FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD47 → Horizon Signal

Horizon Signal

By Lawless, Zoomer and tiro

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall10993.3050
Fun12722.9050
Innovation12322.9149
Theme9953.4350
Graphics6673.7151
Audio5283.4851
Humor8802.5844
Mood5893.5847

Comments

shosanna 2020-10-05 22:15

The link was supposed to be for a web version but it goes to a page with windows download only :( That's a pity, I can only play browser games now...

zoomer 2020-10-05 22:50

@shosanna Fixed now, sorry

owlycode 2020-10-05 23:14

I enjoyed the vibe on your game! I just wish there would be an answer to all those mysteries. The fight scene was a bit slow, maybe more speed for the ships and the bullets would make it more tense?

tiro 2020-10-05 23:20

@owlycode Thank you my guy means a lot this was our first time trying to make a game. There was a lot that we could add but honestly just ran out of time overall. Good suggestions though, I also thought the ending fight could have been more intense <3

owlycode 2020-10-05 23:41

Welcome to the community then! Fifth game here and always a pleasure to participate, I hope you enjoyed your first run!

will-isaacson 2020-10-06 05:44

really nice mood you have here. The dark electronic stuff when you're flying the ship makes everything feel creepy. To that effect, I kept thinking more of a horror element was approaching but never quite got that. But you nailed the concept, and I had fun playing. Congrats!

lawless 2020-10-06 06:39

@will-isaacson Hey thanks for the kind words we actually were going for an ominous horror-ish feel and I'm happy it felt that way. Glad you had fun :)

vphyre 2020-10-07 00:07

Very good. I enjoyed playing your game, it was fun. The graphics are beautiful, and the sound is good. Congratulations.

lawless 2020-10-07 01:06

@vphyre Thank you, glad you enjoyed :)

etrealjunior 2020-10-07 09:08

I liked your game my congratulations, I also did one if you want to know, and give me your feedback I am very grateful, this is the link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/resurrection

joedev 2020-10-07 18:56

Much enjoyed! The writing was especially good, and it gave me really good sci-fi spooky vibes which I like (kinda reminded me of the Expanse a bit in tone). Great job :)

etrealjunior 2020-10-07 19:47

the graphics are beautiful and the audio is very immersive, I just found the small fonts but nothing that got in the way

zoomer 2020-10-07 22:17

@joedev Really glad you enjoyed. Comparing this with The Expanse is pretty flattering as well on its own, thanks a lot :)

zoomer 2020-10-07 22:19

@etrealjunior Thanks a lot, and yeah the font is indeed small and it turned out to be even tinier on 4k screens. Will surely keep that in mind next time, thanks again

nonozuchu 2020-10-08 14:11

Poor mike :( Its a fun little game

zoomer 2020-10-08 17:11

@nonozuchu Indeed :(

Glad you enjoyed

sollu 2020-10-08 19:33

Graphics and audio were great, also always lovely to see a game with a thought out narrative. Good job guys :)

vildanix 2020-10-08 19:34

So this is how it feels to be stellaris scientist volunteer. I love that event. Nice interpretation. What was shall be.

vleue 2020-10-08 20:09

nice story, but very hard to read with the font size

sn4pi 2020-10-08 23:01

I liked the story! It was mysterious and stunning at the end, also the loop mechanic has an explanation so no story holes to find there. Maybe the pacing was a bit too slow but I guess that was part of the idea to always go through the whole cutscenes like flying the first ship straight upwards? The Boss was stupidly simple but with a magnificent speed/difficulty increase

lawless 2020-10-09 03:04

@sollu Thank you, glad you enjoyed it :)

lawless 2020-10-09 03:06

@vildanix AHA YES! I'm so glad someone recognised where it's from. We really wanted to mention that this was inspired by Alexis Kennedy (the guy who wrote the story for Stellaris), but through all the last minute chaos we totally spaced on that. Pun intended. The event in game was one of the best story based storylines I've ever played. Glad you enjoyed :)

codeman1010 2020-10-09 05:17

Brilliant writing.

lawless 2020-10-09 05:25

@codeman1010 Thanks for playing this on stream! Glad you liked it.

