Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Ghost Ship (Jam Edition)
By dylan-fries
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1799 | 3.24 | 33 | |
| Fun | 2050 | 2.88 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 1888 | 2.93 | 32 | |
| Theme | 1919 | 3.28 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 1611 | 3.32 | 33 | |
| Audio | 1156 | 3.11 | 33 | |
| Mood | 812 | 3.61 | 32 |
Quick reminder to get more players: Use a thumbnail for your game. Otherwise your game is presented with this grey box. Some great Games are not played because of a missing thumbnail ... You can still change it by editing your submission page :)
GreyBox.png
I like your game !
The flight speed felt a little slow. Love the ambience.
It really lacks a goal but good job creating this experience. Nice background audio :thumbsup:
Nice Concept! I personally think everything should be sped up a bit
Very atmospheric, and an interesting take on the theme! The first camera shift scared the hell out of me, so congrats on that
It's a little unclear what the goal of the game is, and how the fuel mechanic works. It could use a tutorial or an intro for that.
It was cool flying around the map once i figured out the controls. Atmosphere is nice. I wasn't sure what to do so i followed the blue glowing particle emitting things on the ground, but i would always loose the them after a bit. Cool entry.
This game has really nice mood and the gameplay was pretty fun.
It's not entirely clear that blue particles are there to refill fuel. Adding a sound effect to gaining fuel could have made this clearer. It's cool that you tried to use different camera views for a more cinematic feel but some of them can be pretty jarring because of how pulled back they are compared to the main camera.
Getting the missiles to explode by colliding with each other was pretty fun. The game world felt properly ghostly and I enjoyed my time with it.
@pilarius Thanks for the tip! I did Itch but forgot to upload it here!
Super moody, this is the only jam game to actually give me chills so far. Awesome job! I really wanted to continue exploring, the atmosphere is really awesome. Reminds me of the dark atmosphere of sci-fi PS1 games like G-Police or Future Cop LAPD. I wanted to find out why the world was so destroyed.
Definitely didn't add a super secret portal to another world so you goal seekers would have something to strive for. That is for sure not a thing that was included in build 0008.
Good ambiant mood with the lighting and sound! The gameplay can become boring, but it was a nice experience!
Nice mood, with the music that helps a lot creating and keeping it. Nice landscape, but maybe it suffers a bit the lack of a goal... nevertheless, good job!
@dylan-fries, are you a duo with your sibling? cousin? parent?
Cool villains & concept, they remind me of the robo-octopai villains in the Matrix. Visually, I like starting from the wide shot to give scale to the scene, but maybe it should zoom right in to the ship so you can see what you're doing or at least give player some control of the cam, or make the ship a lighter shade of grey? I found myself maxing out screen brightness and still squinting and I have damn good eyes, but maybe that's the intention of "Ghost Ship?"
Were those refueling/re-energizing platforms? Not sure they all worked or if I
I'm surprised there wasn't a crash/explosion sound. If there's one more sound fx to add, it's that one. The music set a good mood until the granular synthesis stuff; that got painful to hear pretty fast.
Seems you can fly through the concrete of those abandoned structures, but not fly through mountains. Really nice alien landscape, there. eerie as hell.
Also, thanks for playing our game. Glad you liked it. :)
I can't even see what I'm controlling. There's sometimes a yellow thing on screen that seems to respond to button presses, but 80% of the time it's not there and I just get a "Game Over" after a few seconds.
@maxathon Try waiting for a few seconds when it first starts then the cam zooms in. Down climbs up vertically so if you are just holding the up button you will immediately crash into the ground.
Hi @tom-stroll Thanks for the feedback. I'll check the colliders on the buildings they might not be generating properly. You are welcome. You should link it in your bio so I know which game yours is.
I'm working with my brother who did the audio. He just gave me a bunch of random sounds he made and I dropped then in so we could definitely hit it with some more specific audio. I would like an ambient engine sound as well.
