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The Heaviest Matter of the Universe's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of the Limitation | #48 | 3.458 | 3.458 |
| Concept | #48 | 3.208 | 3.208 |
| Overall | #69 | 2.958 | 2.958 |
| Presentation | #74 | 2.792 | 2.792 |
| Enjoyment | #87 | 2.375 | 2.375 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
DNLK
Software used
Construct 2
Use of the limitation
Player is a star that attracts both friendly and hostile stars to itself
Cookies eaten
2
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Comments
I'll be honest, from the very start I barely knew what was happening and it just got more chaotic from then. I understood that I had to collect white stars because they shoot and all that stuff but it seemed like I couldn't do anything to stop the red enemies? I couldn't dodge, shoot or heal by myself, the whole stuff felt almost completely automatic after getting a few minions. At some point I just decided to stop controlling altogether and it literally became an idle game, there were enough minions to keep the game going on by itself forever and I still had only gotten like 3 of those big balls (I agree that 10 may be a lot, unless more variation is added). I think the idea is cool and all but right now it feels closer to a little simulation program rather than a game, the player needs to have more control and challenge for it to be fun imo. To be fair though, you did say you planned to add upgrades and stuff but had to scope it down, so I guess that's a side effect and I feel that. Congrats for submitting anyway and best of luck if you do plan on improving it after the jam!
It boils down to the implementation. Actually, player is never moving but the stuff around you do depending on the mouse position. Basically, it imitates movement, and that has some weird side effects like bullets being unavoidable. I decided that if it works that way, let's build a game with this in mind and put collecting star minions to protect yourself the main way to survive and progress. It is not ideal and if I will come back to this project I will change these mechanics.
A lot of other comments already covered some of the constructive feedback I was going to give, but I'd also say that the pacing could probably be improved by limiting the amount of cores needed from 10 down to something like 3, or increasing the rate that you would acquire them by having multiple boss stars appear together after you've collected a few cores already.
Also, having unavoidable attacks is a tricky kind of mechanic, because it punishes the player for not playing well enough in the past, rather than for how they are doing in the present. Pairing the helper stars with some kind of skill or ability to dodge/defend the attacks might be a better way to balance the amount of control the player has. I saw in another comment you mentioned wanting to include other abilities/drops. That sounds like a good opportunity to provide this kind of mechanic if the game gets expanded in the future.
Overall, I like the general idea though. Made me think of something like Slither.io with the constant collection and goal of growing larger
You really leaned into the optional non-rated theme of “Gravity” but your answer to the “Use of the limitation” question doesn’t really talk about how you approached the mandatory rating category of “Constant Motion”. I’ll attempt an explanation here: “Player is a star constantly in motion, and its gravitational field adds to this by attracting nearby stars too” — how’d i do?
I could fly around and recruit white guys, the blue guys made a little chime upon being grabbed, the red guys were attacking, but i never found a way to increase my score above 0000000000 so i’m not really sure what’s happening there.
You needed to wait for the boss star to appear, it drops a core on death. Once you collect 10, you win.
I saw in the description that there are “boss stars” that are supposed to appear every minute, but i never encountered anything that looked like it might be a boss. Do i need to survive longer than three min to get the first? Is there a specific space they spawn in that i might have been too far away from?
It is a bigger than you star that appears above you and then hovers to the top left or top right side.
Had fun playing the game. But needs a short tutorial so that you can figure out the controls and goal from the start. Nice work!
Idea is cool! Maybe add some more variety to gameplay, but for Jam it is enough :)
I had more ideas in mind (more drops, abilities and visual improvements) but honestly got a bit tired of the jam so scoped it down. I might work on the game later though to improve some aspects.
Fun idea, however the game is not very intuitive at first. Nevertheless, once I knew what I needed to do it was quite satisfying. Feels like an interesting spin on "Vampire Survivors-like" genre
Really cool concept and I love the clean visuals but I found it almost impossible to control, I think it would benefit from either slowing down the player movement considerably or having it move towards the cursor rather than away from it.
Fair point, I will try making it follow the cursor instead of vice versa and see if it is better.
it is very confusing.... i mean, ok, you did something cool, but you had to think about gameplay too maybe?
Yea the goal is not that clear but you need to kill boss stars appearing every minute and collect 10 cores dropping from them to win.
Very confusing, I could not tell what was going on with all the random shapes zooming around me
White shapes are friendly, red/black ones are hostile. You can eat stars to recover health or flyby to recruit them as a satellite which would shoot at hostile stars.