Katamari is one of my favorite game series. Once I figured out how to play, I had a really good time and I see potential. I think you just need to work through the UI and you'll have something cool. IMO, you should play through "We Love Katamari" for the PS2 and really focus on their UI system, how they use sounds and graphics to communicate to the player what is good behavior and what is bad behavior. Would love to play again, keep it up!
Interesting little thing. In terms of things to add, maybe a indication of directional velocity so I can see what direction I'm hurtling towards a bit better. I noticed your ReadMe mentioned testing for performance. I had no real issues on a Ryzen 2700 and GTX 1070.
This was fun and humorous to try to fall on where I live and kill myself;
Reminds me of wario ware for some reason. It would totally fit as a timed mini game to rapidly collect stuff; get bigger and Katamari Genocide the planet under a time limit like the sun is trying to outdo you in kill count and you race to end humanity before the sun blows up or something. collecting a ton of space junk spinning rapidly and crashing into California felt so relaxing. Like a pain in my spine left me seeing it become the sequel to the holocaust with this music... beautiful.
very neat game. Music is charming and makes it more funny. I'm not sure how you'd make this a real product aside from it being apart of a wacky minigame collection but its good none of the less you're smart and can figure it out.
some more humor like screaming people when you land and crash on earth would be hilarious.
I had no idea what the game was until I read Ryan’s comment and instantly understood. Neat idea and environment!
I’d double the hitbox for all the early collectables because it’s just annoying trying to position things just right
Maybe add some glimmer/twinkle effects to objects within a certain range so they’re more visible
Have some other way of judging the velocity of the asteroid, since it’s hard to tell how fast your going and which direction you’re headed.
I look forward to having a new way of making California a crater in the future
Nice idea, Katamari in space. I think you could have some UI or shader effect to show how close you are to objects, in Reizen I made "bullets" turn red the closer you get to them. It was just hard to judge distance and I'd often graze things I was trying to get. Maybe you could be a magnetic asteroid.
This points to an issue with how your camera is set up. Because the asteroid is in the center of the screen, it obstructs the objects you're trying to hit. So if you keep the camera angled so you can see what you want you end up going under it oftentimes.
I think this game could benefit from two views, a first person view, and a third person view. Could be a neat like, lowres space camera effect in first person. I dunno, maybe just try offsetting the camera. You should try 6DOF too, though players don't usually like that (see Egogia).
Tapping to move got a little better as I went on but I think it could be either less sensitive, or maybe just allow tapping forward to move camera-forward instead of on a flat plan, and space and ctrl won't be needed then.
I like the ending idea, I think it'll be really funny when you get an end screen saying how much damage you've done based on your size, how many people you've killed based on location, etc.
Maybe even, have the game be time-limited, so you gotta get big fast before NASA blows you out of the sky, maybe you can even go overtime and start dodging missiles while you get bigger, then you have to crash on missile launch sites, and a tiny part of you detaches to get big again. Could be a fun game-loop.
Your stars flicker like a motherfucker, I don't envy you, star shaders are cursed. I'd also play with the sense of scale a bit, the Earth shouldn't feel so small, but I get it needs to be arcade-y enough to be fun to collect stuff.
I feel like the controls should probably be relative to the camera.
When I played with un-inverted camera it felt unnatural(so inverted, to me), I think your settings are flipped. I always play without invertion but I left it on in this game.
it felt like small bits were too far apart so I quit before I could grab anything but bolts. I thought about skill based maneuvers where you have a level with asteroids you can bounce off to create an optimal trajectory and then grab the small bits very fast this way. much faster than without bouncing to change course. to balance it you could lose some bits on every bounce, if needed.
Having specific horizontal/vertical controls in space feels weird, always expecting for it to be relative (like a spaceship) before realizing it isn't. Tapping is also an odd choice - I was trying to hold the keys down at first before re-checking the readme and saw that it's tapping. Ended up growing so big I could barely see anything even with maximum zoom out. Also, I like that you can crash into the moon as well.
Other than that, didn't really have much performance issues.
managed to create a giant crater in the pacific ocean twice
the demo works fine. i noticed there's a failure screen but no success screen (or maybe it just doesnt come up?) succeeding (i think) just freezes inputs and lets you look at the damage you've caused
otherwise had no major issues or errors. consider explaining the controls ingame as well, nobody reads itch pages. took me a bit to realize that i needed to tap keys often instead of just holding the button down, which was a tad annoying. i should be able to just move like in a driving game, by just holding the respective button down and steer. either way, fun concept, nice demo. hope to see more soon.
