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GALAXEN
GALAXEN
By mrerdalural, idikit and xumr
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 475 | 3.23 | 40 | |
| Fun | 685 | 2.47 | 40 | |
| Innovation | 422 | 3.05 | 40 | |
| Theme | 404 | 3.39 | 40 | |
| Graphics | 256 | 3.84 | 40 | |
| Audio | | 3.33 | 5 | |
| Humor | 568 | 2.09 | 35 | |
| Mood | 139 | 3.76 | 40 | |
Comments
takusan
2017-04-26 10:47
Oh I like it, you artsy bastards! Interesting idea, well executed. One of those where you start thinking about the premise instead of just playing the game.
Technical issue though: for me quotes stop abruptly mid-sentence during travel - only the blackhole quote showed the whole text. "I know simply that the sky will" "You are the big bang, the original force" It's not the same amount of characters or words, not sure about timing.
I'd love to see this in its entirety though. And if you will be updating, would you consider adding some sort of scaling option to the world, which would allow to make the environment more distant or scarce (too feel more... space-y :) )? But that's just my preference, I suppose it's not a trivial feature to add in this case.
Love the concept, well done!
@Takusan thank you for the feedback. Actually you need to orbit around a planet for a while to get the whole text but may be I should increase the distance where the communication starts and breaks. I'm not sure if it would be ok if i update the game for that kind of change right now since the event time is over and this does not exactly count as a bug.
Love the concept. Some awesome quotes! I sat back and enjoyed the ride :D Good job!
takusan
2017-04-26 21:57
@mrerdalural ah, that would explain a lot! I don't think you should update it now, but a post-jam update could deal with it - I was indeed darting at high speed through space, never occured to me that it was issue with distance (since I never tried moving slowly, and there's no indicator).
The ideal solution would need playtesting - get some different players and run the game with different settings for them, then check if someone falls into the same trap as I did.
I hope you'll get noticed though - as I said before, this is a good submission and I like it a lot :)
Cheers!
avavt
2017-04-27 08:53
The mood is very good, leave me with important life questions - like why am I sitting here playing a game instead of turning in the report I promised my boss.
I think I kind of get the message of the game (this is one of those game where you can never be sure you complete got it). And it was a nice experience. There wasn't much *game*play in it, but it was a beautiful experience nonetheless.
xmatos
2017-04-28 18:17
Hi there, congrats on the game! If someone described me what this game was, I'd probably find it extremely boring, but it was actually oddly engaging. The fact that there were quotes on the planets, and not coins or a +1 on planets or something like that, left me wanting to find the next one. I think it would be nice if you left the author of the quote in it. The game looks good and the music fits nicely(even though you didn't made it, it's worth praising the music choice). It was fun playing around with the momentum while on a orbit, maybe there is gameplay that can be explore there. One problem that I found the game could have design wise, Is that, I spent too much time looking at the map and not at the scenery, which it seems a bit against the spirit of the game, maybe have a smaller map, or maybe you can only access it while in orbit of a planet. Anyway, good job on the development and good luck on the competition.
takusan
2017-05-01 13:09
I've added rating in addition to my earlier feedback. Cheers!
fedor
2017-05-01 15:22
Nicely done!! It's nice to travel around and explore new planets. The idea with qoutes to collect stands out the game from the crowd. Well done!!
Pretty views, for sure. I would like to see some more mechanics. Overall, well done!
Visually pleasing game, and a very unique concept. Kept getting dragged into the sun too rapidly the first few tries, which was discouraging, but started to pick things up on the third attempt.
There is something here to build upon, for sure. Good job!
gao-ming
2017-05-03 09:33
The graphics are beautiful. Great work!
scornz
2017-05-03 10:42
The art is amazing and relaxing! This can definitely be turned into a full-fledged game... nice work!
Rather nice art and mood in this one! The quotes were interesting and it was quite enjoyable to try and piece together a common message through them all.
I had a couple of issues however: some of the planets were too close together and their quotes were overriding each other, so I had to go and look at the quote list to read them properly. Also, because of the understandably large expanses, I found it more useful to just look at the map most of the time, instead of all the great space-art.
Great entry overall, enjoyed it quite a bit.
@andrew-castillo We know about the close planet message overriding issue. Actually we are preparing for a post LD version and a WebGL port that optimizes the game, fixes a few bug and changes how the messages displayed.
