Newton's Axiom

Made in 72 hours for GMC Jam 7.

This game is now open source: https://github.com/meseta/newtons_axiom

Take control of Newton's Axiom, a state-of-the-art ship lost deep in hostile space.  Survive by mining asteroids for metal to build your own fleet and dominate this sector of the galaxy.

Controls:

• WASD or arrow key movement
• Mouse aim
• Left mouse button or space key to fire primary weapon
• Right mouse button or shift key to fire secondary weapon
• Click on units to switch control
• Click on build icons to build new ships

Hints:

• Your Newton's Axiom mothership can mine asteroids too, albeit slowly.  Use when the situation is dire.
• The game ends when your last mothership is destroyed.  But with enough resources you can build more as backup.
• You should be able to outrun enemies you can't fight.
• Your loyal fleet will follow you to their deaths, even if that means crashing into an asteroid that strayed into their paths... use caution when cruising at speed.

Dev details:

Adhering to the Newton's Law of Motions theme of the game jam, all the motion in the game is governed by F=ma, each unit has a mass stat and a thrust stat that creates acceleration (except for the friction in space, which unfortunately needed to be added for playability reasons).  Collisions are done in full 2D circular collisions, and adhere to the correct momentum transfer.  Projectiles also transfer their momentum; and there is weapon recoil, albeit suppressed.

In addition to the physics, the game also make use of Boids instead of a discrete state machine to govern AI behaviour.

Coding, Art: meseta

Open source code:

I have open-sourced this project, you can find it on github: https://github.com/meseta/newtons_axiom

Here is a video walkthrough of the project: