clericshields 2021-04-27 02:13
Tough to make a game like this with resource management. I thought it was pretty fun. I appreciate it!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Deep Space Journey
By aaranos
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1757 | 2.82 | 31 | |
| Fun | 1837 | 2.39 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 1532 | 2.74 | 31 | |
| Theme | 1394 | 3.24 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 1718 | 2.50 | 32 | |
| Humor | 1420 | 1.76 | 23 | |
| Mood | 1532 | 2.94 | 30 |
Tough to make a game like this with resource management. I thought it was pretty fun. I appreciate it!
I just couldn't understand how this was supposed to work.
I could really see this being a clicker game with a few minor improvements! It's a good base. Having a visible indicator of health and morale like the faces of crew mates, some spoken dialog like, today we made a great haul! or the crews exhausted, we've been going strong for weeks now!
things like that would really make this more enjoyable. I can feel the story just from this little bit you did! Overall, pretty good job!
Hey! Nice entry! It was quite fun managing the resources and trying to keep them somewhat balanced, and it was well made. Sometimes it was hilarious when you could spend money to get more money lol.
It's a really nice concept and with some storyline and animations and the ship maybe moving somewhere the game would have been more interesting, because now nothing really happens when you keep moving more lightyears away from earth, and I dont think there was an end goal? Correct me if im wrong 8) Music I thought was really epic, fit the game quite nicely. But yeah my only complaint is that it would have been a bit more fun with more of a story and animations and some stuff happening on the screen, but for a jam game that resource managing is well done and nice job to keep it so balanced!
@bubbadubc Thanks, those kinds of things were part of the plan. As the time limit approached I had to cut out a lot of it. I might use this as my base to put together a mobile game from it.
@raffe The game was basically adventure/survival, with the goal to get as far from Earth as possible. I was hoping to get an animation for the ship warping, but I reworked the entire event system in the last few hours of the jam. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I like the idea but, some more interesting gameplay would of made this game very good.
Nice work! This kind of thing takes in depth writing to be really interesting, I think it's really good considering it was made in 3 days, music was a great fit!
Pretty easy (for the first 10 planets or so), feels RNG-based. Maybe it would get more interesting as I play and learn what's important? Feels kinda like FTL, but with only the dialog boxes =P
(Also: runs in Firefox, but not in Chromium, for me. But it runs great in Firefox, so hey!)
The crew would like to focus on MONEY!
Spend -12 MONEY for MONEY
*clicks that option*
You spend -12 MONEY and received 4 MONEY.
***
I did this about six times. Yes, my stock investment portfolio irl isn't particularly healthy either.
Balancing all the resources to keep the trip ongoing is interesting, but it feels difficult to lose. Spamming to click random options keeps the voyage going for a long time. Additional encounter types could breathe some extra life into the game, or maybe even just more varied descriptions of the events rather than "crew wants to focus on xxx."
The music was excellent and perfectly thematic, and the UI/graphics, while simple, were well polished. Overall, this feels like the foundation of what could be an interesting resource management/strategy game, if only just a little bit extra were added on!
I enjoy that the game has a really clear goal! The feeling of getting further and further from Earth felt good, but I wish there was more to do and a clearer sense of my impact.
Cool idea for a game, wish there was more to the different planets/systems than just a name and color. Having different events to explain why you lose/gain different resources would be cool. "Your ship got stuck in an asteroid field, you lost 15 health" or something along those lines. Still though, doing something procedural with enough content to make it really interesting is tough during a game jam. Nice work getting everything to work!
Music is quite fitting and space-laxing. Simple, easy to learn UI. Missed the whole picture and wished for some cool narrative space events (encounters), not just managing resources. Had a sweaty space trip, though.
Curious, just tried to play and nothing is happening -- just a grey screen. I followed the webGL link. One error in the console if I try to fullscreen otherwise nothing. ^ Seems other people can play just fine though. Using Chrome fwiw.
@jacobrutter I'm running it in Chrome Version 90.0.4430.93 (Official Build) (64-bit), Unity has a checkered past with web builds in chrome though.
The core of this type of games is the story that connects the gameplay with the player but in game jam it is very hard to make something that big. I really liked the ship art and the music. For a game jam it is good entry.
Nice jam. A bit more visuals would be nice though.
This _does_ look like a good base for something, but I'm afraid I didn't really find it that much fun as-is. Putting in some sort of narrative/quest and a reason to "go deeper" would do a lot. Of course, that's true of a ton of elements left out of _most_ LD games due to time constraints, so no worries! Music and starship art are good!
Got to 1755 ly.. If that is anything to brag about.
I like games that manage to put grand ideas (in this case entire universe) behind simple rules, so this instantly gets my sympathy. Here a lot of makeup is discarded to reveal the very core of decision making in order to be in charge of something. You have to sacrifice either what you have plenty of or what you have to in order to keep the show going, in this case get the fuel, as the only vector of progress is distance from the earth.
While I did had fun playing, with this being a jam entry I kept feeling you could have done a bit more, like do some basic textual context charade over them raw trades in numbers. I don't mean whole story (that would quickly get repetitive to read), but like one sentence (title, 4x6=24 titles, sounds... doable) per resource trade combination could improve the atmosphere (ie "Blood Fuel" when trading morale for fuel). Or maybe I am wrong and these things are better left to imaginations of players fully.
Of course I know those things can get complicated, being a lone programmer can give you a writing block for simplest things, and maybe you had a late start or not enough time to dedicate more. Planets changing colors was at least somewhat satisfying. Either way, I am glad you made this, and I had fun with it.
@kr4ft3r 4 hours or so before submission I had 2 custom events with dialogue. I knew I would never get enough made so I had to figure out a way to generate them. I appreciate your thorough review. I know I'm doomed to hear the same criticism. I've done a lot of jams so I know a lot of the pitfalls, for instance a lot of people mention the music which is just a royalty free track when I took music off the rating, BUT without including any music all other scores would be affected.
Very interesting resource-management game. Trying to balance my different resources was pretty fun, although the randomness and lack of information can lead to sequences where you don't really progress in any direction and just exchance resource types back and forth (or in some cases, -32 money for +17 money or something similar ;) ). Still a refreshing genre to see in this event! Plus, the music was great!
The music fits real well! It's cool to see the barebones of a space management sim :)
I'd be interested in the sort of narrative that would arise from playing into the cold, clinical, "I'm dealing with numbers and not people" that's present in the game as it is right now.
Some sfx for button press feedback would plus it up a little, and perhaps some reason to click or not click on each of the buttons on each planet. It currently feels maybe TOO open for me to just keep clicking. Has potential I think to be really fun! BTW, I appreciated your post saying no need to install anything! ;)
I really like the concept of this game. With a little UI improvements and some more variety and balancing in the options given, this game has tremendous potential.
My journey didn't get that far, but it was fun enough. The choices are a little repetitive, but this is working well for a jam, good job!