Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → SOS STARSHIP F1
By tim-eriksen
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 670 | 3.28 | 23 | |
| Fun | 764 | 2.97 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 565 | 3.23 | 23 | |
| Theme | 764 | 3.37 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 939 | 2.64 | 23 | |
| Mood | 509 | 3.22 | 22 |
I did not make it home, but I did have a good time.
After a few attempts I never found I had much of a problem with oxygen management but getting enough scrap to keep your ship going after the difficult jumpdrive sections was a big hurdle. Good game. If you were to develop further I would consider re-balancing supplies so either oxygen drains faster (or is harder to obtain) and make the scrap collected go further to repairing your ship.
I got lost in my shuttle in the empty black depth of space. I went beyond the stars. My oxygen dwindled ever-so-slowly as I reached a point where the familiar and friendly points of light were no longer there to guide me. I panicked. I did not think I would ever make it back. But then, I came up with a plan. I would find the Corner of Space. I started at the vertical edge of space, with stars on the left, and empty nothingness on the right. I followed this like a river bank, until I found the horizontal edge of space. These edges met, at The Corner. From here, a straight shot at a perfect diagonal led my directly back to my ship. The plan worked. I was saved. My journey could continue.
I did not make it home, but I did have a good time.
@tupto Thanks for playing! I agree, some balancing is much needed. I had so much more planned, but I ran out of time :grimacing: Maybe I'll continue working on this in the future.
@maxflav Oh wow, you make the game sound so exciting :joy:
Interesting little game. I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/rlppIbg4aVI
I made it home, yay! :earth_asia:
Solid game! I couldn't come back home, but I did enjoy my journey.
Took me a couple tries, but I made it home! The first time I lost track of where my ship was and just stared at my ship drifting into space and running out of oxygen like, "well, shit" :joy:
I made it home. Pretty simple game, but works well. One possible bug? You can just leave and re-enter the same station over and over again to stock up on resources. No need to explore. Some sounds would have really helped I think, even some bleeps and bloops make a big difference.
@archimagus Thanks for playing! Yes you are correct, that is a bug that I did not have time to fix :slight_smile: I would really have loved to make some sfx and music, but I had to scrap my first idea some 10-12 hours in, so I ran short on time :grimacing:
I played and stopped at the first stop and then I got lost! I love the abstract approach, committing to it works and it reminds me of old PC games. What was I supposed to do after docking to the first place?
I liked the visuals and thought the game fit the theme well, but the gameplay could've had more variety.
I like the minimalist art style, and the game was fairly well balanced. If there's one thing I'd change it would be to make the sequences where you visit sites more interactive.
Enjoyed the aesthetic. Getting lost in dark space felt bad, but having a win condition was nice ♥
@spacewizardj Thanks for playing! You were supposed to undock, search for other locations to dock, and eventually dock back to you mothership and activate the jumpdrive :slight_smile:
@gunturtle @quadtree Thank you and I totally agree! I had planned to make the docket locations in to sort of a platformer, so that would have made it more varied and fun I think.
Not getting lost in space when you are surrounded by what should be thousands of navigation points was really difficult; two possible options for this, either have something that would allow you to ping your main ship (say at the cost of an additional limited resource) or by having an option to restart the game rather than reloading the entire page or waiting a long time for the o2 to run out.
One bug, when I pressed J when in the shuttle after getting some fuel I just started going wildly off to the right and pretty much ended the game for me that time right there and then.
Definitely going to keep on trying to play this to see how far I can get, there is a lot of potential in this concept.
It's quite amazing how immersive the game is despite/thanks to minimalistic art style!!
@kjscott Yeah some sort of ping/direction indicator was on my list, but sadly something I did not have the time to implement. @aggrathon Thank you so much!
Hey! Quite ambitious project for the time frame and it controls well. Like the minimalist visuals too. Great Job :slight_smile:
I love this idea! It feels kind of like FTL on steroids, but the direct control over the shuttle and your character makes it feel much more immersive. It has a huge potential, and there's a lot of directions to expand in: different types of locations to visit, bigger locations which you really need to explore on foot, there might be combat (both on foot and in your shuttle), etc. Add in some random events for additional flavour, e.g. you return to your ship and you find it boarded by pirates and you need to fight on foot inside your ship. The minimalist art style isn't bad, but it would be greatly supplemented by slow ambient music and some muffled sounds, like rocks hitting the hull, metal creaking, etc.
One thing I'm not so sure about this is the jump sequence. I feel like this simplistic arcade-style agility test with low-maneuverability ship is a little bit out of place. However, I guess with some upgrades it could feel a bit better - as you travel you are able to add shielding for your ship, protecting you from some debris damage during jumps, maybe a forward-facing laser to be able to shoot the debris yourself.
I've found one bug: on my second playthrough, as I gathered resources from a location and started to move to my shuttle, the camera suddenly shifted partially to the outside, and I lost control. Moments later the camera moved entirely outside, but I never left the location. The shuttle wasn't there to control either. None of the buttons worked, I had to refresh the page. The game didn't freeze / crash, because the oxygen was still going down. sosStarship.png
Overall, it's a wonderful concept and a nice compo entry. Good job! ;)
Edit
Oh, I forgot to add. If you land in a location, your character should probably leave the shuttle on their own. Right now you have to press `y` to dock, then `y` again to leave the shuttle. Since you can't undock immediately, it's obvious you want to leave the shuttle. There's no need for this additional key press. Same thing for leaving a location - you want to undock after you've boarded the shuttle.
@lcstark Thank you for the lengthy reply! Many of the ideas you have are the exact ideas I had, so that's validating to hear! Sadly I never had time to implement them. My plan was to have some platforming exploration at the locations, and to have some locations requiring hacking and braking in :slight_smile: I had planned for enimies/dangers to avoid in the locations and a more interesting jump sequence. I also fully agree with you about music/sfx being sorely needed. I actually said to myself that I would focus on sound this jam, but that did not work out that well apparently :joy: I think this could be an interesting project to continue work on in the future :smile: