For the September 2025 HEJ game jam challenge, for the themes of “Zero Gravity” and “Solid-Liquid-Gas-Plasma” I made a game about an astronaut. How fitting, you might say. I had an idea a year ago, about a lost astronaut, where he should have been gather resources, craft stuff to survive on a small planet, then ascend to the meteor ridden space, and finally craft a spacecraft that is able to leave that place behind. The guy would have the planet’s flora and fauna as the enemy, so some defenses would be needed and oxygen management would have been one of the main part of the gameplay. That idea wasn’t going anywhere so I sliced a bunch of stuff, made it much more simpler: only two resources to mine, the third and oxygen can be generated from water on pre-placed stations. Oxygen generators are double as checkpoints too, where the player gets back when the astronaut runs out of oxygen (using it up, or if an enemy touches the astronaut, it also decreases the oxygen), or can teleport back before that. So, basically no dying here, only getting back to a checkpoint. Other than that, there are plasma generators, turret printers and some upgrades that make possible, or help to progress on the level. The final goal is to find the broken escape pod, repair it, fill it up with water and plasma before the time runs out and there is your happy ending… more on that later though.
Technically, there are some interesting things happen under the hood. The flying around works with small bursts of oxygen, then the astronaut flies in a direction with inertia, but slowed by a little drag. Knocking into something stops the movement, giving a new direction will modify the current flight path. Getting and loosing oxygen is pretty much straightforward. Gathering the pieces of the space station – that crashed into Oumuamua – and the scattered water with a mining laser is another part in the game, probably could / should modify it to just simple proximity based pickup. I implemented a mini map, that uses an image and some updating elements, like stations and the player’s location. I didn’t have time properly make a fog of war mini map, as unfortunately the printing of the tiles to pixels process takes a good 5-10 seconds in itself, but that’s one thing I want to tackle at some point in time. I again used some screen effects to make some interesting atmosphere to represent the loneliness and give some sense of danger. I decided to put a bunch of information about the game on the GUI. Besides the number of the resources, I show the hotkeys (as the player collects stuff, some new elements also shown), and the possible / found upgrades. I made three type of enemies and two of them use grid pathfinding, built in GameMaker, with some extensions to make their movements more believable (if there is no colliding factor between them and the protagonist, they just move in a straight line, otherwise they switch to grid movement). One enemy is just sits on walls and they retract from lasers. Ah yes, and again, I used the new camera system, as where to make use of the smooth camera movement, than in a game where the protagonist can move with any speed (to a max of course)? That failed to work normally again during stream, just an FYI.
I added some upgrades as I mentioned, some of them needed to progress, most of them just helps to get by. An analyzing laser, that shows on cursor hover the tutorial information, the requirements of the stations, enemy and upgrade info, and how much resource is in one bundle. A radar drone that already scanned the insides of Oumuamua and will activate TAB button to show the mini map. A respirator, that so to speak helps to better make use of the available oxygen (doubles the oxygen the player can carry). A slow firing laser pistol, that can be used to shoot lasers to destroy malarkey blocks and damage enemies. Well, this works a bit strange, as left mouse button, if held, activates the mining laser. Releasing the button (if no mining laser activated) will do the shooting. There is an alien key, that opens doors (touching or shooting at them). And finally, a repeater addon for the laser, now pressing (and releasing) left mouse button quickly will fire lasers much faster. It is needed, as the second enemy type is a ruthless hunter and also shoots lasers. The final confrontation is a bit hard, the player even should make a bunch of turrets or just be content with always teleporting back to the last checkpoint, while trying to repair the escape pod.
And the promised ending. So, the player has one hour to escape, and it’s plenty, especially if the player had at least one run with the game. The protagonist gets aboard the pod, it takes off, happily ever after. I do like to come up with background stories and connections for my games, to my other games. So I actually decided the fate of the astronaut: he was not able to escape Oumuamua, it dragged him out of the Solar System. Soon, got into a wormhole as it was actually an automated scout ship of an ancient civilization on its way back to home from a long-ago mission. Said civilization is a mummy-species that cultivates death over any life so they mummify themselves (and others) to become powerful, undead beings. They had world conquering ambitions, until their own planet, the cradle of their civilization was torn apart and they were set back in their advancement centuries or even a millennium. That is when the astronaut gets captured and “upgraded” to a mummy, by draining his blood, that seeped into his space suit and dried as such. The process changed his personality and become the Wizard (on the right of how he can easily use and even create some technological stuff, which was kind of lost for this species) and he served Tut, a powerful giant entity. For jealousy, or misunderstood information she imprisoned the Wizard. Some centuries later he escaped on his spaceship from the clutches of Tut. Familiar story? Just check on the Wizard of Tut. (As for the different uniform / spacesuit: I made this connection later, after I was ready with the game, just imagine that the white one is more similar to the Wizard’s :). Also, the spaceship: he just could have built a new one, from parts of the escape pod and from the technology of the mummy-species.)
His path will cross with another character of mine, somewhere in time. And the species itself is tied – even if from far afar – to Heartcaged, as one of the main bosses in that game is a mummy looking giant with godlike powers, that was elevated to this position in the past, well before their home planet was torn apart. He went on his own “adventures”, conquering worlds, dimensions, until he settled in an other world, just messing around with that locally in his new found apathy.
PixelKrajcár 