought about making exploration and sleep/upgrade process more interactive, but ofc game jam is game jam. Something was cut due to time constraints.

ellaris

Oct 12th · 12:22 UTC

Cool game, the ending was interesting although I'm not sure I fully understand it. It was a bit hard to figure out what to do at the beginning, since I tried to fix the turbines, but it didn't seem to work, maybe a more clear indication of missing resources would help with that.

Baturinsky

Oct 15th · 23:22 UTC

Very atmospheric, but the instant death for some slight miscalculation on MW is too harsh for a game this long without saves.

NiceKot

Oct 16th · 21:49 UTC

@baturinsky fair point. We implemented a short period where you have time to repair the turbines until the game ends in game over, but designing a save system from scratch was just out of our scope for the game jam. We tried to do give a notice via UI, but alas.

Baturinsky

Oct 17th · 22:59 UTC

@nicekot Saving is not as hard as it seems. Especially fo this game, where all game state is just about a dozen of numbers.

ophiene

Oct 23rd · 19:42 UTC

Amazing work! It’s super interesting and has a vert unique way to paraphrase the theme, good job! And welcome to give our game a try! :)

Alchemic

Oct 24th · 20:00 UTC

Oh wow, this is exceptional. I got totally sucked in from the start, although it does get a bit repetitive at the end.

I think I could have played this for hours if it hadn't ended.

Thanks for being honest and opting out of the Art category.
The art that was made by hand is all very high quality!
I really like the character designs.
Personally I think I would have just scrapped the location backgrounds, if that was the only thing that was AI. They do add a bit of atmosphere, but imo it's not necessary, since I'm mostly focused on the text anyways.