Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Adrift
By coda-highland and Immamoonkin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.91 | 14 | ||
| Fun | 2.79 | 14 | ||
| Innovation | 3.36 | 13 | ||
| Theme | 3.41 | 14 | ||
| Graphics | 3.12 | 14 | ||
| Humor | 1.43 | 10 | ||
| Mood | 2.54 | 13 |
Interesting game, didn't seem like I could get enough oxygen to sustain myself? Then again, I did waste a lot of it inside. Objectives not immediately super clear, but you end up figuring it out pretty quickly. Love the art though!
Super cute visual style! I loved the almost watercolor look to the visuals. Unfortunately, I was pretty confused, and couldn't figure out what to do. I got some rocks, refined them, but it wasn't clear how to get from that stage to building components, and the game design didn't make it super clear. I liked the emphasis on chemistry and combining objects! I would recommend making it clearer to the player how to achieve their goals and less trial-error. I wasn't sure if copper or water/etc was valuable, or why I should be collecting/synthesizing/crafting with them.
Só passei pra sugerir colocar as coisas que não dão pra craftar ainda desativadas pra gente saber o que pegar
@erroneous Melt ice into water, then electrolyze water to get hydrogen and oxygen.
@pen-island-games Interesting perspective, thanks. I was actually aiming for it being more of an exploration thing -- since the instructions say what you're trying to aim for, I figured people would want to try to figure out how to get there.
@jozgames Yeah, that's not a bad idea.
Instructions aren't very clear without experiencing the gameplay, and the gameplay isn't very clear without the instructions. I think the player needs a little in game hand holding with this one. But the graphics are very nice and the game has depth. The players just need a little help understanding it.
There's a cool idea here. Having the player plan out their resource inventory to fit the different needs creates a fun gameplay loop. But there are a lot of things that make the game not a great experience.
This game has a real information overload problem. When I start the game staring down four different stations each with their own confusing-looking UI, my brain kind of shuts down. I think the solution in these cases is to give the player one station at a time and force them to make use of it to unlock the next one. That way they figure out what that station can do for them before a new one enters the mix. It's a combinatorics problem. Maybe I can figure out these four stations on their own, but anything I do in one station is completely meaningless unless I know how to use the created resource in the other stations. "I turned rock into Silicon. Cool, but how does that help me? Heck, maybe doing that screwed me over completely because I needed that rock for something else." That's my sort of thought process.
It's problematic that you can't see crafting recipes you don't have the resources for. How am I supposed to know what to collect in order to craft what I need? Once my inventory is full, I need to jettison something. How do I know what to jettison unless I know how much of it I'm going to need? I had to look at your source code to figure out how whether I really needed all of that Silicon. (I didn't.)
I can never seem to get enough ice to offset the loss of oxygen from obtaining it. I need to collect an ice ball every five seconds or else I'll end the excursion with a net oxygen loss. I found that to be impossible even without collecting the other asteroid types. The collision with the asteroids was also really buggy. Sometimes I was able to hold two at once but most of the time the second asteroid would bounce off me or teleport around. I was never able to beat the game because I always ran out of oxygen before I crafted my third thruster part.
There's definitely some cool mechanics in this game, but there's a lot to be desired in the polish and balance departments.
@zungryware Thanks for the feedback. Balance is definitely something I was concerned about. I tried to make sure you had enough stuff in your starting inventory to explore the systems to see how they worked, but I didn't have time to fully balance everything.
You're not supposed to be able to hold two rocks. Trying is supposed to just bounce the other one off.
@erroneous @pen-island-games @jozgames @mrs-wheelsx @zungryware In case any of you are interested, I've uploaded a postjam revision of the game that fixes the game balance -- you were all right, it was way too hard and a little too opaque.
I think this concept was cool, but there wasn't enough info given to the player to make it fun. Too much information at once
@coda-highland Nice. I was able to beat it this time! I think the game runs a bit long though for how much content there is. Maybe only two or three parts should be needed for the Nav-Comp and Thruster Repair?
Nice game, it`s simillar to Subnautica. It would be very ncie to have music. The patched version is much better, the balance is more fair. I stuck in wall lol bugged.png
A lot of the other comments summed up my thoughts really well on this, but I do also want to say, nice work on this! Most of us all have a lot of little things that totally need some tweaking on our jam submissions. But you all did a good job putting this together, and keep up the good effort! I'd love to see what this turns into if you all keep working on it.
@pawel12 Yeah, the similarities to Subnautica occurred to us while we were reviewing what we'd put together.
@scott-cooper Thanks! I don't know if there's quite enough to this one to keep going with it long-term; there are other games in my back catalogue that I'd rather return to -- Nullified is the one I'm most interested in building out.
@zungryware Thanks for taking another look! You're probably right about shortening the overall game duration like that given what I have here.
@zach-rouhana Sorry, I don't know if I understand -- is there too much information, or not enough information?
@pawel12 Oh, huh, I just reproduced that bug. Not sure how that happens. Did you run out of oxygen?
@coda-highland I think it happend when I run out of oxygen when entering ship or I moved during respawn.
Checking out your game.. it's pretty cool. Just by playing it you can learn a lot about.. how the Universe works, I'd say :D I will play more!
Now, while you've seemingly gotten better balance (judging by comments; I didn't play the original initial, only the updated) you still have something I call UX issues - and those are the worst to fight (I had a lot in my game, even when trying to avoid at all cost). They are unpleasant to deal with especially when prioritizing time to more meaningful tasks. What do I mean: what players need to do in the game is not self-evident; or worse - they may not have a clear way to learn it (or it could require additional effort). Examples: many people don't read instructions. If I didn't read them, I would never be able to leave the ship in the first place. What about a small pulsing indicator on objects you can interact with? [Z] itself (on player over) may not be enough. Same thing for stuff outside the ship - ok, maybe after bringing a few asteroids *and* interacting with the ship systems I *will* know what the blue asteroid is, what the grey asteroid is (etc.) but I don't know from the beginning. I don't have a way to check either. That's basically should apply for any object the player may be interested in. : )) From this point of view, some players will persevere and enjoy, some will not even bother.
I myself like the gameplay loop. I will play more! Maybe I also learn something more about how our world works in the process ^^ And - big congrats on the effort! This is not a small feat!!!
@aweskybear Yeah, that's the kind of polish that's hard to get into a jam game. I thought I was doing pretty well with spawning the character somewhere that you naturally discover that there are objects you can interact with, that you can move two-dimensionally in space, that interacting with some objects opens up an interface, and that you can craft new items based on what you have in your inventory using those interfaces. That's more implicit world-instruction than I've ever had an opportunity to include before; that's something I'm going out of my way to pay attention to more as experience makes the coding aspect of game development take proportionally less of the available time.