Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Asteroid Outlaws
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 429 | 3.72 | 27 | |
| Fun | 754 | 3.26 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 389 | 3.58 | 27 | |
| Theme | 398 | 4.09 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 117 | 4.44 | 28 | |
| Audio | 197 | 3.88 | 28 | |
| Humor | 896 | 2.54 | 24 | |
| Mood | 384 | 3.76 | 28 |
oh wow I really enjoyed this, wonderful implementation of realistic physics. I had a lot of fun chasing down packages, and I thought I was doing so well because I'd tractored up a whole stack, but then i realized their mass was also affecting my ship, making it almost impossible to fly! Awesome work, seriously!
@rohanmoon Hey thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. (And congrats on first comment! :confetti_ball:)
Very impressive! The physics/motion felt very realistic - almost too much so, in that trying to steer and direct the ship and manage them momentum was definitely a challenge. The graphics and visual effects were all really solid, and the soundtrack definitely had personality.
Excellent work, especially for a 2-person team.
Excellent visuals, ost, and art!
@pete-valeo Hey thanks for playing! Really appreciate the kind words, hope you managed to get a hang of the momentum eventually. :wink:
@sweltj Appreciate it! Thanks for playing!
@guitarbro Thank you for making a great game! Do you plan to sell or monetize it?
@sweltj Probably not unless it gets wildly popular or something lol. LD is mainly just for fun. :slight_smile:
Really good looking game, good execution on a solid concept. I found some difficulty with the thrusting when buying the main thrust upgrade, the ship was constantly spinning, but I probably just needed to change input modes. Nice work!
@josh-bothun thanks! Looks like you found a bug with the rotation damping lol. Hope you were able to recover.
Ship control is difficult. Getting on the mother ship is not an easy task. But at the same time the game is interesting. It is a pity that there are no other ships that need to be robbed.
You are great!
The movement is well made and feels realistic. Reminded me of Outer Wilds. I found the spinning bug as well, it is fun to struggle with space flight! There doesn't seem to be a limit to how in debt you can go, or any real penalties for incurring the debt. In my opinion the money/buy/upgrade systems more get in the way of a fun spacey tug of war with asteroids(packages, deliveries?) than add to the experience. Great execution on the models and textures, really solid for the time frame.
@getsky The movement definitely takes some getting used to. Experience with other zero-G Newtonian physics games probably helps. Thanks for playing though. I hope it wasn't too hard.
@blank-3d Switching to keyboard controls can sometimes be easier. The PID that controls rotation may have also built up some error when it couldn't have control while in the buy menu. I'll have to look into that. There is a penalty to debt though. Every 30 seconds you make a payment based on a percentage of the debt, and then it has an interest rate it increases by. More debt = more interest payments. It is pretty low so it isn't too punishing, but it's there. The upgrades were an incentive to sell stuff, but we didn't end up doing a whole lot with it. It probably could have been cut. I'm glad you enjoyed it though!
@blank-3d Outer Wilds is a good comparison. :wink:
This game looks amazing! Loved the implementation of the physics.
@diego-teran Thanks! Glad you enjoyed them. :smile:
Damn this game has got to be the hardest *thing* I've ever tried to do JKDKJDAS man, I'm shocked that anyone even *thought* of a control scheme this insane, let alone being able to actually control it :dizzy_face: I don't think it would be fair to rate this game in anything other than graphics, audio and humor (all superb, like seriously what a beautiful game) cuz I only managed to get like 1 or 2 boxes in JKDSJKSD. I feel like if I played this for like 1 or 2 weeks straight I could master it though
@fupi lol, that's space physics for ya. :wink: Thanks for the kind words regarding the graphics/audio/humor and hope you were able to get the hang of it eventually!
Wow! Amazing graphics art! They are really very detailed! Great game,and I can't wait to drive again!
@yuriscat Glad you liked it! Thanks for playing! :smiley:
Really Enjoyable. Sorta reminds me of some flash games with a simple. repetitive but fun mechanic. just sorta wish you build on it as the game goes on(like more expensive items the farther you are. or the faster they go making them riskier especially on your fuel) and the graphics where surprisingly great
One complain i do have is that the rocks are sorta useless. i dunno the exact reason why they where added but I felt like for how much monument they bring to your ship(sending it out of control). they have little reward. I was also going to complain about the controls but other then turning can feel a little sensitive they're pretty good once you get the hang of them and know how the space bar works picking stuff up and sending them back feels fun. it's like the docking session's of kerbal space program turned into a game
Awesome entry!! Loved the graphics, audio and nice physics mechanism. It took me a few runs to get the hang of it, but then it was pretty fun! We actually made quite a similar game to your haha called "Orbit Express", feel free to take a look and share your feedback!
I would add a pause menu with an option to restart, as I had to refresh the page on my first try :)
Incredibly polished game for a jam ! The gameplay is a bit hard to learn, but at least it's deep enough. Good job :slight_smile:
Very polished game with a clear objective. At the beggining it was hard to understand how to control the ship, but after switching to manual controls it became little bit easier. Also i don't understand how to trigger a cargo sell, it happens little bit random Music is also great
I don't know what to say, great game ! really fun and polished, the sound serve nicely the mood of the game. I liked it so much I just want some more variations and other stuff to do ! Really well done
@lonelygamedev Thanks for checking our game out! I agree, we could totally expand this concept with more content like that. Excellent suggestions. Regarding the rocks: they're there to be an obstacle, not for you to actually make a profit. :wink: The $1 is essentially a consolation prize for actually towing one back lol. And you're right about it being similar to KSP, that might have been an inspiration. :eyes:
@bmanstudio Thanks! Glad you liked it. I actually had your game on my list to check out, so I'll be getting around to it at some point. :thumbsup: We wanted to add a pause menu but ran out of time and figured you can just refresh the page like you did lol.
