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Out of Reach's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #1088 | 3.509 | 3.509 |
| Presentation | #1228 | 3.418 | 3.418 |
| Overall | #1504 | 3.127 | 3.127 |
| Fun | #2125 | 2.764 | 2.764 |
Ranked from 55 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?
You have to move a rover out of its operator's control range. But the operator will fight back. In addition, you do not have full control of the rover and your number of inputs are limited
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?
Yes
We created all audio during the game jam
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Comments
Challenging game. I included it in my GMTK Game Jam compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
Thanks for playing and streaming it !
We'll make UI and available moves more clear in the future and try to reduce retry frustration.
Really cool puzzle game, the mechanic is confusing at first, but not that hard. The art is pretty good, nice work!
Thanks for playing our game ! We'll try to make more levels (and harder ones) to push the idea a bit further.
Interesting puzzle game, but too short ! I would like some animation when the rover is moving, not just instantaneous jumps from one place to another.
Thanks ! Glad you liked it.
We struggled with some bugs during the last stretch, so we had to sacrifice level quantity to stability.
We plan to update it after the jam to add a lot more content.
Super fun puzzle game! Maybe if you highlighted the tile that was the rovers next target it might help new players understand faster. But I am nit picking. I loved the visuals too. Great game!
You're definitely not nitpicking, better indication is required. We planned for some but it was cut in the last day panic. You're the first to suggest highlighting the next tiles though and I'm ashamed to say that we didn't even think about it and this seems like the perfect idea for what we want to achieve.
Great visuals and a puzzle game. I had problems with starting and understanding it but then I got a hang of it and it became way better and easier.
Thanks for playing. Glad you went past the rocky start.
Cool idea for a puzzle game. Also, nice visuals and audio.
I struggled a bit at the beginning, but once I grasped the concept it was really fun to play :)
Thanks. Glad you got over the fact that we badly explained the controls / concept in-game. (There should've been a tutorial, it was almost done).
Happy you liked the visuals, your game looks nice too ! (Don't mind me, I wrecked your neighbourhood)
🏡🐑🐄
I think this is a really creative take on the theme. I love how you have to free the rover, it's pretty adorable. :)
Once I figured out how to play, I really loved it! The puzzles were pretty fun. In your post-jam version, maybe you could add a restart button, and give the player a few seconds before the rover starts moving? I dunno, it was a good game and I'm trying to think of feedback. Good work! :)
Thanks for playing ! It's really heartwarming to see that our concept and puzzles hit home for a lot of you.
We're still discussing how to reduce failure frustration and adding a restart button is a potential solution.
We have a bug where the rover already moved one time when the level starts, which add to the problem of having enough time to figure out the level.
Took me a long time to understand how to play because I couldn’t tell if it was a puzzle game or (slow) action game. But I also didn’t read the instructions closely (I found the game from your reddit postmortem).
Now I get it: It’s a puzzle game where you can make a limited number of deviations in a bot’s route to try to get it to a radio dead zone.
The idea is neat, but running out of moves and having to watch the rest of the path play out is frustrating. Being able to rewind time would help a lot.
I think the semi-realtime nature works against it. If instead of a time limit, the player hit space to skip a tick, then it would feel more strategic. Requiring reflexes doesn’t seem to improve the gameplay.
I got stuck on the level with a single green square and after a few tries, wasn’t engaged enough to figure out how to use my inputs to trick the driver into helping me (which I assume is the solution). I think the loop is too frustrating to keep me playing.
Looks really nice though. And I think it’s a good match for the theme. (I gotta admit, the semi-realtime nature definitely fits with the jam theme.)
Thanks for the time spent on it and your detailed feedback!
Sure, we need a restart button (or rewind, à la Into the breach). I was frustrated as well during playtest as well but we had to upload the game as is, there was no time left. (we uploaded the game 3 minutes before the end because we had a breaking bug)
We'll fine tune all those aspects after the jam. We'd like to see our game as we envisioned it (if we had more time :p).
Id love to see a more polished idea with more levels!
We'd love it too ! :D We will try to make a more polish version after the jam !
I was a bit lost, I think maybe making the UI more noticeable and let the player predict which way the rover's gonna go would make it more accessible - Good work!
Thank you for the feedback. We would have like to have time to display more useful information through the UI. It is a bit hard to predict how the operator will correct the route but we made a point to at least make it consistent so once you've seen the outcome of one input at a precise point you know it will always react the same way.
