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SAAN: Lunar Flares's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #268 | 2.236 | 3.000 |
| Gameplay | #271 | 2.236 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #272 | 2.385 | 3.200 |
| Audio | #315 | 1.789 | 2.400 |
| Graphics | #336 | 2.087 | 2.800 |
| Theme interpretation | #373 | 1.938 | 2.600 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/demwilson/gameoff2020
Theme interpretation
We took the concept of transient lunar phenomenon, or lunar flares, and turned it into a last ditch hope to financially save a united space initiative. The core game play loop occurs in a facility on the moon while the astronaut collects moon rocks to improve the space program back home.
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Comments
Wow! I really enjoyed your game!
It’s not common to find roguelike games about space and even more with RPG like combat, awesome concept! I love that you can even fight together with other characters.
Very engaging game! Well done!
Thanks for the feedback, and we’re glad you enjoyed it! We plan on fleshing this game out more once the competition is over.
I really loved this submission! I played like for half an hour (which is a lot for a jam submission, I think hah).
I think you may even have a great prototype for a commercial game with this :)
Some feedback/suggestions:
1) My first combat was a mess because I didn't understand how to fight haha. Maybe you should hold the enemy first attack for the first combat.
2) The arrows on the combat mode should be more eye catching (like using a yellow arrow and a pulse animation)
3) [I'm not sure about this one] Items from loot should have a description. It's hard to understand what they do. But there're games (like The Binding of Isaac) that work great without giving you a full description of the item. So maybe you could work in some kind of categories for them (like on Isaac) so the player knows that the item is a combat ability, an ally, etc. Edit: I just saw on a screenshot that there are descriptions! Again, maybe you could create a color code to group them and make it easy to understand what they should do on a glimpse.
4) You could add a small transition to fight, to make the player aware of it.
5) I saw two weird things on the combat mode: the fight music starts quite later and the fight options doesn't appear exactly when your bar reaches the 100%
But in general: congrats! This is a great game, keep working on it!
We’re glad you enjoyed it!
Most people were completely confused by combat as well, so there’s obviously some things to fix, and make more clear.
Yeah. There were lots of small UI things we could have added to combat to make it more clear what was going on. We plan on adding them in the future.
We’re also glad you found the item descriptions (we had a great time writing them!), but we are not sure how to make it obvious to hover on them to get the details. Any suggestions on how we could do that?
We wanted transitions SOOOOOOOO badly! We just ran out of time!
Agree with both. We had to focus on the major crashes instead of those minor things. We’ll get them in the next release.
Thanks for the kind words. We plan to keep working on it.
For 3: You could try adding a information symbol (like ⓘ) close to the item. People will try to press it, but will see the description on hover.
It's great you found these useful, I can wait to see a new version!
Ah, an info symbol makes perfect sense! Let’s see what we can do.
Woah! Major props on the game design. It feels like a procedural generated Zelda + Paper Mario with other RPG elements. No joke this game concept is something I would LOVE to play in a polished format, I think you have something really good here!
Some tips on the polishing: the graphics can use some improvement with a more immersive or mysterious initial setup / dialogue with how Zelda games like a Link to the Past work. As for the combat, I wasn't a huge fan of the time element but loved the taking turns style it psuedo created.
Congrats on the game and I definitely think you should adapt this game into a commercial product if you have the time for polish!
Let me know what you think of my game Moon Blob =) https://avatar-nick.itch.io/moon-blob
Thanks for the kind words! We’re glad you like the game concepts!
The procedural map generation was a big piece of our plan, and I think it adds most of the replay-ability to the game.
The story was lost to our aggressive timeline, but we’ll flesh it out as we continue development.
I really liked the ground control stats. Well done. I also love what you did with the equipments inventory. The combat system seemed a little unpolished. could use some improvements in effects.
Thanks for the feedback!
We agree with you on combat needing more love. There was so much more we could have done with it.
I love the exploration and the animations!
Though I will say - I don't think the combat timer is as much of a challenge as you think it is. It's optimal to just spam the spacebar, only occasionally switching options (assuming the player even has any alternate options that run). So the timer is more just an annoyance than a challenge.
Something that could make combat more interesting is if the player could choose to move around in an attempt to dodge enemy attacks - but, the more you exert yourself, the more oxygen you use up. Which would help tie the combat sections with the exploration sections a bit more.
We appreciate the feedback!
We are glad you enjoyed it too!
The truth is: we wanted to do more with combat, but we just ran out of time. We love your ideas about improving combat, and if we continue with this game, we’ll probably go that direction. Your idea for tying oxygen management into combat is a good one too. Thanks for sharing!