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Planetary Evacuation Force's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics (Is it pretty?) | #5 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Theme (Does this match the theme well?) | #5 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
| Gameplay (How fun is it?) | #6 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #7 | 3.154 | 3.154 |
| Audio (Does it sound good?) | #7 | 1.769 | 1.769 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
i felt this game matched the theme very well i got a liltle chocked up in my first play through seeing the little evacuee van getting smashed by asteroids racing to save lives just for me to take off .....
Thanks! It's awesome to hear that the game managed to create such a memorable moment for you :D
This was a good game! You’ve got loads of mechanics in place which is really impressive in the time available and it has a really nice feel to it. I liked the rotation-based gameplay of the planet and enjoyed the aesthetic going on (tried the download version too and the planet sprites add a nice touch) Tutorial was also really good and the UI was very fitting
I would have liked it even more if your resources/money carried over between planets so you had an extra layer of forward planning to have enough left to start mining on the next planet and so on, as leaving the planet sort of feels like completely starting the game again, but the numbers showing saved and left behind was enjoyable to keep note of
It’s a cool concept, I thought it made for a nice bit of thinking, making sure you stuck miners down quite early so you could keep up defence and so on. The ground defence option was particularly neat as I liked the little cube fights going on when you spawned in some fighters. It felt polished and the random generation worked well. Nice one! :D
Hi, thanks for playing!
I find if pretty funny that people liked the aesthetic; I've got no drawing talent, so I just got some squares, rotated and scaled them, then made them lighter/darker based on the layer, but I am glad they did the job :)
Yes, that was the original intention, for the money to be carried over, however I decided to leave it out simply because of balance concerns. Because I didn't have enough time to fine tune the cost and spawn rate of everything, and so I envisioned a scenario where, after evacuating a few planets, the player would either be hemorrhaging money, or would have so much that they could easily afford everything from the get-go. This way, while not as rewarding, I could at least put a cap on how much the game would get unbalanced, before being restored to neutral.
But rest assured that after the balancing update (v1.1), I will be adding it into the game :)
Thanks again for the feedback! I'm glad you've liked playing it :D
Really cool game! The tutorial is super good, kind of unexpected for a jam, nice job!!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed playing it :D
This game is very fast moving and i say that as it seems like it take forever to rotate the planet sometimes like it takes too long to do the actions i want to do, it feels very polished and the endless nature of the game makes it feel somewhat lacking, the game's controls being varied gave me some confusing with the ground defence being activated with space and the air defense being left click.
i can somewhat see the theme in this game although not too sure of its presentation as i think you're intention was the leaving behind was the leaving the planet behind although i could be wrong.
The game however in the end of the day is very well polished with a very simple tutorial, however i would wish for a more interactive one or a simple overview of the controlls as there is a bit too many slides. Greatwork tho as the game seems very well designed and there is a few systems i can see that are working under the hood.
Thanks for the feedback, and for playing :)
The slow mech movement was intentional (tough, now that I think about it, I could speed it up a tad), I sort of didn't want the player to be able to defend the whole planet with a single mech, thus forcing them to buy multiple and have them spread around. I don't think the game did a great job at explaining that, so I apologize.
That's a good shout, with the action buttons for the mechs being different! I'll probably change them both to left click for consistency.
And, yeah, an interactive tutorial would've been the dream, but I didn't want to spend too much dev time on it. I may rework the current one to have fewer images, as you suggested...
Also, them theme was more specifically about leaving behind the people from the planets you evacuate. So the idea would be that you had to weigh the pros and cons of staying a bit longer to save those last few people, or evacuating to protect those already saved. (Again, not crystal clear, I'll add a line to the description explaining it better :))
Yeah the theme makes more sense now thank you, the game was very well done and im quite impressed you managed to put all those mechanics into play and work as well as they did, great job
Thank you :D
I appreciate that this game is difficult which forces you to abandon people, but I found it just overwhelming trying to spawn everything and control them, but AI would have been fairly difficult in this jam I assume. I love the concept and the art style and think with some improvements with controls it could be great.
