You've crash landed on planet xr57p. Combine discovered resources to explore: Green increases your adventure range; Orange creates attack pads for launching ray gun blasts; Purple creates teleport points.

Inspirations from jam theme (Episode 72: Expanding Your Universe with Jakub Wasilewski (Slipways)):

  • start from game feel - the main action is clicking. Try to use the click in multiple ways and make it feel good to use with tactile feedback.
  • explore and expand by making connections - your 'lifeline' ties you to your crashed ship's oxygen resource but limits your exploration.
  • use of a color wheel

Game Controls (all controls are left mouse)

  1. click to move and discover red, yellow, and blue tiles.
  2. if you move, any enemies can move the same number of squares. 
  3. click + hold to drag primary color tiles. release to combine primary colors into secondary colors.  
  4. create green tiles to increase your lifeline and expand your area of exploration.  
  5. create orange tiles to create pads you can attack from.  Click + hold to initiate targeting.  drag to target horizontally and vertically (like a rook in chess).  Release to launch ray gun blast at target. 
  6. create purple tiles to create teleport points.  Click + hold to initiate teleport.  Drag to target another purple tile.  Release over another purple to teleport. 
  7.  goal: explore as far as possible.  keep as many green squares protected as you can (points).  any aliens you release on your journey will eat the green squares. remember, aliens only move when you move (hint: try teleport)
  8. Special keys: toggles the tooltips on/off; to restart game; Z to zoom (PC).

Other personal goals

  • wrote an implementation of the A* pathfinding algorithm
Updated 21 days ago
StatusPrototype
PlatformsWindows, HTML5
Authorbones7242
Made withGameMaker

Download

Download
xr57p 2023 09 15 1057 win.zip 4 MB

Development log

Comments

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(+2)

Maybe I'm just not familiar with your influences, but I'm totally blown away by how unique this feels! Like the first time playing Fjords or a Michael Brough game. So, great work! Can definitely see the potential here. Let me know if you want more specific feedback! <3

(1 edit)

Thank you so much for taking the time to play it and share your feedback! Your comments are helpful and encouraging.   I had a variety of disparate influences for this game, but it really was all about the theme and trying to build design outward by iterating on a core mechanic (as well as keeping it something simple and achievable).  I liked the idea of exploring outward from a center point that you were tied to,  and I've been wanting to try implementing a grid based system.  I was kind of thinking about what if spaceman spiff's world and Into the Breach gameplay but exploration/adventure.  I started from the idea of getting a resource from each tile and built around that.  As I got going, @broquaint introduced me to Desktop Dungeons so I played a bunch of that and it became a big influence on the movement.   My goal was to create some simple systems that created rock-paper-scissors style decision tradeoffs around whether (and where) you combine resources.  At the core there should be a tradeoff between needing green to advance but needing purple and orange to survive.  I was thinking about chess and the puzzle of creating sightlines to cover your pieces with the ray gun.  I liked the teleport as a counter to the monster moving every space you move.  For movement, I struggled with wanting it to feel snappy and have immediate feedback on every click vs. needing to show the movement from tile to tile across space so the monster could move accordingly without him randomly appearing places... I fussed around with a lot of different directions hoping to discover a good way to create puzzles out of the core mechanics and I like it but felt like I never really got there.  

I will take any and all additional comments/feedback/criticism/ideas you have.  

I haven't played Fjords or any Michael Brough games, but I just googled Michael Brough and I think I'm about to go down a rabbit hole of awesomeness.  Thank you for the connection and recommendation!

(+1)

You're so welcome! You're definitely in for a treat with Brough's games. I totally suck at all of them, but I find them incredibly inspiring.

Here's a link to Fjords if you're interested. May not be relevant for you, but for me your game had the same sort of lovely excitement of something unfamiliar. It's a (sort of) platformer with an emphasis on teleportation and glitchy mechanics where you are constantly changing the map around you. So actually, maybe it is relevant!

I feel like the next step would be to have some sort of integrated puzzle mechanic, but I also love the emergent quality of the game, so not sure how I'd fit that in... Either way, it's a great start, and maybe some space from this project will allow you to discover what you are looking for!