The Lonely Moon

historymaker118 2018-08-16 19:51

This is an interesting concept. Got some unique mechanics going on that were a little tricky at first to get used to, but I eventually did. There was a bit of humour in the dialog boxes on the side what with missiles being sent out against me and everything, but the sound effects got very annoying very quickly. It would have been nice to have some music in the background to offset the bleeps and boops, as it was I ended up muting the tab. A great jam game for something made in a weekend, I hope you can come back for the next one with something even better!

timbelion 2018-08-16 20:42

Reminds me of Cookie clicker.

dasun 2018-08-16 20:45

Interresting concept, but I didnt fully get grasp of the mechanics, maybe better tutorial would be nice but overall good game for 72H

thunderawesome 2018-08-16 20:48

Sound fx were a bit piercing on my ears. I was spam clicking like cookie cutter but realized pretty soon that I would need to have a better strategy.

holy 2018-08-16 21:10

It's a nice game with simple graphics, I tried to build my ark but when my first science station crashed against the moon and the second flight throught the space (probably now is in other galaxy) I deserved. xD I'm not a patient player but I love to see things exploding, so I had fun taking this game on my own way. :) Good job to all of you!

awesomealliterationalliance 2018-08-16 21:11

took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do (Thought it was just a clicker game) But when I discovered the purpose of the "W" and "S" keys, it was really fun. The mechanic of controlling the trajectory of each satellite and managing them all is well thought out! Overall very nice and innovative entry!

kl0z 2018-08-16 21:14

Nice dynamics! I love how difficult it is to keep the orbit stable, the perturbation because of the moon it's so difficult to anticipate! Same as @historymaker118, a little atmospheric soundtrack would had improved the gameplay a lot. Nevertheless I enjoyed playing it! Thank you!

capitals 2018-08-17 21:43

Hey really liked to concept. Enjoyed playing it. However if I can give you one piece of advice it would be to somehow add a tutorial or a how to play thats not a wall of text - that would make this game more accessible. Well done btw!

oddeyed 2018-08-17 22:14

Thanks so much to everyone who has played so far. Your feedback is much appreciated - we want to make the game better after voting ends and also make a really good game next jam!

koala-squad 2018-08-19 16:45

Web GL 2 not supported... What is that supposed to mean? Are you using an older version of Web GL that isn't supported by newer browsers? I'm using Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer and they both get that error when you try to open the game page.

dancan 2018-08-19 17:14

@koala-squad This game was made with Godot, which needs WebGL 2 and Web Assembly support for the HTML5 exported game. This unfortunately means it won't work on IE, Edge or Safari. To play it I'm afraid you need Firefox or Chrome. Sorry.

koala-squad 2018-08-19 17:17

Oh, okay. I'm sorry I can't rate your game.

josehzz 2018-08-19 19:29

Nice entry, I don't know if its only me but when I launched a satelite its says you get 20btc/sec, after launching I didn't get any btc per sec. You guys have a nice concept polishing it and posting on Kongregate/Newgrounds would be a good place for a game like this

mr-madcat 2018-08-20 10:52

Overall a solid entry.

It was pretty hard to get into, but I eventually got better at it. You made pretty good use of the theme.

Well done folks.

oddeyed 2018-08-20 19:59

@josehzz Thanks for playing. You need to use the W and S keys after selecting the satellite to move it to the green zone, then it will start making money. :smiley_cat:

simplepotential 2018-08-20 23:15

An interesting clicker. Maybe an indicator that says what you need to do when you launch a satellite would be nice, I didn't realize I needed to do anything more than click buttons on the side until reading your full description.

nerobius 2018-08-21 00:53

This was fun, but definitely needs better instructions. I got to 2.6 mil at the end before the moon's gravity took everything off course.

schizoid2k 2018-08-21 00:57

I spent some time with this game, and it was quite enjoyable. Nice interface and graphics. Makes me want to come back and spend more time playing a few more games. Congrats on a nice entry.

wrenpirate 2018-08-21 06:05

I'm terrible at this game. Every laser satellite crashed immediately. I had better luck with the cube sats, but I realized that I won't live long enough in real life to build an ark at cube sat rates. I accept that I can't change the trajectory of a satellite after a certain period of time, but I don't understand it. The notifications were so small and fast that I didn't bother trying to read them. I'm sure there's some sophisticated math going on with the trajectory calculations. Other people seemed to figure this game out, so I'm worried that it's just me.

oddeyed 2018-08-21 06:59

@simplepotential @nerobius I'm sorry that the instructions aren't better. We really wanted to add a tutorial but ran out of time for the jam.

