I like the core ideas in the game. There are a lot of elements that definitely show promise. For me, though, there were a number of things that just didn’t quite get there.
Asteroid Mining…
- There’s no challenge here. There’s a fuel limit that limits the number of asteroids I can visit, but I fill up my storage space way before then anyway. If fuel was an issue, perhaps it should have been tied to moving the mining drone on the screen in some way. Also, there’s little chance that anyone would miss any minerals in the asteroids as they’re all visible (and clustered together). Maybe adding a little lighting in a way where you can only see the “surface” of the asteroid and not deeper in, making the player wonder if it’s worth continuing to mine or to move on to the next asteroid.
- Mine drone movement is… strange. It feels like it should move like in a game of Asteroids, but when I propel forward, the drone goes for some distance then comes to a sudden stop. How far the drone goes seems to be a bit random too. There are times I can cross only half the available distance between two walls, then, other times, I can cross the entire distance. This may be personal preference, but I feel as if the drone should have been modeled after the ship in Asteroids (in mechanics, not in looks)
- In the station view, it was not immediately apparent to me that I could scroll in and out on the station. As such, I barely even saw the first assault wave attack the station. I did eventually discover I could scroll out, but some indication, either in the help or even a little message at the top of bottom of the window might have been nice. Even without that, I think starting zoomed further out might be a bit better.
- Help system… well… I was going to say there wasn’t a way to close it, but you corrected me on Discord just a few minutes ago, and it seems I just needed to click the “Help” button again. Therefore, it’s not as game breaking as I was going to say it was. That said, I do feel the window should be closable when “escape” is pressed as well. Obviously you’ll have some foolish players that don’t realize that they should press the Help button again ;) . Also, one of the TABs in the help menu should contain a Game Controls tab.
- During the assault phase, even though there are some defenses in place, there should still be something for the player to do. Maybe be able to TAB into a “defense” drone that I can fly around and attack enemies with? I say this not as a failure of the game (it is a jam after all) but more as a idea I had.
Over all I think this game has a lot of solid ideas and with some more work could be a really fun tower defense style game!!