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This was a fun game. I found it kinda difficult, but I did eventually beat it. I personally would have preferred if movement and firing directions weren't tied to each other (more like a twin-stick shooter), but I also understand that's more a matter of personal taste. One thing I would have personally changed was the overworld map. From what I can tell, it's randomly generated instead of a designed map, which caused me problems. There were a few maps where I wasn't able to make it to any other system before running out of fuel from the starting system, and other times where there were system directly next to the starting system. Also, the time I won was when the closest system to the starting system was the final system, meaning I went straight from the tutorial to the final level. I would have preferred if the map was a fixed designed, and designed to specifically provide a smooth difficulty curve.

On the topic of accessibility, I found the colors for the fuel dots and XP dots to be too similar for me to easily distinguish between them. Using more distinct colors, or better yet, having the different dots be different shapes, would have made it easier for me to know what I was picking up. I kept running out of fuel in part because I didn't have a good sense of how much fuel I had actually picked up. On the topic of fuel, I feel like there should have been an indicator of what the actual fuel maximum was along side the fuel counter, as that would have helped clear up some of the confusion I had with the mechanic.

Thank you for the feedback, it’s really useful 😀

I could not go for joystick system, since I am targeting web / PC.

But I wanted to go for a propulsion system at first, where a force is applied to the spaceship, and you can rotate the ship after applying motion, to shoot wherever you want, which make sense for a “forward gun” (the main one), but it would most likely cause motion sickness to some of the streamers and players.

More precisely, I wanted the player to be able to accelerate in a direction, rotate, and shoot the enemies behind. It would add other difficulties though, like avoiding enemies in the movement direction, for instance.

And I did not have time to make two movement system. I will try to let the user choose the movement system for the next version.

For the second issue, the whole “die and retry” system I had put in place is not clear enough:

  • If you die, you keep your upgrades, as long as you do not restart the game (close the tab)
  • You will respawn at the last reached place (something like that)
  • Continue will put you back at the last level you loaded (at the beginning of the level)
    • It’s supposed to be a functionality to pause the game and continue later, since there is no save system
  • Start game will put you back in the first level difficulty, but the game systems I’ve listed above must be interfering with the design I had in mind (it’s a bug) -> you must be spawning in the last galaxy place you’ve reached -> so it’s diminishing (except for the learning curve) the difficult nicely (but it’s a bug)

I had never run out of fuel in the galaxy, since I know what to do, but I just tested it : you will respawn at the last position reached before you clicked on “Main menu”, the next time you open the galaxy map.

Normally, you can reach Luyten 726-8 (the one before the Snow level) directly from the first level with full fuel, if you do not waste any. -> I’ll make the difficulty lower and/or clearly indicate what to do once on the galaxy map

“I would have preferred if the map was a fixed designed, and designed to specifically provide a smooth difficulty curve.” -> I am sorry, it’s a bug

“On the topic of accessibility, I found the colors for the fuel dots and XP dots to be too similar for me to easily distinguish between them.” -> thank you for the advice, I can definitively make them of different shapes, I will focus on that (just after the parallax effect that woahh_jess mentioned)

“On the topic of fuel, …” -> yes, I will definitively implement a fuel-bar (same for the health and experience)

I am new at Godot, so I did not do it during the weekend, but I’ve seen some tutorials, it’s definitively something that I can implement.

I think it is not indicated clearly enough, but you can totally set the difficulty you want by using the cheat code “level up”.

Spoiler:

You can actually exploit the “run out of fuel” functionality + the spaceship continue to move after “Game over” to clear the game in 2 tutorial maps + the last one, which I’ve just done 🙄