Play game
The First Wave's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #6 | 4.541 | 4.541 |
| Innovation | #7 | 4.082 | 4.082 |
| Audio | #18 | 3.836 | 3.836 |
| Overall | #52 | 3.574 | 3.574 |
| Theme interpretation | #88 | 3.393 | 3.393 |
| Gameplay | #125 | 3.033 | 3.033 |
Ranked from 61 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/rednur01/the-first-wave
Theme interpretation
A daring endeavor to cross the galaxy and its many perils to reach Earth
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Stunning artwork, animations, and sound effects! I got a little confused which controls to configure next. Playing this was a fun experience that really matched the jam theme really well!
Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed playing.
Really innovative game !
The cockpit is quite complex at first but once you get the gist of it, you can really enjoy the game at its fullest.
I can't wait to play this game in VR :D
Thanks for taking the time to stream and play! Was really helpful watching someone new to the game explore the different controls and mechanics. Really appreciate it
I love how the cockpit looks and all of its different panels and controls, everything is designed in a really appealing way. Figuring out how to operate everything was part of the fun, and I like how there is a fun variety of options when it comes to dealing with negotiations. After an ending where I befriended the humans, I decided to go with a more aggressive approach next time, and was finding the battle system pretty interesting but unfortunately the game seemed to crash in the middle of it. It may have been the slider issue you listed in the description. That was really the only problem I noticed, I had a great time playing this!
Hi Zelveri! Glad you took the time to understand the control system and the various gameplay mechanics, and had fun doing it! We spent a lot of time and effort designing them. Sorry about the bugs - at the end of the jam we're rolling out an update fixing all the known issues, as well as adding some more cool stuff! Hope you'll check it out then!
Really cool game! graphics look amazing! looking forward to where this project goes in the future!
Thanks for playing! And yes - we have plans for future updates! Hope to see you there!
Really cool game! I love the diegetic UI, makes you feel really in the game! I can totally see this as a VR game of sorts in the future :D. I really enjoyed messing around and pressing all the buttons, and actually I think i broke the game at the start because of my button pressing lel
Buuttt that was totally my fault! I reloaded the page, and actually followed the instructions the second time around, and things made kindof sense! I did get a bit lost with what I was supposed to actually do, but I was just mesmerised by how interactive and beautiful everything was :)
Thanks for your feedback Avi! Sorry about the bugs! They're gonna be squashed in our next update right at the end of the jam. Glad you enjoyed the experience!
Wow! Such a great immersive experience! Superb graphics, music and mechanics!
I truly enjoyed playing with all the devices and buttons.
Really well done! Congrats!
Glad you enjoyed our game! Thanks for playing, jvalen!
Game environment is too good. Lighting and the crisp sounds are perfect for the cockpit. You nailed the look and feel of the game. A little tutorial before starting would have helped a lot.
I guess you spent lot of time in testing the game for different environments too. I was using MacOs BigSur. Tried it in Firefox and it worked as described in your game page. Sometimes it was throwing errors on screen when i try to slide the button on left bottom. But it did not stop me from enjoying it
Hi Rayyan, thanks for the compliments! Glad you liked the visuals and sound.
Sorry about the bugs :( We only discovered them from user feedback after the submission deadline. We're going to be fixing them all in the next update, right after the jam ends. A UI rework and a tutorial are in the works too to help with learning the controls and mechanics early-game.
Thanks for playing!
I liked the concept very much! I had some problems to get the mechanics at the beginning but then I could enjoy it. Unfortunately I keep getting the following error in the browser version from time to time:
An error occurred running the Unity content on this page. See your browser JavaScript console for more info. The error was:
Perhaps you want to have a look into it.RuntimeError: invalid conversion to integer
@https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3038788/The%20First%20Wave/Build/The%20First...
@https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3038788/The%20First%20Wave/Build/The%20First...
@https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3038788/The%20First%20Wave/Build/The%20First...
