FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD47 → Orbital Rescue

Orbital Rescue

By zebrainflames

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3053.4427
Fun2093.5227
Innovation3093.3027
Theme4643.2027
Graphics4083.1627
Audio3213.0026
Humor3002.5426
Mood3902.9726

Comments

jcmonkey 2020-10-04 23:54

had some points where i got stuck and wasted burn on the planet, or better while i was stuck dragging on the planet, but i think that could have been html lag.

nikos 2020-10-05 02:13

Very fun game! Interesting concept. Some music and being able to retry at any point in the level would be nice. Good job!

binroot 2020-10-06 14:53

Absolutely no bugs and glitches, which is pretty incredible for a 48-hr game jam. Great work keeping up the quality, even it means simplifying the art.

landypommel 2020-10-06 15:03

Nice idea of gameplay! The yellow planet one is a bit hard btw :> I got stuck in the loop of that level)

tryston 2020-10-06 15:06

Really cool, sometimes when I would spawn in a level there would be one less astronaut than before but I'm not sure if that's intended because I kinda needed it lol.

zebrainflames 2020-10-06 16:51

Thanks for the feedback everyone :)

@tryston to be honest, that is a bug - didn't have a chance to figure out why it happens yet... so let's call it a feature until then? ;)

meek-bits 2020-10-06 19:30

I love playing games with orbital mechanics. I guess you may also be a KSP fan :rocket:

Haven't seen such idea before. I really enjoyed it and passed all levels. The only small feature I missed was to be able to restart even if there was fuel left.

Great entry :thumbsup:

zebrainflames 2020-10-08 14:17

@meek-bits thanks for the kind feedback! Yeah, I've played quite a lot of KSP :D

noahw 2020-10-08 16:59

Really neat idea, and nice work! Definitely difficult, but also fun. Agree with @meek-bits, I was having flashbacks to playing KSP whispering "we're coming to get you, bud" under my breath :)

ubershmekel 2020-10-09 06:44

Lunar landers are usually boring because the controls are too simple. The binary star system was super interesting, I think you barely scratched the surface of more interesting gravity schemes. I would have loved to see eg a teleport, stronger rockets, heavier planets, and just more gameplay around the gravity. A blackhole might be neat too. The art was charming, the sound felt real vintage and arcadey. I had a lot of fun for the short play. I did find one bug, when I was on the last level and died right on the body of an astronaut and during the level reset, that astronaut didn't show up, so it was much easier to win. It was actually a pretty lucky bug because I was really struggling with that last level. Because there was so few levels, I assume you didn't use a tile editor like https://www.mapeditor.org/ so please check it out if it helps. I would have loved to have more levels with a more gradual difficulty curve. Thank you for the game :)

zebrainflames 2020-10-09 13:55

@ubershmekel thanks for playing, and thanks for all the nice ideas! :)

The bug you mention has been reported by others as well, will have to figure out what causes that :)

The game is built with Godot engine - for such simple levels I think it ought to be enough for level design: I can save individual levels as separate scenes that are then loaded up - the code for this is currently buggy, I think, but improving on that should be doable.

There are importers to Godot from Tiled though, so that is an option! I think I'll just have to spend more time on level design to improve that aspect.

steambrain 2020-10-10 12:45

Nice orbital mechanics, although, I'm not sure that everything works as intended then corners are reached - each time I got there it seemd to me, that I lost some speed, or maybe it went in wrong direction. Different kind of thank you for not adding landing mechanics(like too high speed = death), was fun dropping on planets with no fuel left without regard for landing speed.

sanojian 2020-10-10 12:46

I love that there is no time limit, so you just use patience and gravity to win the levels. A fuel gauge would have been nice. Really good use of orbits and gravity. Very solid game.

zebrainflames 2020-10-10 18:32

@sanojian there should be a fuel meter on the bottom left corner of the screen - if it's missing it's a new bug, I think.

@steambrain my original plan was to add some sort of landing mechanic, but I ran out time - maybe that was a good thing :)

Thanks for playing and the feedback to both!

sanojian 2020-10-10 18:35

@zebrainflames Whoops! The game was just taller than my browser window so I missed it. I see it now

dxk2294 2020-10-11 08:40

This was a lot of fun! Pretty challenging at times, but I don't think any of the levels were unfair. I agree that some music would have really helped with the mood, but I still had a great time :smile:

finn-tr 2020-10-11 09:18

Really cool idea! The art was very good and the mechanic is really fun to play! I think you should be able to restart the level at any point rather than have to run out of fuel first but other than that, this is a very solid game! Well done!

zebrainflames 2020-10-11 10:07

@finn-tr @dxk2294 thanks for playing and for the feedback! :)

I think I'm going to add restarting at any point to the todo for the post-compo version :)

ic-rainbow 2020-10-11 11:10

Yay, more n-body gravity coasters!

Consider starting the scale thing earlier, way before the lander comes near the screen edge. Otherwise it *appears* to switch to some weird rectangular motion which is confusing.

PS: thanks for not implementing planet collisions :sweat_smile:

zebrainflames 2020-10-11 12:00

@ic-rainbow thanks for the feedback & playing :)

I've actually changed the camera/zooming code changes in a post-compo version already with wider (and equal on all sides) margins. I think I'd need to add some sort of background to also hilight that the camera is zooming out, now it's initially a bit hard to notice.

jare 2020-10-11 21:34

Very neat, quite unforgiving tho! :)

kurt-roembke 2020-10-12 13:29

Nice art and polished gameplay! I love the camera zooming. Some Atari-like music would have brought it all together. Nice work.

thewustache 2020-10-12 14:20

Nice entry! The gameplay feels very smooth, good job on that. And I like that you have to land before moving on to the next level. That always feels really satisfying, especially if you manage it without spending any extra fuel.

I think showing the path the ship will take would be a worthwhile addition, as orbital mechanics and fuel management are already enough of a challenge. That would allow you to add even more difficult levels!

zebrainflames 2020-10-12 16:38

Thanks for the geedback @jare @kurt-roembke @thewustache

@thewustache or_path_example.png I've actually started implementing that sort of thing :)

kurt-roembke 2020-10-12 16:53

@zebrainflames ooo that trail is pretty too. Seriously love the art.

shaolin-dave 2020-10-12 16:55

Love the concept and the gameplay style is really good, but could use some work. I found myself just tediously waiting around a lot of times. The gravity was a bit wonky at points, I was sitting on one planet then suddenly started drifting off of it onto the other planet with touching anything. There were times where I think I could have used the last bit of my gas to land, but I think I would have lost anyway? I was drifting far too slow to wait and see if it'd let me win anyway. But the concept is good and with a little polish this could be great game. I see you're working post-jam so I'll likely check back.

zebrainflames 2020-10-12 17:01

Thanks for the great feedback @shaolin-dave :)

I'll try to make the level layouts a bit more stable in the future (e.g now in the level where there's one large and one small planet, the gravity of the large planet is quite overwhelming which might explain the behaviour you got).

Also currently it's fine to land with 0 fuel, I'll just have to make that clearer :thinking:

trexxak 2020-10-12 19:03

It does everything it wants to and feels like a complete game! That being said, I suck at the game and could only make it to level 4 with a lot of trial and error :DD Maybe the gravitational pull could be tweaked a bit? But again, that could be my own incapability speaking. Really cool title for a compo game! Good job!

tricky-fat-cat 2020-10-12 19:29

Neat and fun puzzle game with decent movement an clear art.

hakro 2020-10-13 19:09

It's a lot of fun. Really liked it. It's also nice that when you suck at a level, after a few times it becomes easier because some of the astronauts. Nicely done. Cheers