potatuetata 2018-12-02 23:48
A great game, it really was fun playing it ^^
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Sirius Galactica
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 115 | 3.71 | 46 | |
| Fun | 50 | 3.86 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 354 | 2.92 | 46 | |
| Theme | 221 | 3.55 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 142 | 3.70 | 46 | |
| Audio | 54 | 3.76 | 44 | |
| Humor | 178 | 3.01 | 44 | |
| Mood | 115 | 3.54 | 45 |
A great game, it really was fun playing it ^^
@potatuetata Thank You :)
A nice play on a classic theme! At first I was like, "hmm, galax", but you fit it into the theme very well, and hence a high score from me. Great fun. Well produced. :thumbsup:
@arkiruthis Thank you Sir <3
Really cool game, really enjoyable.
Was a nice game, it fits very well in this theme. Well done! :thumbsup:
@daragonis @a0m1n3zone Thank you both :)
This is a really fun, addicting, little game. one of my favourites so far :smile:
Really quite fun! I find it great that the mechanic which seems so simple to grasp in the first few rounds remains unchanged yet ramps up in difficulty later, while remaining playable and rewarding. Well done :)
This was a really nice game. I enjoyed the gameplay, and I loved the creative use of the theme. The music was simple but still engaging. Having allied ships was also a really nice touch (both for the theme and to make these space battles feel more important)
However I beat it without having to eject any crew members or sacrifice any other ships, so I'm not really sure what I was supposed to do with that option. I was also initially overwhelmed by the control scheme: I would get rid of the "c" and "p" commands from the instructions, because before I started playing I thought I'd have to eject crew members during the level, and so I'd need three hands to handle WASD, shooting, and ejecting. This is super morbid but I think a little animation of a little astronaut exiting the ship and fading out would really drive home the theme.
This is one of the few games this compo that made me immediately want to play through it a second time :) Good job!
@shawn-moore Thank you so much for the feedback :). Balancing a game like this is quite difficult since some people are just very good at Bullet hells in general. I was going to originally include oxygen pick-ups which would've made ejecting and destroying allies much more important but alas alack, I ran out of time.
I was expecting someone to be quite overwhelmed by the controls, getting rid of P from the instructions is probably a good idea, I may need to keep c though because I have some ideas for the future where you may actually need to eject some crew members mid flight ;)
Also that last sentence, good to hear! :D
Awesome game, I loved the minimalist look and attention to detail with the particle effects, camera shake, audio feedback...
I played it until the end and lost just enough oxygen to make sacrificing crew members meaningful.
One way to push the sacrifice dynamic might be to lose oxygen over time based on the number of crew members on board and take out one crew member per hit instead of oxygen. You'd have to let yourself be hit to regulate the use of oxygen and last long enough.
@fre Thank you for the feedback! I was actually going to implement the mechanic _like_ that originally, however I found that the game would be more enjoyable if the rounds could be completed at the players own pace without having a time limit they'd have to constantly worry about, your idea is actually pretty good, but it's not exactly the direction I want to take the game (I want to avoid giving the player a reason to be hit). I will most likely re-work the crew member mechanic though so they
1. Have more value 2. Have a bigger reason for the player to actually _want_ to eject them before possibly destroying allies.
Thank you for the write-up, your feedback is invaluable :)
@call-me-nutty Makes sense, having a time limit is stressful. Here's another take: * Start with 5 lives (oxygen) and 5 crew. * Gain 5 oxygen each round, minus 1 per crew alive. * Keep the effect of crew fire rate, gain 2-3 oxygen per ally ship sacrificed. * (optionally) Increase consumption of oxygen by 1 each round so you have to actually sacrifice something even if you're good.
(Imo, keeping numbers small makes it easier to reason about the game design and for players to strategize)
@fre Actually! That's a really good idea. I never really thought about reducing the unit value, my solution to make the game easier for the player was to just splash +100 oxygen for the player but not only having Oxygen down to single values but also having the crew more _directly_ affect the oxygen is an incredible idea. I'm definitely prototyping this idea at some point, thank you for suggesting it!
