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Lost in the Stars's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #29 | 4.152 | 4.152 |
| Aesthetics | #33 | 4.364 | 4.364 |
| Mechanics | #48 | 3.909 | 3.909 |
| Sound | #51 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Music | #64 | 3.848 | 3.848 |
| Story | #324 | 2.515 | 2.515 |
| Theme | #373 | 2.939 | 2.939 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Please see /Docs/credits.txt in GitHub repo (it's a longer list than this unformatted input box can take)
Link to your source?
https://github.com/christh/Lost-In-The-Stars/
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Comments
Cool
He says to be cool, but I don't know how yet
I love shooters, and you did a great job for the game jam! I appreciate how "Asteroids"-like it is, the mechanics are great, especially that turret, I think that's pretty unique. The music is catchy and the AI and visuals aren't bad! Great job!
The graphics overall were very nice. I think they could have been slightly better if they were more consistent. This is a jam so I know there is only so much you can do in the short time. It just seemed some asteroids were very detailed while other parts were very underwhelming. The ship movement and upgrade system are very nice and worked great. I would liked for the sound effects of the guns to be more verbose to really make me feel like I was in a super powerful spacecraft. I want you to know this is just some feedback on what I think would take it to the next level. I had a ton of fun playing your game. Overall I thought the quality and size of this game is amazing. You guys nailed this! Great Job on the wonderful submission.
Thank you so much. I have no regrets on any of the code I wrote for this one, graphics so-so, but as for the sound effects - yes this is an area I definitely underdeveloped and I'm not even sure why, lol. With a few more hours I'd have cooked up some chonky bassy blasts to accompany the lasers and a suitably epic boom sounds to accompany the player's OTT nuke death explosion.
Thank you for the feedback, the sounds are where I'll pay attention next.
this was incredible. I like that you found some solid assets and went after the gameplay programming and design for a fully polished game with well considered balancing of your mechanics and everything. This would ahve been a quarter grabber for me in the arcades. You accomplished that stated goal of 'as intense as you want it to be'.
I saw some echoes of Hollow Knight or games that preceded it with these ideas in your way of having the minerals remain where you last died kind of giving you a chance to recoup the currency that you had lost. That and the level progression occurring when you lost a boss battle with the really cool transitions both graphically and with music, subtle yet effective nods to the jam theme, chef's kisses all around.
I played through until the first area in level 3 where my ship got stuck between two asteroids and I couldn't seem to back thrust my way out of it. Attaching a screen shot just for reference of where it happened. It was a pleasure playing!
Thanks for the kind words and the chef's kisses - muah!
Sad to hear you got stuck, but THANK YOU for the screenshot. I fixed the rocks there, the collider was a bit spiky, but I've also added a bugfix to self-destruct - hit the F1 key. There's no mineral cost to this - probably speed runner abusable but to flesh it out would be venturing into new feature territory :)
Many thanks for the feedback.
nice idea! Seems like a very fair placeholder feature. Glad the screenshot was helpful : )
Really cool game. I go to the end ... and wanted more !
You did so much work, congrats
Very cool, I love the idea of unlocking more max levels between deaths/runs. The sound of picking up the minerals/currency is a little grating, but overall enjoyed it.
Very kool looking game! Nice space feel and vibes.
Controls we're a bit tricky. I found it hard to point the weapon where I wanted to fire. Having the cursor direct the weapon would be very nice.
The collecting materials sound effect was a little ear piercing to, made me not want to pick things up :P. Could probably do with a different SFX :).
But overall it looks great, and has so much potential for a great space game moving forwards!
Great job as a solo Dev to! well done!
Thanks for the feedback! Re: the mineral colection sounds, yes I agree - interesting thing is, on a previous project but a similar scenario I've noticed very different sound outputs when trying on different computers: 1. my PC with USB headphones: fine, 2. a laptop with bluetooth speaker: some weirdness but generally ok, 3. another laptop's speakers: definitely not fine, 4. android version: sounding entirely different again :)
I wonder if some sound drivers 'auto-clip' the sound output to make them less ear-piercing.
Will be something I'll playtest more next time, and rather than play tons of sounds I'll just have a single collection sound that is started / stopped as appropriate..
And thank you for the kind words.
Really good game! Great graphics and mechanics. The particles were also really well done! The way the minerals orbited you was also pretty cool, although sometimes it was annoying when they would orbit you for so long lol. I honestly don't really have any issues or suggestions with this one! I guess the connection to the theme was a little loose? I'm just really pulling at straws. Great job dude! Excellent submission :)
I had a lot of fun with this! I like how when you die you drop your minerals and can pick them back up. I kept dying to the turrets lol. The art for the rocks felt really surreal and combined with the music did a great job of setting the mood of the game.
Really great, ran great, weapons were great(ly) satisfying!
Nice game, very fun to play! Loved the visuals and the way the minerals are attracted. :D
Great game! Congrats!
This was so addicting and fun - I couldn't stop playing! The level design was great and loved how the music and style changed as you progressed through the levels. Everything was so polished. The upgrade mechanics kept me engaged.