@wrenpirate The reason you can't change trajectory after a while is that they run out of "Delta-V" which roughly corresponds with fuel. You can see the Delta-V fuel gauge in the bottom right of the screen in the info box.

The laser satellites do have too much drag, so they crash unfairly quickly. Sorry about that! Most people lose the first few laser satellites each game - the trick is to wait until just after the rocket detaches and then hold W until your orbit expands, then coast around to the other side and circularise. If you haven't learned that trick from KSP or Orbiter or something then it's pretty impossible to know what to do.

Thanks again to everyone who has played and rated, it looks like a tutorial is the most needed thing for the next version.

nam-nguyen 2018-08-21 07:46

Hey this game is so addictive haha, and yes it reminds me of cookie clicker but not all cookie clickers are addictive haha. Anyhow, I think Indiegogo gives me the most amount of money, launching the satellite cubes and laser doesnt give me much money as they crashed almost immediately after being launched. I think some tool tip here on how to use them in the most efficient way would be best. Otherwise, a very fun game, and honestly I just click and click but the visual feedback makes me feel like Ive done so much more haha. Great job!

agar3s 2018-08-24 01:39

This game has a lot of depth, it looks like a simple Idle game but then you need to control the satellites' orbit and be careful with the meteorites. It's quite difficult but is a very interesting game!

acdimalev 2018-08-24 09:20

Thanks for the feedback on my game! It was quite an interesting challenge to build a Libretro game in 48 hours. Now that I have a lot of the technical details sorted out, I'm hoping to spend more time focusing on actual gameplay next LD.

I really like your game. It's a lot of fun and the core concept works very well.

Quick heads-up, I intentionally glossed over the front-matter for the game. Some of the feedback I'm about to give is from the perspective of a player that hasn't carefully read through anything before jumping in.

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For anyone who's played a clicker, I think the shop layout is going to be far less intuitive than it should be. There are a few too many ques that suggest clicker gameplay-- some number that's increasing, some eye-candy that doesn't (initially) seem interactive, a series of buttons that are increasing in value, and the first couple buttons are entirely "increase the number" buttons.

By the time I launched a satellite, I was just slamming.buttons without worrying too much about the hover-text or what was going on with the main screen. Based on my previous experience with clickers, I figured that the satellites exploding was normal and random.

I can see from the comments that I'm not the only one who went down this path, so I figure I'll share my own perspective on what's going on that's getting people stuck on the clicker track of mind.

First, the game starts with something that's totally not part of the primary game mechanic. Something simple that I think is worth trying-- bump the player's starting money to 150 btc. If I had three options at the beginning, I doubt I would have been so quick to assume that the game is a clicker.

Second, the shop is ordered strictly by increasing cost. My clicker-monkey-brain just assumed that the different types of things were just associated with different eye-candy. If these were grouped (investors, defense, satellites, goal), even without labels, it would have given me pause to wonder why they are grouped that way.

Third, debris is incredibly subtle, at first. Even with the pop-up notifications to tell me that a satellite collided with debris, it took me quite a while to figure out that the dots weren't just a graphical effect and were indeed bad. I really wish I had some ideas for what could be done about this, but I'm totally drawing a blank here.

Fourth, the instruction / how to play short-text leaves no question about The Ark, but doesn't stress the main gameplay mechanic (moving satellites into orbit).

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Outside of the whole clicker thing, I have a couple more quick thoughts.

Moving the moon distance out of the statistics view and onto the main screen would likely increase presence of an important game object that's otherwise completely invisible at the start of the game.

Laser satellite has a controller hint / reminder in the hover text. More of that would be awesome.

I'm going to stop rambling now.

Where should I keep an eye out for your game?

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"a laser was destroyed colliding with Debris!"