Looks really nice! The controls were a bit confusing, since it's tough to tell how the player's input is going to affect the rover.
Thanks for your feedback. We'll work on feedbacks and UI to make it less confusing.
No problem - I'm excited to see the next iteration! Would love your feedback on our game as well. SpaceBus
Done ! Your game is a neat take on the "ship maintenance" mechanic.
What a great concept! It was a true pressure to figure out this puzzle. Althrough I feel like the time window to choose controls is fairly small.
Cheers!
Thank you for taking the time to figure it out, I think we could explain it better. We should adjust time between moves accordingly to level difficulty.
This is such a cool idea! However, the pathing of the rover confused me a little, and the gameplay was pretty slow for me. Very nice presentation though!
Thanks for your feedback ! Ideally, we should decrease tick duration on later levels, to increase difficulty.
Nice job! I loved the art of the rover and the overall environment kept me fully immersed. The gameplay felt good too. Well done :)
Thanks ! Glad you like the art, we spent probably to much time on this for a jam but we're happy you - and others - like it.
What our game looked like during greyboxing :
Great art and presentation! The concept is very interesting, but it felt a bit like a guess and check. Maybe there's some way you could let the player know how the rover will move without giving away the puzzle?
Nice work!
Thanks!
Glad you found the concept interesting. We surely have to make operator route correction more obvious. We planned to add some iconography and some foretelling about operator's actions, a stronger level progression (to soften the learning curve) but our last day was hectic and we had no time to implement all that.
We already have a consequent backlog of things we'd like to add.
The game has good graphics and a sweet soundtrack (nice job Oyzuu ^^). I also like the idea and the theme that fits perfectly.
I'd love to see you polish the signs and feeback.
(Et vive les frites bien sûr!)
Hey, thanks !
We're (not that) far from what we planned after 5 hours of design on the first day (we filled a few mood/concept boards) : multiple planets / biomes, multiple types of objectives, some storyline, multiple player actions — not just moving in four directions — and a lot more ; but 48 hours wasn't enough.
#Sacrifices
(Vive les frites 🍟)
Good graphics, and original concept, however a smooth movement of the rover would be nice, and the game is kinda hard for first levels
Thanks !
We get it that the game ramps up a bit too steeply on difficulty, we planned a smoother learning curve but in the end we had to rush some levels designs and decided to show more of what it could be on later stages.
I love the art style, and the music is fun and unobtrusive. It took a little while to work out the game mechanics (what the rover would do without an input from me, when not on the arrow path) and by the time I thought I might understand this, I ran out of levels. There is a lot of potential in terms of level design, here, which would make the overall playing experience more fun, engaging and challenging. Good effort!
Thanks for your feedback, we were a bit short on time, I would've like some additional hours (days?) to make it shine as we envisioned it during the design phase. We were going for multiple planets, more interactions, voice lines from the operator, etc...
And it's nice to hear that the music resonated somehow, I wasn't convinced when I made it. I did all the game audio (13 SFX and 2 tracks) in ~3hours, it felt like I had to cut a bit on quality.
Glad you liked it !
I really like the idea, it's fun and could become even better with some polish :)
It needs some polish and clarification on a few points though:
- lack of feedback makes it hard to understand when your input is impacting the rover
- having the path of the operator to regenerate when you affect it could be nice to follow how to go against it
- the mix of UI positioning and timing makes it a little hard to understand what is going on
But good job overall, when you get what happens it's fast and fun :)
Thank you for your comments. Yeah it lacks polish and clarity :( we plan on improving it after the jam to make it closer to our vision with a clear UI indicating the next moves and better idea of the path the operator take. And also more interactions like picking up and dropping objects, mining through mountains etc! We see a lot of possibilities for the game.
I like the concept of breaking free from the operator but the game needs context and clarity, I didn't realised the oil patch moved you an extra space and I still dont quite understanding where the operator will take the robot once its off the path.
Yes we had in mind more contextualization, with a hands off tutorial and some lines (voiced or not) that helped understand the situation.
Concerning the operator, it will try to find back its way. It's not always clear what he will do but he will ALWAYS do the same thing. We considered consistency more important. If you input the same input at the same point he will always correct the same way so you can try a bit and see what route he takes.