This is pretty adorable. Although, for an alien planet, the plants seem a little, normal XD

Will the game have any sort of challenge to it (ie, pits, spikes, bad dudes, anything that causes game over) or will it be just a casual relaxed exploring type game?

Omg this is a lot like an idea I had a few years ago (that I still want to get around to)! yay for collective consciousness!

I like the idea. How much do you plan on diversifying what's going on in each biome? Is the system for building the world procedurally generated?

I like it! Its always amazing to see how distinct people can make their aesthetic within really tight pixel resolutions.

I hate it when people say "oh, you're making a [genre] game? You should check out ...". But it reminded me of this old game called Dinosaur Safari where you go back in time to take pictures of dinosaurs.

I like the puzzle of the frog behaviour interacting with the mechanics (digging holes or sneaking). I think there could be a lot of meaty gameplay in the space where behaviour meets mechanics, rather than jumping puzzles or avoiding danger. It reminds me of adventure games where you try and draw out an animal with bait, or block off exits so it can't escape. I think The Dig had some puzzles like that. You could add in multiple states to animals, so while it might be easy to collect data from a normal animal, one that was pregnant and hiding in a burrow/nest might be really hard to find or get at.

Biomes would be cool to see more of your art.

new feature: don't scare the frogs

Flies are in the game! Flies are a little less frightened of you than frogs.

Also, finally starting to get oxygen/health meters into the game

Also:

I'm kinda torn between showing a lot to kind of incentivize myself into keeping a regular schedule / getting feedback, or to not show much to avoid spoiling the game for players. Thoughts?

this probably isnt a huge deal for anyone else, but last night i found out that one of my major issues with haxepunk (no way to manipulate bitmaps directly) isnt actually an issue. so now: lighting!!!!

im not gonna use darkness tooo much, mostly for underground biomes. but now i can have another thing you can upgrade: your scanner's flashlight!

(you also may have noticed the presence of water. water probably won't be in that specific biome, im just reluctant to show other tilesets for fear of spoiling too much.)

i didnt really want to show other biomes or their creatures, but i'm just too pleased with how this lighting worked out that i had to show off the firefly.

so as you might be able to guess, 'space research game' is kind of a working title for this project. i'm having real trouble coming up with an actual name for this game though. any ideas?

and, because i'd feel bad if i posted something without a gif, here's a spider

Looks really awesome! How long have you been working on this?

Hey, this looks rad! I loved Metroid Prime's scanning mechanic so it's great to see something like that here. Keep up the good work!

sorry its been so long!! between ludum dare and various other things i havent been able to work on this game since last week. development is probably going to be slow for the next little while but i found some time to implement some little fishies

its kinda tough to see whats going on in a gif, but basically unless ur moving ur cursor very slowly when u go to scan the fish, it'll get scared and go hide in its lil hidey-hole.

the basic idea of the game is to have all the biomes correspond to different tools, and all the creatures are little 'puzzles' that you have to use the tool of that biome to solve. the tool for this biome is the FLASHLIGHT. the fish get scared of the light and run away.

right now i have four biomes planned for the demo, and ive finished the visuals / theming / corresponding tool for all of them. i also have the monsters mostly made or planned out for all of them.

ALSO: still totally struggling for a name for this game. nounoursheureux made a good suggestion with finding the name for the planet, so i tried to find a roman/greek deity name for it but none of them are really grabbing me. so the thread's still gonna be called space research game for the next little while, unfortunately :(

EDIT: what do you guys think about Terranaut?

So I've finally started to implement the final 'tool' that's going to be in the demo. This tool is the GRAPPLE, and it works something like this:

as you might be able to guess from the gif, the grapple is primarily meant for use in traversing tree branches, but it has uses for getting out of underground areas quickly as well.

Great project, can't wait to play this. ;) What engine are you using - Unity, Unreal, maybe something else?

Star Surveyor update!!!

Featured: birds, beetles, and bulbplants!

