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SpaceBus's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #467 | 3.929 | 3.929 |
| Overall | #572 | 3.579 | 3.579 |
| Fun | #788 | 3.357 | 3.357 |
| Originality | #910 | 3.593 | 3.593 |
Ranked from 140 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
As time progresses, your ability to maintain this ship slips further and further out of control. Machines are dependent on one another, so as things break, other things break faster.
Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
Yes
We created all art during the game jam
Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
Things I liked:
I've seen several games very similar to this one, but what stands out here is the mechanic of jettisoning passengers. It's a brilliant way to spice things up, and it creates a great risk-reward system of figuring out exactly how many people to jettison in order to be able to stabilize without tanking your score. The pixel art presentation is nice, and I particularly like the animation of the passengers flying out of the airlock. Although it wasn't particularly noticeable during gameplay, your comments have pointed out that you have an extremely intelligent difficulty scaling system. The duct tape was a neat touch as well.
Potential areas for improvement:
One of my main problems with these kinds of games is that I seem to always run into a problem Mark Brown calls "optimizing the fun out of a game." In this case, I ended up just running around with a wrench to fix the pipes because everything else I could keep under control, which meant that I didn't end up engaging with your more unique and interesting mechanics. Specifically, I think making the jettison button easier to reach might help make it a more used tool, along with possibly allowing you to use duct tape while holding a tool (or even buffing the time the machine stays off). Having said that, you've already talked some about changing the tools to fix the pipes, which probably would also work-- maybe you can use that as another way to help scale the difficulty?
Overall:
This game is an original take on a classic game jam concept, with several features that make it stand out. I'm glad to see that you're still working on it, because I think with a little more balanced mechanics it will be much easier to interact with the elements that make this game unique. I'm excited to see how everything improves!
Thank you for your detailed feedback! I definitely agree that as-is, it still needs some balancing. When I play for long enough, it's easy to get into a rhythm where you can stay ahead of the game and nothing really breaks. In the future we plan to add a few more things that can break, including possibly incorporating additional single-use tools, e.g. things will catch fire and you have to go get a Fire Extinguisher. Thanks again for taking the time to review and comment, and I hope you'll play the updated version when it gets released!
Fun game, capturing the theme great as you run around fixing everything. I just feel like there could have been just one more system to try and balance, to add to the chaos
Thanks for the feedback! The plan is to add a few more small machines to break (like the pipes), but we didn't have time to get those in before the deadline. Thanks for playing!
This is pretty nicely polished graphics and style! It wasn't super clear what I was supposed to do, despite the tutorial. I thought I figured it out and was running around fixing things and would suddenly lose without knowing why. Maybe a touch difficult at the moment. But well done
Have you heard of "Bfxr?" For this kind of game, it makes it SUPER easy to create sound effects!
Thanks for playing! We're updating the tutorial to be clearer in a release that we're going to push through after voting closes. Basically, if too many machines are broken, you lose power faster. You can jettison passengers to lighten your load and bring your engine power back up to give you more time to fix things.
We have SFX ready to go! We just didn't get to submit that version before the deadline. Thanks again for the feedback!
Very fun game, just a note that two things were a bit frustrating, Tools near a ladder are an incredible nuisance to pick up (you keep climbing the ladder and you can't pick them up). The pipes feel like they break so often I might as well not bother fixing them.
Good feedback, thank you! We have a system set up where during each flight/wave, there's a set number of pipes that will break. The number goes up for each flight, but the interval between the breaks is random. So sometimes all of the breaks will happen at the same time, although they're usually more spread out. I think preventing too many back-to-back breaks is something we'll try to tune out in the future. Thanks again!
Thanks for playing! Those 2 things are actually connected - we're planning to make this more clear in our next update. The power bar is based on the number of working machines compared to the weight of the passengers, so if you start losing power you can jettison passengers to slow down the bar and buy yourself some time.
Hey very good game and concept! Makes me feel like a crew member in FTL. I might feel a little bad for letting most passengers go into space... but hey if the captain (and me) go down then everyone goes down anyway! Nice job!
