Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Legendary Orbit Golf
By faithcaio, pschichtel, Dzefris and Oxropy
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1521 | 2.83 | 52 | |
| Fun | 1556 | 2.44 | 52 | |
| Innovation | 604 | 3.50 | 53 | |
| Theme | 1079 | 3.34 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 1206 | 3.08 | 53 | |
| Audio | 895 | 2.94 | 49 | |
| Humor | 1207 | 1.91 | 39 | |
| Mood | 1229 | 2.96 | 47 |
Very difficult to play. In every case I either ended up stuck to a planet or shooting off into oblivion. The premise and mechanics, at first seemed really interesting and definitely like a type of game I would enjoy but when I was never able to achieve anything close to the goal it did bring in some frustration.
I really like the idea and I think it looks great! The path plotting is neat, but I couldn't ever get the controls to work for me.
Really cool idea but I have to agree with HungryCatGames. Very difficult and not super clear on where Im supposed to be going. Looks and sounds really cool though!
Interesting idea but rough execution. Having more control over picking your path would have made a huge difference, but as it is the lack of control makes getting a good shot mostly luck. Also, it's way too easy to reach escape velocity. I also encountered a couple bugs where planets would not be removed from the scene after hitting backspace to reset.
Interesting, a bit confusing at first but gets better as you play on. Pretty good!
I like the concept however I feel that the lack of instructions and some missing visual cues let you down a little bit. With a bit of work this could turn out great.
@hungrycatgames @will-chambers @spice-cabinet @rein @cz46 Thanks for the feedback!
I definitely agree with the "clunky" / non-intuitive controls. The initial idea was to be similar to other golf games where you have to master the skill of hitting the ball when a slider is in the perfect spot, but we also see that it's probably not obvious for people not involved in the development. We plan to add additional visual queues and a few camera pans, that were initially planned, might get added.
I really enjoyed the idea, it works well with the theme. The controls might be a bit clunky but not to difficult I thought. Middle mouse button does some unexplainable teleporting I think. Graphics work really well.
@heho you found the super well hidden cheat :D
I like the idea and the trajectory of the ball around the planets is well executed. But as otheres have said it's really hard to control. Also I had litteraly no idea where I was supposed to aim, a visual indcation would be nice. Another point I really liked is the music it goes really well with the space setting and the theme
I really like the idea, but I don't know where to go. I really like the audio, it fits with the game well. The graphics were very good as well.
Really nifty idea, and a lot achieved here for a game jam. It would be great to have a bit more control of the trajectory of the ball, but I appreciate that would be tough with the time constraints given! Great work! :)
I added a play-through / tutorial video, some known issues / notes to the post, that should clarify things
Really nice idea! Kind of reminds me of Angry Birds Space.
Interesting game! Playing golf through space is crazy and I like it.
Really neat idea here.
As others have mentioned, it's really confusing as submitted. It might be worth doing a post-jam version with some easier tutorial levels that walk you through the early steps; the tutorial video is a nice stopgap that got me moving though.
As a KSP player, that was fun.
I tried to go where arrow is pointing, but i think i ran out of shots because i was flying between 2 planets and arrow was switching back and forth(actually i now watched the tutorial video and apparently there's no indication that the destination was reached. So that's a thing).
Regarding controls: while i realise that it's supposed to be the challenge, i can just orbit around a body and just repetedly try to plot the maneuver i want and cancel it if it's not what i want. So that kinda just slows down the game.
I want to like it more but the immediate halts in the gameplay loop is frustrating to say the least. Because there is no way of recovery when the "ball" hits the planet it basically ends and I have to restart it and begin anew. I would highly suggest to lift the ball into orbit when crashing on the planet. Sure it's not "realistic" but you don't feel so frustrated each time you hit the ball.
@gameag In the Submission Version when reaching the goal planet the indicator is just wrong and nothing really happens. This and the controls are changed in the Post-Jam Version. It now uses the scroll-wheel to change the velocity.
@adiwan It was supposed to reset you to the last stable orbit you were in. Sadly that somehow broke in the submission Version (It thinks the crash location is a stable orbit position). We also fixed that in our Post-Jam Version. You can then either go safe and slow down every other planet to go into a stable orbit around it (moving your save-point forward) or speed trough multiple planets risking to crash into one and reset further back.
