Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Prospects
By bobap
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 623 | 3.28 | 25 | |
| Fun | 635 | 3.02 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 708 | 2.84 | 25 | |
| Theme | 452 | 3.69 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 624 | 3.26 | 25 | |
| Humor | 589 | 2.27 | 24 | |
| Mood | 672 | 3.15 | 25 |
I find these upgrade games strangely addictive so I had a lot of fun with this one I legit got everything :sweat_smile: - The sound effects and aesthetic were nice too. I will say it might have been better to mine discrete pieces of ore, and upgrade inventory slots, rather than have it be a timing thing, as then it becomes an arbitrary waiting game of how much you care to wait for, I did a lot of sideline yt watching! Still a lot of fun though
I saw "star wars galaxies" as a ref, made me laugh and decided to give the game a try :) The scanner idea works well for a resources farming game and suits the theme! The game felt a little bit too slow for a game jam imo, and the upgrades felt a little bit redundant. Maybe I didn't play long enough but I would have been way more hooked with more diversity and less re-used mechanics.
One of the few things that would have made the game more interesting in my opinion (while still being feasible in a game jam format): - add randomness in the ores values, maybe have a board at the sell shop that would show you the current price for each ore ? Maybe the market would evolve when you sell too much of a specific ore, or just could change over fixed periods of time, forcing the player to come back to the shop at a regular rate. - add a turbo for the motojet (as an upgrade ?), something that would make you go faster in straight lines while reducing manoeuvrability) - have a map (this one can be more tricky to do in time) - the scanner could give more info. If i'm not mistaken, the pitch change in sound is pure random, while it could have been a nice indicator of how close we are to a mineral deposit - have 2 or 3 additional motojets for sale ! It would be a nice motivation, i'd instantly feel like "ooooh what does this one do ?" - have a auto-mining robot of some kind that I could drop and forget for a while.
Also I think the UI isn't usable with a controller, which would have been nice.
Once again, I played for 10min or so, so if I missed mechanics I'm sorry :) Anyway, congrats for succeeding in making a functionnal game in this jam!
@rum-ham Thanks for playing. It did end up becoming more of an idle game sadly. I ended up fumbling the core game loop in the end. The manual collection was initially part of the soft-lock prevention and I didn't end up pivoting properly after realizing I wasn't going to be able to complete the automation bit. Deposits being "mined out" after a time would have been a decent quick fix. An inventory system would have been nice, but based on my past experience I knew it would have taken too long to make properly.
@maxence-delacroix You nailed it with the analysis and suggestions. I wanted to have all of those things. You can tell how shallow it is since all the upgrades and systems were kind of the proof of concept bits and I never found the time to make them more interesting. In hind sight I would have changed from crunching the environment elements at the end and developed the actual systems more.
- The code for random ore values is actually there, but I bailed when I determined the UI would take too long. - Turbo I thought about when attempting to sprint a few times when on the bike and actually would have been really quick, but I just forgot. - Minimaps are actually a mystery to me, I definitely need to look into making them so I could have them in my toolbox for next time. - The scan pitch **is** random, good catch. I use the same code and audio pool for playing basically all the sounds. I had the same thought when I initially added the scan ping, but it got pushed to the end of my polish list unfortunately. - I 100% wanted more bikes. The code is all there to adjust maneuverability, speed, acceleration, and turning, so it would have been quick to make them. As you may be able to tell, the hoverbike that we do have is actually still placeholder art I made the first night of the jam and would have felt bad half-assing additional bikes without making a proper first one. Should have just bit the bullet on that one. - The auto mining rigs were literally the next thing on my list and would have made it in if I skipped the environment bits. So sad about that.
Controller UI might have been simple to implement, but I don't have the experience with it and got scared away from attempting it during the jam. I also found some crashes when using the controller to enter/exit the bike, so careful with that. Might be a problem with my controller double-inputting though.
You didn't miss anything and all your points are absolutely on my radar. It ended up being a lot more shallow than I was hoping. Taking away important lessons from this one about prioritizing better and playtesting core gameplay loops before diving into QoL and polish.
I really like the polish on the gameplay! The speeder feels good to drive around on, and all the UI interfaces look great. I do agree that the balance feels a bit slow, I unlocked 2 materials, but it took so long to get the first few upgrades that I don't really feel incentivized to continue grinding materials, although I do think if it felt a little more rewarding I would still be playing :) Overall pretty good submission, I did have fun!
I really enjoyed speeding around, the camera was a nice touch.
There were some scaling issues on my Macbook Air (game was really wide, couldn't see entire screen). We had similar issues with some Windows users on our Godot game. Not sure if it's the same issue or not but we fixed it with:
Project Settings → Display → Window → Stretch: Mode: canvas_items Aspect: keep
Nice work. I liked the movement controls a lot. I would have liked to find a first mineral deposit right next to the starting location. That way you get a quick win and you can complete the first loop before expanding. Keep working on it.
I think you really nailed the game in all aspects but the pace. I am sorry, but I did end up doing other thing while leaving the game idle for the excessive amount of time and skipping ores to the best I could buy at the moment :see_no_evil: UI is excellent - I love how the scanner looks. Bike movement - really smooth. Theme - fits. Game - looks very fine (love the animation for the door/building with Frank) - perfect while compensating for the enganing gameplay, but it was really tooo slow, man! :smile: Also - it would be the perfect touch to maybe show some button icons near interactable objects (e.g. until first interaction occurs) - imo this would a) streamline the start of the game and b) maybe it would prevent me from confusion that I need to mine a plant, not a spot haha. Great job!
@adam-gallina Thanks for playing. I totally get it, I definitely didn't provide enough aspiration for the grind.
@mostlypants That is curious, because those are the settings I use. Should have fit and given you black bars. Could be that the native resolution I set it to was 1920x1080. Did you play on ldjam or itch and was it fullscreened?
