Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Return to Nothing
By gno-evenimente, sageware and bflatinteractive
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 601 | 3.41 | 44 | |
| Fun | 902 | 2.83 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 221 | 3.65 | 44 | |
| Theme | 275 | 3.72 | 43 | |
| Graphics | 755 | 3.16 | 44 | |
| Audio | 462 | 3.18 | 43 | |
| Humor | 441 | 2.96 | 40 | |
| Mood | 424 | 3.48 | 43 |
I really really dig this game's aesthetic. I love god games too- being able to destroy planets with a single click was deeply satisfying to me.
I like the details put into each species' art/story/etc.
I ran into a small bug where, when holding right click to pan around, I clicked on a planet which kept my mouse from becoming visible/unlocked again.
Good work ! !!
Thank you so much for playing our game @hydezeke as well as the bug report. Indeed, we were able to reproduce this bug. I know how to fix it and I will do so after Ludum Dare 45 is over. Thanks again for your feedback!
This was so enjoyable, and really chilled me out tonight. I loved reading about all your aliens, and the vibe is this unique blend of silly but also really lovely. I liked listening to the music, and your guys' space puns :D And then when I went to play again, it was a whole new universe! Again, great job! Felt like a much lower intensity No Man's Sky with neat lore
Wow, that is quite the compliment @inky thanks so much! We would really love to build on this game after LD45; add more action features, alien races, and dialog. I would love to have one the size of NMS, perhaps that'll be for Return to Nothing 2 haha! Thanks again!
Was drawn to here because of the planets themed approach resembling ours but with a 3D Unity take. Loved the mood given by the music. The bleep sounds felt maybe too harsh compared to the rest of the sounds/music but maybe it's on purpose.
Thanks for giving our game a play-through @pierre-feuille-studio glad you enjoyed the mood and music. No, haha, harsh bleeps were not on purpose but due to time crunch. We will remember your feedback and alter the sounds for the full release.
I like that you took the theme literally. Everything from nothing. There's something disturbing about being able to destroy a planet with a single click. It was like billions of souls crying out... Nice work!
Haha, we sure did @jharler! I'm very pleased the game disturbed you. Thank you for giving our game a play.
Awesome job! Great sound design. I wish there was a satisfying explosion to accompany destroying planets! Great concept too.
great idea i think. Art work is not great maybe but i really like that style. I enjoyed this game. Good game! :)
Great little "resource manager game". Find out who is evil and destroy them -- at least that's how I played it =D Nice work with the stories of the species living on planets as well as making a game work with basically very little actions to do, but still manage everything fine!
Thanks so much for your feedback @jayometric, and I totally agree with you. We will add an explosion sound after LD45 ends.
Thanks for playing @ekin, glad you enjoyed the game.
You got it exactly right @themista92! Well, that is one of the ways to play (8 others as well). I hope that after LD45 ends we will add many more things to do and explore. Thanks so much for your kind words.
Great submission! We had almost the same idea for the beginning :P
Close but your beginning is like the reverse @rayne. Loved your game and thank you for playing ours!
Quite a work for a LD game! the soundtrack and sfx are amazing and they really set up the atmosphere for the game
Cool game, really relaxing ;-)
I like the plethora of alien civilizations. Whoever concocted them has a lot of imagination. The music is excellent. Some of the planets (e.g. the "ash" planets) are beautiful. As others reported I had some trouble with the pan controls (in some cases, I couldn't stop panning), but overall this is a very good game.
Really nice aesthetic!
I found it nifty too. However, the timer was rather fast! It might be nice to have a "leisurely" option!
And I made it once to the Hand of the King ending, but I haven't found any secrets!
Very unique ideas for aliens! Here is a little video of my playthrough if you would like to see it!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/492121753
Thanks so much for playing @foursay, so glad you enjoyed the atmosphere and music. This game was 30 hours of no sleep on my part haha.
Glad to hear the game was relaxing @krakadushka. Thanks for playing.
Thanks for your kind words @gamebuilder, it was @gno-evenimente who created the alien races and music, he will be very happy to hear your feedback. Ash planets are my favorite too! I apologize that you hit the panning bug, were you playing the Windows build or Browser? I will have this fixed after LD.
Glad you liked the look of the game @eranot, thanks for your feedback.
@taophoenix - There is no timer within the game, except for if you try to leave the universe. Is that what you were referring to? If you reached Hand of The King, you destroyed all Evil while aligning with Benevolence. Secrets are a rarity to spawn with each gameplay, we will add more secrets and stuff to do after LD.
Thanks for streaming @jake-marks, really enjoyed watching your gameplay. You almost won the game haha! The universe had 1 good and 1 evil point left, which means you missed 1 or 2 planets. You probably had to move around with WASD to find the remaining one. As for your mention of the "Add Pop" sound being annoying, we will tweak this after LD so it is less abrasive. Thanks again!
I was playing in Firefox using Linux (Ubuntu).
Awesome, thanks for getting back to me @gamebuilder. This bug is my top priority after LD.