@https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3038788/The%20First%20Wave/Build/The%20First...
@https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3038788/The%20First%20Wave/Build/The%20First...
@https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3038788/The%20First%20Wave/Build/The%20First...
Thanks for playing smokecastles, and for the detailed bug report! From the initial look into those error messages, I suspect some sort of browser add-on (like an adblocker or popup blocker or something along those lines) that's stopping the game from accessing certain parts of the browser. We will definitely take a closer look and try to find the exact cause. In the meantime if you would like to play again without the errors, firefox seems to work better than chrome for this game.
We will be releasing an updated version of the game shortly after the jam ends, where all known bugs will be fixed and the UI will be updated to be more beginner friendly. We also have a tutorial in the works to teach new players the mechanics and controls in a natural way. Hope you'll give the game another shot then. :)
perhaps some details may help you further: I used firefox without any addon (running on a linux platform).
Very immersive, great job on this one! Managed to get 2 endings. I just wish the runs lasted long enough to make the upgrades feel like they made more of a difference. I found the gameplay mechanics quite intuitive after playing around for a little bit, despite comments to the contrary. There were some bugs too which you've listed under known issues, of course, but the overwhelming impression I get from this game is one of very good quality.
Hi Sam! Thanks for the compliments and for playing more than once!
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback about the gameplay mechanic as well. We agree that the runs are a bit short right now, especially on Lupus where you can get to Earth in 4 planets if you go for the shortest route, or 5 planets in Olor. We will take a look at that and try to come up with a good balance between making the runs longer and feel more substantial while also allowing for fast-Earth strategies. We want this game to have a lot of replay value and we're working on redesigning some of the mechanics to allow for that.
Glad you enjoyed the game!
Love the look and feel of the game. It's probably me being slightly slow on a Monday but I hard a hard time getting into the game. I think I would have appreciated some form of tutorial that went step by step in some way. But I can see that a lot of effort went into this so super impressed all in all!
Hi cykelkatalogen! It's definitely not you haha, we got a lot of feedback that the controls and mechanics of our game aren't easy to get into for newer player. And we totally agree with that. We're currently redesigning the UI to address those problems and will be releasing an update shortly after the jam ends. We also have a tutorial planned for first time players. Thanks for playing!
Really good game, I liked the graphics and gloomy music. :)
It's pretty hard to understand what to press and how to navigate at the beginning. The control info on the main screen are way too hidden on the bottom left, you easily miss it.
Thanks for playing Fry! Totally agree with you about the UI, we're redesigning it right now to be more intuitive.
Really liked this one. A kind of first person FTL, that is not almost solely focused on combat. Personally I liked all the different widgets and controls you had, the thrust control and stuff was fun to push forward. That said a few of them were a little finicky, I feel like a little more binary keyboard integration could have worked a little better. Sitting there flicking through the menus with just the arrow keys was surprisingly engaging, and made me feel like I was controlling a dashboard.
Graphics and texturing was really cool, though the font was a little hard to read at smaller sizes, and the screens to the left ended up having a bug where I had a couple of text screens overlaid on top of each other.
Obviously a little buggy but otherwise a really great entry, well done.
Thanks for thoughtful feedback Jake! We agree with some of the UI issues you brought up and we're currently redesigning the UI to fix those problems. The game lets you right click to zoom in, which helps with reading smaller text, but that feature is a little hard to discover at the moment so we'll be making that more obvious as well.
Thanks for playing and for the compliments!
The music, audio effects and graphics are gorgeous! :-)
Regarding the gameplay, I really appreciated the hints where the control panel gets yellow, but I found it quite difficult to keep the game status in my head...
Thanks for playing renato and for your feedback! We're working on changing up the UI so that information is presented to the player in a better way.
Very nice work. The visuals are great!
Thanks neonpixls! A lot of time and effort went into put into designing and creating the environment so I really appreciate it! Thanks for playing!
