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The Sun Will Explode's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #258 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Theme | #653 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Artistic Style | #970 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- The concept is fun and intriguing, but I felt a bit lost when transitioning to the next planet. Additionally, I struggled to see how the theme for this game jam was incorporated into the game.
- Very fun, the mods are pretty fun, though it feels like you need to stack a bit or else you get over whelmed going the middle balanced route. Or I'm just bad at the game. Look forward to seeing.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
The player uses cards to build modules on their space station in order to escape the sun’s explosion while picking up as many people as possible from throughout the solar system.
Cards cost Energy to play, and the player can gain more energy by picking up population from planets. They can also raise their defense in order to protect their population from being damaged from space debris, and leftover energy becomes defense if they choose to stay on the surface of a location instead of moving to a new one that turn.
Once the player reaches the edge of the solar system alive they win; if their ship gets too damaged or the sun explodes, they lose.
Extra Notes
The sun will explode
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Comments
I really quite enjoyed this. Gave me an FTL vibe, but more simplified. A nice little calm game.
Thanks! We heard about FTL when we started doing our research, and decided not to play it so we don't copy that game. But glad to know we've achieved the casual genre! 🚀
Sweet game! Some bits weren't clear to me, like what exactly I was trying to do to escape the solar system (though I did end up doing it!), why I was able to add so few or so many parts to my ship each round, or why I would want to travel to different areas of the map. But I think there's something here. Deck builder + space ships. What's not to love?
Yes some of the game isn't super obvious to anyone except us 😅 We wanted to achieve the rogue-like feel of "explore and experiment to find out what stuff does", as well as add to the replayability so you play again and again to discover all the "rules", but perhaps we went a little too far. In future versions, we plan to make some kind of first run of the game as well as add animation and sound effects to make it more obvious what's going on / what the goals are.
As for your specific questions:
What exactly was I trying to do to escape the solar system? You have to build up your ship / space station and pick up residents of planets along the way to make it out before the sun explodes, because you were given just a starter ship. So you can't fit everyone on at the beginning of the game since it's just a bridge.
If you meant why was I trying to escape the solar system? Because the sun will explode! And all the planetary objects will be destroyed. So get through all the planets as fast as you can before the sun goes supernova!
Why was I able to add so few or so many parts to my ship? Each card costs ⚡Energy (denoted in the top right corner with the little energy symbol), which you have (shown in the "status area" at the bottom of the screen, with the same Energy symbol). The amount of energy you have is written as "X/Y" where "X" is the current amount of energy you have left in that turn, and "Y" is the total amount of energy you can "hold" at the beginning of your turn, based partially on how much 👨🚀 population you have (which is based on how many beds you have), as well as how many farms you have (which produce energy at the beginning of every turn). So spending energy to build things is like asking the population of your ship to help out and build a farm, shield module, etc. Then when you end your turn, everyone goes to sleep and is well-rested the next morning, ready to help again! At least, that was the idea 😁
Why would I want to travel to different areas of the map? We wanted to give the same kind rogue-like feeling of choice by making a randomly generated, branching map. Each type of location (planet, asteroid, satellite, UFO) gives different benefits and presents different kinds of dangers. For example, planets always have a lot of residents on them, so if you're build requires a lot of population, you should probably aim for routes that have planets on them. As for the other benefits or dangers... I'll leave that up to you and your play-throughs! (Note: we plan to make these more distinct in future versions, like potentially adding special cards only to UFOs etc).
Thanks for your time, appreciate it!
Pretty neat little game, could have potential if fleshed out a bit more. It would be good to have more incentive to build out your ship. Right now it seems like stacking all of the same cards on a single square gives too much benefit to pass up.
Thanks for playing! We wanted to add more cards but opted to make at least a "playable" game to submit with plans to add more cards and support different strategies after the jam. Funnily enough, one of us like to stack all the sleep, farm, and shield modules, while the other one spreads out for the most amount of health and very little defense (since all the other modules get damaged before hitting your bridge).
Glad you enjoyed!
I like the idea of a deckbuilding shipbuilder, and the fact that this was made in HTML is very impressive. I also like that you went for a sci-fi theme, when most games made for the jam went in the fantasy direction instead, it helps the game stand out a lot more!
Thanks so much! The dev actually learned HTML and Javascript for this project, believe it or not :o the artist had experience though, so together we were able to make a functioning game that's out of this world. We almost went medieval-themed, but switched to space 🚀 Thanks for playing!
Wow, that's even more impressive if they didn't know HTML or java script beforehand!
Nice game i liked it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play it! 🚀