Rover

Remote controlled vehicles are cool, especially when they're on a different planet. However, when that vehicle is on another planet, you get an enormous amount of lag and when the rover is at its dark side, you lose communication entirely. This is a game that simulates what it feels like to control such a rover. It is a game where you need to plan your actions ahead and avoid obstacles using a limited amount of information. It is a game about the fun of powerlessly watching your rover crash as your commands to save it do not arrive in time and about the fun of having your rover suddenly break down due to environmental hazards, but having absolutely no idea why.

GOAL: Collect the pink artifact and travel to the drop off point, marked by a green circle, while avoiding environmental hazards and keeping your energy cell sufficiently charged.

CONTROLS: The game is played using the mouse. Click a button in the bottom right to chose an action. You can hover a button to get a short description of that button's action. Click in the time line (bottom-left) to schedule it. Holding shift while clicking allows you to schedule an action multiple times. Clicking the button again or right clicking anywhere will deselect the chosen action. The map can be dragged by holding the left mouse button and rotated using the middle mouse button.

ACTIONS:

Waypoint	Waypoints are used to move the rover to a different location. When selected, click the map to set the waypoint's coordinates. Be aware that movement costs additional energy and produces more heat. Waypoints cannot be updated when the coordinates have already been sent to the rover.
Wait	Stops the current action causing the rover to become idle. Can be used to conserve energy or prevent collision.
Solar panel	Deploy solar panel. Used to restore energy. The panel is fragile, so the rover cannot do anything else while it is out. Note that the solar panel takes time to deploy and repack. It obviously does not produce energy during the night.
Grab artifact	Used to collect the artifact which is necessary to complete the game. The robot arm used for this purpose has limited range.
Ground sample	Take a ground sample and analyze it to obtain more information about the terrain.
Cancel	This is used to remove actions from the schedule that have not yet passed the communication horizon.

ISSUES:

The game features a day-night cycle, which is not clearly visible as I forgot to implement the map darkening during the night. When the signal strength is at 0 it's night.

DEVELOPMENT: This is my second game jam. This year I wanted to have better graphics, add sound and use both days of the jam. I succeeded at two of those. I wanted to have multiple scenario's, however I did not have time left to make any.

USED RESOURCES: For the artwork in this game I used assets from:

• OpenGameArt for the mars rover model;
• Texture Haven and Free Stock Textures for the terrain textures;
• Google Fonts and Font Space for the fonts;
• Openclipart for some of the button icons.

Furthermore I used D3.js for creating SVG graphics using JavaScript.