The cockpit is super cool. Moving the switches and knobs feels very good. I would have wished that in the beginning not everything would be operable and you would get an introduction. Super great game, congratulations.
We're currently making changes to make the game easier to get into! Thanks for playing puppermaster!
Nice work, love the graphics and the interface, well put together. I managed to get to Earth and became friends with the humans. I was a bit lost at first with all the controls in the cockpit to mess about with but it was fun to work it out. I found the zoom feature useful too when looking through the different buttons to press and thought the navigation joystick was cool too.
Thanks for playing Soul Grinder! Appreciate the feedback and the kind words. Glad you found the zoom feature useful, this the first piece of feedback we've gotten on that feature so thanks for that. Yes the controls aren't taught to the players very well right now :( We are working on improving that, its our top priority right now.
As for the ending, initially we had plans for a system where each ending would unlock new characters. They all have different abilities so this would unlock new playstyles with each ending you got, adding a lot of strategy and replay value. But for the jam we ended up unlocking all the characters and letting the players enjoy them all right away. Future versions of the game will definitely bring more weight to the different endings and add meaningful strategic choices for each one. :)
It is very flattering that someone who made this game liked my game, because this is way-too-good for a month-long project. Fairly lengthy review incoming:
I was so impressed with the art, the sound, the atmosphere, and the immersion. Locking the player into the cockpit was super smart and it allowed you to put so much detail in such a small space. I loved that you could interact with the buttons even when they weren't ready to be touched. While I'll agree with the other comments saying the game isn't very intuitive, that is easily solved with a tutorial mission that eases the player into the systems (of which there are a staggering amount -- very impressive that you did this in such short a time). The design is so good, though, that I was able to figure it out with visual clues such as the buttons lighting up and the prompts on the screen. It kind of just felt like this was a later level in a game that I wasn't prepared for, not bad design like people are suggesting.
The battles are very tense and exciting despite it just staring at a screen with numbers and meters. When you take a hit and your ship shakes and sparks fly, you FEEL like you get hit. Extremely smart to do it this way, because that obviously takes way less time and resources than an entire visual space battle, but still gives a similar effect.
Two main criticisms (besides the lack of intuitiveness, which is easily rectified): I think the battles would do well with an "attack now" button. Often, I found myself setting my sliders within a fraction of a second and then had to wait 10-20 seconds until the turns happened. It was kind of boring. If there IS an attack now button that I missed (which is entirely possible, I'll admit), that would, again, be resolved with a tutorial or better highlighting/feedback.
The other is the hunting/gathering. Again, I will preface this with it being probably me being unaware of what to do despite everything being there, but I had no idea what to do while my party was on the planet. Clearly I was meant to do SOMETHING, but what ended up happening was I just sat there hitting random buttons hoping to help them and nothing happened. They finished and there was no feedback as to what they found or did. I thought I had to hit coordinates? Maybe? Again, tutorial!
Again, brilliant game, amazing job, and you should be banned from any and all future game jams in hopes for anyone else to have a prayer to get noticed (kidding!). I would be very interested to see what you come up with next.
Thanks for the detailed feedback yousayrandy, we really appreciate it! Critical feedback will help us improve this game a lot and bring up all the weak points so I'm really glad you took the time to leave thoughtful feedback.
- There actually is an attack now button, it's right on top of the sliders. It's the big red button that says Fire. Unfortunately, we never explained this to the player. I decided to add that button just a couple of days before the deadline because I was having the same issue as you. I had gotten so good at the game that I was setting my sliders in 4-5 seconds and then just having to wait. Because that button came so late in development, we forgot to explain what it does at all :( But then again we did a poor job teaching any of the mechanics so that's an area we have to improve in.
