Thanks for submitting a game! I really love your concept here. The bite sized narrative and visual when I landed on planet Backwater was surprisingly immersive at such a low resolution. It got me excited to see what other planets had to offer. I want to write out my first play experience here because I could say the movement is difficult to understand but that's already been said.
At the start of the game I am just getting used to the controls and the movement of the ship. I need some time to do that because this is a unique movement system that I haven't had much exposure to. However, as I am trying to do that I am getting beaten down by enemies which leaves me no choice but to blast off into the void of space to avoid dying. I am quickly disoriented and I no longer know where I am or even what direction my ship is pointing. But that did allow me to figure out the targeting system. When I started using Q to auto rotate my ship in conjunction with the targeting I actually thought the system was quite intuitive.
I set course for Geohell thinking I got this figured out. But I could never get there. As I got closer I was trying to use my Q and S keys to rotate, slowdown, and stay on course but the distance would start getting larger instead. Trying to hunt down ships was even more difficult because they're moving targets.
I restarted the game a few times to see if I could better keep track of the ship's direction but all my restarts resulted in feeling like I couldn't get anywhere. My initial suggestion would be to simply make the player ship a little bigger so I can better understand how I am oriented at all times. Buying the turret and using the targeting system to fight the ships around Backwater felt pretty awesome and I can see how mastery of the game's movement would be super fulfilling. Thanks again for participating!
Thank you for the detailed feedback! I very much agree. Although I’m not sure I’ll expand this prototype with all the features the game ought to have, I have thought that it would be nice to revisit and polish up the fundamental mechanics and first-time experience. The feedback encourages me and gives me some more motivation to do so.
This game seems pretty cool. It's pretty hard to understand where you are going though... So I didn't got far in any of the runs. I think the controls could be remapped (I know you mapped them this way to mimic a nokia layout, but I don't think they're ideal for this game at all...). Overall, it's pretty solid game.
Thanks for playing! Yeah, it’s kind of hard to track your own movement – best you can do is by targeting a planet and using the distance meter. I would ideally come back to this and improve on those aspects, just not sure if I should still try to adhere to all the jam constraints or to follow up at a higher resolution with a full keyboard!
Thanks for your diplomatic comments, lol. I see you gave up learning the controls after about 30 seconds but I already knew my entry was the impenetrable sort that people would have to make some commitment to figuring out, and I respect your mad hustle to play as many of these as possible.
The game seems really cool (and quite ambitious) but I just can't get into it because of the movement controls. I know real space has no friction, but implementing it like that in a game just means you slide all over the place trying to get anywhere. This is especially notable when trying to land on a planet. Getting the right angle in the first place is hard, but slowing down enough to be allowed to land is nigh impossible with the slippery controls. And that's ignoring the fact you're being shot at constantly.
On the more positive side, I like the ability to lock on to nearby enemies and planets. It's useful to be able to orient yourself even way out in the middle of space.
Thanks for playing. Most of what I’ve heard from others has been along the same themes. It is pretty impenetrable, I know.
It’s tricky, but I didn’t invent this control scheme, and I’d run the risk of looking like a poor sport for pushing back against feedback – I appreciate it, really! – by saying the lack of friction can work perfectly fine, even if it doesn’t come together in the current build.
But in the EV games this is based on, landing under fire is something of an advanced challenge, and I didn’t bother at all with trying to make it accessible to new players in the time I had – I was actually crunching pretty hard on the last day and only barely got the planetary landings and menus included.
I also think it’s currently way too hard to read the speed and direction of the tiny ship, things move too fast relative to how close the camera is, and players are supposed to have time to get their sea legs with simple cargo transport missions well before other ships try to kill them. Perhaps in a future release someday.
I did find the controls / sensitivity a bit of a challenge; most of my play throughs were marked by me skidding past planets I desperately wanted to land on while being unable to dodge a barrage of bullets.
