The Unstable Zone

remco 2021-10-05 14:15

Very atmospheric again. I'm used to this from you by now though :-) You really are pushing your shader wizardry to the next level, and it shows. The Joror humor (t/m) in the Joror description boxes (patent pending) is present as well, and that's not a bad thing. Is that an XKCD ref I see?

It took me an _embarrasingly_ long time to find out that the green dots contain unstable matter. And an even _longer_ time to find out that the more aggresive ones contain more, so I shouldn't just shoot it. That was _after_ I failed to notice for the longest time, that, to collect stuff, I should position my ship so that the little blue field that is coming out of the same part of the ship as the blue beam is coming from, is the only intake. At this point I had already shot the majority of the green stuff in the level, so I started again. I got further along, so I thought I might actually see the end of this game, it took me a while, but now I have collected almost half of the unstable matter ... which was about one or two minutes after I noticed that the more cargo I hold, the more inertia and less top speed the ship has. Then I accidentally got sucked back into the far part of the level by the stream. At that point I had been playing for what felt like a really long time, so I stopped. (At some point I might attempt a third playthrough, going back and forth to the AI, like in my first attempt.) I'm not sure how much of this is on me, and how much of this is on the game. (On the one hand, the scanner indicates that the pirates have unstable matter --though in my defence the info screen doesn't always show up and the capital U is in dark geen on darkish grey--, but I don't think it specifies anywhere how the tractor beam works.)

Some other remarks: - Dialogue system should have a back button: I wasn't able to get back from the rest of the conversation without closing it and opening again. (Closing the dialogue isn't obvious either.) Also the QBits wheren't shown on every screen that I might want them on I think. - Not sure if on purpose: The very large crate can't be illuminated (but does show up breifly when disintegrating). - Control scheme is really nice, feels very intuitive. - Idea for the tractor beam: Make it the entire side of the ship, not just a small part. - Why can I turn the light-tool off? What purpose does that serrve? - When tractoring, sometimes objects disintegrate, other times not. And as I rewrite this from my notes, I think that that may be because the also receive damage from bumping against my ship? - Another thing that isn't mentioned, is that the nanites need raw materials (and not, for example tech-part ones -- or even it being free). - At some point I got some debug info to show when I pressed a key I think? Little white boxes with numbers on 'em. I thought I might check it out later ... but then I forgot they key and/or actions that lead me to that :-p - A very small detail, but I noticed the tech counter is stuck when sucking in parts with the tractor beam. It still counts them properly, and dissapears, but the number (unlike the raw mat) doesn't go down in the info box. Maybe that's only when combined with raw mat though?

joror 2021-10-05 14:52

Thank you for your always in-depth feedback @remco ! It always helps :) This time I didn't have much time to polish gameplay / learning curve, and it shows. I will add your troubles with looting / resources to the Tips section, might even add them to the Help page in the game.

(maybe I should start the game with the help page?)

fishtaod 2021-10-05 15:11

Great going. I loved the atmosphere of the game! The fog shader is great. Could be nice to have it move with the ship, or give an indication on currents (if I'm not mistaken, their are places which are harder to cross, seems like their is current but not sure). I guess my main concern is understanding the goal of the game. I gather that I'm in some cavernous place, but not sure what I'm doing there or what is expected of me.

joror 2021-10-05 15:27

@fishtaod There is a station to your top-left which should give you some more context and a goal :) (bit I admit there is not as much content in there as I like ;)) Flow-stream graphics were on my to-do, but didn't get to it :(

ttu-hasan 2021-10-09 11:46

very nice atmosphere and i liked the overall execution of the game

mrbamboo 2021-10-09 12:32

The mood if really nice ! Great work.

kakapoy 2021-10-09 12:37

Very good game, it was a little cryptic at first but become more understandable the further we go. The atmosphere real good ! Well done.

ache-games 2021-10-09 13:01

Visual art look great. Well done!

kingslee142 2021-10-09 14:24

I really like the visuals! Controls are intuitive and the feel of the movement is quite smooth. I would add few more tips during the game. Overall good job!

nekowei 2021-10-09 14:59

good visual effect and control is so smooth! I like the right bottom air flow area that speed up or slow down your ship.

maybe there should be more visual difference between weapons, but with the time limit it's a good work already.

freeworld 2021-10-09 15:07

Very atmospheric! I really like the background fog, the vessel's light and the music! All combined, it makes you feel like you're this tiny ship on a hostile alien planet, I really liked that! I liked the mixture between more hectic shooting and the slower paced exploration part with lighting your way and sometimes getting into a flow taking you to places you're not really sure what to expect. I can imagine some kind of more horror-ish setting with this whole buildup.

Overall a great entry, good job!

ditam 2021-10-09 17:11

A beautiful game. I also really liked the tiny descriptions (even though hovering moving objects was a bit inconvenient), they have a nice style with hints at a deeper and alive universe, great writing. Loved the thruster behavior too.

It took me the longest time to figure out how looting works - first I thought that the "blue zone" was the little blue box at the helm of the ship. Then I read @remco's comment which helped a bit, but it still felt like nothing is happening in the blue zone - it certainly didn't help that when I fullscreened the game, the inventory bar at the bottom disappeared :)

Nonetheless, this is a very polished title, that I would love to see expanded into a fuller game. Well done!

coolestdoggie 2021-10-11 10:47

I really love your art! It was so unusual control and a little bit hard but this atmosphere was awesome!

loiclegrosfrere 2021-10-12 00:23

The background (and lights on it) is cool as hell ! I didn't get that there is the blue zone to harvest when using the attract beam I was at 50 unstable matter to the end (I suppose ?) and I tried to find another creatures but, nothing happen :sob: (I don't know if this is my browser, but after some time, the game started to be really slow, like high usage, but nothing warnning me in ressource usage)

chainsawmcd 2021-10-12 18:42

Good art, nice dialogue. I really enjoyed the ship's controls as well, it moves quite nicely. Great work!

vladlawrence 2021-10-12 18:58

THAT WAS SOMETHING. Such atmospheric and horifying game, you did a great job. Gameplay, sound, fog, light, dialogs - all is working toogether,thats awsome. I realy enjoy it)

manzdeh 2021-10-12 19:22

The game looks absolutely great! I feel like you really nailed that mysterious and isolated look and feel with both the graphics and sound. The controls and physics were good as well!

I didn't realize at first that I had access to multiple beams and I _think_ I eventually ran out of things to mine, so I got stuck at some point and couldn't upgrade any parts of my ship. Still, I really enjoyed the game and I think this could work well as a nice and relaxing game if you decide to expand on what you have now.

khadia 2021-10-13 09:11

Wow, well done! The game looks and works great. It took me a while to figure out what to do, partly because I had an issue being unable to communicate with the hub at first (playing in Chrome browser) but after reading other comments and restarting it seemed fine. I must admit I didn't end up finishing it, but what I did play was very smooth and really impressive for a jam game. Great job!

exmxpx 2021-10-16 11:34

This felt good to move around and control in and had it's own distinct style. Good submission!