Comments
I recorded video feedback for you
you can find the video with other recordings at https://mega.nz/folder/WQ91HBxL#X4-j8Mj7H30Ai3aevWFEmA
Interesting little thing. In terms of things to add, maybe a indication of directional velocity so I can see what direction I'm hurtling towards a bit better. I noticed your ReadMe mentioned testing for performance. I had no real issues on a Ryzen 2700 and GTX 1070.
This was fun and humorous to try to fall on where I live and kill myself;
Reminds me of wario ware for some reason. It would totally fit as a timed mini game to rapidly collect stuff; get bigger and Katamari Genocide the planet under a time limit like the sun is trying to outdo you in kill count and you race to end humanity before the sun blows up or something. collecting a ton of space junk spinning rapidly and crashing into California felt so relaxing. Like a pain in my spine left me seeing it become the sequel to the holocaust with this music... beautiful.
very neat game. Music is charming and makes it more funny. I'm not sure how you'd make this a real product aside from it being apart of a wacky minigame collection but its good none of the less you're smart and can figure it out.
some more humor like screaming people when you land and crash on earth would be hilarious.
I had no idea what the game was until I read Ryan’s comment and instantly understood. Neat idea and environment!
Nice idea, Katamari in space. I think you could have some UI or shader effect to show how close you are to objects, in Reizen I made "bullets" turn red the closer you get to them. It was just hard to judge distance and I'd often graze things I was trying to get. Maybe you could be a magnetic asteroid.
This points to an issue with how your camera is set up. Because the asteroid is in the center of the screen, it obstructs the objects you're trying to hit. So if you keep the camera angled so you can see what you want you end up going under it oftentimes.
I think this game could benefit from two views, a first person view, and a third person view. Could be a neat like, lowres space camera effect in first person. I dunno, maybe just try offsetting the camera. You should try 6DOF too, though players don't usually like that (see Egogia).
Tapping to move got a little better as I went on but I think it could be either less sensitive, or maybe just allow tapping forward to move camera-forward instead of on a flat plan, and space and ctrl won't be needed then.
I like the ending idea, I think it'll be really funny when you get an end screen saying how much damage you've done based on your size, how many people you've killed based on location, etc.
Maybe even, have the game be time-limited, so you gotta get big fast before NASA blows you out of the sky, maybe you can even go overtime and start dodging missiles while you get bigger, then you have to crash on missile launch sites, and a tiny part of you detaches to get big again. Could be a fun game-loop.
Your stars flicker like a motherfucker, I don't envy you, star shaders are cursed. I'd also play with the sense of scale a bit, the Earth shouldn't feel so small, but I get it needs to be arcade-y enough to be fun to collect stuff.
-Has controller support but can't use it for UI.
-Controller camera rotation is locked to cardinals for some reason, but free flowing with mouse.
-Too annoying to touch things, though I don't play space games so it was disorienting.
-Performance good.
How do I collect stuff? I collided with a space station and an asteroid an nothing happened.
You have to start with the smaller nuts and bolts and then build up to the larger objects.
I feel like the controls should probably be relative to the camera.
When I played with un-inverted camera it felt unnatural(so inverted, to me), I think your settings are flipped. I always play without invertion but I left it on in this game.
it felt like small bits were too far apart so I quit before I could grab anything but bolts. I thought about skill based maneuvers where you have a level with asteroids you can bounce off to create an optimal trajectory and then grab the small bits very fast this way. much faster than without bouncing to change course. to balance it you could lose some bits on every bounce, if needed.
Having specific horizontal/vertical controls in space feels weird, always expecting for it to be relative (like a spaceship) before realizing it isn't. Tapping is also an odd choice - I was trying to hold the keys down at first before re-checking the readme and saw that it's tapping. Ended up growing so big I could barely see anything even with maximum zoom out. Also, I like that you can crash into the moon as well.
Other than that, didn't really have much performance issues.
managed to create a giant crater in the pacific ocean twice
the demo works fine. i noticed there's a failure screen but no success screen (or maybe it just doesnt come up?) succeeding (i think) just freezes inputs and lets you look at the damage you've caused
otherwise had no major issues or errors. consider explaining the controls ingame as well, nobody reads itch pages. took me a bit to realize that i needed to tap keys often instead of just holding the button down, which was a tad annoying. i should be able to just move like in a driving game, by just holding the respective button down and steer. either way, fun concept, nice demo. hope to see more soon.
Just the one level for now. Mostly testing out performance with the shader and physics.