So I'm almost done filling out the creatures and plants for the different biomes. A bunch of them still need to be updated with their new designs (as I mentioned before, I want each creature to be a little 'puzzle' that requires using a specific tool--still haven't programmed a lot of that yet).

I'm noticing that I'm starting to lose momentum on this project, so I think the next few things I'm gonna do on it are going to be a little bit...different. Adding environmental details and storytelling is something I've wanted to do for a while, so I might try to start mapping that out. The plants also need a bit of love, I want them to have some effects on the player (ie some spray out poisonous gas, some slow the player down when she steps on them, some shoot projectiles, stuff like that). My goal was to make this game mostly a relaxing experience, but I think it could use a little danger.

One last back-to-back update before I get swamped with work.

So for a long time I was going to have an oxygen and a health bar, and oxygen would just slowly trickle away until it reached zero, at which point your health would start chipping away. And other things could do damage to your health like fall damage, plants,etc. And both your oxygen and health would get restored if you went back to the ship

But that system is a bit...convoluted, for a game thats not really supposed to be focusing on 'survival', at least not mainly. So I've simplified that system to just the health meter, and I've eliminated oxygen entirely.

I've also worked on some of the damage-dealing plants that are gonna be in the game:

Since creatures already have this system of movement puzzles focused around specific tools in the game, I figure I'd give plants a different kind of variation...a deadly variation, if you will :P

Now that I've settled on some nice rules for how creatures / plants are gonna work (plants are dangers, creatures are puzzles) I've gotten myself very excited about this game. I found myself some time this weekend to work on finally implementing the spider's behavior:

So to give you an idea of whats going on here:

spiders are going to be totally impossible to scan if theyre on their line of silk. if you get too close, they just go back up to a spot just above the level geometry so u cant scan them. so what u have to do instead, is dig down from above and cut the line at the source. at which point the line snaps, the spider falls, and then just sort of ineffectually walks back and forth. (don't worry about how the spider doesnt really stick out against the background, its outside its natural habitat in this gif)

im gonna try to get all the other creatures up to the same level of intricacy, its just gonna take me a little while.

sooo if you're wondering why i havent updated this in a while its because...well im kind of stuck.

some of the stuff i've made for the game is really fun (namely, the grappling hook and the creatures it interacts with), but a lot of the early gameplay without all the tools is super boring, and i'm not sure what to do to fix it yet. at the start its basically just a lot of jumping and crouching and scanning and theres not a lot of really interesting stuff to do with those abilities.

and if i go down the territory of making this a more platformer-y game thats okay but id want to do it in a way that isnt super derivative of other platformers, and keeps with the themes of exploration and survival. and i have noooottt come up with any good ways to do that yet.

i still have a lot of hope in the game, this is just kinda one of those things that comes along when you havent thought through the design completely before starting to make the game :P

hello again!

so what i really should be doing with this game is figuring out exactly how its gonna flow and if the starting area is fun, and if the fruit/wood log stuff works or is just kind of filler content.

that is what i SHOULD be doing.

what ive actually been doing is making the grapple hook much, much cooler.

now, instead of just being pulled towards it when it hits something, it can actually act like a rope and let you swing thru the treetops (u can also pull urself in by holding right-click after its been extended).

ive been wanting to figure out how to do this for a long (looonnnggg) time, so im glad i finally got around to it. BUT, im gonna go back to some actual game design stuff now :P

DINO UPDATE

So, I figured out what the dino should do.

Now you can use the dino to get to higher places, and go across spiked moss and other dangers. All you gotta do is feed him some fruit!

With this I think I'm moving on from the flatlands for now. I think the dino was the missing piece of the puzzle and now I have everything I need to build a nice starting area. Gonna finish up the swamp next!

(in case you didnt notice, I also updated the tileset a little bit so it looks more natural).

Hey again!

So the demo's juuust about done.

I thought while a friend of mine is finishing up the sounds for the game I'd open it up to some playtesters!

If you're interested in playtesting the game reply to this with your email and I will send u the build as soon as I can.