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Point of origin's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme (How well the game follows the jams theme) | #6 | 3.117 | 3.250 |
| Fun (Overall enjoyment) | #8 | 1.918 | 2.000 |
| Uniqueness (Originality of the game) | #8 | 2.230 | 2.325 |
| Balance (Speed of the game) | #8 | 2.230 | 2.325 |
| Overall | #8 | 2.373 | 2.475 |
Ranked from 40 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I used the first reset to activate the star and never touched the planet again.
That is certainly one way to beat it)
New comments about the balancing as well
The layout of upgrades in the black hole is... Somewhat questionable I feel like? Some upgrades are ridiculously powerful while others feel weak. Seems like a case of "Just hope you choose the right one" on the first few resets which might be odd.
Overall ignoring the bugs not a bad game for first submission. I'd recommend moving all variables into a game object (Say, instead of star1Power = 0, star2Power = 0 etc, have something like let game = { star1Pow: 0, star2Pow: 0, ... })
This allows for easier saving (You can do JSON.stringify(player) to get the object to string conversion, then save the game using the localStorage API which you can find more info about on google. To retrieve the object again you can use JSON.parse(string))
I'd also recommend moving the javascript into its own file to not clog up the HTML which makes things very messy. You can have, say, <script src="game/js"></script> and then have a game.js file in the same folder as index.html.
Tyvm for feedback again.
Regarding balance: Personally the only upgrades i find really lacking are the 5% per upgrades ones. Game was supposed to have more upgrades, so with the amount of upgrades cut this one turned out to be meh. As for the rest of them - they are not supposed to be equal. That was intentional. I also find some stuff being kinda meh on its own (like persisting 3rd star upgrade through BH reset) but really powerful in combination with other stuff (3rd star upgrade affecting planet). I did want to add SOME choice to the game to make it not so braindead. Another thing on the topic of balance is - yeah, it was rushed. Just as everything else, i will be fleshing it out after the jam is finished, but for now the balance is quite barebones. I.E first upgrade price is just increased 1.3 times with every purchase, while ideally i should have done some scaling stuff.
Regarding code: noted. Will do when fleshing it out.
Regarding separate JS: That was the initial plan, but it didnt work at all when uploaded to itch this way. Just showed a cluttered mess of all the upgrades in top left corner and none of the assets etc.
I do recognise that this game is probably bugged, but hey, having a submission is better than none, the purpose of the jam is just to inspire people to try and make things. Even if you fail this time you still learnt something you can apply elsewhere.
Here's some feedback pre-game break:
- Hiding the upgrades when they are not bought is probably a bad idea, as you often want to see the effects of them.
- A formatting function: at some point you have 0.30000000000000004 black holes. Floating point errors are inevitable so it's a good idea generally to account for them.
- Layout-wise: The huge screen size and small hitbox of celestial bodies makes things awkward. The upgrades should probably be placed close to the celestial bodies, instead of far away. Highlighting the planet whose upgrades you're viewing would be nice as well
- Gameplay-wise: The active clicking of planets and idle nature of stars without really anything to connect the 2 makes for a very odd contrast and disconnected feeling, which could be improved
1) I did not manage to make proper UI in time, so hidden upgrades are more or less a workaround to avoid it being too cluttered for now.
2) Should have missed something. Last hour pre-submission was pretty much spent on rounding down numbers. Its also weird as black hole should only ever increase by 0.1, so idk how 0.30000000000000004 happened. I will look into it.
3) Pretty much point 1
4) It is actually connected. You fill the first star to activate second star. And then each planet fill is supposed to increase star drain rate. There are also upgrades that connect them in more ways.
Gameplay-wise i didnt want to make it a brain-dead clicker, and if you check black hole upgrades there are actually different "paths" you can take to beat the game as you can buy BH in any order . Some more efficient than others.
Strange stuff is - the game is more or less stable when i open html file on my pc, but uploaded to itch a lot of stuff comes out. Guess thats my biggest takeaway here - should test stuff on itch rather than using the files i have on my pc in the future. And of course - thanks for the feedback.
I've really tried to get to the point where I can buy all the Black Hole upgrades, but something consistently breaks to where I end up with a massive negative amount of Star energy and therefore cannot progress. I've given it five runs and the most I got were 7 upgrades before it shattered on me. Even besides that though, the game explains nothing to you and is just a click fest with no other real mechanics, so even beyond the bugs there are fundamental issues with the game
With second layer behaving as it is currently, i have to agree that this turned out to be a clickfest with nothing going for it. A lot of automation should come from second layer behaving as it was supposed to.
As for explanations, UI etc. , unfortunatelly, they did not make it due to time constraints. Thanks for the feedback nevertheless.
Far too broken to be fun, sadly.
Should be fixed now