Thanks everyone for the great feedback! I will comment and rate all of your games too!(@andrew-castillo)(@takusan)(@scornz)(@gao-ming)(@realitycheck)(@ursigames)(@fedor)(@xmatos)
khorm
2017-05-03 17:34
Right from the start with the dark music and cool menu this game have one of the best mood so far this Jam for me. The text is very well written and the game gives off a really consistent and awesome feeling. The vastness of the world vs the tiny you. Lovley background sprites that might have been IMO a bit to common - I'd like to really hone in on the "lonley" and vast feeling even more with a bit less happening in the background. On a few occations I managed to kinda glitch and stick to some of the smaller bodies. Probably only game this Jam that will recive max score on Mood for me. Great job overall!
What a beautiful entry!
The only thing I could criticize here is the jerky movement whenever the earth gets pulled right to the surface of a planet, should just be something concerning the collision detection, maybe you are moving the body without checking for collision. And maybe the camera also jerks sometimes. I think you could fix that by making sure the camera is positioned after the world is moved.
Nice selection of music and mysterious quotes. I love it!!
lipsch
2017-05-03 18:32
The athmosphere in this game is amazing! My first thoughts were: "What am i supposed to do?" But after a while i realized how beautiful the world (oh sry, Universe!) is. The exploring of the new planets and the diffrent gravities is really nice (: Overall a really nice, athmospheric game which goal i have not found ^^
gozz
2017-05-03 22:37
Okay...
At first I didn't know what that was and... it's kind of an alien :D
But I really like it, the physic management is quite great and I like the "mood" aspect of this game. Really great entry. I would have looooved if the graphics were a bit better as I think it's a bit simple but well, nice work !!
• The atmosphere is incredible! I felt in the game, good job.
• Graphics are stunning and visually pleasing, excellent job in achieving this!
• Overall an excellent game, would like to see more in the future
The concept of using gravity is quite nice, and you can make orbiting yourself around other bodies, which is funny. The game is atmospheric but somehow misses a goal.
Overall the entry is indeed artistic and interesting. I like it a lot.
Some sweet-ass parallaxin' going on here! Gotta love that parallax. I narrowly escaped death that one time, barely grazing the event horizon of the black hole as I slingshotted past, that was cool! I ended my journey between a rock and a hard place, squeezed between two planets caught in a compromising position. Trapped in double gravity well hell! Great atmosphere and beautiful look, I had a good time :D
Played the game here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (starts at 1:09:00)
Music fits very well with the game and the mood. The movement seems a little tricky when you are trying to move along the space.
I lost a lot of messages because I was travelling so fast and I dont know how to reduce the speed xD
Planet art (how bigger planets are darker than other +1) look nice, as the random galaxies, but the background seems a little poor (the square background stars).
Overall, is interesting to explore te space looking for planets and avoiding dark holes xD
Good job!
Your graphics makes me feel the motion of spacetime. The solitude and the vastness and narrowness of universe the world in a nutshell.
PS i'm confused that do use newton's gravity law? The gravity seems weird. But the gravity is good. I can accel myself to the escape velocity; decresde the energy while increase the angular momentum to find a circular orbit to receive the radio of celestial bodies. Cool!
Interesting little game. I'm not sure I can say anything you didn't already know: most of the times you can't read the messages because they disappear too soon, the camera movement when you crash into other planets looks quite bad, but playing with the gravity and trying to orbit some planets is fun. Keep up the good work!
5mixer
2017-05-04 11:13
I agree that the messages disappeared in an odd manner. While it technically may have made sense, it might have been best to show the full message before cutting it off. The game was well done, it was kinda neat watching my tiny planet cause another planet to fly around lol. I feel like it lacked some purpose, and while the might have been intentional, I obviously think that if you extended beyond LD, that should be the first thing you fix :)
I really enjoyed the atmosphere, and the explorative feeling. It would have been nice to read text while just passing by the planets, rather than having to stop and get new momentum - It kind of disrupted the nice flow. Nevertheless, I think the soundscape, the visuals and the general flow of the games goes very nicely together!
This is very nice! I think other people have already commented adequately on the way messages disappear (especially when two bodies are near each other). Other than that there's not really a lot to complain about.
I guess I can complain about this, if I have to about something: Quotes that have a hyphen in them, the stuff after the hyphen never shows. Presumably this is because you're splitting on the hyphen to hide the attribution, but it also affects "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine—it is stranger than we can imagine.", you just get "Not only it the universe stranger than we imagine".
Anyway, all in all, a neat experience!
Always love exploration so even if there wasn't much to do in the game I still enjoyed my time with it. Well done :)