Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Shooting Stars in a Blocky Cosmose!
By aweskybear
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 176 | 3.34 | 35 | |
| Fun | 116 | 3.45 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 65 | 3.72 | 35 | |
| Theme | 192 | 3.37 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 199 | 3.19 | 35 | |
| Audio | 104 | 3.48 | 35 | |
| Humor | 112 | 2.79 | 33 | |
| Mood | 170 | 3.34 | 34 |
Was that a riff on the Banana Boat Song :laughing:
Loved the immersion! The visuals were so cohesive and complete. I had to admin I had to read the directions a couple time to grasp the dynamics (red = bad, got it!). Nice work!
Very nice! I can tell you have carefully design the mechanics. The balance between different properties/items/resources eg radius of the circle, good/bad squares with buff/nerf, score etc really creates a fun dynanmic. Also, i really like your audio!
Very interesting! Definitely a chill game. I don't think that this one is for everyone, but I think that the people who like it will REALLY like it! Top marks for innovation. Nice work!
Super fun and cute! Such an interesting mechanic - zooming out and in to scan the skyline. Oddly - it was somehow both arcade-y and meditative, which I don't think I've ever felt before.
A lovely entry! Ended up with negative score - but enjoyed it the whole time! Really pretty to, in a way that is hard to describe.
Hey! I recognize that melody! Makes me want to point out constellations with celeste and blathers!
First thought: Oh, a nice lovely star viewing game before sleep ^v^
Minute later:
chaos.jpg
That got overwhelming really fast xD
The idea feels quite unique to me, and the starry sky is cute (before chaos). I tried looking for particles in that square on the bottom right but that didn't help much. I relied more on the line "Detected! Look closer!" down there. I wish I looked more at the sky itself ;-;
Really interesting concept tho!!
@binroot Haha no idea what banana song is :D but glad you immersed in the game. I wonder if the game is not obvious enough (it never is XD), especially if many things are happening at once.
@kyanoss yes yes! Thanks for noticing! I spent half of my time on day 2 *rebalancing*. And red and blue stars were one of the mechanics added after my own playtesting.. + how those affected the game!
@guardaro truly, this game can be both relaxing and frustrating :D - not for everyone. I have to come up with a way to showcase one *intended* way of playing. I've noticed there is such a thing for many games!
@ugly-robot HA! Great you had fun playing!!! Suuper happy you felt the both-arcady-and-meditative feeling. :D Thought exactly the same but didn't know if it's just me... did we invent sth slightly new here ?? XD
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Thank you all! All feedback welcome!
⚡ **Tip how to not get negative score XD**: - avoid capturing **RED** stars 🟥 - you lose points or the game gets faster :D - just capture GREEN 🟩 ones with the smallest circle possible :P - the ones for points :)) - see **sniper mode** in the description if you got the nerves to use that XD or are an FPS fan - capture **BLUE** 🟦 ones (no need for precision here) to negate red ones and make the game last longer
Really fun game!
such a fun and innovative concept! the music reminds me of "animal crossing in space" and it kinda fits the game's vibe, looking for stars to capture!
aside from that song this game is really cool! ( i joke I joke! it's kinda catchy)
Idk why but playing this makes me happy happy like happy happy happy also my eyes hurts staring at these too long lol
Nice game! I Started off by capturing a large zone of Blue stars to get extra shots, but didn't notice a red star was there too. Spent the rest of the game trying to recover from the negatives.
Feedback: - I think the language behind "Level Up" was confusing. In this game, leveling up is bad! It took me a while to understand. - UI was small/hard to read. I would have enjoyed a more prominent display of my points and remaining shots.
@sirlich Oh, thanks for the feedback! It is a web game - you can always "zoom in" a bit like a web page BUT you are right - I'd better add some Settings for the textual elements specifically maybe : ))
Yes, Level Up is "Things getting harder" :D will think on this
Fun chill game, and the music is cute.
I scored 104 at most. Very fun. The music is a bit repetitive but the satisfying camera click kept me clicking :laughing:. And sniping is really hard...
What a cool and relaxing game. Loved the music, loved the visual effect on the circle when it grows and shrink, loved sifting for dem green dots !
@ricna thanks!
@universeflow capture them all!
