week-of-the-agents 2020-10-05 09:33
Game with big perspectives. A lot of cool pixel art, not bad strategic part, but game has some bugs. My gas extractors do not work. So I can't leave 1st planet.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Solar Edge
By mar3k
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 41 | 3.98 | 30 | |
| Fun | 149 | 3.66 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 99 | 3.81 | 29 | |
| Theme | 296 | 3.62 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 51 | 4.17 | 30 | |
| Audio | 84 | 3.73 | 30 | |
| Humor | 148 | 3.14 | 27 | |
| Mood | 81 | 3.76 | 30 |
Game with big perspectives. A lot of cool pixel art, not bad strategic part, but game has some bugs. My gas extractors do not work. So I can't leave 1st planet.
@week-of-the-agents Thanks for playing, I'll look into it, but are you sure you assigned people to it? Also to leave you have to collect set amount of gas.
Works great on mac too. In the format of a Java jar I tried opening it with terminal but then I found out that I was overcomplicating things: I just right click->open->open (on mac catalina) and it worked perfectly! I love the narrative style and character of the tutorial "I know youre the boss but if it was on me I would build a metal refinery first" Well my colony died. I think its cool how theres a strategy or like survival game in here and I love the art style all around. Thank you!
P.S. What linux tools did you use to make this?
@fabdynamic thank you so much for the kind comment. IDE I used was Intellij; for pixel art I tried for the first Piskel (but I prefere PyxelEdit tbh) and Gimp; to record music I used audacity; and for sfx I used sfxr.
First off, you should probably mention for others that you need the Java SDK to run this game! I really liked the idea a lot but there's no conveyance of what any building does, or any indicator of what is happening. The music and art are fantastic, and I'd love to see more.
A great game with a cool narrative and palpable sense of urgency. I very much loved the tiny hex tiles.
Kinda angry and sad, because it's really nice and I want to explore it further, but the difficulty is off the charts. Never survived past the second planet, and I have to move on to play other games. I wish it has more forgiving error margins, or a lower difficulty options.
Ambient guitar track - mad props.
Cool game with nice aesthetic (I especially like the overview map). The game mechanics are quite challenging at the start, all my people died :(
Nice "Game Jam" you got here ( :krappa: ). I am saying it like this cus mate this sure is no game jam game. It feels too polished and really well made. The pixel art is on point, from the colour pallete to the sprites and the way the game looks. I really cannot believe this was made in such a short amount of time. I expect games like this on steam with a pricetag of 5-10$ not in a gameJam. It s not really my type of game but still got me hooked for quite some time. You really did a nice work and I am waiting now to see this in my recommanded games on steam. Go on, make more games like this, publish them, what you waiting for? A last thing i want to add because i saw someone else point this out. The difficulty of the game is beyond your average player to be honest. It s really hard. Even with that nice introduction tutorial in the start, it still feels hard. But, now this is quite a big but, it s not a flaw of the game. The difficulty of the game as long as it's not unfair hard because of some non-sense it's not a flaw. This is your vision of the game and the way it should feel so it s exactly as hard as it should be. Nice work mate and cheers. Have fun further into the jam and hope to see your game on some market, be it pc or mobile!
@zepimppotatoe thank you so much for the kind words, and I'll be sure to consider making a full version. And yes I'm quite aware of the difficulty, and frankly I didn't want it to be so hardcore mode, but somehow I didn't balance it well enough in the time given. But fortunately it is possible to beat (current play time is above 2 hrs so a lots of tries :D).
Wow it's sooooo hard! But you managed to make a lot of game in 48 hours! I do wish it was easier, but after 2 hours of playing it I finally managed to beat it! Luckily I didn't try too hard to get uranium because not having 80 doesn't stop you from leaving the system (frankly I couldn't really risk losing anyone until I got to the last planet). I was about to give up when I saw the last planet reaching 400 degrees and only had about 12 uranium, but I'm glad I decided to see what happened anyway.
I'm really, really impressed with what you managed to make in 48 hours. Great job!!