@kkritselis Good note. The material spawn locations *are* randomized, but the first material nodes are huge and there are a lot of them meaning that there *should* typically always be one nearby. It's likely you got an unlucky seed. Seems like the solution wasn't sufficient. I should definitely force one close spawn before running the random gen for sure. The balance was trying to have one in scanner range, but not on top of you so that you have to at least move a little bit for the first one.
interesting, not sure what it might be. This was on itch. It worked just fine when I played it fullscreen, but when it wasn't fullscreen it was about 150% of my screen width.
p.s. ended up getting all the upgrades! Could see it being fun with some creatures to escape from or obstacles to dodge.
@mostlypants You don't happen to have the browser zoomed to 150% do you? I also set the embed viewport to be 1920x1080 which is probably way too much.
I for sure wanted to get way more obstacles in. Hostile creatures, or creatures in general, would be fun. I actually hadn't thought of that. Imagine the horror of accidentally splatter killing a poor little critter.
I love the art style, and the nice little touches like the animated door and roof fading out. Gameplay is somewhat lacking but it feels like the basis of something great. Do the upgrades stack? It seemed odd that the higher numbered ones were more expensive but were no better. My controller kept giving double inputs which made the toggle buttons hard to press.
@someone Thanks for playing. I too feel like there's some good potential and want to expand it further. Just a bummer I wasn't able to deliver my full vision for the Jam. The upgrades do stack, yeah. You can see the stats at least for the scanner on its UI at the top with the "Range" and "Interval" values. I noticed the double controller inputs after submission and haven't had a chance to look into why that is happening. Thanks for the feedback on that though since I had initially thought it was just my controller because it's old.
what's there feels really polished, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time hunting for ore. definitely piques my nostalgia for SWG! The speeder bike movement feels really slick.
I enjoyed the game loop and putting it on as I did other stuff. The only mechanic that I thought could use a bit of development was encouraging the player to unlock all the different materials. Because overall I felt like the long travel times + challenging vein mechanics led me to skip over multiple upgrades every time
@ragtagradical Very happy with how the speeder controller turned out. Wished I could have included more obstacles to navigate around to really make good use of it.
@nnovak The meta is definitely to skip over materials. I didn't get a chance to balance the economy. A rotating "stock market" of materials would definitely help encourage targeted farming.
Had a decent primary loop, and a well executed scanning system. I also did like the upgrade system and the gradual unlock of more minerals to mine. The only thing I would note, and it was a point brought up from feedback in my game, is that there should be something I am working towards, like a quota system or something. Other than that though, really well done.
@wizard Without a doubt. Never enough time to get it all done. I fear that I lost too much time to polishing and left the game just a little too barebones.
Had a fun time cruising around the desert planet, the Speeder controls are exactly what I would imagine a vehicle like this feels like. I really like the scanner you created, searching for rare materials and selling them for a penny to Frank :D. Well done! :)
This was very well made! Polished and well designed. I appreciated the clean visual style, the intuitive menus and the fluid controls.
Driving the speeder was so satisfying! It had just the right feel to the motion. I was proud when I even managed to steer it inside when I was going back to sell materials. Didn't feel as smug when I struggled to get it outside again though :laughing:
The gameplay of scanning for minerals was fun and quite engaging. Good choice of mechanic for the theme, I think it worked really well. It was fun to keep upgrading your equipment. I can confess that I kept it running overnight to farm minerals, hehe. It still worked great to continue playing this morning. Good job on making it stable! Most of my games will freak out if left running for to long... :P
Good game!
I enjoyed this one a lot. The speeder is fun to drive and the gameplay loop of scanning for and then homing in on resources was interesting. I did find it a bit unfortunate that once I found a spot I was best served by just sitting and waiting for collection to happen, especially as I didn't know how much I needed to collect in the first couple of runs. Not a feasible idea for a game jam, but I could see a minigame like one of those 'hit the zone when the moving line is over it' ones to get more minerals from that collection cycle being fun to stay involved with that part of the game. The art was nice, really felt like setting out into a wilderness to find the minerals, shout out as well to the scanner ping graphic, I liked that it seemed to not just be a perfect circle, it was a bit wobbly (or maybe it was just my eyes). Overall a fun game and a well polished game jam entry, well done!
I liked it, I probably replay it in another ocation, is smell like a game with a lote o thinks to do, but my first impression is good. The controls are a litte weird for me but nothink that break the inmertion. And the visuals are perfect for this game :D
So, I got stuck in this game for 30 mins, well done! It’s a simple loop but very addictive; a classic incremental. The variety of upgrades is good, but it’d be cool to have some for the bike too. Also, instead of just upgrading digging stats, you could add different pickaxes with unique attributes. I’d also suggest tweaking the digging mechanic; right now the loop feels a bit broken when you just toggle 'farm' with one button. Maybe add some simple procedural generation so ore veins actually run out in certain spots?
Pretty solid foundation for a larger game here. Like others, once I got to a mining location, the game turned into an idle game for me. Alt-tab while the number goes up. I skipped tons of ores because I collected 1000 of the starter ore and got one of the later ones. I think fewer 'idiums' with more distinction between them would work better than a long list of resources blending together.
Would make sense if the speeder could only hold so much weight of ore, then you could have different speeders to upgrade to. Or different traders in different locations that will buy ores for varying prices. Maybe bandits or alien wildlife raids while you're mining, meaning you have to run or fight etc. That's turning into something way bigger than a jam game, but you really could do a ton with this!
The game felt like actively playing a Rimworld character. The speeder controls were super smooth, the camera zoom was maybe a little aggressive at times, but overall, driving the speeder was the most fun in the game! The UI was polished and slick as well, good job!