@tenthousandfireants haa that is fine :D :D - that's why there is a `Mute` button in settings
@wo-ri-gou-le Glady glady glady I am :)
@jed :heart:
@carsten good, your score is the highest so far from the reported ones :D
My personal score was around ~500
I attempted to allow for this game for anybody to have fun. E.g. "snipers" / FPS guys - precision players; casual guys - who don't care about the score but the pure clicking and chaos should be ok too; meditation guys..? you can let the game just run - no clicking LoL. You must be between FPS and casual guys haha :smile:
@crak sift through them all then! Thanks! :spy: :four_leaf_clover:
Pretty fun. Efficient presentation that really gave me everything I needed. I liked the "focus" mechanic. Kinda addicting.
Nice game. The music was cool as well. Relaxing, but you get amped up when you see a green signal.
Music is perfect. Fun concept.
Wooooooow so hard. Took a while to find out where all these special stars were. The green ones fade pretty fast sometimes. Now I thought my score was the best part about the game. shootTheStars.png
@commanderstitch :smile: the game's a bit like life - you don't always end up on the positive side :/ :crying_cat_face: LOL !
Did you have fun, regardless the negative score? :)) Come ooon, be honest XD
@aweskybear no, i couldn't take not being able to see what i'm doing, and the tiny tiny green dots that have to be targeted with 1x1 pixel size when the disappear the moment i shrink down the very thing i'm looking at it with wasn't fun for me. Others may like it, just not me.
So, I did what I like most and made it as big as possible and took as many cool pics as I could.
@commanderstitch that is useful feedback, thanks ! Ha, taking cool as many cool pics is nice, I am glad since that was one specific intention behind being able to capture "at any size"!
BTW I was planning to also add a Zen mode, which would be a meditative non-punishing experience. Maybe for a PostCompo. In that, maybe we could have the smallest star size... larger than 1x1 :)) yes.
Not bad at all! I managed to get a score of 18.
Best sound design you've had so far -- the music really fits the mood. Except I'm not sure what's up with that Windows sound effect? Especially since I don't use Windows!
Fairly impressive that you have that many objects moving smoothly with a handcrafted engine. Well done. (I suppose it helps that you don't have to worry about collision!)
It was sort of tricky to manage the zoom scale (maybe ctrl should have been for making it faster instead of slower?), and the fact that the green stars blink slowly in the main view doesn't help with spotting them.
(Side nitpick: You have a typo in "periscopic" :wink: )
@coda-highland Thanks for taking the time to try it! : )))
Not sure about the Windows sound xD, I have some "yay" and "noo" sounds that represent "pain" upon getting Red star but not much else.
About the engine/collisions, correct, it's pure JS this time, so doesn't go through much hoops I guess.
I am not sure if it's obvious enough, but when a green star is in view, it says "Detected" at the bottom-centre bar. Anyway, if one is for the points, they need to actually find them and zoom on, yes :D. I intentionally did not make the CTRL this way, but only for fine-grained zoom because of the assumption some people may never use/find that and without fast zoom in/out the game is pretty much unplayable :D So a UX decision.
Appreciate even the side nitpick :rofl: I actually care.
THANKS for all the feedback : )) and GL and have fun! :bow:
The UX decision makes perfect sense now that you put it that way. (And yeah, I saw the "Detected!" message and I used it.)
I found the Windows sound effect: it's at 0:30 in the background music! Did you have a notification come in while you were recording it or something?
A few other little comments:
* At least on my computer (Linux, using Chrome), the green circle doesn't show up until I click once, which forces a miss. * Sometimes the game shows a "PAUSED" message but it's still taking clicks in the background without showing what's happening, and there's no message saying how to unpause it. * The mute settings don't stick across plays.
All just points of polish that don't detract from the overall experience.
This is so creative! It took me a long while to figure out what was going on, it didn't click until I read the comment that it showed in the text at the bottom that there was a green thing in view. That's when I realized that I needed to scan my cursor around the screen for the stars to change color. Once I got that going it was really fun! Especially when I got a green star or a bonus and the face in the corner goes yupiiii!!
I think the green things give you way too few points, and the red stars are very punishing, from my experience playing you get like 0.3 points per green star and -10 points for a red star! I understand that you're meant to zoom in to get more points, but when you're trying to click on a single pixel flying through the screen and they disappear so fast, sometimes you don't have enough time! I think you should just get more points in general instead of percentages, brain dumb, brain like big number.
