Play game
Aero Eternity's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- This really took me back to some classic flight games I used to play. I loved how smoothly the plane controlled and it felt really cool to do double rolls. I can see how the connections screen was meant to tie in with the theme, but as it stood, it was a little clunky. Having some numbers to the side that showed you how many connections you had would have helped also, since the lines all overlapped after a point. I am assuming future versions will remove this without the adherence to the theme, but if you wanted to keep it you could find an alternative way to make it relevant. Maybe making patterns with the lines (like for a 'cat's cradle' game), or balancing it by percentage based on which wires you connect like you're altering your plane itself, could be a variation that keeps the mechanic and makes it unique in the future. The game was easy to pick up. I think having space instead of mouse click as the shoot is less intuitive, but also makes more sense if you just need to hold down the button. I played the web version, and had no lag issues. The game did end when I was low health, and two out of the 3 things on top were at 0 beeping. I only figured out on my next playthrough what that was about after looking at controls (didn't realize there was also a how to play there). I don't quite know what makes me lose connections other than just taking damage. The low-poly graphics were just right. Easy to see everything, and not too distracting. The towers at the bottom were harder to see, but once I spotted them, I was able to take them out. I liked this choice, and it clearly gave you enough time to work on those sweet barrel- I mean aileron roll. The music was also a great choice. It hit the vibe well and I liked it in the menus too. Overall a really fun game! There are places to improve, but overall you have a good thing here! I could see some fun improvements/expansions on this into a full game.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
My personal score was 24 spaceships destroyed, but I'm never been good at flight games 😆 However I feel like this game is extremely polished! I love how you focused on a low-polymer approach to invest more effort into building smooth interactions and animations. The whole experience of the game is very pleasant. I feel like the music goes very well with the gameplay. On a side note, I would change the connection menu accessible from the main title (it gets very messy) and maybe the engine icon, because it's a bit hard to tell what it is.
You definitely should publish this in a store!
Thank you!
And don't feel to bad about your score, it's actually partially my fault since I made two of the four enemies almost indistinguishable from the mountains in the background. Sorry about that.
The low-poly look was definitely so I could focus more on animations and mechanics and totally not because I have absolutely no idea how to make a decent looking 3D asset.
I probably won't publish this, but I appreciate the thought. I am working on an improved version which, if I complete, I might make more noise about (still won't try to sell it for anything though).
There was a bit of a learning curve for me with the connections feature, but the mechanics were super fun and smooth + the music and sound effects fit the aesthetic perfectly. Overall, a great vibe and would play again!
I was so psyched to play this just based on the previews during the jam! It looks incredible, sounds great, and plays beautifully. The movement of the jet is so fluid and I love the detail on the wing trails—I kept doing rolls just to watch those little loops form behind me… Plus, the slowdown on the connections menu is sooo good. Keeps the game feeling like it’s constantly moving forward, but makes it practical to switch and add connections on the fly.
This game really makes you tap into that flow-state, absolute-focus mode, which I think is indicative of good design re: the movement, enemy/terrain placement etc. It's got such a strong visual style that works really well with the gameplay too. The connections UI might be made more intuitive with some labels (I had to go back and reference the how-to-play page at first), and I would definitely recommend just taking the player to that screen immediately after pressing “start game” instead of disabling the start button until connections are made. I overlooked the exclamation mark on the connections menu button at first and thought maybe something was broken, even despite the additional warning I had just read in the “how-to-play” section… whoops.
Additionally, I had some trouble getting the game started, so I’ll leave some technical notes here in case it helps at all (my multiple attempts to get it working should prove how much I wanted to play this thing lol):
Overall: this was such a joy to play and really technically impressive for the small amount of time we had for this jam! Honestly I want to see if I can get this running on my Steam Deck with some funky button remapping just because that seems like a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing this gem, good luck in all your future endeavors!
I'm glad it lived up to your expectations! I definitely agree that the menu UI could be improved, though if I were to do it again I might try to make the menu be more physically part of the scene, and have the connections tab consist of actual components on the jet that are visibly disconnected right when you start the game.
I don't feel like I can take full credit for the design and flow of the game, since I think that's more-so a product of me playing way too much Starfox 64 as a kid. That game is baked into my subconscious.
Also if you could provide more information on your issues with the web build when you tried in on windows/firefox that would be incredibly useful, since I'm also using that setup and aside from some stuttering at the beginning (which I'm working on fixing), it works fine for me.
I'm kinda considering making a small update for this sometime in the future. There were a few things I didn't have the time/knowledge to add, and the game just doesn't feel complete without them. No guarantees though, I don't have the best track record for post jam updates.
Came back to the WebGL build on my Windows PC/Firefox. Last time I had a number of tabs running in the background and upon seeing the initial performance switched to the download pretty quickly. This time I had it running in a solo tab and gave it a minute. After pressing start, the music continued to play without issue but the game would get stuck on a frame for like 2-7 seconds, then move forward a bit, then get stuck again. After about 45 seconds though, the stuttering seemed to subside and the game played pretty smoothly at maybe ~30 fps or so. Probably should have given it a bit more time on that first web playthrough—the stuttering does go away after a bit.
Best of luck with any future development! It'd be neat if you do come back to this, but regardless, you’ve made a very cool project for this jam.
The stuttering should be almost completely gone now (although there's another loading screen). I say should because I haven't tested it on multiple devices yet.
Just going to leave a comment here for this, the issue Olanti was talking about had to do with the physics tick speed not matching the screen refresh rate. It's since been fixed.
Surprisingly addictive. The low-poly models look very good with the color choice, and the soundtrack is great too!
UI is a bit annoying: if you make multiple connections with one line, but then decide to erase one, all connections are erased at once, which in case of shields pretty much means instadeath on higher waves. There also was a second of camera flickering its position when entering the ring while in 3rd person mode (windows exe version).
Overall, this is a very cool game!
I used the wrong renderer for the exe version. I just updated it so hopefully that fixes the camera issues. It is a bit concerning to hear about though since I never encountered an issue like that while working on this. If you have time, could you send a video of the camera flickering so I can see what caused it?
Glad to year you liked the models, this was the first time I've used blender for a game, so I really had no idea if what I was making was actually good.
And yeah, I'm not happy with the connections UI either. The code for that alone came close to completely destroying the game.
I've sent a recording to you through Discord.