Play game
Greed Station's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Devlog | #3 | n/a | n/a |
| Gameplay / Fun / Engagement | #11 | 3.440 | 3.440 |
| Audio / Sound Design | #17 | 3.160 | 3.160 |
| Overall | #19 | 3.150 | 3.150 |
| Theme | #23 | 3.080 | 3.080 |
| Art Style / Visuals | #33 | 2.920 | 2.920 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine / Tools
Unity 6
How does your game fit the theme?
It's quite a literal interpretation of the theme. The goal is to gather resources as efficiently as possible. You play against an ever increasing deadline. Think of the best way to gather resources, use resources to reveal the best path. Destroy resources to dig deeper faster or plan a more efficient route.
The world is procedurally generated and all resources have different value, so plan your approach and stay ahead of the deadline while upgrading your weapons to fine tune your strategy.
Devlog link
https://antjowie.itch.io/greed-station/devlog/979271/goedware-game-jam-14-dev-log-and-retrospective
Easter Egg Challenge
In the main menu there is a big space ship at the top. During gameplay shoot your rail cannon or drone towards the top of the screen. This will hit the space station. If you hit the space station 3 times you will get a special ending.
Self-made & used stuff
Anything else you'd like to share about your game or development process?
This was our first game jam. At the beginning time felt quite abundant but it quickly became apparent that the scope was too big. We've cut quite a few features but have still managed to make something that feels quite polished and fun to play.
Getting to experience working together towards a deliverable in a short timespan has been very insightful, the biggest concern was that our idea required quite a few systems to start testing, so we never really knew if it would be fun to play until it was done (and we didn't have anyone on the team with a focus on designing to ensure we're making something that's actually fun).
Once the systems were finished and we tried it out, it was quite rough, but by playing and coming up with ideas to improve the gameplay while ensuring they stay withing scope we were able to deliver something that we are satisfied with.
For next time, I'd definitely focus more on exploring the theme more to come up with an creative interpretation that requires less foundation to start with. But since this was our first gamejam, I really put the focus on getting a tangible idea, and working towards it. With clear expectations it's easier to visualize the end product, ensuring the team is aligned.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Very well done for your first game jam!
It was a fun game to play and looked cool too with the laser beam and the ground-mining mechanic. Must’ve been a lot of work!
I was able to get pretty far using just the beam, but the upgrades were a welcome addition.
The visual style was nice and the background music was a great beat too 🎶
Solid base for future updates with more options maybe or other planets or...
All in all, a solid and strong first jam entry. Keep it up! 💪
I had a lot of fun playing this! The atmosphere is tense but still really fun! The music is fantastic and matches the game feel very well. Unfortunately it was a bit too hard for me and I was unable to beat cycle 4 even after several attempts. The game is really fun and feels very polished, great work!
Really cool and intense experience!
The gameplay loop of digging deeper, managing resources, and staying alive under pressure works great.
The atmosphere is dark but oddly fun — felt the tension build with each cycle.
Also, big fan of the station design and the upgrades. Would love to see it expanded!
I managed to go get the normal victory with just the beam and the drone, though I imagine the railcannon is useful!
Your team did very well for a first jam! With a few tweaks (and the addition of a pause button please) this would give all the same feelings an old flash game would!
Also is railcannon an ULTRAKILL reference?
Good job on winning with only the beam and drone, the intention for rail cannon is to clear out resources faster, but with some yield and radius upgrades it becomes quite potent. We actually wanted to go for that kinda old school flash game vibe. The whole theme is to not take itself too serious.
Now that you mention ULTRAKILL, I should've added a coin thrower weapon which would've been such a great easter egg :D Something for next time, thanks for playing!
extremely fun game! i enjoyed it a lot! although i felt i was sticking way too much to the laser. overall, addicting to see the numbers stack up!
keep up the great work!
Happy to hear you had fun. If we had more time we actually wanted to encourage exploration more, by adding chests that you need to pickup with the drone launcher and the initial vision was also a bit different, where each weapon had their own cooldowns (laser would have heat meter, rail cannon 3 shells and take 10 seconds to create new one) so you would end up trying to use all weapons as efficiently as possible.
