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A jam submission

Solar CoreView game page

Make planets and destroy rocks!
Submitted by SokiSouler — 12 minutes, 59 seconds before the deadline
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Solar Core's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Art Direction#2133.1653.467
Innovation#2842.7393.000
Overall#3272.6532.907
Theme#3292.6172.867
Game Design#3372.4952.733
Fun#3592.2522.467

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Cool game, it felt much more like a 'sandbox' game than anything else. I do wish there was some context for it and some reason to make planets and what not. It was enjoyable to float around in space and I liked the atmosphere the game was able to achieve. 

Submitted (1 edit)

I'm a sucker for space related games so I really enjoyed flying around for a few minutes but I haven't found  a star or anything of interest. Crashed into a few asteroids - assumed that was a bad thing. I like the music and the idea of what I feel is supposed to be happening but it's not happening for me.

Submitted(+1)

Please explain how to create planets. I click on the icon and nothing happens.

Developer

You have to find a star (glowing circle) first to take control over, and then make an orbit. Unfortunately I didn't get time to implement a tutorial or a good system that shows what you can and can't do :/ the controls are listed on the page. Feel free to ask again if you need more help!

Submitted(+1)

The thing that stands out to me in a good way is the visual style. I am glad to see a space game. Both of us made space games, so maybe we can give each other more relevant feedback.

I also really like the music, although it did get a little repetitive after looping 4 times. I appreciated the gradual fading out and reverb of the music. I wish that you let the game be quiet for longer, or just had some kind of white / brown noise in the background, to let that quiet lonely atmosphere of space sink in even more. I also do wish the asteroid destroy sound was a bit quieter. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy with the audio overall.

I like that you can connect to stars and create planets orbiting the stars. I got into a situation where I moved one star right next to the other. I wish you could create a binary star system, where two stars orbit each other simultaneously. I totally get how this would be too ambitious for a game jam, but it would be cool to see in an updated build. 

My only real issue with this game is I wish that it were level based, so I felt like I had more of a prescribed goal on what to do and how to proceed. In this case, I found a couple stars, made some solar systems, destroyed some asteroids, and then stopped playing. Take what I saw with a grain of salt, because I have the same issue with minecraft - it doesn't have a prescribed goal, and yet minecraft is overly successful. But yeah, I would have liked maybe to have two modes - an endless mode like this and a level mode with more structured and focused gameplay. I don't think this is a huge issue either, just affects me as a player. 

I was very happy to see camera shake and particle effects used here. I keep recommending people with action-esque games to use camera shake, particle effects, and hit stop. I think you could also benefit from hit stop whenever you destroy an asteroid. Hit stop can be achieved in a coroutine like so:

IEnumerator hitStop(float hitStopTimeScale, float duration)
{
    Time.timeScale = hitStopTimeScale;
    yield return new WaitForSecondsRealtime(duration);
    Time.timeScale = 1f;
}


and call it with (below) where x = 0f and y = 0.2f

StartCoroutine(hitStop(x, y));
Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your thorough feedback. I agree with everything you say about the music and pretty much everything else you said. the music was made by one of my friends but didn't get much time to make a longer track, and I added it like an hour before deadline, so didn't get time to do something like that.
It would be really cool if you could make other things orbit around a star and make it sort of systemic. That would however be way to big scope but something I would really want. I'm however not very good at programming and this project I mainly focused on improving my programing skills, so the design became quite terrible with no meaningful gameplay or goals. I really appreciate your feedback and your tip and that you took the time to play the game! 

Submitted(+1)

Awesome job!  The sound is great and it;s a really relaxing atmosphere (or lack of atmosphere).  I like the little detail you add to the background stars too, making them twinkle.  I have similar sentiments as the others, as it was a little unclear at first, but given more time I'm sure this can be something really cool!

Developer

Thank you so much! Ye the game is very unfinished so there isn't really any goal so far. Might work on some more later to add some actual gameplay/game loop. Good to know that the atmosphere is relaxing as that was one of the things I wanted to achieve^_^ I'm quite happy with how the visuals turned out since I'm not an artist and had to find ways to make it look decent.

Submitted(+1)

Really nice and relaxing.

I wasn't sure what to do at first so i just wandered around for a long while until a found a star.

Then a Wandered around whith the star... until i undertood I had to open the menu to do more stuff.

So I created orbits & planets... and wandered around with my cool looking solar system. ^^

Until I found some meteorites... and.. destroyed them ? (not sure why, but at least it was satisfying)

for feedbacks :

  • maybe add some visual indicator pointing to the closest star / meteorite / "other stuff the player is supposed to find" so that the player has a goal and somewhat know where to go. 
  • I enjoyed being thrown in the game and having to figure out what to do with what. you should keep that feel but maybe give some explaination on how some things works (basic controls, what the menu is for, how to create planets etc)
  • little bug. if you create planets at lowest orbit your star kinda collide with them and propel you in one direction withou possibility to stop or turn)
  • Not much to say in term of art. it all looks really pretty and kinda hypnotysing.
  • the menu could use some polish to match the effort you put in the visuals in your scene.

All in all, It's a nice game, still not sure what it was all about and what I was supposed to do with it, but I did enjoyed the ride and it was a nice break in my series plays. thanks for the experience :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for the feedback and playing the game ^^ I wanted to add some clear goal to the game and especially some sort of "tutorial" explaining the basics, but I stupidly left that part to the last day, which unfortunately got occupied by trying to solve lots of game breaking issues. So the game is pretty much fly around aimlessly and build some planets. I mainly wanted to focus on learning programming better for this game so I made some decisions that took quite some hits on the design and scope because I wanted to do what I felt I could learn most from in terms of programming. The points you're bringing up would however been good to focus on to make add some actual purpose and clarity. Again, thx for the great feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Satisfaction

Developer

<3

Submitted(+1)

The game certainly looks very pretty, such a surreal and serene atmosphere! Floating around in space, sucking up stars, and destroying space cookies. I must admit I wasn't too sure how to progress further in the game? Anyway, good job on a very relaxing game! :D

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much^^ there isn't really anyway to progress in the game due to lack of time and bad planning. The main goal designwise was, however, to make a relaxing game so I guess I at least managed to achieve that :) And yes, although it's supposed to be asteroids, when I put them in the game I realized it looked like  huge space cookies xD

Submitted(+1)

Definitely an interesting mechanic, its more like a solar system gone rouge simulator. Would love to see the same mechanic with some more direction of something to do instead of wandering through mostly empty space.

Developer(+1)

Thank you! The plan was to make it some sort of survival like game or at least give some sort of goal, but I ended up focusing on many other stuff that I wanted to learn so didn't get time really implement anything like that. Might work on it some more later and make more of an actual game.

Submitted

beautiful game! but I kept roaming around aimlessly, a cue to where we need to  go would be awaesome.

Developer

Ye, definitely. There isn't much to do at the moment unfortunately. Might work on it some more later to add some actual gameplay. Thank you very much for your feedback and playing^^

Submitted(+1)

awesome! the visuals are mesmerizingly  great, coupled with a relaxing background music , the gameplay is pleasant with a good replay value! congratulations! keep it up!

Developer

Thank you very much! glad you enjoyed it. The look of the game turned out better than expected. I'm far from an artist, so focused mostly on a very simple visual style and using lights and particle effects to make it look better.