@faithcaio Cool that it has been dealt with! When I'm done with reviewing a ton of other games I'm coming back and play the post-jam version.
It's a really clever idea and I like the presentation. I have to kind of agree that it's hard to figure out what you're doing, and if this were to get some post-jam polish I would suggest in-game informational messages.
Cool idea! I found the controls pretty finicky, and it was pretty frustrating to charge headfirst into a planet after a few jumps done successfully and having to restart from the beginning. Some simpler levels to get your feet wet and a better control scheme could make this fun!
Good: * I love physic based games, and gravity based ones in particular, so thanks for it. * It looks rather neat with all the particle effects. * The engine is responsive (maybe too much), and feels accurate
Bad:
* Right-click is cumbersome on some devices (tablets and macbooks), so are certain keypresses * Some bugs are rather annoying, but you already know that :wink:
Ugly:
* Having to read a huge wall of text makes me think that the gameplay is too sophisticated * I didn't understand what I should do, I was mesmerized by the loops around planets ;)
A physics game (I like those) with a very neat graphics (those little cute planet models were great) but yeah the goal is kind of obscure, so I was having fun just flying around :)
Audio work was on point too
Tip of the hat to you guys for making the web version, as I always do everywhere :)
Very cool and difficult game! Like it
I wasn't sure which planet I was actually trying to get to, but I had fun slingshot-ing around for sure
I really like the premise, though as others had mentioned, there was difficulty making the shots without getting stuck or flying into deep space. Other than that, I really like the look of the game, and the music is pretty cool! The music really fits the space aesthetics too, Also when the drums start coming in, oh man the song is a bop! I wish the drums came in sooner! Great work.
@blobo I added the link to @rahtainka's soundcloud account.
Unique idea!
Controls were hard, but I liked the concept. Music was really good too, fit the theme well.
Cool idea. But I ended up shooting myself out in the wrong direction every time.
I tried going in blind. On my first shot my mouth was just agape watching everything unfold lol.
Eventually I figured it out and started hopping from planet to planet though. As I understood the game more I started trying wackier shots to try to hop past planets more. Afaik that was what you were going for. The game idea definitely makes for some great screenshots, it certainly drew me in.
There are some clear issues but others have already covered them. I really liked this entry because there have been lots of orbit-loop games this jam, but this is the first one I've seen where you kinda create your own orbits. Not only that, but I haven't seen this style of game where you could also affect things midflight. Usually it's a gravity based shot, you watch it happen, then it's over. Great job bringing some new things into the mix!
I'm a big fan of the gravity mechanics going on here. As you already called out, conveyance is a little weak here (without reading all of your text here, I had a hard time understanding what was going on).
There's something good in this game, and it feels like it has a lot of potential.
This is a fantastic premise, though it was particularly difficult for me because no scroll wheel on my touchpad. It sounds like you've already been tackling things people have raised so I hope you go further with it.
So interesting. The concept "Orbiting Planets" is same to my game. But different game play, art style and so on. This graphic is soooooooo good!!
Heyo, I played your game on stream! Here's the vod if you wanna rewatch; https://www.twitch.tv/videos/765804766
Thanks for submitting your game!
@justcamh thanks for playing the game! sadly it was super late already here in Germany, so we didn't attend the stream. Zooming out would have made it a lot easier to play. We improved the automatic zoom in the post-jam version already :)
Really cool concept, hard to figure out how to make it work though.. maybe a bit more arcade physics would help
i could nnot really get past the first couple shots as it seemed like the ball got stuck. i like the idea of golf in space. thanks for making this game.
I like the concept of the game, and would love to see it fleshed out. Couldn't really figure out if I was playing right or not, even with the in-description explanation. I was on my forth play before I manage to hit without getting stuck on the first planet I came across. The instructions would be better in-game. I think you touched on everything else with your known issue notes. One final thing: You've reused graphics and music, so you should opt-out of graphics and audio voting.
@shaolin-dave for graphics we have merely reused the same star background we used before, which has never been our own (I'll try to trace the origin). for audio we reused the background music, but effects are recorded from scratch. in both cases the asset alone is just one part of the story. not sure how to proceed here.