tiro 2020-10-09 08:40

@vleue Thank you, yea the font size and other details are definitely something we're going to have to pay more attention to in the future. Thanks for the feedback <3

tiro 2020-10-09 08:45

@sn4pi Thank you very much! I'm really glad you enjoyed these little aspects we thought of, even the little buffs we gave Mike Smith during the boss fight. We tried to start off with something a little more eerie and slow paced to build up to the "ending". It's all a learning experience for us so thank you for your feedback! We'll work on the pacing and timeline more in the future <3

arad-hamidsamiee 2020-10-09 16:54

Very good atmosphere, sound design and pixel art, well done!

tiro 2020-10-09 21:53

@arad-hamidsamiee Very much appreciated :)

tvorojok 2020-10-10 09:49

As I can see, quite a lot of work has been done! Well done

tiro 2020-10-10 12:57

@tvorojok Thanks a ton <3

smiley405 2020-10-13 15:35

good story and pixel art. fought with boss, lost it but enjoyed it.

lawless 2020-10-13 18:13

@smiley405 Thank you :)

chocolat-endive 2020-10-13 21:23

The overall mood, gaphics and sound/music is really nice imho. I really love the blips. I think the game would have been better if the different choices leaded to different endings and not just a loop.

Also, after the first time, the "cinematic/text" is reeeaaally slow. Some way to skip it could have been great.

I'm not sure the boss fight suits well to the game it's to much "space invaders" and not really "atmospheric-sci-fi-dark-horror" like the rest.

I really enjoyed the narrative side. Nice entry, and thanks for sharing this little game. I really feel you could build a longer and more "deep" game with this little prototype.

zoomer 2020-10-13 21:59

@chocolat-endive

The different endings were planned but since it's our first time, we sadly ran out of time much sooner than expected. Also after posting the game and actually playing it ourselves we noticed that the cinematics were a bit slow and annoying but it was too late to add a skip option. All in all we sadly ran out of time.

That being said, thanks a lot for the detailed feedback and I am very happy you still enjoyed.

chocolat-endive 2020-10-14 08:16

Don't worry, that's absolutely understandable, that's why game jams are about.

balance686 2020-10-17 20:33

I really enjoyed the pixel work and the audio is great! That coupled with the storytelling creates a lot of atmosphere/mood. It also works well with the theme of the jam. I liked that the boss fight added more interaction to the point/click storytelling and having the enemy speed up when its health gets lower adds a bit of challenge. Would have liked a way to speed up the dialogue, especially after you've been through it once, but overall I enjoyed the experience. Nice job!

lawless 2020-10-18 19:21

@balance686 Definitely agree with you, the dialogue needed to be faster / skipable especially since you play through the same areas a couple of times, will keep that in mind the next time for sure. Thank you for the kind words:).

kingofsquirrel 2020-10-19 12:54

Great Game! I can't believe you did that in only 72 hours! The graphics are amazing and the game has a lot of content! I took a while to figure out how to shoot, maybe could've made that a bit more obvious but a great game overall!

cg-fred 2020-10-22 19:00

Very nice game, loved the atmosphere and graphics!

revanj 2020-10-25 05:19

Something about the tone of the game is... interesting. The "controls" in this games serves to make it much more immersive. The shooting scene can actually go a lot faster, and the dialogs can be faster as well, but other than that, it's such a nice game! I definitely would like to hear the whole story, though :)

lukas-kunce 2020-10-25 20:32

good visuals that work really well with the atmosphere, using miniumum audio resources.. i'm not sure the shooting part worked for me as it didn't feel quite right, but it was still a pleasant surprise since I initially expected a pure interactive novel-like game

midorimelody 2020-10-27 01:24

Cool game. I really like the whole intro and cinematics.

krysh 2020-10-27 14:14

This was a really cool take on the theme and the art and visuals were great! I would have put the controls in the space battle part cause it took me a while to realize I could shoot back but overall this was really good!

ava-skoog 2020-10-27 19:20

Great mood! Was cool to try different things to see where the story would go. Ended up an unsolved mystery in the end, unless I missed some path? 😅 Only wish I could have skipped some stuff on repeat playthroughs after I had already seen it a couple of times. Cool stuff!

criobite 2020-10-27 19:34

Woah, really loved the mood of the game! The shooter part was a little simplistic, but yeah sound design and overall theming was great.