Apparatus by evindor
Figure out the mysterious Apparatus and defend the Core. The Apparatus can summon creatures and buff them. But it's not very easy to operate.
Here's some help:
- Arrow symbols change the direction of the Apparatus' head.
- The crystal symbol with a number adds mana to the Stack.
- The crystal symbol with a plus sign operates on mana that is already on the Stack and increases it by one.
- Single creature summons cost 1 mana.
- Multiple creature summons cost two different amounts of mana, X and Y. They summon a lot of creatures, multiple of X and Y.
- The axe makes your creatures go Berserk! And it only costs 2 mana. Try it out!
Ah and don't forget, the machine overheats from working too hard.
- Use basic cooler to drop some heat for free.
- Use advanced cooler for 1 mana to drop a lot of heat.
Last but not least, try the grow buff. It makes your creatures permanently grow in size and strength. It also costs X Y mana and grows X*Y creatures.
Hover over icons to remind yourself what all these cryptic things do.
Did we mention you can shoot fireballs? Left mouse button is your friend. Right mouse button will case a healing circle and help your creatures.
Build a circuit which can survive for 4 minutes and the Crystal Core will be yours.
Made by a team of two: - @evindor - Game Design, Programming, Music/SFX - @erasemenot - Art, Game Design
| Play on itch (full screen available) | https://evindor.itch.io/apparatus |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/apparatus |
Ratings
| Overall | 84th | 4.12⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 147th | 3.904⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 17th | 4.299⭐ | 84🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 315th | 3.939⭐ | 84🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 310th | 4.024⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 125th | 3.914⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 279th | 3.844⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 72🗳️ | 101🗨️ |
I like it and want to be good at it, but not after I spent 3 days on my own game!
The mechanism is self-contained and interesting.
I managed to prevent the apparatus from overheating, but not my computer. The game is extremely slow with lots of creatures spawned and some optimization would help (probably not something fesible during the jam).
Also, really looking forward to seem more build system and and more in-depth mechanisms integrated.
I love having to make creatures with a Turing machine. And I love steampunk graphics, too bad you can't put it in full screen.
It just took me a while to figure out how to put instructions in the machine.
PS: The tooltips on top of the machine are very small in my browser (Vivaldi on Windows); on the bottom over the symbols, they are fine.
Very cool concept, one of the best games of the jam! Of course, the optimization is a bit lacking, but you can overlook that in a jam.
The music is just bombastic, I love music in this style.
The mechanics are very cool, the Turing machine is very well implemented. Naturally, not everything was clear on the first attempt, especially what X*Y spawn means, but by the third attempt, I was able to complete the game; towards the end, I even had to click with the mouse, as there seems to be a limit on spawning new objects in the game :)
Thank you for creating this.
Spent a while trying to win but still can't find the proper combo :)
Had a good time with it tho!
See ya on the next one!
The art for the machine is really well done, it makes it a little more satisfying to interact with! Same with the audio, it makes the machine feel real and really adds to the whole experience.
I really like this game, I hope you continue to work on it!
Well done!
Love @motoilyuha's design :)
I could not find out a good balance between spamlagging and actually surviving the game, always dying at around 80%
very well done!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuddhZScWxo
I had a real blast with this, so kept playing until I could beat it without using the mouse button abilities at all. It took me a while to realize that X Y meant those tiles used two stacks of mana up but it was fun to figure out how to balance heat and mana. I could definitely see it grow out to something with more complex tiles, maybe logic or conditionals.
Only real criticism is performance really hurt after a while (summoning 80 little guys at a time I'm sure doesn't help), but can't fault that too much in the timeframe. Really good job!