Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Last Shot
By jeke
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1231 | 2.57 | 29 | |
| Fun | 1169 | 2.51 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 719 | 3.05 | 29 | |
| Theme | 967 | 2.98 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 1155 | 2.19 | 28 | |
| Audio | 1.00 | 4 | ||
| Humor | 894 | 1.77 | 24 | |
| Mood | 1052 | 2.40 | 28 |
This was very creative! I have played many of these 'gravity puzzle' games, but this had some nice twists like the asteroids moving around and the black holes getting bigger (even eating whole planets!)
I didn't hear any audio, but you didn't opt-out of the category, so I'm not sure if I was supposed to hear any, or what.
Great job!
Thanks @nick-rafalski. The first time a black hole blew up and ate the whole screen (not something I had intentionally thought through) I laughed quite hard.
I think I just opted out of audio correctly.
You got the sound accurate for a space game! Pretty cool idea actually, but the small meteors kind of make it super difficult to reproduce a flight or did I miss something. I like the inverse mechanics and the theme interpretation :smile:
Very nice idea, but I think it's too hard, with the astroids you cannot really controll where you are going. Also the physics feel weird which makes it unintuitive
@krasse I agree with the audio being hyper-realistic, just like everything else in the game.
I added in the small meteors to shake things up and to enable the black holes to grow on their own. I had considered putting in a setting to control how many would spawn and even allow them to be turned off, but then didn't because of laziness.
Thank you for the feedback.
very difficult game, perhaps too much for me! Cool concept though, with some further development in graphics and sound this could be a great android game!
@jamesolivermusic thanks for the feedback.
The difficulty was definitely a top concern. It was hard for me to judge since it since I set up the map and my play-test sample size was one.
Gotta get a bigger QA team.
Very hard to me, i only could reach to the planet 3 and fucked up with my black holes all the game haha.
The gravity is hard to control and we must be very lucky to use the asteroids (to me).
Anyway, nice job !
Wow, it's really hard
@krysis @sosaddude do you think reducing or removing the asteroids would have made it easier, or are the black holes too hard to work with?
To be honest I never felt 100% okay with the way the ship interacted with planets and the black holes. I wonder if I should've made the gravity interaction less "real" and more cartoon-y.
@jeke nope, its a good moment, that your game hard ( on my opinion ), because gameplay really nice.
@3ncryp73d I agree with the physics feeling weird. Ironically I am using the universal gravitation law, but I think I should have faked the interactions to be more intuitive and forgiving. I think the space between things is too small for "really" gravity to be really useful.
Got to the planet 3, almost got to the last one, but my first black hole exploded. Will try again! Nice little game, pretty good match to the theme.
Thanks @roman-petrov my primary goal was to get an interesting take on the theme that would not require a ton of development time.
@jeke yeah sometimes the real equations feel unrealistic, had this a lot in my own game
Nice game, really liked it :D
Thanks @dasun it was my first time doing a game jam. Will definitely do more in the future.
I like the idea, and that it actually works on mobile. Unfortunately I'm really bad at playing it, couldn't even reach the first planet, hahaha.
I thought about doing "fake but more fun gravity" for my game, but with the short time I had I too just did an "almost real gravity" instead. (two enemies have movement around some specific focus, as if there was a massive object there; I just apply the gravitation law's acceleration every fixed update). And like you said, maybe "cartoony" gravity would work better in both cases.
Interestingly I've just read a blog post here about someone using a realistic 3d black hole on their game, and then changing it to a cartoon-like effect because it didn't feel nice for game purposes.
@wendel-scardua thanks. Yea, I think "real" physics just aren't as fun as we expect them to be.
Pro-tip: I had the most success placing black holes midway between the start and target planets and off to the side. It gives the ship a little more pull towards the target and allows you control the bend of the ship's path.
Fun/challenging game! Great use of the theme. I like the look of the black holes and the gameplay mechanics. I could only make it to the third planet and even that took many tries haha. Audio would seal the deal! Nice submission!
Thank you for the feedback @balance686. Trust me you would not have liked any audio I could've made myself. I will have to recruit a sound person or run through some tutorials for the next one.
@jeke thanks for the pro-tip, I've managed to get to the first planet at least :)
Ooh an interesting little puzzle game. This was surprisingly more challenging than I thought it might be, but I soon started to get the hang of things. A really interesting mechanic with creating your own gravity centres that works rather well. The graphics could do with some work as they aren't anything to write home about, and the lack of a soundtrack hurt the game too, but you're working alone so programmer art can be forgiven when the gameplay is this nice. A good experience.
Thanks @historymaker118. I unsuccessfully tried to recruit an art friend for the jam. So I went all in on game-play and theme. I decided to do the jam on Thursday and was only able to put in about 12 hours over the weekend so the visuals and audio definitely got the short end of the stick. Hopefully this can change in future jams.
I chose not to rate because I couldn't get the rocket to react to a black hole no matter where I placed it or how big I made it after the 1st attempt - Not sure what's going on but given all the ratings I must have something wrong with my setup (Chrome on Windows 10) ... seems like a neat concept - disappointed I couldn't get it to work!
I was placing black holes and they were not doing anything to the ship's path, so it would just fly off screen every time, no matter what I tried. I couldn't play the game. If there is some trick to it, I don't know what it is.
Very interest concept! Was very challenging! Had the black hole devour the entire solar system several times lol
This is a great game, what an awesome feature to not only worry about the black holes, but getting thrown off trajectory with the meteors... 4 planets was the perfect amount of challenge given how the black holes grow over time.. I hadn't read your "pro tip" before playing, but I found the same thing.. a well placed small black hole halfway through had a lot of impact! Had fun with this. Check out my game, not sure what you think about the artwork but I'd be up for discussing collaborating sometime.
@johnnwfs @shinyogre thanks for the heads up about that issue. Not exactly sure what would be causing that. I have uploaded a link to a Windows build if you still want to try out the game. Sorry about the inconvenience.
@ryan-wickman thank you. Having a black hole devour everything is my favorite "feature" of the game.
@grahhhhhhhhh thanks for the feedback. I will definitely check out your game and keep you in mind for the next jam if I find myself lacking artistic resources.
Thanks @jeke, ~~will give it a go~~ I was able to play this and have to say I enjoyed the concept. I also couldn't get past planet 3. I think some folks mentioned changing up the little asteroids flying around - usually found that the random flyers would blow up the map by expanding a black hole far earlier than would make getting to planet 4 possible. Probably too quick and easy as a single room game without the asteroids, but if there were a series of levels/rooms with increasing difficulty - and maybe pre-planned asteroid 'orbits' the playability would increase. Nice concept and good job.
Decent game! I like the puzzle type deal in this game! Pretty nice!
@jeke alas, I don't have Windows.
@shinyogre hah, yea that is why I went for WebGL. What browser are you using?
@jeke I am using Firefox 61.0.2 64-bit.
Instructions unclear; ship stuck in black hole.
Funny game but could use some sound effects / music!