cslupius 2021-04-27 00:30
Fun mechanics. Great Music choice.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Outerstellar
By pineapplegladiator, madhumster and Siliel
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1075 | 3.43 | 31 | |
| Fun | 854 | 3.39 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 1108 | 3.06 | 31 | |
| Theme | 767 | 3.75 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 1133 | 3.48 | 31 | |
| Humor | 1355 | 2.04 | 24 | |
| Mood | 670 | 3.67 | 31 |
Fun mechanics. Great Music choice.
The darkness of space and music took me in, but I think you could have left out the button prompts and just do the on and off loading of the survivors automatically - also the refuelling. Once I read about spriraling, it was way more fun, maybe you could force the player to go in circles around the objects, like orbits :)
It's really fun to just fly around and listen to music! Too bad you run out of fuel :D
The mood of space exploration is great. The spiraling tip really helped but I wonder if the resource planets are spawned randomly or on pre-designated locations. I was only able to find one. When I was out on the third spiral it became really hard to pin point the location of next star so eventually I ran out of fuel. I like the idea though :slight_smile:
@cvetk0 The planets were manually placed. One could say in a devilish way :) Thanks for playing and feedback!
The concept, premise, and the core objectives of the game fit the theme well. The visuals of exploring space and uncovering parts of the terrain support the theme, and give a sort of claustrophobic tension, at least in the first moments of going into the unknown. The positive and hopeful music appears to fight that feeling, but it becomes more appropriate as the game shows it's true face as a relatively relaxed pick up and deliver exploration game.
On the other hand, the controls feel stiff (and not 0G floaty). Turning the ship felt unresponsive, and it was as if it's fighting against me. My biggest pet peeve were the abrupt and hard collisions in space - like a pigeon slamming into the side of the white house - firstly with the space pods, and worse, when slamming into the invisible barriers around the suns. Stars are indeed dangerous, but a visual indicator where the collider is would be a great help. Or even removing the collisions in general! I don't feel they add much to the gameplay (at least to the part where I've played), and space is 3d, so hypothetically you could fly over or under stars and pods - that suggestion is coming from the fact that the star station has no collision - which works quite fine.
tldr Relaxing, interesting, fits the theme, fun until you collide with anything and stop like you just walked into a lamp post while staring at your phone.
@nidzakornjaca Thanks for feedback! Controls were meant to be a bit stiff, but you are totally right about collisions.
Fun game! I like I idea of exporing the universe to look for survivors. A mini map to see where you are in relation to everything else would be nice as I kept getting lost and running out of fuel, but otherwise it was great!
i love the music and the concept that's very plaisant to play ^^
@okaylobster you can manually open map by pressing M and move it around using WASD. Not a minimap but map of some kind:) Thanks for playing and feedback!
Fun little game. As others have mentioned, the controls are a bit sluggish. What I would have also kept is that the ship doesn't slow down by itself, so keeping momentum.
Music is awesome.
The game is fun, but I think the planets and stars are too far apart.
Fun and engaging, however desperately needs a minimap, cause field of view is a bit small and spamming M is annoying.
Somehow found like 15 stars before actually discovering that there are planets.
(also game likes to hang after alt-tab and *really* dislikes two-monitor setup, however maybe that due to wine)
Clearing the "fog of war" with the light felt unique. The map was a great inclusion. Placing the first star juuuust in view of the starting point was a great decision to draw the player to the mechanics.
Nice game! Music was catchy. Graphics were very well done, especially like the "Scanning unknown space" mechanic. Exploring the unknown is one of my favorite game mechanics, and you nailed it! You game really fits the theme well. I had a lot of fun playing it. Really like the mood of the cold emptiness of space. I did encounter a small bug. I was on fumes heading toward the HQ station when I ran out of gas but seemed to coast to the station. The onscreen text showed I was out of fuel and I could press R to respawn, but neither the movement nor E or R keys functioned. Ended up having to manually stop the game. But, before that I had lots of fun. Thanks for making the game.
Cool game! Well done for a jam, with a couple more features it could be a full game. Music was awesome as well as the graphics.
It seemed like saving survivors upgraded your ship? It would be nice to have some control over what got upgraded. Maybe if you add resources then it adds a bit of a dynamic between rescuing survivors and collecting more resources.
The one thing I didn't like is the drag, you're in space after all ;)
I managed to gather all the resources but I saved just 190 survivors... that makes me greedy and hearthless? I don't know... but exploring the deep space was really funny! Sometimes the dark "resoruces planets" popped out of nowhere and scaried me because i was totally focussed on finding the fainth light of a star passing through the fog of war! Btw I've been really surprised by your great work with the "fog of war" and the map. Continue with the good work!
Really nice atmosphere, it felt dark and the planets were nice and glowy, an arrow to point you back to the space station would be really helpful.
I really liked drawing out the map.
There is no friction in space so would have liked to have been able to move as such without drag.
I liked the game, but at one point I found it too hard/tiring to find the next stars (and did not find any more survivors). I'd like some speed upgrades in the end :) Also cool music!
Nice entry! I was a bit started when I hit the first star and suddenly everything lit up haha. I wasn't able to find all of the resources, but I enjoyed exploring around through the darkness
Awesome entry, a lot of fun to play, and I managed to find all 5 planets. Only 220/500 survivors though, and I was having trouble finding new suns, not sure where the rest of the survivors were hiding. One suggestion would be upping turning speed when you are slowed down/stopped.
Well done!