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Stellar explorer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Adherence to the theme? | #1 | 4.824 | 4.824 |
| Please provide some feedback! Be kind. | #4 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
| Environment, aesthetics, mood? | #4 | 4.412 | 4.412 |
| Mechanics & gameplay loop? | #5 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Accessibility? | #10 | 3.529 | 3.529 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team Members
Isirode
Generative AI
I would not include deep-fold's or shatteredreality's tools as AI, so no.
If you do, then yes, see the credits section.
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Comments
This was such a great game :) everything seemed to be polished like a complete game, which astonished me that you accomplished so much in 3 days- I was honestly expecting one, maybe two worlds, but 5!?!?!? I stopped playing when my spaceship ran out of fuel when reaching another planet, which was a little frustrating as I had little to no indication of running out of fuel. But I sunk a lot of time into that game and saw that many people have probably played this game the longest out of the other submissions!! Which is highly impressive for having very little coding time. The graphics are stunning, the enemy ships are visually interesting- it's a great game with still lots of potential :) I would love to see more!!
Thank you for the nice review 😃
For the graphics, I’ll credit the asset providers that I used ^^
Making the worlds, as they are right now, was not too difficult once I had made a reusable system to build them. It’s still a bit time consuming to integrate the visual assets but not that much. I took shortcuts as well, some of the planets are the same in some stellar systems, I think, there is enough diversity so that it’s not too obvious.
I will make it more obvious that the ship is out of fuel as well. It will not matter as much once there is a save system also ^^
I spent a long time on this game and really enjoyed it, it is possibly one of my favourite games in this jam ^^ I think you've hit the theme perfectly and most importantly you made a fun game with a clear direction and goal.
From the comments, I'm gathering that you might return to this project and update it? (Please do!) If that is the case, I think the fuel shortage was possibly too painful, so it might be an idea to work on that.
This game was a wonderful achievement, well done, especially as a one person project on a very short game jam!
Thank you for the nice feedback, I’m glad it’s one of your favorite games 😀
I’m actually working on a new version yes, I will do a MVP using the reviews that were made.
The ship will start at full fuel capacity in “normal” difficulty.
I’ve fixed some bugs related to the fuel as well.
This was fun. The static background was great for me but I think it’d be easier on the eyes if the ship, drops, planets etc. would be slightly bigger. Idk how this would look with parallax but I liked it this way and turned off star rotation. Thanks for that setting. The pew pew sound does get annoying quickly though ^^’
Thank you, I’m glad that someone liked the static background 😂
It’s not that bad actually, I would not had time to do something else I think anyway.
I applied the SFX volumes feedback for the next version.
I love the idea of the reverse-bullet hell/survivors-type game! I could sink hours into a game like this.
I loved the art you used for this game. I can't remember - did you create these for the jam specifically, or were these premade assets? Either way, they're so beautiful! I want them as a wallpaper XD
As we discussed on stream, my biggest issue with playing this game was due to the static background/parallax-y things confusing my eyes! 😁 If you do decide to update this game and test out different settings for the background, I'd be happy to playtest the changes!
Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!
Thank you for your feedback, it’s was nice to be able to discuss it live :)
It’s a generator that I used to generate sprites specifically for this jam ^^ They are deep-folds’s Pixel Planet Generator and Pixel Space Background Generator.
I’ve listed all the assets used in the credits section of the game.
I will definitively focus my next efforts on the parallax background. I had taken this approach because the specificity of this jam (and I released the game 6 hours before the end, so I would not had the time to do something different ^^)
I’ll try to give the users more choice as for the movement system to use as well (and I’ve noted a few other things from live review).
PS: I had added the asteroids for the parallax issue, but if I had put too many, it would had give the feeling to be in an asteroid field
This was a fun game. I found it kinda difficult, but I did eventually beat it. I personally would have preferred if movement and firing directions weren't tied to each other (more like a twin-stick shooter), but I also understand that's more a matter of personal taste. One thing I would have personally changed was the overworld map. From what I can tell, it's randomly generated instead of a designed map, which caused me problems. There were a few maps where I wasn't able to make it to any other system before running out of fuel from the starting system, and other times where there were system directly next to the starting system. Also, the time I won was when the closest system to the starting system was the final system, meaning I went straight from the tutorial to the final level. I would have preferred if the map was a fixed designed, and designed to specifically provide a smooth difficulty curve.