Love the ambition! I liked feeling like the overlord of the universe. Couldn't figure out what increasing popuation did. At least destroying planets was straightforward (as it always is). Maybe UI could be improved to give the player a sense of what's going on? Cool game! Thanks for sharing
Glad you enjoyed the game @afroan. You suggested a great idea for a more descriptive UI, I'll make that part of the plan for after LD ends. Thanks so much for playing!
The idea of The Big Bang is cool! I love that! The game tells us that the society will be much easier if everyone is either good or evil :smiley:
This prototype was very fun to explore, even though nothing seemed to progress over time. The art is distinctive and beautiful, I loved looking at all the different planet types. At first I was trying to be as Malevolent as possible, but I accidentally destroyed all of the evil planets first and got an Angelic title! D'oh. Then I got a Malevolent win by hurling people into a lava planet, which was hilarious. After that, I tried to find a secret, clicking everywhere and roaming up close to planets to see if there could be something hiding on the surfaces, but after 4 or 5 games, I still couldn't find a single secret! Thank you for building and sharing.
That was quite a curious sandbox entry. Many bits of curious lore, wouldn't mind getting to know even more of these species. The first playthrough was quite a hassle because I didn't know RMB can rotate the camera. Also, it seems that no matter what, I could get the good or evil down to 0 (which sort of fits a "you can't rid the world of all good/evil" theme, I guess) and I didn't get any title except for the Abandoner. How would one invoke other endings, I wonder?
When it comes to the gameplay itself... Personally, I'm not a big fan of these black-and-white morality systems, with obviously peaceful and obviously malevolent species, especially if it implies that it's a benevolent thing to destroy "bad" people. Also, I kinda hoped that these ray-eyes species (Brilights?) concerned with universe balance would actually react to the balance in the universe changing (be it for the side of "good" or for the side of "evil"). I'd have preferred if the game would describe the outcome of the player's actions, and let them judge whether they like it or not. Also, maybe have more nuances in species behaviour?
One of the additional actions I can think of is moving one unit of population of some species to another planet, and see how they interact (whether it results in a multicultural planet, a mutual eradication or eradication/enslaving of more peaceful species). Of course, this would have been many times more complex and way beyond the scope of the Jam, but since you plan to work further on the project, maybe you'd be willing to try?
Either way, it's a curious project and has some potential, especially with even more wacky species.
That's an interesting take on the game, @wxzuir, thanks for playing!
Thanks for giving the game a play, @changemewtf. Glad to see you were able to get two of the endings. The secrets are randomly generated each gameplay, so you had some *very* unlucky rolls. I appreciate your reporting this to us and we've decided to up the RNG chance for secrets spawning after LD ends. Thanks again for the feedback!
Thanks for the feedback @alphish!
I'm definitely going to add a help screen to explain the controls within the game after LD. Hopefully that will end some player frustration.
Since you were not able to get Evil or Good down to 0, this is definitely a bug in calculations, which would have been able to getting 4 of the 9 endings. Would you mind telling me which build you were on (Windows or Browser)?
I appreciate your opinions on the black/white good/evil aspect. I think it would be a great addition to add a neutral stance to gameplay involving the Brilights. Additional species behavior would also be appealing, plus a way to more species around to different planets.
You have posed some very valuable incites for which I am grateful for. We will definitely try to incorporate these into an official release. Thank you very much!
@sageware I'm glad you appreciated my feedback. As for the calculations bug, I played the game on Windows build. I might try out the web version later today to see if it works correctly.
@alphish awesome, thanks for the reply. I've made a note about the Windows build and will review how its calculating.
@sageware Alright, I played it on web version and now I indeed could get three endings I couldn't get earlier. Also, thinking back, maybe the missing pieces in the Windows build were some particularly sinister lava planets?
Now that I replayed it on Windows build, I got the ending, too, so it might very well be me ignoring lava planets earlier (I thought they didn't affect overall good or evil, but it seems I was wrong). So maybe there's no error after all, especially if Windows build and Web build use the same underlying base.
--- EDIT ---
But then I played again and got in a situation when there's one good and one evil left, despite there being no planets in sight. So I guess there is a bug after all (maybe something akin to a rounding error).
--- EDIT2 ---
Other time I had a setup where I ended up with seemingly a single planet, and still good and evil in nineties. So yeah, might want to look into that algorithm (on the web version, too).
Other thing - I tried to get the positive balance with destroying all good, but I couldn't make it - the malevolence score of 50 for destroying a good planet is way higher than benevolence score of 10 for destroying an evil planet, so even if I maxed out the good population before destroying the planet (because... uh, it's very good thing to make planet more populate before destroying it, yes), I'd still be short of 20-30 benevolence.
I restarted the game lots of times, but most of the time I got many more good planets than evil planets, and the one time initial evil far outweighted the good and I could get the positive balance, I ended up with 1/1 score and no planets left...
Another thing - the player can randomly get Expert Balancer ending right from the start. I managed to get one by proper and intentional gameplay, though.
