Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD41 → Crops in Space
By mrjoshuamclean and Katethemakeupmonster
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 820 | 3.21 | 39 | |
| Fun | 984 | 2.81 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 882 | 2.98 | 38 | |
| Theme | 804 | 3.29 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 874 | 2.97 | 38 | |
| Audio | 497 | 3.12 | 38 | |
| Mood | 733 | 3.10 | 37 |
Great VN! Very innovative to use actual game/management mechanics in the VN format. Amazing art, and great music. I actually played all the way until the end.
One thing that I think might be a bug, though: when I chose not to land on a planet at all, it just kept counting negative distance once I was past it and never disappeared, even when it was over -100 LY away.
It looks like you guys did a lot for a game jam. Having an Option and About page is cool to look at. Overall, its really nice. I think the story, art and UI could be improved a bit
One thing to note, when I started the game up first, the scrolling background was made me a little bit dizzy and nauseous.
Also, I got an exception when trying to talk to Klaara? or the other person. Can't remember.
I didn't play too long, but it would have been nice to see some more interactions with the crew/ character development. In fact this game kind of reminds me of Sunrider Academy.
Love the music and art. Not 100% sure what having people man certain stations does, as you get stats on them regardless. But I definitely think there's a lot of potential in a game like this, and I love the atmosphere you've created.
I got an error when asking why I can't sell seeds https://pastebin.com/XRDzbULC
I was able to continue playing after that, but eventually got stranded in a situation where there was no way for me to continue, so I didn't make it to the end. I like the tradeoffs involved in the mechanics, but it's a bit overwhelming to have everything dropped on you right at the beginning in such a numbers-heavy game.
I liked this a lot! It really has the space atmosphere down pretty well, and I think with a little more content it would really have the "alone in space" atmosphere down pretty well. As such, the only thing it really needs is fleshing out.
In fact, as it currently stands, the game was pretty easy once I figured out that you could convert food to all other kinds of resources: it means that landing on planets is not really necessary, and because you can use 18 fuel to escape any enemy, it becomes pretty straightforward to just click the "wait 10 hours" button and the "plant seeds" and "convert" buttons and win.
Fun concept! The music and art really sell it. About the seeds, I am pretty sure you are allowed to hotfix your game for game breaking errors. Anyways, nice job guys!
Interesting FTL alternative type concept - i agree with others, it was alot of concepts to dump on the player initially, i think this would benefit from something a little more gradual / building up the introduction of new mechanics. Nice job overall!!!
This was so awesome. I played it for ages, I absolutely loved it. Great work, both of you! :grin:
Thanks to everyone for the feedback! We really appreciate it.
@ZaneDD Another tester also pointed out that bug. Hopefully we'll get it patched in the next version. :)
@Flameo326 We'll look into ways to make the scrolling background less nauseating. Sometimes if you talk to an officer and say "Nevermind" it throws an exception. This is one of those hard-to-pin down bugs that I'll try to squash soon. As for more crew interactions, that was the last thing on the table when we ran out of time. We'll start to flesh out the "novel" part of the VN experience in future versions.
@Yirggzmb Shields recharge faster and crops grow faster if the stations are manned, and the engine can get to Level 3 only if the station is manned. It's definitely subtle. We'll try to make it more apparent in the next version, or at the very least include a guide!
@notnullnotvoid Great idea on ramping up the complexity. We'll try to make it build step by step in a future version to avoid confusion.
@TheMonsterFromTheDeep We were tweaking the balance to the very end, so there will definitely be changes to fix up this gaping hole in the design soon. XD
@Rocktavious Hey, you caught onto my inspiration! The initial concept was "FTL as VN meets Harvest Moon." :D
I think it has the potential to be very fun game with better graphics and UX design, it was a very good concept.
Cool game, lots of fun. Good Job.
I agree with the others in that there's a whole game's worth of material here if it was fleshed out. To give an example, Red Dwarf was basically about 4 shmucks stuck on a tin bucket millions of light years from Earth, and the compelling story came from the interaction between characters. If you decided to turn this into a full sized game you could have something like that!
