Project Planetfall: The Exodus Directive

smilewood 2025-04-08 02:43

I love what you are going for with this game, it is a massive project with a lot of moving parts for attempting in a game jam. The “manage a vessel that you are in” genre is one that is a lot of fun, and you have gotten an impressive prototype of one in this project.

On the whole several of the interactions felt a little bit clunky. Clicking on items once in the storage UI then again to pick it up springs to mind, same with what seemed like extra storage shelves at the front of the ship (I couldn’t tell what those were for). Really a lot of the game would have been improved with some sort of instructions; the drills, my favorite minigame, took a while to figure out because I kept trying to steer them while extended, just having text like “Aim then extend” on screen when using them would have helped a lot.

I would have liked a progress bar for… well a lot of things, notably the foundry cooking up things and the fuel/coolant remaining. Seeing the numbers for the latter two doesn’t mean much to me. On the whole there are just a lot of numbers all over the screen that I basically don’t look at most of the time, refining them to be graphical indicators would go a long way.

The art style in your game is great! I love the character who just looks like this dangerous expedition into the depths is another day at work. The ship itself is well designed (if a little empty, was something meant to be in the back room?) and all of the systems are readable as what they are. The sound effects and music are a good touch.

Overall I think this game has a lot of potential, and with a little more polish on the presentation of several of the systems would be a game I could play a bunch. Well done!

grimwitch 2025-04-09 05:26

Wow so I want to start with the big positives first, the game is gorgeous. Each and every station has a unique interaction and control scheme really making you feel as if you're in control of a massive mining rig. The sound effects are solid and help alert you to how things are progressing on the ship. I also particularly enjoyed the mining system, it felt super intuitive for me.

I think you might have taken on a little bit too much for a game jam however, despite everything on its own being very solid it feels a bit disconnected from each other and actually managing the drill is very overwhelming at first. The numbers surrounding the screen just feels like way too much at first and I wish it was presented in a way that helped guide the player into systems as they mattered. However I realize tutorialization is one of the absolute last things you do when under a time crunch, and even without the crunch a rather difficult thing to get right.

I would absolutely love to see this game polished further, I think there is a lot of potential here.

You should all be very proud of what you made!

christian-zommerfelds 2025-04-11 06:41

Would you mind updating your note so that we know whether what we're playing was done inside the deadline or not?

> NOTE: Please use the GitHub download link for the latest working build. Hours before the deadline, we encountered issues with physics not working well on the build. Hopefully it’s a small gaff and we can fix it before the final playable build, but if not, please keep that in mind. Thanks!

That aside, the game looks really awesome! Here a few thoughts as I play the game:

* Wow, the vessel/ship moves very nicely, including the rotations. Really well done for a game jam! * I feel overwhelmed, not sure what to do (not necessarily a bad thing :)) * I can't figure out how to pickup items. I tried to click in the output of the foundry, right click, drag, nothing worked. Oh I think it's because I already have something in my hand? This part feels unintuitive. * I personally would have liked to use the drills while the ship is running :) Update: actually at some point the worked, even with the ship moving. Also I found it easier to just turn the arms on and let the ship drive and pickup automatically * It would be nice if the heading input wheel would be controlled by turning :) It felt wrong when I turned it as it was going back an forth * It wasn't clear to me my suddenly all machines turned off. Maybe because power demand was not met for a while? * I think when the foundry is powered off after everything was turned off you can pay for stuff but never get the output? I was able to get into negavite resources, and I never got wat I wanted to build. * It wasn't clear to me where to put the core model and radar thingy * Music is nice (but gets a bit repetitive), sounds are great

As you can see above there are some rough edges, but I enjoyed playing and think that the game has a lot of potential!

gamescodedogs 2025-04-11 06:42

It's a pity there is no HTML5 version, but nevertheless, I did not regret that I downloaded it. Powerful, well-assembled game. There is serious potential to develop it into a large Steam project. Good luck in voting!

rincs 2025-04-11 09:41

I was very glad that Vegeo was in chat to help explain the things. It was a LOT to start with. But once I got the hang of things it was REALLY zen and fun and I enjoyed looking at the soil, and the stuff I could collect, and understanding the grapple-mining thing!! I was just sad I got a bug that disabled me from fully upgrading my machines. BUT I WILL PLAY AGAIN!! I hope there's a post jam with a zen mode (to start with) =u= !!

