Space Scavenger

quichi 2020-04-20 21:48

Great game, definitely has a nice and retro feel to it.

I enjoy the movement of the game, it's very different from what you usually get with these types of games where it's mostly instantaneous movement - the addition of acceleration makes it stand out well.

I do think the difficulty curve is a little bit flat though. Since the game goes on forever, it would be nice to have it scale so that the player eventually loses at some point, I played for 10 minutes and I could probably go on forever if I wanted to.

The art is nice, the design on the spaceship is pretty unique. I also really liked the movement in the background and how it feels a bit circular.

The UI is a little bit complicated, and I had to double check which buttons did what in order to really get it. Perhaps some icons in game would help alleviate that. Also, I wasn't sure what the point of upgrading things like my oxygen and railgun were, maybe that could be explained better with a tooltip of some kind?

The sound was also a bit heavy attack heavy, it's quite jarring to hear such a strong sound every time anything happens in the game. I would mellow out some of the more common sounds and save the heavy ones for important things (like dying, etc...)

Overall, a fun game and nice interpretation of a classic genre. Great work! :)

rrsmtz 2020-04-20 21:54

I like the idea of gradual improvement here. It is definitely a challenge to maneuver especially at the start. The UI is a bit distracting though, when you have to look at upgrades while at the same time dodging asteroids. Also, it's hard to tell apart the scrap metal from the asteroids.

magzh 2020-04-20 22:09

@quichi Thanks for the feedback.

There is a difficulty manager, that we thought to be working, but it might have a bug. At least during our testing phase, it increased asteroid speed and their frequency.

Thanks for the complements on the art. I haven't done pixel art in quite some time, so I wasn't sure how it will work out, but it turned better than expected.

Yeah, I agree on the UI. I wasn't sure as more icons would make it even more cluttered and it already takes a lot of space. I probably should add what each upgrade does to the game description.

Here is the list of all upgrades:

Hull decreases damage dealt to all components.

Shield decreases damage dealt to itself.

Engine improves horizontal acceleration.

Thrusters improve vertical acceleration.

Oxygen decreases depletion rate of the oxygen.

Railgun decreases cooldown for the gun. (Cooldown is indicated by the bottom left bullet icon)

Audio could've been better, but I am still learning how to use Bxfr and Audacity.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

magzh 2020-04-20 22:10

@rrsmtz the UI definitely needed more explanation to it.

This also reminds me that I forgot to add this to the control explanation:

Pressing 'space bar' slows down time, so that you can pick the upgrades/repairs.

Thanks for the feedback.

magzh 2020-04-21 12:23

Posted a bugfix to the difficulty manager as 1.1 version.

randdir 2020-04-23 09:08

So I tested the 1.1 and ain't notice any bug team good job. I guess this entry need some improve to make difference between collect object and rock (a bit confused). Otherwise theme is cool and we understood were it leads us with some polish it could be very pleasant. Keep it up nice project !

bulent-altinay 2020-04-23 14:44

Really liked the game. Fun to play. After playing a while the asteroids stopped comming and the ship up-down control stopped working. On the left panel I clicked on some buttons, really don't understand their effects to the game. And more bullets to shoot please :smile: . Like the graphics and soundFX. Congrats...

lorwon 2020-04-23 16:42

I don't understood why my controls stoped working, but nice game !

vladlawrence 2020-04-23 16:47

Well done! It works perfect, dynamic and fast game-play) I agree with @bulent-altinay some blasters would be really nice!))

darran 2020-04-23 16:48

Pretty nice game, had fun trying to keep alive! I've not got much new to say, other people have already pointed out the things I thought about too.

Keep up the good work, and well done :)

dylan-fries 2020-04-23 16:49

Cool start! I really liked how tough your ship was and the emphasis on long term strategy. Repairing your shields was insanely expensive and might be something you want to lower the cost on as it will help newbies survive much longer. I really liked how everything got damaged over time and you really had to allocate funds to repair it. Reminds me of the old classic arcade game Raptor: Call of the Shadows, which if you have never played you should go play right now for an hour or two.

I dug the floaty physics movement and thought you could play that up even more. I also liked the slow speed of the rail gun (more like a torpedo really, rail guns are usually insanely fast, maybe a new feature?) however the length of the cool down really reduced its usefulness.

One suggestion around the pausing feature is rather then actually pausing the game, just give people a break (10 seconds, 20 seconds) between waves to build the ship or vary the intensity. This way you are still putting passive time pressure on them but are able to remove both a full button and an UI from the interface. I also found after 5 minutes it was getting exhausting and could use a break. Just a thought.

Also, you could consider asteroids coming in from different angles as well. This would let you greatly reduce the speed required (for the asteroids) and the total number as they could come in from different angles and that would be much harder to avoid. Be careful with this though, it could easily become over difficult. That would reinforce the strategic elements you already have in place.

I also agree with some of the others that it was hard to tell scrap from the asteroids, although that could be a feature in some ways. You might want to have some more obvious scrap and then some which looks like asteroids but is higher value. You might also want to consider high risk, high reward trade-offs such as an asteroid that you could destroy with a rail gun to gain a big boost of metal . This would give players as skill shot to work on and would greatly increase the depth. It sounds like you are already working on variable difficulty too.

Other people have mentioned sfx, vfx etc and I think those would also really help.

I can see you are managing many uploads. You may want to consider Itch.io for hosting (also allows for long term updates) and especially Butler, which is a command line uploader for Itch that is very cool. Google it and you will find the docs. That is all you need.

Good job! Keep at it!

pomelouncia 2020-04-23 16:54

the graphic is impressive, but it takes a lot of time to recharge my weapon. and the move speed make it hard to control. Some times it just hard to tell the material from the rocks.

smirnov48 2020-04-24 02:54

3 minutes it's a maximum. Oxygen, speed! It's start hard so quickly. Nice game! FTL style graphics looks good.

equivocator 2020-04-25 21:47

I liked the style of the graphics and the concept! It was kind of confusing to tell what was collectible vs what was dangerous and I often found myself avoiding collectibles on accident.

samueldeboni 2020-04-26 00:33

Nice game, the graphics are good, but I think the controls could be a little more responsive. In general it is a solid game.

wolfier 2020-04-26 21:18

Games a bit bland without music and the sounds are a bit annoying. At first the game was fun at first but i noticed that the asteroids quickly got spaced out more and more to the point where there were only 3 things on screen at every given time. The upgrades were a nice touch but i couldn't tell what all of them did. Artwise the ship reminded me of FTL but everything else felt a bit weak.