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Starlifter's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #16 | 3.464 | 4.000 |
| Graphics | #35 | 3.464 | 4.000 |
| Originality | #43 | 3.464 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #52 | 2.997 | 3.460 |
| Controls | #52 | 2.887 | 3.333 |
| Fun | #70 | 2.502 | 2.889 |
| Theme | #72 | 3.079 | 3.556 |
| Accessibility | #90 | 2.117 | 2.444 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.2
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
Mine resources from planets and build giant structures to turn a dying brown dwarf into a main-sequence star!
How does your game tie into the theme?
Growing a star increases luminosity and helps illuminate the universe!
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
dev.orion, Holywar, WolfKolona
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
1
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Comments
impressive work. The music was great!
Thank you!
We just used some assets through an asset store for music that I use for other things, but it was appropriate to this jam we thought, and I'm glad you liked it!
I liked the resource management aspect, and having to balance the input and output flow of hydrogen. Learning about the game mechanics and structures was difficult due to not know how to achieve the goal. From the instructions on the title screen, I knew that keeping the hydrogen flow rate within the white zone was "good", but I didn't know that I needed to keep it within a specific region of that white zone in order to grow the star in a meaningful manner. I did notice that the star's image in the list would glow when I'm in the right zone, but I didn't initially catch on. A tutorial process during the first stage that explains the hydrogen flow mechanic, as well as adding more distinct zones within the hydrogen flow bar to indicate what would cause stable growth/decay would help prime new players on how to grow the star to the next stage.
The UI was very informative, though it felt extremely cluttered along the right-hand side, as the build queue window and celestial bodies list are always visible. Having the option to click on a planet to select them to be actioned on in addition to clicking them on the list would be helpful, especially when having to deal with critically low/high hydrogen flow rates.
Adding to this, managing flow rates across multiple planets is hampered by having to wait a few seconds after selecting a planet. This can become a problem when experiencing under/over flow as the 10 seconds you have to adjust the flow rate is eaten up by waiting for the bars to appear for the corresponding planet and waiting to see how the adjustment has affected the flow rate. It would be nice to have the control bars for a planet's planet crackers be visible immediately after selecting them.
Outside of critical flow rates, it felt rather therapeutic when you achieve a stable rate of growth through managing each celestial body's output. With the random events, it was fun to switch from a steady pace to a frantically micromanaging structures to prevent failure. The game state did seem to stall, as I wasn't sure how to acquire antimatter to build any of the late game structures like the Star Lifter. Is antimatter acquisition tied to an event?
The music is fitting for the setting, and it was ambient enough that it didn't grate on my ears after a while.
Overall, the core concept is there, and I enjoyed what is available after figuring out how hydrogen flow works. I think needs a little more polishing up.
A resource-management game about revitalising a dying star.
Hey thanks for the comments.
Yeah it's a Jam so didn't have the time to do all the polish we wanted and it was a fairly ambitious concept. Thanks for the feedback , it's really helpful.
For anti-matter, there is a structure that actually takes lots of hydrogen to make it. So you need to increase your output as you go. But your right, a tutorial or some kind of pop up to make that clearer is something we would need to do if we wanted to take this project further.
Thanks again! All of this is very helpful. Help us contrast what works with what doesn't work.
really cool concept, and i commend you on trying such an ambitious one for a jam! i ended up getting a little lost towards the end, when it wouldnt let me build and more structures and my hydrogen was depleting.
Thanks for the comments!
Yeah there was a problem we realized late in development that we called a 'soft-lock'. Because the game is flow dependent it's very easy to end up in a situation where you can't advance. That really comes down to really precise tuning, which for a game like this would honestly take like weeks to sort out because everything is time dependent and related to each other.
In a proper game ( not a jam ) you should do balance analysis before hand, sort of mathematically describing the relationships, like a game model in a spread sheet that lets you play with relative strengths and weaknesses of all the buildings.
We also capped the game at 24 buildings ( and there was a bug that was capping it at 22, we found after release ) , again because of time limits we didn't want to hafta deal with users placing buildings cuz getting the UI for that right would have taken the UI dev a day or two once you factor in polish and good feedback.
Our objective was to trail the concept with bare minimum of scaffolding and see if it worked at all. We think it did, but a future iteration, if we take this farther, will likely be much more involved.
This is a cool game in terms of idea and implementation, but I didn't quite get the appeal here. I guess thats just not my kind of game - although I have to say I really liked the graphical style and the music here! For the controls, it would have been nice to be able to click on a planet to select it.
Overall, a pretty strong entry!
Thank you!
Yeah that was something we wanted to do. Just didn't have the time to wire it up.
I think this game has potential but in its current state its lacking. It's could be just my skill with these types of games but in my three attempts I would run out resources and ended up just sitting there soft locked. The core concept I think is good, little micro-management games like this can be fun, but right now in its infantile state, it feels lacking in options to escape situations.
I did read in another comment that your team was new to game jams, and you seem to be taking feedback well. I would love to see where it goes if you decide to continue with this project or whatever you decide to make next.
Hey thanks for the feedback!
Yeah we are aware of the issues. Maybe this particular game concept was a bit ambitious for a jam and it shows, but we wanted to experiment with a concept that could be turned into something fully featured down the road potentially.
The soft-locks in particular were a problem we didn't anticipate and started popping up a day or two before the Jams end. That's a bit of a hard problem, because it's actually a problem of interface and human psychology, how do you communicate something to a player and give them enough time to respond, and give them enough visual indicators that they are far less likely to soft-lock , while still leaving room for players to make painful mistakes.
I see the lines where this game wanted to go, but I eventually got bored with what I had to work with, so I flooded the dyson sphere with reactors, causing a hydrogen underflow.
It feels like a game that suffers from overscope, but at the same time, there's not a lot of complexity at play here in the first place. Numbers get a delta-based increment, there are buttons and figures, and that's that.
I think this is a submission that the developers will know best about what went wrong. Hopefully, you guys can figure out how it all went downhill, and you'll be back in January!
Appreciate the feedback! Most people are too nice haha.
Yes, and actually agreed with the critiques above. It's two of the developers first Jam, and one of the developers second Jam.
Over scope is def true, and we ran out of time to do the tuning that we really wanted in order to give it more depth, so both those problems are actually related. But it was a fun experiment, and now we know better for next time how to approach these things.
Thanks Again!
Cool game for a 9 days of work, impressive. Will you carry on working on that ?
One thing i was unsure about, is will I get more structures. It was first few minutes and only had 2 structures, crackers and two planets. I was only waiting as I read on itch page the descriptions of more. But in game I was unsure is that it or is there more. And what are the conditions to get them.
In anyway it was fun to play. Hope I could be able to play full version sometime in the future
Thank you, we're considering carrying on development, but will have a team meeting when we're fully recovered
Yes there are more structures and planets to exploit that become available as your star grows through the tiers, with a total of 6 planets available and 7 buildings. While we had plans for more buildings, some had to be cut due to time and overlap in function.
Balancing of tier length is probably something we'll have to take a look at post-jam but there are 4 currently included with a varying amount of time spent in each
Yeah I think the interface needs a bit more clarity. The intuition is missing, though that didn't occur us till it was too late in the project to add features.
Maybe we need to show the threshold to hit the 'tier' which unlocks new buildings and new planets. It's meant to scale exponentially, with bigger more valuable worlds farther away, and more expensive buildings becoming available as you advance. There are 3 tiers, and the game doesn't complete until build the last tier and the final building , though that isn't stated explicitly anywhere. Just ran out of time. We were pushing updates at like 3:30, with delivery due at 4 haha.
Thanks for playing, and the feedback! It's super valuable.