Bunker Builder

As missiles rain down upon the earth, how long can your underground base last?

Bunker Buster is a base building game in which you build, expand and manage an underground bunker while missile strikes destroy the ground above you. Over time the ground above you is destroyed and you are forced to build deeper and deeper to prevent your base from being exposed. Building becomes more expensive as you move further down though, so manage your workers and resources carefully to last as long as possible.

Version 1.0.2 (post jam): Added small box to menu graphic telling people to click to view the tutorial.

Voting results

Overall
10th
56%
5.636
Graphics
16th
94%
4.727
Audio
8th
44%
6.364
Gameplay
7th
38%
5.545
Originality
3rd
13%
7.000
Theme
3rd
13%
7.455

This game entered in the Team competition (16 entries).

Comments (7)

dorkulon
 • 4 years ago • 

Pretty intense experience! Great job putting so much depth into this game!

Mr. Chocolate Salmon
(@mr_chocolatesalmon) • 4 years ago • 

There's a lot of detail in the game. Which is good, but I think it needs more time to explain the game. I skipped through the wall of text a couple times but there was too much to memorize and so I just jumped into the game and hoped for the best aha.

Overall though, the style and gameplay is solid. So good job!

DaFluffyPotato
 • 4 years ago • 

I found that the ideal strategy seemed to be to build a bunch of corridors down (since they were cheap), then build everything down lower since they're connected to the corridors. I also used corridors to get the materials in the ground for money (although this becomes less viable farther down). This seems like a pretty big exploit in the design that was left open.

I'm not sure if I was being dumb or not, but it seemed like I could only assign workers to housing, which was weird.

It looks like quite a bit of work was put into this game considering it's a game jam game. While there's a lot of mechanics here, I definitely think the tutorial could have been shortened a bit while still conveying all of the important information.

Overall, I like the concept and the interpretation of the theme, but I think the execution in terms of design could use some work.
Good job though!

RiverDog
  • 4 years ago • 

Thanks!

Wan
 • 4 years ago • 

Love this little game! The daunting tutorial frightened me at first, but it turns out the mechanics are quite intuitive and it's not too complicated to actually start having fun.

Once you get the hang of things it gets quite easy to last a long time. I suspect the increasing prices and the more and more damaging strikes make the gameover inevitable, but the progression was slow enough that I could play for >10mn without issues.

My own strategy was to build compact bases with one of each type of building at regular spots down the vacuum tube, with any remaining money being used to dig plenty of mines while seeking diamond & gold.

Apart from the easy balancing, my main issues are the lack of depth counter on the HUD, and the fact that the people seem only here to trigger the game over. I don't think assigning people to places changes things, nor having more people has any benefit. Oh and I've had a few crashes too.

Anyway it's a pretty impressive entry offering a rich gameplay, and also cool music reminiscent of Kerbal Space Program. Good job guys

bradur
 • 4 years ago • 

It was easy to tell this game had a lot of love put into it! I appreaciate the lengthy manual but an actual tutorial would be more helpful. It was quite hard to understand why the workers sometimes didn't do what I wanted. I managed to survive at least 10 minutes.

The music & sound design was terrific! This game could be really fun with some polish. It's very daunting to start playing the game with the missiles coming down. There should be a tutorial mode where you can't die and you have to learn to play before you get thrust into the battle situation.

remco
 • 4 years ago • 

I like the idea, as it is original. Base-building always gets a bit static after a while, and this flips the formula on it's head, especially with the 'it gets more expensive the deeper you dig', which makes sure you can't continue indefinitely. (You could build in a high score, either time survived or depth reached.) The execution is also well enough to keep you playing at least for a while (the different buildings and the icons make it al very intuitive, good job).

However, it does suffer from the usual detractors with such games: Waiting around until you gain enough resources to build the next needed building. Unfortunately, for this specific game, this gets worse as you progress, as inevitably you'll only be able to build smaller and smaller new (and deeper) outposts, which generate less money (and less workers to boss around), and thus make the waiting longer. (Or at least it restricts your choices.) So the game gets harder, but also somehow a bit more boring.

I'm not sure if assigning workers to stuff helped much, unless it's a bit faster and I just didn't notice, the same ammount of food/gold was produced?

I also could get into negative money for a while… Is that intentional?

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Baconinvader
RiverDog
mit-mit

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