On the topic of accessibility, I found the colors for the fuel dots and XP dots to be too similar for me to easily distinguish between them. Using more distinct colors, or better yet, having the different dots be different shapes, would have made it easier for me to know what I was picking up. I kept running out of fuel in part because I didn't have a good sense of how much fuel I had actually picked up. On the topic of fuel, I feel like there should have been an indicator of what the actual fuel maximum was along side the fuel counter, as that would have helped clear up some of the confusion I had with the mechanic.
Thank you for the feedback, it’s really useful 😀
I could not go for joystick system, since I am targeting web / PC.
But I wanted to go for a propulsion system at first, where a force is applied to the spaceship, and you can rotate the ship after applying motion, to shoot wherever you want, which make sense for a “forward gun” (the main one), but it would most likely cause motion sickness to some of the streamers and players.
More precisely, I wanted the player to be able to accelerate in a direction, rotate, and shoot the enemies behind. It would add other difficulties though, like avoiding enemies in the movement direction, for instance.
And I did not have time to make two movement system. I will try to let the user choose the movement system for the next version.
For the second issue, the whole “die and retry” system I had put in place is not clear enough:
I had never run out of fuel in the galaxy, since I know what to do, but I just tested it : you will respawn at the last position reached before you clicked on “Main menu”, the next time you open the galaxy map.
Normally, you can reach Luyten 726-8 (the one before the Snow level) directly from the first level with full fuel, if you do not waste any. -> I’ll make the difficulty lower and/or clearly indicate what to do once on the galaxy map
“I would have preferred if the map was a fixed designed, and designed to specifically provide a smooth difficulty curve.” -> I am sorry, it’s a bug
“On the topic of accessibility, I found the colors for the fuel dots and XP dots to be too similar for me to easily distinguish between them.” -> thank you for the advice, I can definitively make them of different shapes, I will focus on that (just after the parallax effect that woahh_jess mentioned)
“On the topic of fuel, …” -> yes, I will definitively implement a fuel-bar (same for the health and experience)
I am new at Godot, so I did not do it during the weekend, but I’ve seen some tutorials, it’s definitively something that I can implement.
I think it is not indicated clearly enough, but you can totally set the difficulty you want by using the cheat code “level up”.
Spoiler:
You can actually exploit the “run out of fuel” functionality + the spaceship continue to move after “Game over” to clear the game in 2 tutorial maps + the last one, which I’ve just done 🙄
Solid idea and looked nice! I think I got hit by some bugs at some point (enemies disappearing), but possible I just couldn't find them...
Thanks :) It’s a bug (it’s actually in the known bugs section), you probably killed it but the destruction animation did not runned. It’s very weird because the code is the same for each enemies :( I know how I could fix it though
Yeah just game jam things, always going to be bugs. Tried again and was able to clear, once I got the upgrades going it flows really well!
I was trying to read through the tutorial when I got attacked and murdered, without even being able to move yet! (I hadn’t figured out the movement)
Still, once I got through that, it was pretty fun, and very challenging.
Well done!
Thank you for your feedback :) It’s not much of a tutorial but it’s good enough for the time I had I suppose ^^
I actually used a timer that can be different for each planets (the value is only different for the first planet), the one of the first map is 20 seconds (other planets are 5 seconds).
Since I knew the messages, I would just spam-click “ok” and it felt like a long wait before the first waves ^^ I would not want the players to think nothing is happening.
If I had time, I would’ve make the game start after the player acknowledged the last message, for instance.
I only had time to play the first level a couple of times (after dying a fair few...) and was reasonably surprised by the challenge until I got the hang of it. After a short while, I did find it was hard for me to keep track of the screen, so I mostly just lucked out to win because I couldn't keep watching all of the movement.
I am sorry to hear that, I’ve noticed multiple person indicated it was challenging, I could make the first level easier.
I think I would also made the ships slower, for the first levels. And make the screen wider, so that you can see the enemies arriving better, may be.
I like it, very hard but very cool
Thank you :) It’s nice to have feedback. In this kind of games, you would obtain more weapons but I did not have time to implement them ^^ The last level was very hard or all the levels ?
Turret go Brrrrrrr
a fine gamejam game
Thanks :) I capped it a bit (I think), so that it does not go full bullet hells (I had a memory leak at some point, that I fixed, maybe it would have been fine ¯_(ツ)_/¯)