A few ideas to make it better (hopefully). As you have 3 lives per tryout, maybe you could make the "turn" end by time rather than end of impulse as the latter almost everytime puts you in infinite distance to the target making it easier to just restart.
To sum up with that, there is the fact that there is no friction in space and you shouldn't slow down. Sometimes I tried to play from afar but I almost stop before reaching anywhere and get captured by a planet with no hope of escaping.
The last point is the fact that bigger planet should have bigger bubbles not only to be more accurate but also to make you juggle with the different attractions to get to the target. I don't know if you did it in more advanced levels, I just got to the third one so far.
Hi Marcelo, thanks for the feedbacks! It is nice to hear it from a fellow brazilian game dev pro.
As you can see no one besides myself play tested the game. I used rigidbody drag, so I could use velocity to end the turn and also to make the gravity field feel stronger.
Of course it is not meant to be like the "real" thing (what is real, maybe it is all a simulation, right?), but I didn't thought about how this would affect the gameplay, jsut like many other things.
I set the scale of the gravity fields to be always twice the radius of the planet for the sake of simplicity, but maybe making it non-linear would feel better.
I am not sure if I will keep updating this game after the GJ, but I will take your feedbacks for the next ones!
Hey, really nice concept, and quite true to the theme! :D
Sounds were quite ..."immersive" puzzle like music. Game was hard at first, If I hadn't watched VLad's video + comments, I'm not sure I'd have been able to clear it.
took me a little while to understand the physics, why is it that sometimes it can't "rotate" and go to the direction I want? It is still under "influence" from previous ..velocity right? (don't know the right terms), but you can't just suddenly pause and come to a complete full stop and make a sharp turn right?
I think, having some sort of visual indicator about how fast you're currently going would be nice, so when the player tries to make a sharp turn at high speeds, it'd be easy to know that it's not possible under current circumstances...
Good job on all these crazy math involved :D
and one last thing = at the start of every level, can be hard to locate were you are...
Game is pretty solid overall, just need a few little more visual indicators imo.
You get a momentum from your speed and mass, so in order to stop for example you need a force of the same intensity in the opposite direction. I don't made it clear in the game.
I noticed from vlad's video that the asteroid is so tiny on the screen in some levels. Of course I knew where they were from the start, so I didn't noticed that was a problem. But yeah it lacks a visual aid to locate it.
Hey. I recorded a video about the Beginners Circle Jam #3 and included your game in it. It was very fun to play. However, it would be cooler if it had some feature to make it faster so I would not wait till the ball completely stops. If you want to cut your game out of the video, let me know. However, if you like the video, I make similar videos every day. I will be happy if you subscribe. Anyway, I enjoyed playing your game.
Yeah, I've already subscribed to your channel since the last beginners circle.
I think there was something wrong with the tutorial. You could always press z to pause/unpause the physics and then make another shot. You don't have to wait for it to stop.
I was finally able to play it and I liked it a lot, the idea was simple but interesting and well executed. It took me sometime but I was able to finish it.
The only improvement I think would help is if the direction indicator could give a better idea of the curvature that a gravity field will add to trajectory in the launch moment, which made me depend on luck some times, but other than that, a pretty good job :)
Flight physics is nicely done and it's pretty easy to get used to. Passed some levels from the first throw and the others could not even for 10 minutes)
Genuinely a very pleasant idea. I love unpausing/pausing the game trying to get the planets to give me the perfect trajectory to my goal. Id love to see some sort of representation of where the ball would be going initially, like how pool games usually have a fading line showing your trajectory. It would also be helpful to have some sort of representation of how fast planets are moving when paused. Another thing that confused me was how the score is drawn from your actions.
But yeah. Super novel idea, I'm surprised I haven't played a game like this before as it could be super fun if properly fleshed out into a full game. Nice work!
Great Game! I really like the storyline! I think you may have overdone it with the leaderboards as this is a small game but really well done this is really nice!
Thank you for playing my game, and giving your feedback! I just made the leaderboard because it seemed easy than make a better design for the levels (I suck at it).
As for what you said in the comment below, I heard lots of cases like the one you are talking about! It happens.
You do not know how lucky you are that this is the first game jam you joined. The community is amazing. Wheareas the first one I joined was made by someone looking to get subscribers for their youtube, half of the discord was bots that pinged whenever they said something on social media, and they did not play the games properly at all so when I submitted a full game with a long storyline that I worked on for a month it came last where all the other games were prototypes. (ok, rant over)
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Great game!
A few ideas to make it better (hopefully). As you have 3 lives per tryout, maybe you could make the "turn" end by time rather than end of impulse as the latter almost everytime puts you in infinite distance to the target making it easier to just restart.
To sum up with that, there is the fact that there is no friction in space and you shouldn't slow down. Sometimes I tried to play from afar but I almost stop before reaching anywhere and get captured by a planet with no hope of escaping.