But we thought that upgrades would be more beneficial so prioritized that over improving the weapons. I agree that the laser overstays its welcome a bit too much though.
Really fun game! The digging felt super satisfying, especially once I started figuring out which tools worked best on which resources. Definitely got some Noita vibes from the terrain stuff—love that kind of destruction and discovery loop.
Only thing that wasnt too good for me was the performance of the game on the browser but im pretty sure downloading th game would solve it.
Still, I had a great time with it. You can tell a lot of thought went into the feedback and game feel. Keep up with the good work!
Thanks for playing. Glad you liked the loop. I was thinking of how to make collecting ores fun and mainly thought about Minecraft and Terraria. For me in Minecraft it's that initially it can be tedious but the sounds/feedback and gradual improvements make it satisfying, and in Terraria I always like building the hellavator cuz it's just fun to blow up a ton of ground, so I tried to combine them. Happy to hear it worked quite well :)
As for performance I was actually surprised how many times I had to profile and improve sections of code. I personally had a pretty stable performance (above 120 fps all through) but I'm also on very recent hardware (9800x3d + 7900xtx). I'll keep it in mind tho and test my future projects on my laptop as well.
i must say, i really dig this idea :D
i think the fact that you made this digging system and terrain generation is really impressive, i just wish the player could change the station's angle and position, at least on horizontal axis
also reminds me of Noita in a good way, i guess i have a soft spot for these kind's of games :D
What a great opening sentence 😂. As for the station I'll take your feedback in mind for future projects. While it was intentional I think it just punishes players who want to dig on the right side. It effectively halves the playing space.
I've never played Noita but they're technology is impressive, I was already getting performance issues with this project (though truth be told, due to time everything is implementing in a very naive way) so that's a really cool game to check out what they're doing underneath the hood.
Thanks for playing the game :)
It's certainly a fun game and requires some strategic thinking and investment!
I loved the take on the theme and way the company gives you "gifts" or kicks you out! Lol!
I wish it was clear in the beginning that what colour yields better value. I learnt it by trail and error.
Thanks for making this!
Thanks for playing it :) I always like to go for these kind of "big powerful company is generous or bad" vibe. For this the ideas came a bit from Armored Core where the companies quite literally hire you, and the next day hunt you. They just do whatever is most efficient.
One thing we wanted to add in the targeting circle was to highlight efficient resources green and inefficient red. Though I was also a bit worried that this might simplify the game too much (I think part of the fun in finding the most efficient way to mine is by observing). Since you understood it after some attempts I think the onboarding should've been better, maybe a little tutorial.
great game! After I got the hang of using the different weapons/system on the right resources, doing it correctly felt a lot more rewarding. The angle was a bit hard tho, maybe being able to move the ship horizontally would be a nice help. Still one if the best entries I played so far. Nice job!
Thanks for playing. That's a good idea. Initially we wanted the ship to stay stationary and have projectiles fly kind of like in Worms. If you haven't played it before there is a bazooka and the rocket will just explode on contact so you have to sometimes aim on the side instead of right on the target.
But it didn't really work out in this game, and with the station being stationary, you actually also limit the playable space as destroying the right side of the map is actually more inefficient. Mining the right side only punishes the player.
So thanks for the feedback :)
Cool game,though using other tools felt too punishing as it had a cost so i mostly stuck to the laser
Thanks for trying out the game, initially the rail cannon would have a way lower cost but it would need to load shells which would take time so you would be swapping between the systems and essentially try to use all 3 at the same time (kinda like FTL). Though we didn't have time to update the UI to show this so we ended up relying on the upgrades to make it worthwhile.
I'd say the rail cannon becomes quite nice to use later (it has positive yield after 1 radius or yield upgrade) but using it before that indeed very likely loses your run, and I do think that's pretty bad as it punished experimentation.
Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind for my future projects :)
Really cool game, it was a little frustrating to have to dig at an angle, and I didn't feel mush need to switch from the laser but the gameplay was fun, the visuals were cool, and destroying the planet was very satisfying!