tsaot 2025-04-12 02:16

This is a fantastic and ambitious game. I think the mining drill interaction is great. This games would be great multi-player. This is very ambitious and is awesome to see at this level in the jam.

dxk2294 2025-04-12 03:08

This was an extremely ambitious entry, and I definitely struggled to understand how to play at first. But as I kept at it I really fell in love with the systems at play. It'd be really cool to see this idea expanded on in a full release!

ryusui 2025-04-13 21:21

Graphics and music are top-notch, but I feel like the gameplay itself is a little on the arcane side. I'd have preferred it if the Foundry listed what recipes are available rather than what recipes I can make - I thought the thing was glitched! Some better indication of how to operate the collection drill would also have been appreciated; I tried operating the sliders with the mouse (like with the engine) and it wasn't obvious that they're meant to be controlled with WASD!

I should also mention: it seems like fuel and coolant are bugged. I was expecting the game to end when they ran out, but it doesn't seem like running out of them actually does anything!

eugenik 2025-04-14 05:15

Nice style and cool graphics. Good job!.

wolfier 2025-04-14 17:11

I definitely agree with others that the game is a bit hard to figure out. Now that on its own would be fine, but I'm not really a fan of trying to figure out how the game works while a timer is ticking down to the games end.

ammonit 2025-04-15 08:36

Awesome pixel art! Interesting UI — simple but packed with so much stuff)

coda-highland 2025-04-16 04:23

You rated my game so I'd love to give yours a review, but I'm on Linux. Any chance of a WebGL or Linux build?

i-pots 2025-04-17 12:15

Good game! I like this gameplay!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:49

@smilewood Thanks for playing! It was definitely a fun, yet overscoped project. There were a lot of things we wanted to do, but time limit happened. Progress bars was one of those things that could all round make things to understand. There are talks of continuing the project!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:52

@grimwitch Thanks for playing! The bits you complimented on were the bits we had the most fun making, so we appreciate the good words! Tutorialization and status bars were things we just ran out of time for, just because of how ambitious the plans were. We learned a lot from the project!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:54

@christian-zommerfelds We went ahead and layed out the deadline builds and bug fixes, thanks for letting us know!We appreciate all the feedback and will keep your notes in mind if/when we continue the project!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:56

@gamescodedogs A WebGL version would be nice for reach, but I'm yet to learn how to actually develop for it properly. Don't actually know if it would be possible for our project in the way it is built. But we look forward to continuing the project!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:57

@rincs It was a lot of fun watching you play! Being there and talking to you gave me a lot of insights on how we could improve the project, so I really appreciate you! Look forward to participating in your jams as well!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:58

@tsaot I am SO PROUD of the mining minigame. In the planning phases, I got so excited about the idea and ended up probably spending too much time on it.

Multiplayer is something we would really want to do in future iterations on this idea!

vegeo 2025-04-19 19:59

@dxk2294 Thanks for playing! Tutorialization would exist a bit better in future versions haha!

vegeo 2025-04-19 20:01

@ryusui We tried to fix all the bugs we found in all the interactions with items in our latest patch, so we appreciate you letting us know! We are so happy with how we did in the audio and visual art, the compliments are appreciated!

vegeo 2025-04-19 20:01

@eugenik Thank you thank you!

vegeo 2025-04-19 20:02

@wolfier Yes, something we didn't think of starting off lol. We'll keep it in mind for updates, thanks for playing!

vegeo 2025-04-19 20:02

@ammonit Thank you thank you! I'm really happy with my visuals!

vegeo 2025-04-19 20:04

@coda-highland Unfortunately, we aren't able to work it for WebGL or linux. If we get to a full release, we'll try to see if we can make it linux compatible at least.

vegeo 2025-04-19 20:04

@i-pots Thanks thanks!

paul-thick 2025-04-20 08:17

I really like the visuals of the game, I never thought about the modular drill as it was some kind of the bus XD

itskdog 2025-04-22 15:05

The idea seems good. It was hard to figure out. I think when you use the drill the camera should follow the drill so you can see what it is doing.

hexyvexy 2025-04-23 22:37

Extraordinarily overwhelming, but clearly an involed project.