I really enjoy playing this game. There is a lot of feedback similar to what I can suggest. It was hard for me to track oxygen. Small numbers are easier to track. For example. Love music and artwork.
Good job. It looks like it's not your first jam.
@mrjackhpil Thank you for the feedback :)
As soon as I see a space game I need to try it. I felt kinda evil ejecting my crew members into space, especially as they make that life draining sound =) I was trying to shoot with the keyboard but it would only work to fire with the mouse for some reason? For a retro game I prefer to go all in keyboard. Nice retro art and suitable sound. I didn't find myself playing for too long but nice effort nevertheless!
@imphenzia Thanks for the feedback :). I'll make sure to include keyboard only controls in a future version (I did consider it at one point but it never crossed my mind later in the compo)
Hey nice game! Out of the 5 games I've rated so far this one is definitely the best (Presentation, completeness, fun). I do have some problems with the game though.
First of all the concept of the game is basically just a regular bullet hell game but with oxygen mechanics added. Honestly for a large part of the game it just feels like a regular bullet hell, I got to round 5 on my first run without having to understand or think about the oxygen mechanic at all, then I died because I didn't sacrifice anything because I didn't entirely understand the mechanics (I did not read the instructions). Same thing on my second run, I got to round 5 then sacrificed 1 ship and some crew and ended up barely winning.
So the sacrificing mechanic should imo be more prevalent, since it's basically the main selling point.
I think there are 2 main ways to solve this problem that I can think of and those are: 1. Make the game harder so the average player has to sacrifice more to win. 2. Make it so that you lose and gain oxygen more quickly.
I haven't thoroughly thought about how to balance this, but I feel like option 2 would probably make for a more unique/interesting game, it means the player isn't only in danger after a few rounds and you could have more quick thinking with sacrificing during actual gameplay instead of only between rounds which could be fun.
Also for this kind of mechanic you basically do the reverse Mario Kart game balancing (not sure what the technical game designy term for this is) where you buff players for doing well and nerf players for doing poorly, so doing slightly worse early in the game might mean that you do significantly worse later because you don't have as much fire rate or as many ships to help you. Which might not work very well in a linear type of game but could maybe work in an endless game? Not sure honestly, just something to keep in mind if you ever continue with this game.
And a very small complaint but still wanted to mention it, I don't like that P is continue, I have my left hand on wasd and my right hand on the mouse, neither of those can quickly go to P!
This comment ended up being a lot longer than expected :p
@cute-dog-irl wow. That's a pretty intense review! Thank you so much! :D.
I will admit that when I was play testing the game the mechanic also only really kicked in for me on the last two rounds. Again, oxygen pickups (which I ran out of time to implement) could've resolved this issue because it would create uncertainty in the player, (do I want to keep my crew but risk not getting a pickup next turn), even though I'll probably end up implementing a solution similar to what @fre said.
I've already been planning point 2 for quite a while though that reverse balancing point is something I'll consider. I sort of struggled balancing this game. Since I needed to make it easy enough so that someone doesn't get stuck on the same round over and over again but also difficult enough so you kind of have to die 3 or 4 times before victory (fastest I've speedrunned the game is 3:15).
With P for next level I wanted to pick a button which the player wouldn't accidentally press (like how C is eject), however I myself realised how tedious pressing P is. Will be changed!
Thank you for the feedback :D
Very nice concept of the sacrifice theme. It was very challenging game for me. I did play it like 6 time to finally beat it. The final attempt was unfortunately without sacrifice :(. But I enjoyed it a lot. Nice SFX and music. Maybe the screen shake with full crew is so much intense but finaly very good entry!
@manimal Thank You! :) This was my first attempt at screen-shake and flickering and all that stuff so there's definitely still room for improvement on that aspect. Thanks for pointing that out!
I'm amazed at the quality of this game for just one person, and on the compo no less. Easily the best-quality game I've played so far. Although it was a bit easy, I beat the game without sacrifices first try.