Glad to hear you found it satisfying. A lot of focus was put into that so it's nice to hear it paid off. Initially we wanted to have stations that would also shoot lasers so you'd have multiple angles but that got cut, so now indeed people tend to just mine the left side of the map. Maybe it would've helped if you could also move the station sidewards. The laser is definitely good in the beginning, but I'd say after the first upgrade on rail cannon it can get strong real quickly.
All in all, thanks for playing :)
I like the concept, destroying the ground feels satisfying! The initial tutorial phase was a little overwhelming with all those texts though, but great work on your first jam! :>
Thanks for trying out the game. When we playtested on the last day with a few friends we noticed that nobody really understood what to do (we missed a lot of feedback like the costs, the ore info, etc). Since we had so little time left I tried to just make a tutorial popup and keep the text as bare minimum.
But yea I was still quite worried about the pace of things. Because you start the game, and now suddenly there is a timer, you're unfamiliar with the controls. It just goes full throttle immediately. Next time I definitely want to introduce the player into the game a bit more gracefully, or make a simpler game that involves the theme better :)
Finishing a game in game jam is really hard so congratulations for finishing your first game jam game.
About gameplay it was quite fun and enjoyed it as well but lacks the theme implementation, yes you are gathering resources but doesn't see how everything is defined here. Other than that you did a good job with the gameplay and upgrades as well. So keep it up! :)
Thanks! I'm also glad we managed to finish it, with all the systems we were making it was kinda hoping they'd all come together well but it seems to have worked out quite fine. I do agree with the theme implementation, it's quite boring and literal. Next time I'd definitely want to change up the brainstorming approach and actually make something that really involves the theme, instead of a project where you can just kinda fit the theme into.
Good job on finishing your first game jam game! Although it was a bit unclear at the start, the game functions well. In the end I just drilled down vertically with the laser beam and almost beat the game that way. I can imagine that with more time you can implement more diverse gameplay but the basics are there, so again congratulations on delivering a working game!
Thanks! Haha going straight down was indeed a strategy that we tried to work against by scaling the deadline faster and making the oil resource worth a bit more, and the idea was to have a bit of progression where you start with the laser, and then transition to rail cannon upgrades to actually make that weapon have a positive return and transition to mining with oil.
As usual we overscoped quite a bit, and so on the last day I wanted to really lock down the features but after playtesting we just really thought an upgrade system for some kind of progression was needed.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you found the game to function well. It was a bit of a gamble hoping that all the systems came together at the end but it seemed to work out quite fine.
Is it only me, or is there more games about digging lately :)
I gotta say- I liked this one! The diging felt satisfying! Every hit of the laser, every time the number went up, it had a really nice rythm to it!
The presentation worked well! The pixely underground reminded me of old games like scorched earth. Music fit the gameplay really well.
Upgrades were a nice touch, but I didn't feel that my beam got much more powerful. And since you use the beam 90% of the time I didn't really upgrade anything else.
The theme? Probably the weakest point of a really good game. This was less "everything is a resource" and more "resources are a resource" :)
Over all- if this is your first jam game, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do in the future! Keep it up guys!
Happy to hear you liked it. We put lots of effort to make the mining as satisfying as possible. SFX, shaking UI, number feedback with pops. It's a bit of a shame all the audio got mixed weird when playing on a WebGL build.
I do agree that the interpretation of the theme is very literal, and for the next jam I definitely want to spend more time on it. I already got some ideas on how I'd like to change up the brainstorming approach.
All in all, thanks for playing :)
Cool! This was really fun to play. The gameplay, which I didn't understand at first, was really simply explained and easy to understand. I like the concept of having an increasingly difficult goal to achieve each cycle and having to strategize in order to complete it. Great job!
The art was simple, but effective. It wasn't anything too unique or insane, but I think the style you chose worked well for this type of game. Same goes for the music and sound effects - they add to the player experience a lot and work really well. The music fit's the games atmopshere perfectly, and it's amazing to hear you made it yourself!
The upgrades system also added an extra component of strategy and I think are a nice addition to the core gameplay.
I think that even more sound effects and an extra layer of polish would be a great next step for this game. It would be cool to see animations for when I collect resources, or more complicated graphics.