Wow. Just wow. Amazing level design. Amazing sound. Amazing gameplay. I was enthralled the whole way through. I have a few VERY minor pointers in an otherwise perfect game. The round polygon like walls/asteroids felt a little out of place with regards to everything else. You can still shoot after you die before you respawn. I would love to see a bit more of the story incorporate the theme (for instance when you die but you end up in a different but somehow the same universe respawned into a new level, why? Is there some kind of quantum tear? A black hole? I don't care, make something up, it's so well done I'll believe it fits the narrative if you told me it was a magical toad you ate before flight) I didn't try the modern controls but I didn't mind the tank controls. I'm oldschool like that. I like my ships to fly the direction the ship is and I like my FPS controls inverted. The turret took a bit of getting used to but ended up being an excellent addition once I got used to it. My computers framerate dropped during the final boss fight due to I assume the 5000 minerals and asteroids flying around. And I would have liked a slightly more challenging final boss. But again, these are all nit picky points because there are no big things to point out. Executed flawlessly. Would pay money for this. And I want a sequel.
Thank you for the kind words, really made my day. Particularly glad that you picked up on what I was trying to achieve thematically / plot-wise with the death / rebirth being in a similar but different world. It wasn't just me duplicating the Scene and chopping bits out... OK, it was a bit, but that's lame so I made sure what I kept was interesting - plus it hopefully aided the player a bit re: environment familiarity. Right, this is a long reply, hope you'll bear with me...
I didn't have time to implement real-time plot exposition (those start of level messages were something I literally added during the last hours). So in the end I left it to the player's imagination, which you have definitely taken and run with. Again, as I commented on your game - you pulled it off very well indeed.
The theme I have in my mind was the player was killed in a space battle, and those (invincible) boss encounters are fragments of that last battle, each 'death' strengthening their link to their soul, the changes to the level reflecting increased memories of what happened... Until eventually they have the strength to finally defeat their daemons and be laid to rest / join the singularity / put down that oh-so-lickable hypnotoad. But I definitely would want to make that a path of realisation. You can probably tell I'm struggling to articulate it ;) This is definitely an area I want to focus on next in general as I LOVE games with an immersive storyline. So long as they don't get in the way of the core gameplay.
On the bugs / issues: yeah things chugged a lot at the end on WebGL. For the next jam / iteration of the game I'll get object pooling in. Game has way too much real time GameObject instantiation going on. It's pretty rockin' on desktop though, but I definitely had to stop at the 5 bullet spread on the main gun.
The shooting whilst dead... I left that in deliberately / lazily as a nod to the theme (note the enemies don't shoot after they die - as that would be [was] super annoying) but I agree it's rather glitchy and a bit lame, so I'd better ditch it or have a better indication that it's intentional.
Boss not being tough enough: yeah, agreed - 1000hp seemed like a lot but with L4 upgrades you're basically a mobile death star. Tweaks I made to the player ship speed probably made it too sluggish to track the player too.
Again thank you so much for the review, after the first weekend I basically had the physics, gunplay, most of the tiles, explosions and particles in, but not much of a game (or particularly an idea). I poured everything I had into this over the 3 days before submission time. Kinda broke me for a few days after ;)
With a bit of luck this Game Jam and wonderful feedback / motivation from people like yourself will finally give me a kick up the arse to follow my dream proper and release something of a commercial grade. Cheers!
The ship meovements were fantatic, well done. The upgrade cap felt a little low for how fast it was to reach in the first level.
Thanks Rhonan, I worked on the ship movement a LOT to try and make it graceful, fun and responsive. Twice as many upgrades with smaller power increments may have been a nicer approach but in the end I went for delayed gratification and big increases in power for each upgrade :) Thanks for the kind words.
Great game! Nice touch to give the option to change controls like that. Wish I had managed to put such fluid ship movement like you did. Great job and glad to see you back again this year!
Thank you :) It was great to see you back in the jam, too.
And thanks, I spent a LOT of time on the ship movement. I wished I'd got in something like your objectives radial - then I could have gone to town a bit on the level sizes, or at least made sure the player didn't get lost... Though my last level is probably pushing it a bit size-wise.
I enjoyed playing this, the control system worked really well (I used the point & thrust scheme) and it had the feel of some old-school space shooters. The visual style and music worked very well together, and I liked the way pickups would orbit you once or twice before being vacuumed up.
My only problem was that I wasn't able to finish, I was in the last (I think) stage with everything upgraded to level 4, but when I got killed I respawned in a small gap in the walls so I wasn't able to move.
Oh damnit, sorry to hear that - I've just checked, and two of the six checkpoints in level 3 have a bad position offset. Nothing worse than something added to aid the player actually breaking their experience. My apologies.
I've fixed them and am currently building a new release which I'll upload shortly. Glad you enjoyed playing and hope you'll play again, though I know we're all short of review time!
I had fun, nice music, art, gameplay, all around good game.
Thank you for your kind words! I experimented with some ideas such as the rocks doing damage but it wasn't fun so I kept the gameplay as simple as possible.
Great game. Missing some sound effects and I like the option for different controls. i think a remote control will work very nice in this game. Well done.
Cheers, man! Thanks and was cool seeing you play on stream! Yeah, I felt guilty every time I reused an explosion or laser sound. I'd developed it mostly without sound and well, due to time constraints I ended up letting the music be the main audio theme.
I managed to throw in controller support in last year's submission so would probably be an easy lift and shift. Aiming the turret with a controller stick is definitely harder though (for my sausage fingers anyway)
Edit: you mentioned about the music being a bit loud - I added a slider for that in my latest bugfix.