Sounds about right! The EV games it’s a clone of were a bit like that too, though my prototype, being a bit rushed, has a harsher learning curve on top of being harder to read visually. In the original you weren’t getting shot at immediately in the first star system, and had time to learn to get your momentum under control before final approach. The S key helps a lot by rotating opposite to your current angle of movement.
There’s a visual screenshake effect when you’re hit, but your momentum currently doesn’t get disrupted at all under fire, so you can stay calm and tank a few hits. I even would have liked to add enemy missiles with strong knockback effects that would knock you right out of a perfect landing approach, another thing that’s in the EV games, though obviously would’ve just been cruel in the current build.
After the jam though I may tweak some numbers for the starter player spacecraft, capping top speed more and adjusting the rate of acceleration, so it’s easier to stop overshoots and stay within landing speed.
Thanks. Yeah, controls can be tricky; I wanted to confine everything to a 3x4 key rectangle like a phone, although I’ve noticed that most other submissions I’ve tried thus far haven’t cared too much about that. Maybe in a post-release update I’d try to add an alternative control scheme that feels more natural.
Some keys/controls like the afterburner, primary and secondary weapons do nothing until you’ve purchased those items, so there is some of what you’re describing, though in a less rushed game I’d certainly pace everything out slower, letting the player learn movement on easy shipping missions before they’re thrown into live combat, as well as having some upgrades only available in distant star systems and so on. But right now there’s nothing of the sort, so I’m inclined to agree.
Yeah, it’s definitely a bit impenetrable haha, more proof of concept than anything.
I was leaving myself room to allow the player to purchase bigger and better ships, but the ‘starter’ ship is a little hard to read at that size unless you play for a long time to get used to it. If I do a post-jam update I’ll surely make some tweaks there.
Comments
Thanks for submitting a game! I really love your concept here. The bite sized narrative and visual when I landed on planet Backwater was surprisingly immersive at such a low resolution. It got me excited to see what other planets had to offer. I want to write out my first play experience here because I could say the movement is difficult to understand but that's already been said.
At the start of the game I am just getting used to the controls and the movement of the ship. I need some time to do that because this is a unique movement system that I haven't had much exposure to. However, as I am trying to do that I am getting beaten down by enemies which leaves me no choice but to blast off into the void of space to avoid dying. I am quickly disoriented and I no longer know where I am or even what direction my ship is pointing. But that did allow me to figure out the targeting system. When I started using Q to auto rotate my ship in conjunction with the targeting I actually thought the system was quite intuitive.
I set course for Geohell thinking I got this figured out. But I could never get there. As I got closer I was trying to use my Q and S keys to rotate, slowdown, and stay on course but the distance would start getting larger instead. Trying to hunt down ships was even more difficult because they're moving targets.
I restarted the game a few times to see if I could better keep track of the ship's direction but all my restarts resulted in feeling like I couldn't get anywhere. My initial suggestion would be to simply make the player ship a little bigger so I can better understand how I am oriented at all times. Buying the turret and using the targeting system to fight the ships around Backwater felt pretty awesome and I can see how mastery of the game's movement would be super fulfilling. Thanks again for participating!
Thank you for the detailed feedback! I very much agree. Although I’m not sure I’ll expand this prototype with all the features the game ought to have, I have thought that it would be nice to revisit and polish up the fundamental mechanics and first-time experience. The feedback encourages me and gives me some more motivation to do so.
This game seems pretty cool. It's pretty hard to understand where you are going though... So I didn't got far in any of the runs. I think the controls could be remapped (I know you mapped them this way to mimic a nokia layout, but I don't think they're ideal for this game at all...). Overall, it's pretty solid game.
Thanks for playing! Yeah, it’s kind of hard to track your own movement – best you can do is by targeting a planet and using the distance meter. I would ideally come back to this and improve on those aspects, just not sure if I should still try to adhere to all the jam constraints or to follow up at a higher resolution with a full keyboard!