@meta-link Thank you! Hope you managed to the hang of it.
@torolchuk Thanks for playing! To sell you just have to come to a (near) stop over the pirate base ship. Holding spacebar helps with this since it cancels your velocity.
@arthur-sorignet-gautrot Appreciate the kind words! Thanks for checking our game out.
Lots of new comments suddenly. Let's get started.
@fupi Yeah, understanding how to intercept and move relative to objects without drag is a weird thing. It takes rewiring the way you think. If you have experience with KSP docking or playing Outer Wilds (if you don't, you should) it makes it easier to understand. Essentially you need to recognize that your relative velocity is what's important and not just pointing towards your target and thrusting. Slow and smooth is faster than quick and shooting past.
@yuriscat Thanks for the comment and for playing!
@lonelygamedev If you're interested in more like this, it's partially mechanically inspired by ΔV: Rings of Saturn (which I believe is free while the Invasion of Ukraine is ongoing) and, like you mention, docking in KSP. As for the rocks, yeah they're useless. We had a system for randomly spawning the packages with random velocities and stuff, but we wanted to add asteroids that functioned similarly. It made sense to use the same system, and instead of re-writing things to allow for non-collectable objects we just allowed them to be collected too, but mostly useless. It's an option though. Thanks for playing!
@bmanstudio I'll have to check your game out! A restart option before you win or lose would have been a nice addition, yeah.
@meta-link Yes, very tricky to get used to when you're used to physics with drag. Relative velocity is the key. Get that to zero with your target and then slightly thrust towards it and wait. You'll eventually collide. Slow and steady.
@torolchuk I agree keyboard controls may be easier, but harder to learn. It's an extra thing you need to be thinking about, so we had the default handle your rotation and point you towards the mouse so you don't have to think as much. Cargo gets sold when it's within range of the station and the velocity is below a certain value. If you just get it in range and zero your velocity it should sell.
@arthur-sorignet-gautrot Thanks for playing! More variation would have been great, but time is always a factor with LD.
I enjoyed it and the physics seems correct to some extent.
I had problems with some object (that were on tracking beam) were jumping at high speeds around ship, which made ship uncontrollable (also they were fast enough to not be clickable at all). So kind of resulted in a lose.
Apart from that the auto rotation seems way too crazy (it never points towards mouse, but is wobbly) - manual one with Q/E is good though.
All in all I enjoyed it and had fun playing this entry. It could do with few improvements (as every jam game), but is polished enough and overall a solid entry.
@zgragselus I'm glad you had fun. Thanks for playing!
The problem with objects jumping around is weird. I haven't experienced that. I don't know what would cause it. I'm sorry you encountered that.
The rotation is controlled by a PID controller that could probably be tuned slightly better. It has the same control as with manual keyboard controls, so it's often easier if the player just takes full control. It's more to think about, but I personally find it easier as well.
Thanks for the feedback!
Loved the gameplay, the mouse could have used a bit of tweaking to not overcorrect so much (actually aiming the ship seemed useless as it just sprung back and forth rapidly, but you could still navigate well enough with the keyboard using the match speed on space bar) but still fun and addicting! I was able to clear the debt pretty quickly, didn't really need much in the way of upgrades, didn't really help that much. I did find the station and found you can bacasically just block a door and park to load up.
After that first run i clicked play again and noticed something interesting, my debt seemed higher and there were more objects spawned, so i started wondering if debt and spawn rate was related and...well...
Screenshot_2023-05-06_20-32-34.png
edit: oh it got SO much more interesting as i was posting this, since i was parked and everything was getting so crowded one of the 20kg asteroids smacked me and tethered to me, it started pulling me around the map gathering into a loot nebula as I went...then then started rubberbanding back and forth, accelerating me greatly and launching me FAR outside the map.
Screenshot_2023-05-06_20-40-42.png
@raptor851 Interesting. No, debt and spawn rate are not connected. I honestly have no idea what caused that. There is theoretically no limit to objects, they just get destroyed when too far away from the player, but I'd expect them to float away eventually. If they collide with things and end up with near-zero velocity, I guess they could build up like this if that's what you were seeing.
All objects you're towing also impart equal force to you, so towing large numbers of object (especially asteroid which weight more) they will make you lose control as it overpowers you. You can right click them to stop towing them.
@cethin this was massive buildup as i was sitting there, only took a minute or so and kept building up, they were actually pushing into the center giving me tons of free money. Possibly the spawn timer resetting for each upgrade? Either way it was building up an absurd amount of stuff pushing in towards the center extremely fast and the rocks attaching to me essentially just hyper-launched me out away from it (I was still gaining money though so stuff near the center definitely wasn't despawning due to my distance away, it was still being captured! Maybe due to the fact that i wasn't moving so much as being dragged by the asteroids?)
Lol that's a new one. Hope you had fun regardless! @raptor851
Very fun idea, loved the graphics and models, they were so well done and nice to look at. The mouse controls felt a bit too much, so I switched to the Q/E rotation method and that made it more manageable. Definitely was a challenge getting the feel for the actual speed you're moving when there's nothing but empty space around, but it was fun! Excellent work!
@john-kisner Hey, thanks for trying it out! Appreciate the feedback. :smile: