The Evolution Of Stars

Category	Rank	Score
Mood	25	3.79
Coolness	3	57
Theme	29	4.00
Innovation	67	3.68
Graphics	71	3.93
Audio	76	3.41
Overall	83	3.61
Fun	255	3.00
Humor	418	1.94

lucas-tiridath 2012-08-27 09:04

Very nice entry. Background soundtrack really made it for me but the glowing graphics were very smooth too. Would have been nice to have more control over when the text changes (I'm a slow reader) but overall very polished and impressive. For your first LD, I think you should be very proud of your achievement. Btw I notice that the icon on the task bar keeps jumping to the right and sliding back to the left? Are you doing something weird with refreshing the window or something?

dadeyemi 2012-08-27 09:19

@Lucas Tiridath - Thank you very much, I used some random plugin for Paint.NET to make the icon for about 20 different sizes so it doesn't surprise me that its a little buggy.

I wanted to add the ability to control the timing but it would have taken too long to implement as I would have needed to match it to the particle animations so I left it out :(.

madpew 2012-08-27 10:17

Well done. I love Educational Games as this one. Please expand on this. Maybe get someone to read the text for voiceovers, and a "skip" button to forward the messages would be great.

dadeyemi 2012-08-27 10:20

Actually having it in Low def instead of HiDef was cause significant stability bugs

dadeyemi 2012-08-27 10:24

@madpew I did record me doing the voice over but:
1: the file becomes huge as XNA has a terrible content pipeline for SFX
2: My voice recording equipment sux (laptop microphone)
3: I have a cold so sounded horrible.

gungnir 2012-08-28 15:53

Is it supposed to end after the line about the brown dwarf? I feel like I missed a lot of content, also no idea how to get any of the achievements, it only lets me create one star...

kevincorrigan 2012-08-28 16:25

Sorry, my graphics card is from the stone age apparently, so I couldn't play.

starmen 2012-08-28 16:26

Really well made entry. Incredibly relaxing and pleasant to play. I couldn't seem to make anything other than a Protostar/Brown Dwarf but it was still fun none the less. It was also surprisingly educational, which is always a bonus. Only minor criticism is that the bar at the bottom with all the writing on it took up a little bit too much screen space, but otherwise really, really nice. Good job.

timtipgames 2012-08-28 16:52

really beatiful. I would have liked to read all the explanations, but sometimes they dissapeared to fast.

zoomyzoom 2012-08-28 17:41

Pretty swag

killerbug 2012-08-28 18:21

Informative. The ambient music really adds to the mood. Although at first I got lost due to long messages, it came out well in the end :)

echa 2012-08-28 20:54

Beautiful.

I wonder, can I make a black hole?

SethR 2012-08-29 11:55

I loves me some science

materie 2012-08-29 22:44

This game is GREAT! Couldn't escape becoming a black hole, though.

joekinley 2012-08-31 14:45

Thanks for the playthrough video. As I'm lacking a windows PC this helped me a lot.
I really liked the graphics and the audio. Good work on that.
Also the game feels really nice and seems fun and interesting. Although I had no idea what was happening. It was educational though.
Also good work on the achievements.

ALso, where's community points gone? I'd have given you 5 stars on that for the timelapse and the playthrough video.

wish-i-was-an-astronaut 2012-08-31 23:56

You know, a post compo version of this would be an excellent little educational game. I'd probably send it off to my astrophysics teacher.
I imagine the text could be rather confusing to anyone who doesn't already know about the life cycle of a stars. Still, good revision tool :P

Asides from that, the graphics were excellent, the music was nice at first but too repetitive, and the user should really be allowed to skip text when they want.
And in a post-compo version, I'd suggest being able to rewind back to previous minigames instead of starting from scratch every time.

goffmog 2012-09-01 00:07

Couldn't get a supernova or a planet but this has real replayability value and is a joy to play through, lovely mood - and space is always awesome, but doubly so when it's educational too. It seems to crash when I switch to another window, but other than that it seems stable for me

dj_pale 2012-09-04 21:08

Really nice concept! The graphics and particles were nice. The sound was a good beginning, but too short loop. I wish there would be a bit more gameplay :)