mdotedot 2026-04-19 22:03
Nice Idea. A bit too fast for my liking I managed the first level but got stuck on the second one. Maybe better on a tablet?!? Graphics and sound are good!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Connect the Universe
By alstegodev
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 138 | 3.50 | 21 | |
| Fun | 151 | 3.28 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 95 | 3.57 | 21 | |
| Theme | 83 | 4.02 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 143 | 3.50 | 21 | |
| Audio | 157 | 3.21 | 21 | |
| Humor | 168 | 2.23 | 17 | |
| Mood | 202 | 3.13 | 21 |
Nice Idea. A bit too fast for my liking I managed the first level but got stuck on the second one. Maybe better on a tablet?!? Graphics and sound are good!
The graphics are really cute! And the concept for the game is definitely interesting. I think the execution could have been better, as just moving the mouse around (and having to be insanely fast at that) isn't really the most engaging gameplay.
Good job!
The idea seem pretty fun, but I was never sure I totally understood what the goal was, or maybe there was something I didn't understand about how to play the game. But the visuals is good and I liked the music. Overall a fine little jam game.
i think level 3 is impossible but i got it!
Simple and cool. Great game design.
It took me a few attempts to realise the planets "activate" just by mouse hover and that clicking on them just deactivated them. :sweat_smile:
The background music is a bit repetitive, but the atmosphere and the style is fun. I think the most difficult part with a game like this is to communicate the rules effectively to the player, perhaps via a simple tutorial level?
Good game but unbalanced, maybe slow down signals a bit. Controls are counterintuitive, but I think it's because the idea is pretty unique.
微信图片_20260423003100_116_152.png The most fun game I have ever played in ld59! I'm really curious how many levels there are in total! It feels like the levels could easily be procedurally generated.
During levels 1 and 2, I initially thought it was a pinball or brick-breaker type of game where you had to figure out the signal timing gaps and click all the signals within that window. But after failing level 3 a few times, I realized the actual strategy was to just track a single signal and let it traverse all the planets.
This immediately reminded me of the Graph Theory I learned in my Discrete Mathematics class—it's essentially a directed graph where you have to visit all the nodes! It also made me think that if all the levels are about finding a Directed Hamiltonian Path, it would really test the player's mechanical execution.
Also, did you implement an anti-spam clicking mechanic to stop signals from spreading? Personally, I find frequent clicking on planets easier for moving my mouse to the next target compared to holding the click, but I noticed that doing so sometimes turns them red. Honestly, it's an interesting quirk and a totally acceptable design choice.
However, I feel like a few mechanics could be expanded or clarified. Sometimes, a planet with only an in-degree and an out-degree of 0 (like a sink node) would cause me to fail because my default assumption was that it would continue propagating the signal to adjacent planets.
Additionally, I recall a really cool moment where a signal passed right through an intermediate planet to reach a farther one. It would be awesome to see that specific interaction happen more often!
The game's music is also very rhythmic and really helped me get into the flow of the gameplay. Thank you for creating this game!
Very cool concept! As others have said I think slowing it down a bit would help the flow of gameplay. Once I got the hang of the controls I found it pretty satisfying to complete levels that seemed initially pretty overwhelming!
Really cool idea, the very strict timing in these levels makes it more of a dexterity game. Its also a little trail and error since you cant really see where the signal will be able to go from any planet. Overall though really neat experience, but it gets overwhelming fast.
I don't know what it is about games that rely on really precisely timed mouse hovers/clicks but they tend to be very frustrating for me. Maybe I'm just bad at using a mouse. I made it through the first 12 levels before I realized that the game was infinite; it would have been nice to have an ending of some sort so I can know when to stop playing. That said, the fact that I made it so far without realizing the levels were random is a testament to whatever algorithm you're using to generate them!
In games like these, with levels that seems very similar, it is really nice as a player to know how many levels there is, or if the game is endless. I hope I didn't give up before reaching the win screen, but I'll go with the assumption that it is endless.
Like the idea. Its simple but works fine. Difficulty is kinda easy for me, guess it would be better if the distance between planets will start to decrease in like 2 or 3 level.
Managed to reach level 16! Couldn't beat the record here but the later levels were just *so* hard...
Anyway, this was a lot of fun! I'll admit that it took me forever to understand how the game works - reading it again, the controls clearly state you need to be hovering a planet for it to transmit signals, but for some reason that was super unintuitive for me. Sill, once I got it, the game was great! I spoiled myself by reading Deng's comment when trying to understand how to play, so I followed their strat of following one signal at a time and it worked really well :) Still, it was very far from easy, especially in the later levels! 15 was the highlight for me - having to follow the signal for the entire bottom-right circle, only to eventually return to the very beginning and then do the entire left side much more smoothly was super cool design! It did take me dozens of attempts and I hated it at points, but it was *so* satisfying finally completing it :)
I did have some pain points though. The main one was the lack of ability to view where will the signal travel to from each planet - it did add an element of memorization to the game, but with so much going on already it felt like too much to me. The other thing is that it was super easy to just barely miss hovering a planet, especially the small ones, and that always felt bad. I feel like slightly extending their hitboxes, or maybe keeping a planet hovered until you hover a different one, would help immensely.
That aside though, I still had a lot of fun, and am pretty happy with how many levels I managed to beat :) Overall, very cool entry!
Cool game, mouse skills are needed. Cool music. I got to level 13, it seems like the levels might be infinate. Less levels and a timer for highscores would have been cool.
Probably my favorite game this ldjam. I found bouncing circles on planets to be charming. But there's probably a bug, sometimes red planets when you lose don't get red circle around. I think it can be some issue with it being clicked or hovered just before losing?
red_but_no_circle.png
But overall, graphics and music complemented nicely this simple in concept but fun game. But for the length of it, audio was starting to get too repetitive. Maybe some variation in that would be needed?
Instructions where ok, they didn't overwhelm me but they didn't exactly prepared me for the first two levels, either. I think I understood mechanics after 3rd level, which isn't bad but imo short tutorial could potentially improve that.
And after I got it, I slowly started to get the hang of it and developing certain rhythm. So in that sense it resembled music games. It also reminded me the type of games where you need to remember sequences (of lights, for example). As here with each replay of the level you where slowly finding your own path with trial and error. Until you executed the remembered sequence perfectly. And it is fun aspect of the game! I also liked the freedom in this path creation, you could choose to follow different planet at the start, to go back, etc. Especially in later levels, after few failures, I was changing my approach, trying to go different way to maybe finally breakthrough.
I've reached 22 level, as the layout differs from the Deng's comment, I assume that it's endless game, it would be cool to somewhere acknowledge that.
connect_the_universe_lvl22.png