Spaceship Ferry Captain's Handbook, Chapter 12: What to Do in the Event You...

nick-rafalski 2017-08-01 04:10

This was super fun. I am a fan of ship management games, but hate when they're needlessly complex. This had a very approachable yet strategic element.

It took me 4 restarts to really figure out the sensitivity of the controls, but after that, it was quite enjoyable.

It wasn't 100% obvious, but is there only 1 level? I know it's different every time, but the spaceship is always pretty close. Does it ever get further away, or more difficult in another way. It was honestly pretty easy by the 3rd and 4th times.

sketchycode 2017-08-01 05:16

Yeah, it's just the one level. I ran out of time, but had planned on introducing more obstacles, and possibly even enemy ships. Game balancing and ramping difficulty got chopped due to time, a mistake I plan to correct for the next compo. Thanks for the feedback!

james-greenleaf 2017-08-01 06:36

Fun game, and I liked the humor too. The controls were pretty difficult, but that added to the challenge, and I was able to get the hang of it.

rockhoppergames 2017-08-01 06:39

A fairly solid take on the theme, with notes of FTL that I enjoyed (turning off lifesupport for a little more power is always good). The repair sound effect was a little harsh, but the game seemed otherwise well put together.

Was I missing something, or was there no button to fly forward though? I had to dock my ship in reverse, and I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.

xel 2017-08-01 06:45

Life support is overrated, though my crew might think otherwise. Took me two tries to get to the space station. Controls were tough but I never expected piloting a space ship to be easy! Fun concept overall. Nice simple graphics. Good work!

jesper-fyhr-knudsen 2017-08-01 08:01

Very fun game :) a bit easy but very good idea and mechanics.

jaakko 2017-08-01 09:27

Fun but short. Good job for compo.

stoffe 2017-08-02 14:20

Fun game, got the hang of the controlls after a while of spinning around.

Sad that the game was to short, could have spawned the the space station further away from the player to make it longer.

lawrence 2017-08-02 16:34

Interesting idea and I liked the controls. Good job :slight_smile:

varelsegames 2017-08-03 03:41

Man, I'm really bad at this. I did complete it, and it was pretty funny bouncing around between all the rocks when I lost control. I found it particularly difficult that I had to aim the ship backwards.

steve-johnson 2017-08-03 04:16

Nice concept and good scope. Moving the station about twice as far away would make this a little better as a single level, or tweaking the plot so there are infinite goals to reach and giving the player a high score. Doing discrete levels in 48 hours is always a huge challenge. Anyway, I enjoyed it!

ryte2byte 2017-08-03 04:35

Great game! Had a lot of fun and the learning curve felt just right. Took about four tries.

Kinda torn about the rotation controls being so touchy. I'm going lean towards the fact that it was the right call for this game.

It would have been great if you had put the toggle keys on the actually control buttons themselves or made the activate via mouse click.

bmacintosh 2017-08-03 05:04

Fun to play, if rather short. I really liked frantically managing the shield and repair power. I also liked the humor, very Galaxy Trucker-esque. Life support just ended up being something to turn off as much as possible, since there wasn't much downside to having low crew health.

cpcrabs 2017-08-03 09:06

I liked this game.

The gameplay was pretty basic, move from one area to another, but with a little power management added, it was quite fun to play.

The controls could be taken two ways. On one hand, they were confusing and counter-intuitive, on the other, they were complex and fun to master.

I enjoyed the music, even though it was pretty simple. I wouldn't listen to it outside of the game, but I wouldn't mute it when playing the game. I was a little disappointed that it only played on the main menu screen.

Most of the sounds were okay, however the restart sound was very startling and maybe a little too loud...

Overall, this game was fun. If you gave it a little polish, improved the sounds, and tweaked some of the gameplay, you could have a really great game.

simonhutchinson 2017-08-03 14:28

Cool! I really like the unique control scheme (which is basically like the whole game!). I kept spinning through space for a while, but when it all clicked it was really satisfying.

gonutz 2017-08-03 22:57

My god, this is such a short game when you finally figure out how it works :-)

That was really nice, I cannot believe how hard it is to fly this tings :-D

Nice graphics, there is no music in the game, only in the intro, why not keep the music going during the game?

Overall a good entry, it was fun, keep up the good work!

kunonooni 2017-08-03 23:52

Pretty fun game. Definitely the kinda game you want for a game jam. Small scope but with some depth and this fits the bill. Sound effects were spot on, controls were good but just a tad confusing. The little blue spot on the ship looks like the front so I wasn't expecting the ship to move in the opposite direction. Once I figured that out flying the ship was really fun! Good job!