turbo-hermit 2017-05-03 11:35
I liked the idea, but it feels a bit too technical. I'd probably liked it more as a sandbox game, where your planet just forms procedurally from any asteroid it hits, instead of making the "right" recipe.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → They Dance With Asteroids
By turnwolf
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 478 | 3.21 | 21 | |
| Fun | 634 | 2.63 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 66 | 3.89 | 21 | |
| Theme | 180 | 3.78 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 324 | 3.68 | 21 | |
| Mood | 340 | 3.31 | 18 |
I liked the idea, but it feels a bit too technical. I'd probably liked it more as a sandbox game, where your planet just forms procedurally from any asteroid it hits, instead of making the "right" recipe.
Beautiful graphics but I think it's too hectic for what it wants to be. Elements come at you too quickly to really get a feel for what they do. Think it could do with some slowing down but I really did like the concept.
A little bit hard to get what the game means. Maybe it's better to use some common knowledge instead of some professional technical terms in the game so more people can understand and have fun.
I really like the concept and the design.
However, i find the gameplay quite hard and tedious. I did not manage to bring the planet to the goldilocks zone. I had problems especially with getting water, because both H and O reduce core, and it seemed that every element, that increases core, also decreases water. I also agree with Sleepy about the asteroids.
Those problems can be easily fixed by some number tweaking and i love the gameplay idea.
@turbo-hermit @sleepystudios @dantewang Thankyou for your feedback! I do agree the game does start off too hectic and needs to be slowed down especially at the start. Will take that into account when making improvements to the game.
@chuck-zelvis Yes I agree, thank you for the feedback!
I really like the idea of this game. It's pretty addictive and I like how the planet visually adapt to its content. As for minuses it's a bit hard at to figure out what element does what and what is the actual aim (the right proportions of the planet's content). Overall, good job!
This could be one of my favourites entries but my lack of knowledge makes me lose even when I think I'm doing right. If there would be a way to experiment in a slower speed I would be playing it until solving it, but it all comes too fast. I love the visuals and Kevin McLeod's music is always a good choice for this kind of games.
I really liked it with the chemical elements, but one thing that really annoyed me was the spawn rate of the asteroids, sometimes fast and sometimes slowly, I still have not been able to bring life to the planet though :thumbsup:
I liked the idea but the game was too fast to get hang of. The elements came so fast that I didn't get time to analyze what they did. Maybe you should make two separate gamemodes, slower one for learning and faster one for playing more seriously. Visual are good. Good job.
Very interesting idea. Made me think! Too bad I'm terrible with elements and really only could figure out a few that helped the planet :) Anyways this is really cool!
The game is pretty interesting. The first space rock I made eventually exploded from too much in it. Every attempt after that the core failed. I am not sure what I did right the first time and wrong the next times since the 4 categories were kind of even.
I was expecting to mix elements and toss them at the planet, but the gameplay is more just of just randomness. The elements go so fast I can't tell what they do because I'm busy swatting other ones away.
Overall it was fun to play, and well presented, but it is a bit confusing and that's from someone that knows what those elements are for the most part. I imagine it will be super confusing to anyone that didn't like science.
The game mechanism is VERY interesting. The visuals are also very cool. However, I was personally confused about which elements I should really combine. I feel like as I play more I would learn by trials and errors, but there were so many elements! (And I am terribly bad at chem) Nevertheless it is undeniably a very good game.
Opinion time! I think this game had a lot of potential, but there were a few overlooked opportunities that made it so the potential wasn't quite capitalized. I spent longer with the game than I might have otherwise, but I wanted to try to put my finger on some specific problems and come up with a few concrete suggestions. Hope this is helpful!
My first reaction was like some other commenters mentioned: omg what just happened? I felt like the elements flew at me too fast.
But I played a bunch more times. The gameover screen doesn't give much info about why I failed, and the restart loop is a little slow - consider going right back into the game rather than to the main screen.
I spent a few games learning which elements upgrade my core. As I watched I think I realized the biggest problem. You need more transparency in the system to the player. I want a different sound effect for when an element affects a different aspect of my planet, so that I know right away if the core was grown vs the crust, etc. I think a little pop effect with a different icon to double-convey this information would also be worth it. This is the most important info for me to learn but the game doesn't do very much to facilitate that. Outcomes of actions should be multiplex-communicated via sound and graphics.
Next the controls were a little tough. After I learned to grow a large core in the initial phase, I made it quite a way with my planet, and eventually it grew to fill the whole vertical size of the screen. After this it was an EXTREMELY short time that I had to click-drag away the elements. I think that there are two problems here. First, does it have to be click-drag? What if it was just "click to bat away" instead? Second, I very often just barely missed when I flung my mouse to the opposite side of the screen to click-drag an asteroid away, and this was frustrating. You could consider being more generous with the click detection. For example I bet right now you just check whether I've clicked on the asteroid. But is the game really a dexterity test, or a decision test? Maybe you could have the game notice when I click anywhere, and if there's an asteroid within a certain generous radius, then I grab it. This way even if I miss by three pixels you can still carry out my intention.
The last big point is about the colors of the elements. I didn't feel like they conveyed the information about what effect they would have, and in fact they often conveyed misinformation. For example the iron is dark and heavy looking, and increases the core. The Mg is a very different look but also increases the core. But the aluminum looks like the iron, but does not increase the core. At least that's what I came to believe, maybe I got that wrong. But generally it didn't seem like the art informed me of what the element would do.
So in summary I suffered from a lack of information: opportunities were there to convey the info in advance, as well as after the fact to confirm the outcomes, but none of these channels were strongly utilized.
I did enjoy playing, but I focused on the shortcomings in this feedback because I felt like I *could* have enjoyed your core idea on a whole other level if I was understanding and feeling more in control.
I hope all of this is helpful, and it's not to say you have a bad entry here, on the contrary it's a cool idea which is why I spent extra time trying to get to the center of what could have been smoother.
A definite highlight here was the art, and the way that the planet changed visually as the mix of things changed, I really got satisfaction when I did have an atmosphere.
I think previous comments describe bad parts of this game. Too fast and difficult to understand which element does what. With panomaric screen it's unfair if elements come from top or bottom, as there's less time to respond, but maybe that was the plan. Game looks nice, but surely would look better if I knew how my actions affect the planet. Overall, nice idea, but execution could be better. Maybe next version?