@djn Thank you for the kind words :)
Cute game, was entertaining
Nice game, very cool sounds and music ! :)
I love BSG, so mood is 5/5! :clap:
@enver-arco @sokette @smuhlaci
Thank you all <3
Hey, great job! The art and gameplay were both really polished, and it was fun to play. I was a bit concerned how the oxygen worked, but when I read that it went down at the start of each round, it made more sense. I do agree with others that it's a bit easy to win the game without sacrificing any people or ships. I'd either make the game a little harder, or, make it so you have to sacrifice at least once if you want to make it to the last level. :thumbsup:
Excellent game 👍, I love your music and the graphics, I think it is a goal I can try to reach for next Ludum Dare, producing good music and art.
When I played first time I didn't understand that the substration of oxygen come every turn 🤔, so it took me 2 minutes more or less to notice that 😮. I don't think that is a mistake but a small improvement for first time players and 1 more feedback to add to what the others said.
Finally, what did you use for music and art? I have a small hunch about some of them 🧐
@mr-chocolatesalmon Thank you for the feedback! I was spending a lot of time this LD polishing my game up and trying to strike a good balance. What I soon learned is that some people are just better at Bullet Hells than other so I went for a difficulty around the mid-ground. For a potential post-jam version I'm planning to add an 'Expert mode' of sorts.
@nekonyo Thanks for playing and the feedback! I knew from the beginning that losing o2 at the start of a round would confuse quiet a lot of people, especially when sometimes you press Q and just die outright. I'll work on conveying that kind of information better in a post-jam version.
Also,
- For in-game art I used: Aseprite
- For art to be used outside of the game I used: Photoshop
- Music and Victory Jingle: Rytmik Studio
- Sound Effects: Mic and BFXR
Interesting, I never heard of them 😮
Good game! Smart mechanics! Control the ship and at the same time manage the oxygen... nice! Maybe you can improve: - Improve the damage and die feedback and when the player has low oxygen... add particles, blink in red or another colors the ship texture and add different sounds. With these players can understand better what happens. - Another thing is improving the feedback about the enemies: when the enemy dies add a particle system explosion or a sprite explosion. - Be careful, because now at the game over screen the players can press actions like Q or C, cancel this inputs in this state to have a better experience. But at the end is an amazing game! Congrats!
great game -- loved the take on the theme -- losing crew members had an affect on gameplay -- thanks for making this
@peterfonts Thanks for the feedback and the points for improvement. I was going to add some sort of indicator for when the player is low on O2 so thanks for the possible implementations. Some particle effects when a ship explodes would probably be a good idea, maybe I'll add an explosion animation too (though I'm not very good at animating). Thanks for the bug report as well, I completely missed that with the Game Over screen.
@paulhocker Thank you for playing :)
Cool little shooter game with a neat background music. It reminds me Xenon. Need improvement - something more hard and frenetic. With more time you could create a full game. Thank you ++
Fun game, the controls felt nice and easy. I managed to complete it all in 1 go without sacrificing any crew members, so could definitely use some improvements on the difficulty as it was too easy. However, the sound fx and music played nicely with the game. Simple but a satisfying fun game :-) Nicely done!
@geckoo1337 @jesper-k Thank you :)
Nice game to play, good graphics and sound! This oxygen mechanics worked well (along with the firing rate varying with the number of crew members). Good job!
Here are some suggestions:
* Why using the mouse to fire? If am moving with the keyboard, I'd rather also fire with the keyboard. * I found the allies a bit distracting. Not sure how to fix this, but the fact is that they make it harder to focus on the things that can kill me.
Thanks for developing and posting it!
Great shooter! For a compo I'm really impressed about the overall quality in art, music, code and gameplay.
Nice job :thumbsup:
Very nice game, had some fun playing it once I knew what to do. If you want to see me go though deoxygenation and share my thoughts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTeUPXVSPps
Very cute!
I didn't actually lose enough oxygen to make me want to eject my crew members. Of course, the LMB buttons didn't seem to do anything (I played the web version on itch.io), so I just kept dodging and that seemed to work fine.