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Exodus Saga's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Community Choice | #21 | 3.683 | 3.833 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
Exodus Saga takes the concept of an epic sci-fi film where you must escape an attacked home planet, then creates and endless stream of uninspired sequels.
Liked
+ Art was great
+ Controls are solid
+ Would be a great time killer on a phone
+ Rad creditsNeeds Work
+ Lack of variety in new levels
+ Limited powerups
+ Iffy theme usageExodus Saga is a nice cute little game. I really enjoyed the concept of swinging around various planets all on different orbits to protect the habited planet. It has an appealing core loop, that just needs a bit more polish and variation to keep the experience interesting. Right now, it's a bit one note, so after 3 or so "Sequels" it is hard to really keep going. The inclusion of bigger variety of systems and orbits within the system, and having a variety in the incoming attacks would go a long way. Rocks that move slow but are heavily altered by gravity to make their trajectories complex would be great. Rocks that split in two when destroyed. Or even homing asteroids that just follow the target planet.
There's also some polish issues with how levels are ended, and if there should be any reason to stay in a level longer. Like you might get additional bonuses if you stay, but the rocks come at you more heavily over time until it's impossible to avoid being hit, so the player pushes their luck before moving on for some benefit is one possibility.
Short of this is: Add a few things, polish the heck out of it, and get in on some app stores.
-James Rossi
Elevator pitch
A space saga with countless sequels.
Describe how your game adheres to the theme
After you finish the game, there's unnecessary sequel to play again.
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Comments
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As far as the theme adherence goes, this was nicely done. The execution of the each-level-is-a-new-game concept is very well done and doesn't cause the player to feel a slog between each iteration. The outro for each level was cool, but also could have used some more variation, and the one part that I feel was lacking was the intro paragraph which only changes the name of the planet on each successive level. This text could have utilized some random generation to good effect I think. I got to Exodus 8 but then gave up because the price to continue was getting up there, and the boost upgrade drop was just too rare that it felt like it was taking a long time to get the 350 to proceed. I think the system layout stays the same after 5, though I might be mistaken, that's another small thing which could have helped solidify the feeling of progression between each level. The instant death is a bit harsh too, considering that asteroids coming from below can't really be seen to be avoided when at speed. It's a really clean looking game though and with some tweaks could be put up on a mobile marketplace or something, I do believe. Nicely done.
Thanks a lot for detailed feedback! I will definately try to refine it to something more engaging and most likely mobile game, got few ideas already.
Graphically, sound-wise this is really nice.
The gameplay was kinda wierd, but I actually quite enjoyed it overall. I'd comment that while the planet orbiting thing is neat, it's actually pretty annoying when rotating the system as it kinda fucks with your sense of where you expect the planets to end up.
The difficulty is kind of all over the place, some rocks you get basically no time to react to.
I don't like that in order to obtain an upgrade or move on, you have to use your mouse to select buttons. This wouldnt be an issue but its the only way you can avoid rocks, which leaves you with an awkward choice between "don't die" and "interact with the buttons" which is kind of lame..
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, i'm not quite satisfied with these powerups myself, maybe some button presses( like 1,2 to sctivate those) would've made big difference. Although there're 'pauses' in waves where things get less intense for a while in which you are supposed to think about what power up to choose. As for rotation, with planets not moving at all you would lose intensity in keeping things out of asteroids way, i've tried stationary planets it made things too predictable and less emotionally engaging.
Quick little game that I played a few iterations of. It left like some weird grandchild of asteroids. The endless sequels are cute.
It didn't feel very challenging to keep the earth like planet out of the way as I could spin the solar system rather quickly. It's a fun idea, but I'm not quite sure where it could go from here.
Thanks for the feedback! The idea was spontaneous and tbh I feel like it needs something ontop, some more gameplay depth maybe. As for challenge it is really tough to find that middle ground between making it bullethell like game with really difficult gameplay and enough acessebility for player to check out more than 2-3 sequels. Will definately think about player experience tuning more.
Fun. I liked it. It was a touch hard to control. I can't really put my finger on why. Like sometimes when I would expect to go right I went left. You got me when the game ended the first time. I was like "Is that it?" but then more. Were the powerups not working? I got the impression I was supposed to get a shield and 2x the money but they didn't seem to have an effect. I also wish the spaceships took a bit more initiative getting things a little further away. Sometimes it was hard to collect the money that was on the field, and I also wish the ships would grab more than one thing per trip! There would be a few clustered payloads and the ship would only grab one.
Thanks for the feedback! Controls were initially ment to be not left and right, but full circle, that should feel a lit better, but I had quite a lot of issues with the system and no time to implement it properly. As for power ups, they do work, although shield can be blown up by asteroids right away, once it applied. Also the idea was to make you think whether you want a steady safe extra life type of power up or rush through the level with x2 speed. As for debree gathering it had few more power ups on earlier stages of development, including launching more ships at the same time and increasing range, but i had to scrap it, because it resaulted in spending way too much time on choosing the power up thus lack of concentration on asteroids themselves.