Solar Edge
**Well, this was a very neat management-sort of game! First off, kudos on everything you've achieved during the 48 hours of the compo!** There's a lot of neat ideas here, and having programmed everything in Java its an incredible achievement by its own! The pixel art is also pretty appealing, and I like the whole motif of the ~~heat death of the universe~~ expanding sun. :sunny:
As for the game design, I felt lost a bit at the beginning, the first times I played the game. The game starts off by suggesting to build a Metal Refinery, and since there were no tags to indicate which building it was, I assumed it was the first one in the toolbar, only to create the Gas building instead and having no way to recover at that point. I had to reset the game a few times to trial-and-error until I found the correct buildings. I think some labels when you hovered over the different buttons and what each of the buildings (and stats) were, would have helped make things clearer.
Something that someone else has already mentioned too, was the difficulty spike. I only managed to make it to the third planet, and even by then, I only had 11/80 Uranium. I kept sending the few survivors I had on expeditions, hoping to get more survivors and uranium, but it seems the fail-rate was too high. There were points where I ended up with negative survivors, and on my last planet, I eventually reached a point where I couldn't have an working ecosystem of Gas/Food/Metal due to no longer having enough survivors. I also didn't full grasp the concept of how Food was distributed by Survivors, when in contrast with the Oxygen.
Even then, I can see how it was intended to work, and I think some more clearness on what-does-what could help go a long way in future games! :sparkles:
I don't know if it's related to the game running on Windows instead of Linux, but the only real technical issue I found was that I felt my clicks weren't registering, and I sometimes had to click multiple times on the planets and on the buildings to get the prompts to fully appear. Nothing too major, but still thought I'd point it out!
**Major kudos for the guitar playing.** One of the great things about the compo games is getting the chance to see how people apply their other life skills when making their game, and I absolutely think you nailed it and it gave the game a very nice tune!
On a final note, as you pointed out, I had to install the Java SDK to run the game, which was no issue for me, but I can see it turning a few people away from rating your game more. Would there be a way to package it alongside the game in the future? **Cheers! :whale:**
@codertrevor Thank you so much for playing the game (for such a long time) and even beating it! You're the second person ever to beat it, so I'll add you on an honorary list!
@jorgegamedev thank you so much for such a great comment, I would even say a review! I really glad you liked it and enjoyed it and I agree on everything you said. I somehow didn't realize that people will have no way of telling what station is what (I'll fix that at least in the description) and the problem with GUI is in my engine unfortunately... I din't manage to ad foreground UI detection, so sometimes button in the background will get pressed instead of the one in front of it. I'll hopefully remember to fix that in the next LDJAM. Thanks again!
This game has potential, but for some reason after about 1 minute everyone dies (maybe I'm don't understand something?). I think it is a great game, the pixel art and music are great and the whole concept is interesting. Great job!
@bajtix Hey thanks, the problem is probably your oxygen level. It slowly drops by the amount of people you have and you have to generate more using the oxygen generator (the red buoy) and also you have to have food for your people (bread icon) which is generated by greenhouse (the glass building).
What an incredible game! I loved it, great job
Really great game! I think the click detection on the planet spaces seemed a little out of position or something as, as someone else said above, clicks didn't always register correctly. Haven't had time to play it too much but am definitely going to keep this around to try again when I have more time.
Amazing game, really enoyed it!
Neat game, definitely a keeper on my computer. I haven't beat it yet, but difficulty feels alright. Fantastic graphics there, and I guess some astronaut-inspired guitar cover :)
Neat but hard game. Everything seems to work well despite the mentioned bugs (though I wasn't able to reach the endgame). Good work!
This is great, graphics music and gameplay. Only a few minor blemishes(biggest one being clicking not being detected sometimes), really great work!
Really enjoyed this game. I'm amazed at what you were able to get done in the length of the compo! It was definitely difficult, I never managed to escape but had fun trying!
Very nice! Kept me occupied for at least an hour. Super hard! Had a very good run and was gonna leave planet #2 with lots of resources but I waited too long(waited for 395 degrees) and trying to click the leave button like 5 times didn't trigger so the sun killed me. I had >800 gas :( That's when I gave up hehe. If you fix the clicks not triggering I will try again!
@notime4games I'm really sorry to hear that and about the bug... Unfortunately fixing it would take me to rebuild a lot of the game, but I might remake the game soon with bit more than 48 hours ;). Thank you for the nice comment and playing the game.