Very polished game
I love the visuals and audio
Maybe have a bit more soudnfx for repairing?
fun concept to run around and repair things,
just feels a bit like a walking simulator if you need to pick up something from the other side to repair something on this side.
All in all a great game
Thumbs up. Hectic and fun. Well made.
Overall all great game. I am wondering through is there a fail condition?
There is! On the left is the SpaceBus power gauge; if enough machines break, you'll lose power and if it reaches 0, that's game over. Hopefully with some more tuning, it will be more clear. Thanks for the feedback!
I guess I didn't wait long enough. I will play again and see because I want to see how it fails
Oh, this game have fun mechanic and combine with the theme “Out of Control” I have been confused what’s I repair aushashuahs, but It’s the idea.
Nice workd, and I hope see you guys in ohters game jams. See ya.
A little confusing at first but yeeting passengers into space was hilarious. Could use sound effects alerting when things break or when power drops to a critical level. Solid game overall. Very impressed.
Thanks for the feedback! We have SFX ready to go, we just didn't get that version submitted before the deadline. Check back in after voting closes if you want to try the updated version!
Seriously incredible game. Very complicated for a game jam game but it was amazing once I got the hang of it!
Thank you!
It's a nice idea executed pretty well. My main criticism is all of the small UI bars. It took quite some time to figure out that machines get damaged when their red bar is filled up, that you need to hold down to repair, that you can't repair while standing on a ladder, etc. I think a tutorial would help explain these things, or at least an improvement of the UI.
There was also an energy bar and a journey progress bar. I really did not have time to look at these due to all the repairs that needed to be done. I did try to jettison some of the passengers, but this didn't seem to make much of a difference. Also, presumably the journey progress gets reset if you loose all of the passengers, but I don't know. Some feedback at the game over screen about why you failed would be helpfull as well.
I hope that helps. Okay, bye.
Thanks for the feedback! We're planning to implement a more thorough tutorial in an update next week when voting is closed. The Engine Power bar is based on a combination of Thrust (% of working machines) and Weight (# of Passengers), so if it starts going down, you can jettison some passengers to slow down its progress or make it start going back up, depending on how many things are broken. Hopefully that will be more clear in the future. Thanks again! This is really helpful to read.
Very fun to play, the bar telling you when the machines are going to break is a nice addition, the only thing lacking would be SFX whenever a machine breaks, ~~or screams when you yeet the passengers~~, for immersion, of course. Also, some tools are less used than others, so it’s easier just leaving them right besides the machine that needs it and just go around with the wrench as is the most used tool.
Agreed! We actually had SFX ready to go for the jam, but we got the update ready just as submissions closed. So we'll be adding those on Sunday after voting is over. Good feedback about the tool balance! I think the plan moving forward is going to be to make the breaking pipes use a variety of tools to help spread everything out just a bit more. Thanks for the feedback!
This game looks amazing :) I really like that proposition ! thanks for the game :D
that was pretty frantic :D
The game looks really good and the'res a lot of visual feedback to keep track of things, good job on that! The idea of using tape is clever, so even if you don't have a tool you can still fix things. Great game!
Thank you! Glad to hear you enjoyed it :)
I love how you can jettison the passengers, that's just hilarious. Stressful music and gameplay. Nice visuals. I like how the tools give it an extra layer of strategy. Good job.
Lovely game that stressed the hell out of me (in a good way unless I'm not making that clear). I liked how when certain things broke you couldn't move past them but you could patch them up with a quick fix if you didn't happen to have the right tool at the time. There's lots of little layers like that in this game that make it really work. Great job.
Very good looking game! Nice gameplay.
There was one problem for me when two spots got overheated. The tool on the opposite side couldn’t be reached
Thanks for playing! We hope to make this more clear in future updates, but if you're not holding a tool you can press SPACE to use duct tape and perform a Quick Fix, making things passable for a short period of time. I appreciate the feedback!