@alphish Okay, definitely sounds like the calculations can be sometimes off the first time everything spawns (at least on Windows). About Expert Balancer on first start, did you get it on windows build? There is a bool that is supposed to make this impossible at the start but we ran out of time to test this properly, and I too have gotten Expert Balancer on start. I'll also work on balancing the spawning of Good and Evil planets. I very much appreciate all of your testing, it has been very helpful!
Yes, the immediate Expert Balancer was on Windows build (incidentally, I got the proper Expert Balancer on Web build).
By the way, from what you write, it seems like Web and Windows builds are maintained separately (or maybe it's the same codebase, but Web uses more up-to-date one?). At the risk of suggesting the obvious or being ignorant about Unity - have you looked into having a common core code for web and desktop builds, so that you wouldn't need to maintain the changes in multiple places?
I'm not sure how experienced you are in programming, but I feel "extracting common algorithms to a module shared between builds" isn't a possibility everyone will immediately think of, despite how obvious it may seem to many developers.
So, while you might be at the level where it's a common sense to you, or maybe you already tried doing that without much success (I don't know how easy/hard it is to pull off in Unity), I decided to throw that idea here just in case. I hope it doesn't come across as patronising or anything like that. ^^'
@alphish - I'm not new to programming. They're the same Unity project, not separate algorithms at all, but @gno-evenimente compiled the Windows build while I compiled the WebGL version. From what people are saying, I believe that the WebGL version is the one that has the bool to prevent Expert Balancer on start, and that commit must not have been pushed via Unity Collab for the Windows build in our rush to meet the deadline. I am however new to LD, and while I'd like to fix these bugs now I'm not sure if that is allowed (is it?). Both of our ends are now up to date with Collab, and once LD is over, we'll compile the final builds and update them on Itch.
P.S. You didn't come off patronizing at all. I would have the same assumptions.
Update: Having a closer look at the rules it seems we can fix bugs just not add new content. I'll see what I can do for the bugs and add a changelog to the description.
Ah, thanks for explaining the situation. Two collaborators compiling their own builds isn't something I'd think of as a cause, but with how intense LD is, I can see how this versions discrepancy could happen. I mean, I posted my entry within the last 5 minutes of submission hour, so I can totally relate to the deadline havoc. ^^
@alphish - Yeah haha its definitely not ideal. Thanks again for all your feedback. I believe I have fixed most of the bugs except for the panning on Browser.
I really could see this becoming interesting if the planets interacted and there was just more to do but in its current state it just feels like a mildly interactive law book for some game universe that does not exists.
I feel it completely missed the mark on theme your starting with something and quite often working towards ending with nothing.
The add population sound was annoying bnut I realllyyy liked the destroy planet sound.
Overall I feel this is a really cool base that has alot of potential and felxability to be developed into something interesting.
Really interesting concept! I enjoyed going around and interacting with the planets. Quite a bit achieved here for the jam.
Well done! :)
Exterminate. Exterminate. Destroy. All. Good. Took a while to figure out the lava planet was good. :D
Not massively in love with this game as the mouse controls are a little too loose for my taste, Overall objective felt a bit... unruly. However it has the makings of a good game.
What I wanted to say is almost covered in all the comments above, so I'll only say this that I absolutely loved playing your game and loved to explore different endings.
Nice mood, it was interesting to read race descriptions. Didn't know how much influence my actions did to the game besides numbers going up or down, but destroying planets felt powerful
This was a very interesting game! I enjoyed it, though it was a bit confusing at first. I think it'd greatly benefit from a tutorial that at least covers the controls- it took me a while to figure out I could scroll and even longer that I could move around. (Granted, you did write them on the game page). At the same time, I was a bit overwhelmed at first with all of the numbers and text thrown at me, so running through those quickly one by one would have made it clearer from the start.
The alien races and planets were very creative, and I would have enjoyed seeing them fleshed out with even more lore and maybe visuals!
Nice job, I hope you all expand on it!
Love the idea, but it wasnt clear what youre supposed to do so after a while you just start throwing people into the lava and randomly destroying planets. really enjoyed the different species of aliens and the planet designs. :)
Nice game. I felt that the beeping when pressing a button was a bit harsh compared to the music and I would like the aliens to also have some sort of agency. Lore wise reading about all the species was interesting.
Though I dont understand the darkmatterlings. Their description says that they dont purposely harm anyone, but they are considered evil and when you max their population they talk about using it to destroy their neighbours, that felt a little inconsistent.
To the Anonymous commenter - your constructive criticism will be very beneficial to for the final build. Thank you.
@tad @freso - Thank for playing, glad you enjoyed it!
@gaz-ireland - on the browser build, I too found that the controls definitely didn't translate well haha. We will work to make them smoother for the final release.
@monish-vyas - thanks so much for playing, glad you enjoyed the game!
@dominas - as it is now, you are correct. We hope to add more features for the final release. Thanks so much.
@selkkie - Great ideas here. I definitely want to add a help screen to explain objectives, controls, and UI more clearly. We also would like to add more lore as you suggest. Thanks so much for playing!
@taddl - Thanks so much for playing. I agree, we still need to work on balancing sound so it is less abrasive. Also, thanks for pointing out the lore inconsistency, we will get that fixed.