A Ludum Dare 43 game jam game

Sacrifices must be made

The Oregon Trail, except a flight to Mars (AKA Interstellar: the 48 hour game jam game)

You are in command of a rocket, launched just before a large meteor strikes Earth making it uninhabitable. Your ship, crew, and cargo are the only hope for humanity's survival. The meteor's threat was discovered less than a year ago, and your ship is underdeveloped and underequipped for the journey. Along the way you can expect new challenges to present themselves, and it is only through your leadership that you and your crew can hope to survive. The path will be arduous and require many sacrifices, only to deliver a small hope of the survival of the species.

1. Balance of resources

You have 50 crew, a cargo bay full of food, medical supplies, and thousands of frozen human embryos necessary for repopulation on Mars. Your rocket has a small surplus of fuel beyond what is necessary for the reverse-burn to enter Mars orbit and land on the surface. The ship's electrical system is powered through solar panels, but one of them is not functioning, leaving you with a shortage of energy.

How will you allocate your limited resources?

Details:

• Crew: 50
• Food: Start with x rations, on board growth handles the rest
• Energy: x capacity
• Embryos: 10,000

Energy drains:

• Food production
• Embryo cryo storage
• Third thingie... but what?

End game scenarios:

• Crew size:

  25: Mars settlement thrives 8: Minimum viable crew to grow colony from embryos fewer: Despair and the survivors die within a year

• Embryos:

  4000: Humanity makes a full recovery 1000: The colony survives but lives harsh, difficult lives fewer: Within two generations there is a population collapse, dooming humanity

2. Events

Along the way, several events will occur, prompting decisions that will force more tradeoffs of resources. Ideas:

• More equipment failures on the rocket
• Crew member inadvertently carried a virus on board
• Meteor's impact with earth alters the effects of gravity enough to require a burn of the rocket to correct trajectory
• A crew member, overcome with grief at the loss of family and Earth itself, and pessimistic about the mission, commits suicide. Morale plummets and others are at risk of the same.
• The rocket collides with space junk on the way out of earth orbit, requiring a team to space walk for a fix.
• Pressure leak