Thanks for playing :)
I hear what you're saying about the difficulty; I didn't intend it to be as unmanageable as it ended up being, just didn't have a lot of time to balance everything and I was worried that it would be to easy and bypass the theme (since you wouldn't need to abandon the people), so I erred on the side of caution. :) I do plan on releasing a v1.1 with better balancing after the jam is over, tough.
Also, if I understood it right, you mentioned you didn't like that you had to control the mechs yourself and would've preferred they be controlled by an Ai? I hadn't considered giving them an Ai until now, but I think I prefer it the way it is now, where you'd have to jump from one mech on one side of the planet, to the other in order to defend against a missile shower. I think having them automatically deal with it would subtract from the experience and I think that, once everything else is balanced better, it won't feel so overwhelming to prepare for the attacks.
Thanks for the feedback! If you've got some other suggestions, (especially regarding improving the controls) I'd love to hear them :D
You are totally correct, giving them AI would defeat most the fun and would result in just a spherical version of those 2D side on castle defense games where you just keep sending troops after troops, I guess it just felt like it would be nice since the game was so hard, but again I understand why it was difficult and i like how you are making the player choose when they leave, giving them that guilty thought to deal with, poor block people.
One thing i would consider when you re-balance the game, although it may take away from the whole idea of having to leave, but forgetting that the theme is leave something behind, it doesn't feel satisfying when you leave, maybe relaxed since you can take a break but I didn't feel like i accomplished as much as i could, of course this games intention is to leave so maybe this style of game just isn't enjoyable for me, but it was interesting how it made me feel when I "finished" a round etc. I dont know just some food for thought.
In the end it was a wonderful submission and still enjoyable, considering how many people actually submitted compared to the amount that joined, I appreciate the effort you made to submit this game, +1 from me and I am excited to see 1.1 :)
Huh, yeah, now that you mention it, it does feel anti-climactic to be leaving the planet... The game has this sort of defeatist cloud hanging above it, with how you can't win, even if you saved everyone. Problem is, I don't really want to change the gameplay to something positive, where you liberate the planet at the end, so I'll have to think of some other way of making the evacuation more fulfilling for the player..
Thanks for drawing my attention to this, and I'm glad you've enjoyed the game :D
The game was quite enjoyable once the understood the controls. Works well with the theme too!
Thanks :)
A few people mentioned control problems; were your problems just about how they were explained? (and if so, did the 'how to play' section help, or was it still confusing?)
I think it was too much thrown at the player at once, also I think adding visual effects and sounds would help.
I see, yes, I didn't have much time for balancing the game, but I am planing a v1.1 in the future to address this, and I'll try to add some more pzazz too. Thanks for the feedback :)
The concept is really, cool and once I got the hang of the controls the game was quite enjoyable even though I didn't do very well.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Could you elaborate a bit more on the problems with the controls? (I see that it is annoying a few people) Was the problem with moving the camera, the mechs, or..?
As for the difficulty, I intended it to get overwhelming, so that you'd be forced to consider abandoning the people on the planet. I was a bit worried that it would be to easy, so I made it a bit harder at the end (tough, looking at it now, it seems that I may have gone a bit too far). I think I'll release a v1.1 with some balancing updates ^^
Just took me a little while to understand how the game was suppose to be played, I did struggle with shooting with the Air Defence's though.
All in all I enjoyed the game an understand its meant to be difficult.
I like this game, though I did find it a tad difficult to control everything, but that is my fault haha
Hi, thanks for playing the game :)
Could you tell me a bit more about the control issues you've had? Where they related to the movement of the camera, the mechs, or was it something else that felt off?
not a problem, like i said though this is my issue TBH.
i am not really a PC game player and struggle with the need to click on the object and then have to move it with the controls haha.
I'm just used to other ways of it being done.
the game is good though and i don't expect anything to change based on my inability to play it.