Interesting game! I included it in my Nokia 3310 Jam 4 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
Thanks for your diplomatic comments, lol. I see you gave up learning the controls after about 30 seconds but I already knew my entry was the impenetrable sort that people would have to make some commitment to figuring out, and I respect your mad hustle to play as many of these as possible.
The game seems really cool (and quite ambitious) but I just can't get into it because of the movement controls. I know real space has no friction, but implementing it like that in a game just means you slide all over the place trying to get anywhere. This is especially notable when trying to land on a planet. Getting the right angle in the first place is hard, but slowing down enough to be allowed to land is nigh impossible with the slippery controls. And that's ignoring the fact you're being shot at constantly.
On the more positive side, I like the ability to lock on to nearby enemies and planets. It's useful to be able to orient yourself even way out in the middle of space.
Thanks for playing. Most of what I’ve heard from others has been along the same themes. It is pretty impenetrable, I know.
It’s tricky, but I didn’t invent this control scheme, and I’d run the risk of looking like a poor sport for pushing back against feedback – I appreciate it, really! – by saying the lack of friction can work perfectly fine, even if it doesn’t come together in the current build.
But in the EV games this is based on, landing under fire is something of an advanced challenge, and I didn’t bother at all with trying to make it accessible to new players in the time I had – I was actually crunching pretty hard on the last day and only barely got the planetary landings and menus included.
I also think it’s currently way too hard to read the speed and direction of the tiny ship, things move too fast relative to how close the camera is, and players are supposed to have time to get their sea legs with simple cargo transport missions well before other ships try to kill them. Perhaps in a future release someday.
This feels pretty ambitious!
I did find the controls / sensitivity a bit of a challenge; most of my play throughs were marked by me skidding past planets I desperately wanted to land on while being unable to dodge a barrage of bullets.
Sounds about right! The EV games it’s a clone of were a bit like that too, though my prototype, being a bit rushed, has a harsher learning curve on top of being harder to read visually. In the original you weren’t getting shot at immediately in the first star system, and had time to learn to get your momentum under control before final approach. The S key helps a lot by rotating opposite to your current angle of movement.
There’s a visual screenshake effect when you’re hit, but your momentum currently doesn’t get disrupted at all under fire, so you can stay calm and tank a few hits. I even would have liked to add enemy missiles with strong knockback effects that would knock you right out of a perfect landing approach, another thing that’s in the EV games, though obviously would’ve just been cruel in the current build.
After the jam though I may tweak some numbers for the starter player spacecraft, capping top speed more and adjusting the rate of acceleration, so it’s easier to stop overshoots and stay within landing speed.
Thanks for playing!
I like the concept, but I would recommend to unlock skills the further you go, since its quite difficult to remember all the controls.
Still quite impressive to add those mechanics within the game.
Thanks. Yeah, controls can be tricky; I wanted to confine everything to a 3x4 key rectangle like a phone, although I’ve noticed that most other submissions I’ve tried thus far haven’t cared too much about that. Maybe in a post-release update I’d try to add an alternative control scheme that feels more natural.
Some keys/controls like the afterburner, primary and secondary weapons do nothing until you’ve purchased those items, so there is some of what you’re describing, though in a less rushed game I’d certainly pace everything out slower, letting the player learn movement on easy shipping missions before they’re thrown into live combat, as well as having some upgrades only available in distant star systems and so on. But right now there’s nothing of the sort, so I’m inclined to agree.
There's a great amount of depth to this game, but I am no good at it. Can't even tell which direction I'm facing. Will have to give it another go! :)
Yeah, it’s definitely a bit impenetrable haha, more proof of concept than anything.
I was leaving myself room to allow the player to purchase bigger and better ships, but the ‘starter’ ship is a little hard to read at that size unless you play for a long time to get used to it. If I do a post-jam update I’ll surely make some tweaks there.
Thanks for the feedback!