The last point is the fact that bigger planet should have bigger bubbles not only to be more accurate but also to make you juggle with the different attractions to get to the target. I don't know if you did it in more advanced levels, I just got to the third one so far.
Good luck with your games!
Hi Marcelo, thanks for the feedbacks! It is nice to hear it from a fellow brazilian game dev pro.
As you can see no one besides myself play tested the game. I used rigidbody drag, so I could use velocity to end the turn and also to make the gravity field feel stronger.
Of course it is not meant to be like the "real" thing (what is real, maybe it is all a simulation, right?), but I didn't thought about how this would affect the gameplay, jsut like many other things.
I set the scale of the gravity fields to be always twice the radius of the planet for the sake of simplicity, but maybe making it non-linear would feel better.
I am not sure if I will keep updating this game after the GJ, but I will take your feedbacks for the next ones!
this is rather long comment..
TL.DR: Nice and creative!
Hey, really nice concept, and quite true to the theme! :D
Sounds were quite ..."immersive" puzzle like music. Game was hard at first, If I hadn't watched VLad's video + comments, I'm not sure I'd have been able to clear it.
took me a little while to understand the physics, why is it that sometimes it can't "rotate" and go to the direction I want? It is still under "influence" from previous ..velocity right? (don't know the right terms), but you can't just suddenly pause and come to a complete full stop and make a sharp turn right?
I think, having some sort of visual indicator about how fast you're currently going would be nice, so when the player tries to make a sharp turn at high speeds, it'd be easy to know that it's not possible under current circumstances...
Good job on all these crazy math involved :D
and one last thing = at the start of every level, can be hard to locate were you are...
Game is pretty solid overall, just need a few little more visual indicators imo.
Thanks for playing!
You get a momentum from your speed and mass, so in order to stop for example you need a force of the same intensity in the opposite direction. I don't made it clear in the game.
I noticed from vlad's video that the asteroid is so tiny on the screen in some levels. Of course I knew where they were from the start, so I didn't noticed that was a problem. But yeah it lacks a visual aid to locate it.
Hey. I recorded a video about the Beginners Circle Jam #3 and included your game in it. It was very fun to play. However, it would be cooler if it had some feature to make it faster so I would not wait till the ball completely stops. If you want to cut your game out of the video, let me know. However, if you like the video, I make similar videos every day. I will be happy if you subscribe. Anyway, I enjoyed playing your game.
Yeah, I've already subscribed to your channel since the last beginners circle.
I think there was something wrong with the tutorial. You could always press z to pause/unpause the physics and then make another shot. You don't have to wait for it to stop.
It seems I didn't test it enough!
Thanks for playing it!
I was finally able to play it and I liked it a lot, the idea was simple but interesting and well executed. It took me sometime but I was able to finish it.
The only improvement I think would help is if the direction indicator could give a better idea of the curvature that a gravity field will add to trajectory in the launch moment, which made me depend on luck some times, but other than that, a pretty good job :)
I added a direction indicator that is affected by the gravity fields as you suggested. It seems a lot better now.
Thanks for your feedback.
Just tried it again and it makes all the difference! I no longer feel like I’m relying on luck :D
Flight physics is nicely done and it's pretty easy to get used to. Passed some levels from the first throw and the others could not even for 10 minutes)
Overall, great work, keep it up.
Thanks for playing!
It was supposed to be difficult but not too much, I will check it.
Genuinely a very pleasant idea. I love unpausing/pausing the game trying to get the planets to give me the perfect trajectory to my goal. Id love to see some sort of representation of where the ball would be going initially, like how pool games usually have a fading line showing your trajectory. It would also be helpful to have some sort of representation of how fast planets are moving when paused. Another thing that confused me was how the score is drawn from your actions.
But yeah. Super novel idea, I'm surprised I haven't played a game like this before as it could be super fun if properly fleshed out into a full game. Nice work!
Thank you for your feedback Squid!
I thought of making a trajectory and the representation of the speed of the planets, but there wasn't enough time to implement.
The score is built by number of spare shots * 1500 plus points for spare impulse force. The less force and shots you use the higher your score.
Great Game! I really like the storyline! I think you may have overdone it with the leaderboards as this is a small game but really well done this is really nice!
Thank you for playing my game, and giving your feedback! I just made the leaderboard because it seemed easy than make a better design for the levels (I suck at it).
As for what you said in the comment below, I heard lots of cases like the one you are talking about! It happens.
You do not know how lucky you are that this is the first game jam you joined. The community is amazing. Wheareas the first one I joined was made by someone looking to get subscribers for their youtube, half of the discord was bots that pinged whenever they said something on social media, and they did not play the games properly at all so when I submitted a full game with a long storyline that I worked on for a month it came last where all the other games were prototypes.
(ok, rant over)