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Alone in Space's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #1 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #1 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #2 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Game launched in SteamVR and I was able to play most of it - I did encounter a few issues that in combination made it impossible to finish (soft-block)
1) Limited energy resource spawn - if you place one turret too many you can't afford to place one in the lift room. Monsters in that room don't drop energy (or at least didn't for me).
2) While dragging enemies from lift area back to my turrets, they would revert to side-walking at random (losing agro) and then blocked the hallway.
With no way of killing them or recharging energy it was a dead end.
Overall, for me this met all of the jam requirements, and seemed fairly cohesive/polished (especially VO/Audio) but felt sterile and slow in gameplay. Sterile is a hallmark of space/scifi and is something even AAA studios struggle with though.
Thanks for your comments Dread!
Yes you're right the monsters' AI really need's better tweaking as does the energy resources.
There never seems to be enough time in a game jam for bug fixes and gameplay balancing no matter how long it is! :D
We'd actually implemented a full navmesh navigation system but that never actually made it in to the AI because we ran out of time to balance it.
I know what you mean we had plans for more environmental items to make it less sterile, such as ipad style voice diaries from various crewmembers, but unfortunately that was left on the cutting room floor so we could concentrate on getting it finished on time (and we still found a 11th hour critical bug!)
Edit: the monsters drop energy based on a weighted loot drop system so next time you played they may well have dropped some energy
that’s great to hear, I hope you continue to develop the title 👍
I really liked the sense of scale. Normally I'm not a big fan of being able to step-move within what feels like a single grid cell but here it worked.
The graphics and environments are great and detailed and with really appropriate ambient audio and the voice was a very nice touch.
The physics for the hammer and two-hand grip is interesting. I found it a little bit hard to maneuver in the beginning but after some practice I was swinging like I was Thor. It would be nice if it stuck to the hand more, or at least if one could toggle that.
The combat mechanics was a bit different and plays like a resource management based puzzle which require a wee bit of planning which is cool. It would've been really nice with a save system.
Also, running would be nice too. I.e by pressing front trigger while moving.
All in all I really enjoyed my time Alone in Space :) After all this time working with VR I'm still amazed how immersive it feels.
Edit: I did not experience any motion sickness :)
Well done :)
After posting my review, I see we are on the same page here.
Thanks zooperdan!
We were trying to keep the gridder feel while still getting close enough to physically touch things in VR space!
It took a bit of balancing to find the right size grid that worked
Yes we didn't realise holding the hammer was such a big problem until the end of the jam, when we were testing end to end by then it was too late! Something to add post-jam!
Glad you liked the combat mechanics, we figured everyone else would be doing a traditional style crawler so we focused on the Think outside the box and attempt to push the genre further by adding to it. rule!
Originally we were going for more of a tower defence style combined with DC but we discovered that either the TD mechanics took over and made the crawling mechanics useless or visa-versa so we reduced that TD aspect to just building the towers and leaned into the dungeon crawling, it is the DC game jam after all! :DThere is a level based save system so that you can restart from the last level you played but yes an in-game system would be nicer especially with the resource management aspect!
We actually had a whole options page for things like running/sounds/some comfort options like dash movement but we spent too long trying to make it work with wrist menu that we ran out of time!
Glad you enjoyed it and didn't feel any motion sickness!
I appreciated the attention to detail put in to filling out the set dressing and environments! Unfortunately I wasn't able to complete it (an enemy parked themselves in the side corridor in command, just slowly turning back and forth, so I couldn't leave that room and had to quit).
I think my biggest feedback, as an Oculus user, is that holding the grip button for the entire game is *very* uncomfortable on Touch controllers; I ended up repeatedly ditching the lathe and coming back for it because carrying it around was too annoying. I'd strongly recommend having at least an option for grip toggle even if it's not the default.
Overall the controls felt oddly unresponsive a lot of the time (even once I realised that movement was head relative)? I eventually noticed the little circle that told me whether I was hovering over a grabbable item, but turret type selection and movement both sometimes didn't respond, and I wasn't sure why.
Still, all in all it's obvious that you put a lot of polish work into the game, and the overall product feels very fleshed out. Great work!
Thanks tjm! Sorry to hear you couldn't complete it, we had a great final sequence but I think nobody has seen it!
Yes you're right, we were planning on adding an automatic grip and hold but didn't realise it was such a problem until we'd tested it from end to end and by then it was too late! It's the dangers of testing small bits at a time!
Strange that the movement was unresponsive, we'll have to look into that post-jam
This was fun, and so polished! Even voice acting! Sadly I ran out of energy on the first floor right in front of the elevator, couldn't get past the aliens.
Thanks dariuou! Glad you found it fun! There's should be enough energy, even without the loot drops from the aliens, however you have to use it tactically and decide where to build and where not to build ;-)
Incredible art! Lightings, Audio,
Appealing quests to finish.
By the way, What software was used to add audio effect to vocals?
Thank you! The audio was processed in Audacity, which is free, using a mix of high pass, low pass, reverb, phaser and distortion filters.
Thanks Sab Rango!