What I saw, I enjoyed, though. Nice art, music was good, and the gameplay was interesting and enjoyable. Nice one! :smile:
What a complex and interesting concept! The art felt unique too, which I know sometimes is an issue in VNs. You managed to get an impressive amount of options and writing in, I kept being surprised when I went to a menu and there was like ~6 options. Overall you managed to finish an impressive amount of content, well done!
Also haha it's not a big deal, but it always bothers me when games ask for my name then make me a boy ('Sir'). At least warn me I should put in a fake name, you know?
Good game. Need more completion since if I loose a crew membre I can't hire a new one.
Ning said she is leaving me almost at the start and then she was the first to celebrate arrival to Earth. In fact, I knew she was hiding somewhere on the ship, those engines did not keep themselves running alone! :)
I really liked the gameplay and the mood! The strategy becomes quite straightforward after a while, though.
There was Alpha Centauri at about 4LY just before Earth, so I wonder, if all other systems and distances were real-life too? (I failed to pay attention, as was not familiar with those names)
Nice job!
I don't play VN often but this was fun. In the future if you are going to go further with it I would turn the planting into more of a mini-game, incorporate the farming theme a little more. I can understand not being able to during the jam of course! Feel free to check out our first entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-typer
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. We really appreciate it. ^.^
@Articulated9 I love Red Dwarf! Smegging brilliant show. It'll definitely be an inspiration going forward... maybe there will be a toaster on board? :P
@Autumnotopia D'oh! That's totally my bad. We did a practice game beforehand and I copied over the code for naming, but forgot to copy over the prompt text that specified you're of the male variety. Will definitely make that more obvious in future versions. Or better yet, allow you to select your gender!
@Shivur Agreed. That was a feature we had to cut for time, but you will definitely have the option to hire (and possibly re-hire) crew in a future version.
@ndry That is indeed an issue. They both show up in the "tutorial" bit and the ending regardless of who's left on the ship. Thanks for pointing out the oversight. Also, Alpha Centauri is the only real one - the rest of them were made up. Just thought the familiar name would be a good way to say "Hey, you're almost home!" ;D
@theamazingb Great idea! We absolutely need to flesh out the crops side of things, and we have plans to do so soon. And I'll do my best to play, rate, and comment on all the games from people who give feedback!
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I really enjoyed the idea of this game with the graphic novel and resource management combination. I did feel like the attack sequences were too difficult but maybe that's because I always kept only a small buffer of fuel and you can't convert food to fuel in combat. Great job overall, very fun concept.
@Mektidas We had a placeholder itch.io page set up to make it easier to publish the game when we finished. This is pretty common practice. >_>
@bentglasstube Thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely look into ways to rebalance the combat. The other choices (waiting for help and negotiating) aren't currently implemented, so having those actually working should help provide more options. :)
I got back to earth, and didn't have to eat my beautiful crewmates!! That's a success story in its own right! Considering it was a visual novel style game, I quite enjoyed it and found the text wasn't too long and I never felt "oh great here's a wall of text". Had a bit a balance the player had to be in control of, which made it mentally stimulating! nice effort and I enjoyed my play through <3
Neet game ! The idea works well and damn this game can be played for so long wow ! I wish I could recruit new member, probably the feature that would keep me in like "huhuhuhuh I can collect cutest member in the galaxy" mmmh.. I feel bad saying that.. The music feels a bit repetitive but anyway, nice game and well done with Ren'Py !
Wow, this game is really excellent! Nice one!
I ran into a bug when asking about selling seeds, here's [the error message](https://pastebin.com/AJHLMLw9) if that helps. Fortunately I could ignore it and keep playing
Theres a LOTTT to this game!!! Didnt get through everything but was cool while I played it!! Cool stuff dude.
Congratulations on putting together this vn, that's always hard in the jam period! The tone is really pleasant, and it's clear you've put a lot of effort in to a bunch of different areas, so congrats on that!
Finally got to try it a second time, liked the atmosphere overall and music, though nothing interesting happened with the crew, landing and dollars are pretty much useless in jam version at least, actions are annoying in text (I'd leave only dialogue in text). Also I observed that it's kind of real-time, but time indicator only updates when moving through action menus...
Good job, after avoiding a couple of gangs and visiting a couple of planets leaves the feel that it's an infinite game (probably it is)!
Lovely idea! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gETlUarz7Y