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Starport Sentinel's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Overall | #24 | 4.071 | 4.071 |
Graphics | #33 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
Audio | #46 | 3.786 | 3.786 |
Gameplay | #51 | 3.571 | 3.571 |
Theme interpretation | #78 | 3.643 | 3.643 |
Innovation | #81 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/Zeikko/starport-sentinel
Game description
Starport Sentinel is a sci-fi detective survival game where you must investigate and intercept incoming spaceships to protect your starport from smugglers and pirates. Test your vigilance and strategy—how many shifts can you survive?
- Select ships by left-clicking radar blips and reject those that violate the security briefing's rules.
- Violating ships can hide forbidden cargo, undisclosed weapons, or lie about their type or faction. If they reach the starport, they will inflict damage—larger ships deal more.
- Information on the left side of the screen may be falsified, while data on the right is always accurate.
- Earn credits and purchase upgrades after each shift to enhance your defenses and survive longer.
- Stay alert, adapt to the escalating threats, and protect the starport at all costs!
Can you figure out what the arrow keys do?
Theme interpretation
The theme 'Secrets' influenced our game by making hidden truths the core of the gameplay. Players must uncover the secrets some incoming ships are hiding—whether it's forbidden cargo, concealed weapons, or false identities regarding their ship type or faction.
Through careful visual inspection for undisclosed weapons or markings and scanning cargo for hidden items, players must piece together the truth. Successfully identifying these secrets allows the player to reject dangerous ships, safeguarding the starport. However, if a ship manages to conceal its secrets and gain the player's approval to dock, it inflicts damage upon the starport, highlighting the stakes of uncovering hidden dangers.
Wildcards used (optional)
Limit your colors to 4
Let players break the rules with things like infinite lives or invincibility
Make time the enemy
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Comments
Very cool entry, and a lot of fun. At first I thought I could get away with just scanning every single ship that came during my shift but I quickly learned that in order to make enough money, you really do have to play detective and make the judgement call to only scan suspicious looking vessels.
I thought this was a very well executed game and honestly a pretty complete package. There's not a whole lot that I would change here other than maybe starting the player off in the tutorial by default, but that's a very minor suggestion.
Great game guys, well done!
EDIT: Also, congrats on using every single one of the wild-cards!!
I immediately thought of Papers please! And the graphics and soundscape are very reminiscent of Elite Dangerous. The theme of secrecy is well handled. I had a bit of trouble getting to grips with all the factions and weapons at once. Maybe the tutorial could be more progressive, to learn one by one which factions and weapons to recognize. There's a lot of information to understand at first, but that has to do with the game's rich graphics, which is enjoyable ! :)
Very nice game! :)
The UI and theming of this game was very well done! I've seen the other comments compare the game to "Papers, Please" and I can totally see it too. Sadly, the tutorial was a bit too fast-paced for me. I couldn't really comprehend what I had to do in-game until it was too late to do it.
Very cool entry. The art was great, I quite enjoyed picking up on small UI details like the shadow from the window, or the control consoles. Good background music and sfx too, I think you nailed the sci-fi feel with these!
I felt the difficulty curve started out very steep. I played the tutorial, and the first rule was something along the lines of "No House Grumio Fragites"... "There are ships coming from all directions, but I haven't even found where the tutorial text is! How do I tell apart a frigate and a shuttle by picture? Their features look way off from how they look in the 'book'! Also, how do I tell which faction it belongs to?" Yeah, it was a bit overwhelming. I think a more slow-paced tutorial would be good here, or maybe additional in-game explanation. I didn't figure out until much later that shuttle and frigate have different engine shapes, or that the big blip with inverted crosshair is for frigates (it was similar in size to cruisers), or that there's a window on the left with information on ship size & faction (which is also apparently can be falsified). It was also a bit awkward having to dart the eyes between cargo manifest and scan results - those are in opposite sides of the screen, yet you have to check cargo fast and often (later because of that and scanner speed I just ignored the scan feature and sent away every ship with suspiciously low cargo weight).
Then the difficulty curve normalized, I even managed to buy an upgrade... But by the time there were 8 or so rules it started to get impossible to track all the rules, and I just couldn't earn enough to combat the monthly upkeep. Made it to 15 rules, I think it was, before blowing up.
Anyway, this kinda looks like a wall of negative feedback, but I actually enjoyed the game very much. Great work, team!
You can really feel the Papers Please influence on this one. Well done! Good art-style, the gameplay is fun and gets incrementally harder so there is time to learn new rules and mechanics. A bit hard to read through all the text would've been nice with some indication on the radar screen to "filter" early to handle many ships. When playing I enjoyed the camera shake from impacts (yeah I got hurt a lot ) which added severity to the actions. Sound was good, ambience was on spot. Well done friends. PS. Think there's a bug that the "rules" overflows in the terminal to the bottom left after some levels.
Wow, very cool game. Was really into the art and theme!
Nice work! That could lead to some interesting more complex game
Thanks! Yeah we had more ideas for more complex systems but couldn't implement them yet. :)
Nice job! Fun Papers Please vibes. I particularly liked the interface and use of 4 colors. Music was good too.
2 UI suggestions: It took me a bit to notice the new/approved/rejected ship color indicator, and also to parse what the unlabeled categories were (allegiance, ship class, weapons, etc).
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! I agree that, the factions, ship types and weapons are little bit obscure mechanics and not well explained in the tutorial. You can check the help menu (located on the top right corner) for more information about these mechanics.
Really cool concept! Reminds me of "Papers, Please".
Thanks for playing! We're definitely inspired by "Papers, Please".
Nicely done! I got the concept immediately but it took me a minute to figure out exactly what I was looking for with the fonts & icons - possibly they could be a little clearer. Overall really good job.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
Rated! Nice game. (please rate my game, too)
Thanks! Will do!
Fun game. Well developed art style and atmospheric music. The upkeep cost seems a bit steep and I could rarely afford upgrades even when I played (what I think was) well.
Thanks a lot! I'm happy if game balance was the most glaring issue.