I really loved that game. I managed to leave the solar system… with only 14 uranium. I guess that doesn’t count.
Super fluid gameplay, the interface is a bit confusing at first but everything feels natural. Sometimes I hadn’t enough water of the first planet, which makes the game almost impossible.
Oh and the amount of art done in that time is huge! You’re crazy! 🎸🖌
A great take of the theme and well executed 👍👍👍 You got all my support and a new follower.
@crazyrems Oh it counts - the amount needed is way too high anyway :D Well done for finishing the game and thanks for the kind words! Adding you to the honorary list :D
This is just amazing! Sadly, at least on my linux system, the game just displays a white screen after failing for the first time, which I wasn't able to fix. So I only had one chance, so I didn't complete the game. 😅 Reinstalling my linux or just using another machine would probably fix the problem 😂, so I'm looking forward to playing this amazing game again in the future.
@chickenchaser I am aware of this bug and I'm sorry I didn't manage to fix it, but I think just closing and relaunching the game should fix it (it's probably stuck in a loop in world... ehm space... generation). Thank you so much for playing.
The concept is good, and being a compo I could say it is also polished enough. The game works pretty well, and has a lot of things going on and is somehow addicting and intriguing. Music is good though out of context to me, sfx are also a bit too high.
That said, there are a lot of things that make it not work as I would expect =/ I'll try to explain.
The tutorial/the first matches are not very funny, but frustrating. I had to start the game 5-6 times after 1 minutes because I literally wasn't able to build anything. The problem here is mostly that you don't use those overlay panel also when you put the mouse over the thing like the tools. I needed to build one to know which was. So I built the metal thing last (I thought it was some kind of armor guy to be honest). If you added some sort of explanation when you over your mouse on them this problem would probably be solved. Also, you could have forced me to build the metal thing as first building. I liked your tutorial panels since they are short and let's say, immersive, but you should have done a bit more.
The overall balancing of the game is pretty broken to me. The stress it builds it's cool especially for the game, it fits the game perfectly, but it goes so fast I can't even learn what I'm supposed to do. Besides, you have so few people, that more or less you have to build the same exact building in order to survive (at least 2 oxygen, 1-2 farm), so you have them always busy doing that + you have to built metal or fuel. After the first planet, the stress of "how can I manage this" become more a thing I've to do again the same, because trying an alternative is too hard. I'm sure that there are weird strategy it's just too hard to try something different because it all goes up and down too quickly.
The last thing is about the uranium. I literally don't understand how it is possible to collect so much. The mechanic of having to send people is somewhat ok, but it's too punishing, 50% you lose someone, maybe you get 2 back (so only 1), and MAYBE you get 3 uranium. Sure there is the planet description to help you know what will happen, but it seemed too random, and therefore, in my second playthrough with only 15 uranium on my 3rd planet when I was almost always sending someone out to find it, I just quit because it not only seemed impossible, but totally out of my control =/
Some bugs I've seen: you can go negative of people, info panel does not hide if I click outside, I have to click on something else (or a planet tile), music at some point went off, but could be related to my headphone that disconnected from bluetooth (the music tho just didn't play anymore, but sfx yes). Probably the most annoying bug was that every info panel (like the one that appears when someone comes back from an exploration) cause the speed up to reset.
Don't get me wrong, the game is overall well made, has a nice "stressing" mood, is addicting, it's very "complete" and not just a prototype, it's polished, and being a compo it's all even more surprising. Also, the fact that u used java is another thing that makes it even more surprising. I just believe that with some balancing adjustment it could become funnier and less frustrating to play!
@toccio94 Thank you so much for such a long and detailed review. And I totally agree with you on almost all of it (the speedup stopping was intentional, but maybe its bad, not sure). I'll keep this in mind if I would be remaking this. Cheers
I managed to spare a bit of time to play this amazing game again. Using Windows this time, it worked perfectly for me. My people always suffocated or starved on the first planet, but then I got the hang of it and actually managed to leave the last planet, though with only 4 Uranium. It was really close, because I could only build one of the Oxygen thingys, so I was lucky I brought such a big reserve... Thanks for this amazing game! 👍
@chickenchaser Good job, I'm so happy that you liked the game and I of course added you to the honorary list. Thanks again for playing it!