Moon Base Constructor by SeaM00se
(I am aware of the naming inconsistency between my LD account and what appears in game... I named this account SeaM00se before I made Icosmohedron, and I can't seem to change my LD account's name.)
Humanity has always looked up at the stars in fascination... ...And now, we are almost ready to explore the universe for ourselves.
Construct a moon base using an array of autonomous robots. Manage your resources under strict storage limits. Expand you base until is is habitable by humans!
Resources:
Robots - Autonomous machines that operate each structure. Some structures need more than others
Power - Is needed by most structures in order to operate. You'll have to maintain power production (from solar panels and reactors), as well as power storage (from power banks)
Moon Rock - Collected from a quarry. The basic building block of most structures.
Iron, Titanium, Uranium - All valuable metals that can be collected from mines.
Tips:
1) You can give each structure up to double the needed robots. Doing so will make that structure run even faster! (e.x: A mine with 10/5 robots operating it)
2) When building a structure, a green cursor means that you can afford it, and a yellow cursor means that you cannot
3) Some buttons have keyboard hotkeys. Hover over them to see what they are.
Known Bugs:
1) If a pylon is activated externally (not by increasing the pylon's robot count, and by a power increase ect.), the pylon's range is not updated correctly 1Fix) Change the pylon's robot count. 2) Making too many pylons slows the game down
More information can be found on my itch.io page below!
Programs and Tools Used: Engine: Godot, Code: VSCode (with gdscript plugin), Art: Aseprite, Music: LMMS, SFX: Labchirp
| Itch.io (Web Version) | https://icosmohedron.itch.io/moon-base-constructor |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/moon-base-constructor |
Ratings
| Overall | 41th | 4.079⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 101th | 3.763⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 286th | 3⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 229th | 3.447⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 121th | 3.763⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 32th | 4⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 264th | 1.933⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 37th | 3.947⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 10🗨️ |
This game is super neat. Fun gameplay and very cool art style. I really like building stuff and managing resources. I managed to meet the goal and would have loved to play a lot more but there was a huge lag spike after I had like 6 pylons. Also I think that it would be nice if the mining building had a tip to what is being mined because you can't tell when you click on it unless you remember what the colors are referring to.
Overall the game is very enjoyable and well made. Excellent work!
Thank you for letting me know about the lag spike. It's something that I thought could happen, given how I manage pylons rather poorly, but I didn't have time to come up with a solution. I honestly didn't think anyone would play that long to encounter it lol.
My main struggle at the beginning was not realizing the left panel could scroll down, so I wasn't aware of all the resources and why I couldn't build certain things. After I got a hang of it, it would have been nice to be able to hide that panel, as it takes up a lot of room, but still see the resource count, like with just icons and numbers that would take up less space.
Thanks for letting me know about the UI issues. Maybe making it a bit more obvious that there are more things in the limits menu would be better. On top of that, you can actually hide that menu by pressing the button to the top-right of it (the one that you clicked to open in), but I guess I gotta work on my UI to make that more apparent.
Thank you!
I did not exactly like the constant menu hiding/showing I had to do I feel like that was a hinderance. Not sure why you choose to do it, I would have liked the resource icons always visible same with the building expendables. If they would collapse/expand on hover is an easy option.
I like that you actually disabled with a warning if you remove robots from a pylon or destroy one, kudos on that. Of course after meeting the goal there was not much reason to continue building except to perhaps see what was out there and how far you could take it. As you can see I'm a messy builder not much incentive to organize. Overall great job!
Yeah after thinking about it, I should have made the resource menu a gui bar on the top (like, little icons that are out of the way) instead of a huge menu. Would've been smart but oh well.
I actually haven't heard about frostpunk until now... and I can totally see that now lol. Might check that game out ngl
Thank you for playing!
I usually struggle to place all the necessary things on the screen, but hiding the unused windows away solves it.
It might sound obvious, but it's not something I saw implemented in a jam games.
The music, combined with an art style, create a cool retro-style game atmosphere.
It looks like you really tried to create a great sound for your game; the music is like 10 times better than what I managed to create for my game. That's really an area I want to improve on in the future.
I haven't completed the game, but I spent ~10 minutes in it and it was a good experience.
You get extra points from me for making this game runnable in the browser. :D
It took a while to load, but hey, I have time. :D
I think you captured the vibe pretty good with this one.
I like the moon depression atmosphere. :D
Nice game tho!
I'm surprised about your comment on my music, since that was one of the more challenging parts of the jam for me. But, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for helping me realize this lol.
The artstyle is great, I always love simple and clean pixelart. And the accompanying music fits it really well. Though speaking of music, I've had one issue with it - it seems that after the track finishes playing, it doesn't restart, leaving the game without music for a long time. Then it starts again at seemingly random times. I've thought that maybe it restarts on building construction (or at least the victory goal building), as it happened several times when I built something, ~~but that might have been a coincidence~~. After trying it several more times I'm convinced the music restarts only when you build one of the victory buildings. If you don't, the game stays silent.
One thing I'd like to see added is keyboard control for the camera, like with WASD keys. The screen-edge is pretty difficult to use when playing in windowed mode (though it's fine in fullscreen).
Other than that, there's not much more for me to say that others haven't already. Well done on making a cool game, and I hope you're going to keep working on it after the jam!
Better controls for the camera is something I totally wish I did, especially since I spent the time to add keyboard shortcuts to the UI buttons...
Still, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The art and music and overall atmosphere are really good!
I don't want to miss out on what looks like a really nice and polished game, so I'll definitely try again later when I have more time.
I do wish there was a bit of opposition or something that created a bit of tension, as I find these types of games more enjoyable with a drive to complete the objective before dying, or the enemies get stronger, or something.
The theme was well executed in the build space, but I would have loved some arrow key camera controls. A little bit of zoom out (or smaller menus) would have been appreciated too, the interface tended to clutter the screen as I would watch the resources increase with the build menu prepared to place the building.
Ultimately, it's a solid game and I did enjoy it to completion.
I have some nit-picky feedback too if that's alright:
- I would love the option to deactivate buildings. It's probably only helpful at the beginning though...
- I didn't really use the solar panels tbh. I spammed reactors
- The pylons adding endless space felt a bit... Cheaty?
- I think there should be more restrictive / hostile elements... Currently, the challenge comes from simply gathering resources and making room, organizing, etc...
- It was not clear you could add more robots than the maximum amount, and for some structures it didnt' seem to do anything
- If the goal is to create just 1 of each human structure, there should probably be a big green checkmark on the building in the construction panel when you do just to make it clearer.
- I did run into the lag spike issue but I managed to finish the game regardless!
I think this game can definitely be expanded, with more missions, more challenges, maybe something dangerous to defend your colony from, maybe some story elements, etc. But I like it a lot. I really enjoyed the theme too! Well done :)