I hear your input on the camera controls. I could probably disable input on the ship until you are closer or even just start you higher up but to be honest I sort of like that it punishes you early for the sense of danger it gives on the second run. I was going for that learn by hard experience sort of thing with a fast reset. I could probably find a middle ground so people don't crash immediately but I will probably not mess with it too much for the LD version. It might be enough to start you up higher off the ground. I do like that it feels unsafe tho. There is actually very little danger other then running out of fuel so I am having fun playing around with losing yourself in the shadows. I have a dust effect as you get closer to the ground in mind so you can tell how high you are and I think that would help as well.
Refueling is the biggest complaint to date and although I like the subtlety of it but the effect when you collect could be more obvious. It is sort of the only thing in the world so I would hope people experiment it. The engine already lights up a bit but I could put in a larger effect. I beefed it up a bit in my bug fixes but it needs to be more obvious I think.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to leave detailed notes.
Very eerie atmosphere! Loved the cinematic nature of the "cutscenes". The camera was unfortunately a bit wacky which made controlling the ship accurately quite difficult. Some cues to help with the depth perception would also have gone a long way to prevent me from failing over and over :D Are you actually able to reach those floating blue particles up in the sky? At least that's what I was aiming for but never had even close to enough fuel
@sibi Thanks for the feedback. I have some ideas for adding ground feedback for just that purpose but unfortunately they fell outside of the scope for this LD. You can reach the sky particles but it is tricky. The key is both collecting more fuel (blue particles) and that you burn much more fuel when you are using the booster jet or turning so you really have to drive slow and carefully rather then rushing to the goal.
I just love the ambiant ! Nice work here
The flying took a while to get used to. But I liked the mood!
Interesting dark atmosphere. Good job! When I played it the fuel display was a bit too far to the right, so I couldn't really see it clearly. Also is there any way to avoid the rockets except for using the boost?
@dylan-fries linked the game in my bio as you requested/suggested. Ambient engine sound would be a higher or equal priority to crashing for sure. Good call. I like that the early punishment is having that first mountain right in front of you (that's where I crashed first and it felt right, Lolz)
Does losing yourself in the shadows actually protect you from those red-eyed robots? Can you hide from them or will they find you either way? (Not that there's enough fuel to 'hide') Maybe there should be a way to coast further if you stop touching arrows, but changing direction is what makes you sink & crash?
@kfischer-okarin Thanks! Do you know what resolution you were running it at? I might need to fix for different sizes. They are very dumb so flying them into things or each other. They are just there to put some fuel pressure on you.
@tom-stroll You actually burn fuel by turning as well as boosting and there is a threshold on it so turning less should burn less fuel then turning more. I think what you are describing is already in there. The trick to reaching the exit is coasting and conserving fuel as much as possible. It is really intentionally going against most design ideas which are punch it fast and hard. They are very dumb right now but that would actually not be a hard feature to add since I could just raycast from the sun to the ship to see if it is visible. Thanks for the feedback.
Nice game, great into although a little confusing what ship was mine :) great atmosphere. The camera angle was a little confusing but added to the difficulty of judging where things would fly from which is nice. Enjoyed this entry, thank you.
Love the darkness of this world :) Thanks for the game, wish you the best of luck!
This is a really good entry, I loved the atmosphere and felt really on edge while playing. Good job!
Interesting concept, felt like an interactive music video. Well done!
man this hits me right in the metroid prime nostalgia in the best way ha. i really love the mood. cool sound design, and the graphics are simple but well coordinated, and the whole thing kind of reminds me of a combination of starfox and metroid prime 1. after i died a couple times and gained the understanding that i was kind of along for the ride, i found it really enjoyable to guide the ship. since it's not intuitive (by that i don't mean bad, it's just different from the usual game tropes), i think some more hints at the beginning at what's going on would have done a lot to help the initial experience. e.g. starting with the ship in full frame and then pulling out, and maybe adding some screen effects like a temporary letterbox to make it clearer that the player isn't controlling the camera. nice work!
@drprettypatty Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the camera has been most peoples main beef and part of it is I am still figuring out the best way to use Cinemachine. I am adding some effects to be able to detect the ground easier and will work on getting a balance for the starting camera that shows you what is going on while maintaining the cinematic aspects. Thanks for playing and taking the time to post!