- For hunting, not sure how far you got so I'll explain the whole loop. When you reach a planet, first you do a planet scan to reveal the resources on the planet, then you do a hunting scan to find where the animals are. This step will prompt you to use the radar, and you use the WAD keyboard keys to turn to the right and face the right console which has the radar. The start button will glow green so you press that to start hunting. The radar will show 3 animals on screen, a bunny (small yield), a deer (medium yield) and a bear (high yield). The smaller the animal the easier it is to catch. This is signified by the fact that they have smaller number for you to memorize and type in. You use the number pad right below the radar to type the number and then press the enter button on the pad. The in-game explanation for this mechanic is that you stay on the ship and use the radar to locate these animals, and then send the coordinates to the crew so they can catch them on the ground. There is a timer on the radar that goes down pretty quickly, it only refills as you catch more animals. Catching bigger animals gives you more time but it's harder so there's a risk-reward tradeoff there. Again, none of this was taught to the player and the only way to know how to do any of this would have been to press H once you selected hunting (but even then, a wall of text isn't the ideal way to teach mechanics to the player). Once you finish an activity, the tall screen on the front side to the right of the big screen tells you what the results of that activity were. So whenever I finish hunting, I look there to see how much biomass I collected and whether any crew members got injured in the hunt.
Thanks for taking the time to play! Hope you revisit the game in the future, we will work hard to make sure it's very beginner friendly and teaches the player all the mechanics and controls in an intuitive way. This was only the second game I've ever made in my life, and for both Cigfer and I this was the first game we made from scratch all the way to completion (design, planning, etc). We are both learning as we go and hope to improve over time :)
I think this game has a lot of potential, and that is why I will try my best to come with some useful feedback if you plan on continue working on the game.
I think the background music and the sound effects are well made, and fit the game perfectly. One thing I felt was off though, was the fact that after a “planet travel” or hyperdrive, I thought my ship broke down (because of the sound effect), which made me think that I was doing something wrong.
I tried to read through the description on how to play the game, but I still had difficulties understanding what I was doing. I love that you highlighted the buttons and sticks I could interact with. It made it a little bit easier to do things. The only thing that was a bit quirky was that I had to lever the control to match the number on the screen exactly (f.eks -1).
The UI is well made, and I think this is the most unique and innovative part of the game. The way you navigate and makes it feel like I am actually travelling through space.
I was able to become friends with Humans (Diplomacy), but I was able to befriend them without interacting with any of the planets I travelled to at all. I just hyper drove all the way through. Maybe if we were forced to do some interactions on the planets, the game could be even more interesting.
I know that you only had a month to work on this, and it is difficult to create a perfectly polished game within this time. That being said, I think you have managed to create something that looks great, has something different than what I have played, and the current quality is way better than a 1-month game. Good work.
Hi Johnonym, thank you for the detailed feedback! During development we only managed to get a couple of playtesters so I really appreciate the thoughtful comments and constructive criticism. It'll help us a lot! We are definitely going to continue working on the game, and hopefully flesh it out a lot more and bring it to market. We really like the game and think it has a lot of strategic decision making and replay value that fans of the genre will like.
- Good point about the hyperdrive effect, we'll definitely work on the effect so it doesn't feel like something went wrong.
- The thruster lever gave a lot of players a hard time unfortunately. It turned out to be not as obvious/intuitive to use as we had thought. We will rework the UI for that so it's completely obvious how to use it, thanks for pointing out the problem.
- Glad you liked the UI! This was my first time doing 2d art for a game so I'm glad someone liked it haha (my main skills are programming and music)
- Yes, it's possible to skip all the planets and go straight to earth and try for diplomacy, although it makes it harder. In the game, there is a meter for how strong the galaxy's technology is. For each planet you visit, every planet gets a bit stronger (their ships become higher level during combat and your starting stats for diplomacy get lower). So the risk with going straight to earth and trying diplomacy is that you have a much lower chance of success. When I play for diplomacy ending, I try to research the diplomacy options that will increase my chances (upto +15% for both subjugation and trade) and that requires quite a bit of resources so I stop by other planets and gather those. But yeah as of right now, there's really no penalty for skipping all the gameplay and going straight to earth. It's actually even a good way to see all the endings quickly haha. Failing subjugation (the Captured ending) is my favorite. We will work on making it so that it's more punishing to go straight to earth and only very skill level players should risk that strategy.