Despite this, this is a really fun and unique game. I quite enjoyed playing :)
Glad to hear you enjoyed it. Yea one thing I noticed was that there was a lot of missing feedback initially about what you exactly need to do, different weapons giving more resources, an ever increasing deadline. We didn't really have a lot time remaining to improve this experience so I tried to tackle it with a tutorial overlay that tries to explain the main gimmicks as simple as possible, and some more in game feedback like showing you which weapons are effective. But even with all these changes I think it can still be confusing, since the game immediately starts, giving a new player almost no opportunity to familiarize itself with the systems when they first play. But it's nice to hear you got the gist of it after a few tries.
For the art and SFX style we kept it simple, but like you said I think the main thing is to keep them consistent. I'm quite happy with how it all came together, the shaking and color changing UI, the compressed VFX, it blends pretty well.
I do want to correct that we didn't make the music ourself. Initially we wanted to but we ran out of time so we downloaded it from a royalty free youtube channel. You can find it here or in the description. I get the misunderstanding though since audio is marked as "made by yourself", but we only made the SFX ourselves, not the music.
The ideas you have for improvement align a lot with ours, especially the one about "animations for collecting resources". Initially another system you'd have would be the Space Elevator (I've added an image for the POC where you can see the space elevator) and you would see drones picking up the resources and bringing them here, and would have to balance upgrading your weapons or logistics to improve yield or increase amount of resources gathered. But we had to cut scope to keep time for polishing.
All in all, thanks for the feedback :)
Love this! Great concept, really satisfying to play and I really enjoy the strategic gameplay loop and upgrades!
Had a total blast (pun very much intended) playing!
Thanks for playing, I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it. Upgrades were a last minute thing we decided to add after playtesting so I'm glad to see it improved your experience
GAMEPLAY: Snappy, simple but allowing for strategy, and doesn't get boring too quickly. I struggled a lot in getting past the second cycle...maybe 'cause I got distracted by trying to shoot the space station, but that's neither here nor there.
VISUALS: The flat-color terrain is an odd contrast with the complex rendered spacecraft. I think I personally like it, but I can't say it's a good move. The color-coding is useful, and the UI is clear without omitting information.
AUDIO: The music ends up a little too cheery for how the narrative was presented, but space-y enough to still have me vibing along. Love the bzzts and ka-chings.
THEME: Not a very creative interpretation of 'everything is a resource', but as a resource extraction game, I can't say you failed. For a first round in a game jam, undershooting things like this is far better than overshooting and failing to produce a game, so you definitely did not fail.
Thanks for playing. Yea we wanted to introduce some textures for the terrain but decided to first really focus on the gameplay to get something going that atleast feels good to play. When we finally finished the mechanics we had about a day left to actually play test and once we did we decided that adding some kind of upgrade/shop had the most impact on the gameplay. Even with the downscoping we ended up having a bit too little time to add.
The over rendered visuals was definitely a stylistic choice. It was a bit inspired by Nubby's Number Factory but it's definitely a love it or hate it kinda thing. Ultimately I wanted to try making the models in blender and exporting them to see how that works (for easy iteration and normal map) and the result does kinda work.
And also like you mentioned, yea it's quite a literal interpretation of the theme. For the next jam I'd definitely try and spend a bit more time interpreting it.
All in all, thanks for the feedback :)
A really nice and satisfiyng concept however I imagine the sound design could be enhanced with a sound on destruction of terrain perhaps. And a reason to use the drones would be nice.
Thanks for playing the game! I appreciate the feedback. Just to clarify though sound effects do play when terrain is destroyed, and the drones already have multiple uses like collecting oil and revealing terrain. Could you elaborate on what you felt was missing?
What I meant about the drones was that when I played I wasnt really compelled to use anything else than the laser because later on I really wasnt sure what its puprose was.
Very entertaining and the destruction of the terrain is very well done, it is very satisfying to “destroy” the terrain and I really liked how the laser is designed especially. Great!!!
Glad to hear you enjoyed it. We put quite some effort into making it satisfying to destroy and mine the planet with sound effects and shaking ui so I'm glad it paid off :)