Also, I really love the music it's really chill, but as the other guy pointed out, yeah there's a Windows error sound in the middle of it x)
All in all this is def my favorite game you've made so far! It's cohesive and genuinely fun, if a little confusing at first, but when you get into the flow of it you just wanna keep going as long as you can. Good job!
Final Score: 109.27
Time Elapsed: 334s
@coda-highland Hahaaaa... :smile: ok.. now I "see" the Windows sound effect XD LMAO. I never even noticed LoL, good catch! To @Fupi too - you eagle-eared people XD .
Thank you for the thorough additional feedback! :)) All are bugs and are known but the focus was pretty much on getting fun gameplay (spent a few hours just replaying and rebalancing on Day 2). I [tried to and] am glad that it ended fun besides any of those points! Thank you.
Just adding on this:
> the green circle doesn’t show up until I click once, which forces a miss.
True, this is the case. I have a useless feature - Right click which toggles the "camera".. ended up useless since left click also activates it (with the aforementioned bug).
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Regardless, I got several cute ideas to extend upon. If I am able to get down to it I will likely release a Post Compo also clearing the bugs.
@fupi Haaaa! This is the kind of feedback [I am always] looking forward to! :smirk_cat:
Thanks, buddy!
I do realize right now, no matter how simple and clear your own game looks to you - it *always* can be [initially] confusing to others! No matter what! :D
I would have to prioratize an interactive in-game tutorial next time, no matter how simple that ends up. Thank you!
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On the green stars giving few points, all is intentional but... your comment makes me come with more ideas to balance that. For one, capturing several stars at once could at least give some bonus. Oooor... simply allow for more points, yes. xD
Red stars are punishing by design - wondering if that could piss people off (I thought *no* but I am never for the points in games; so it's just me :D ).
> All in all this is def my favorite game you’ve made so far! It’s cohesive and genuinely fun, if a little confusing at first, but when you get into the flow of it you just wanna keep going as long as you can. Good job!
:bow: Great words from one of my masters here! Appreciate it!
And glad you played for a few min! :)))
@aweskybear I'm flattered you consider me one of the masters! xD I don't think you need a playable tutorial, the game is actually quite easy to follow, I just think that the text is placed in an unofrtunate position. Maybe instead of text saying "there's a green thing in view", you could make the green stars have a green aura when they're in view, or maybe the green scope starts pulsating, the important thing is that this information is not placed outside of the player's view. If I'm looking at my scope trying to find green stars, having to look down to see the text is a bit awkward.
@fupi good good points : )) . Thanks ones more. And GL and Have Fun ! :heart:
I love the music! Game play was very fun and innovative (if telling the red and green apart took a second, I'm a tad colourblind. I don't mind that though, they were different shades which helps a ton)
I also had a ton of fun zooming out a lot and clicking randomly -- my score dropped in record time, but I loved seeing how fast I could get the stars to go!
@artur-hawkwing Heey, I am so happy! : ) Haaaa! Amazing about the *stars going faster* as a thing to enjoy! I did enjoy this one myself too ^^ as a kind of meditative experience. Exactly for the people who won't bother for precision points. Cheers and thank you!
PS: there are also Blue ones, but I hope I didn't torment you too much :S with your color blindness.. let me check how to tackle this better next time.. ! ✓ :sweat_smile:
This is so inovative! Really cool take on the theme and exactly type of game that hooks me for unreasonable amount of time :D Great job, really not much else to say
A fun, unique, and innovative game. I had to read the sniper controls and try them out before understanding how to get positive points greater than 1. It might also be nice to have an additional button for sniper mode instead of just the right click for players with 1-button mice, however I did not have any problems with right-click in the browser which was great. Good job on the immersive sound effects and listing the tools used too.
@jin9310 this is music to my ears! :smile: Enjoy the rest of LD!
@nbumgardner thaaaanks SO much for playing it on stream! :bow:
Your recording is .999 gold in terms of feedback / end-to-end player perception! Cheers!
And yes, you made a few great feedback points, that I would definitely take into account if come to give a post jam update! E.g. it would definitely make a lot of sense to bonus the Blue ones too based on zoom (NB red and blue were added as one of the final features, so not that much time to iterate and think through). And sniper mode shortcut, again a good point. : ))
GL and HF! :v: