Ignition Point

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A Submission for the One Game A Week Jam #3 following as bes as I can to the theme and restrictions set for it. Granted most of it could be interpreted differently.

Elevator Pitch:

You are an engineer on a dying spaceship trying to jump to safety using a faulty, experimental ignition key borrowed from a nearby space station. You must route fluctuating reactor power between shields, life support, and the rapidly overheating ignition key to survive the jump sequence.

Constraints Breakdown:

Genre: Resource Management – You route a fixed pool of power units between life support, shields, and the engine.
Theme: "Unstable Key" – The ignition key overheats and fluctuates wildly, requiring power cooling to not explode.
Wildcard: Invisible Score – The final health of the spaceship hull is a secret until you successfully complete the jump.
Ingredient: A Borrowed Object – The experimental key was borrowed from a friendly starbase under strict terms.
Weekly Engine: TIC-80 - Used TIC80 for the first time and restricted to only using the engine.

NO AI WAS USED FOR THE PROJECT

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Useless Information to most

I chose to use the weekly engine challenge for two reasons. I wanted to gain that extra point since it's easily obtainable. The second reason was I've never used TIC80, I was familiar that it is an engine similar to PICO8 but with slightly different systems and allows other languages than just LUA. It was a interesting challegne to say the least.

What I found to be the most difficult thing within TIC80 is actually the resolution in which the viewport is in. It was very difficult to construct everything and have it look and fit right on screen. I also am quite terrible at music and audio thus the sounds and music are rudementary at best. It was nice to have the tools included and I didn't have to figure out how to intergrate it into the engine.

Due to the constraints give by the jam are very vague and could be broadly interpreted, aka are very subjective to the user I went for a simple little game. The other reason I went for something as simple as this game was two primary reasons. I've never used LUA for anything more than some things in Stormworks or other games that have it baked into their game, and I've never used TIC80 before so I didn't know if I could fully commit to it. Thus it reinforced the other reason I chose such a small scoped project which is I would like to convert it/ re-create it in another engine / framework to see the differences between them, and how I could expand upon it with a larger avaiable viewport. It also meant if I decide to not comit to TIC80 I could swap pretty easily.

I also kept the scope low, as its very important to keep scope low when learning as otherwise its very easy to get overwhelmed by it all. Just like my previous jam challeging my self to keep scope as mininal as possible. I did eventaully add more to the game after some friends I made from the previous jam playtested it and gave feedback.

So Thanks for LostinTransit for the super helpful infomration that lead to some quality of life features, a how to play page, along with the ability to see if your in range of a + or - button on the game.

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SOURCE CODE

The source code is fully avaible on my github, and can be downloaded as both a TIC file or straight LUA Code. Keep in mind only the TIC file has the audio and sprites.