Thanks for the compliments about the visuals and sound design. For a 2 person team, this was a pretty ambitious project and we're proud of what we've accomplished so far. We have a good vision for the final version of the game and will continue working to get there. Thanks for playing!
Excellent game! Amazing visuals-audio!
I just love exploration games. Plus the mineral mining minigame reminded me the hacking minigame of bioshock which I really liked. Big +++ here!
The information/controls overload needed some time to get used to it. But in the end I really enjoyed the control panel like UI.
The big exception was the semi-realtime (at least that how it feels) combat.
I couldn't figure the mechanics behind it (the attack/defence values of the enemies sometime changed and I had the feeling that I must try to match them, at least my defense vs his attack, in order to land hits or avoid damage) so the combat felt a little random.
I tried to avoid it when possible to keep my ship HP up!
Since I couldn't get any crystals (I though it's the red area of the mining minigame, but even when I hitted it sometime, my crystal resources didn't change). So I couldn't do most of the upgrades in order for example to increase my chances in combat. I only did the laser attack upgrade.
Still an excellent jam entry!! Great job!
Can you make a Windows/Linux export? Web games while very useful for jams can easily "disappear" or become uncompatible in the future.
Hi Vasilis! Thanks for playing the game and taking the time to understand it. Sorry about the confusion, we realized after getting player feedback that the game is not beginner friendly, and we're working on the game now to improve in that area.
The combat has a rock-paper-scissors type of mechanic where the 3 elements are strong/weak against each other. If the player matches the elements properly they can do massive damage and take very little damage. Sadly the difficulty curve on that game wasn't adjusted properly so its really tough for new players to do well. We will fix this problem after the jam for sure.
You get the crystals (called gemstones in the game) from other civilizations. We treated this like a "money" value so you go to planets with civilizations and then either trade with them, subjugate them, or destroy them in combat to get their gemstones. Mining and hunting have a chance of giving gemstones as well but only if you perform really well (research makes this a bit easier). We will do our best to explain all of this in-game in a natural and intuitive way!
As for the other builds, yes we will provide downloads for all major platforms after the jam. Right now we are focusing on fixing all the bugs and improving the new player experience. Thanks a lot for your feedback and compliments, it means a lot to us! :)
The combat is semi realtime? The enemy attacks happen independently of the player actions?
From what I could figure the large combat icons (laser pistol, shield, large bullet icon?) represent the selection areas (attack, defense, ?).
The smaller icons above the numbers (that you can change with the buttons on the left of the control panel) represent the choice you make for each area. The value of the slider is the strength of attack, defense depending if I beat or not his selection.
Is this right? So I have to match both my attack selection to beat his defense selection and vise versa and have enough "slider" value in the area to overcome his value?
The large bullet icon area what it's for?
Can you give me a example of a round?
You understood the game pretty well despite our poor attempt at explaining it in-game. I'll try to explain all the inner mechanics of the game along with the numbers. Long post incoming, but I'll label the sections so you can navigate it better hopefully.
Timing
Yes, the combat rounds have a 15 second timer. The player has to make all their decisions within that time, that's the challenge of the combat game. (There is a crew member perk that adds 3 seconds to the combat timer to make it easier). Once you get the flow of the combat you can get good enough that you won't even need the full time. Then you can press the big red Fire button on top of the sliders to instantly drop the timer to 0 and start that round.
Meters & Weapons
The 3 meters are guns, shields & thrusters. Guns are how much damage you do, shields are how much damage you block, and thrusters increase your chance to dodge & crit. The value of the gun and shield meters are the values you will hit for and block respectively. The value of the thruster sets your dodge chance to 50% of the value and your crit chance to 25% of the value. Crits deal 2.5x damage. The total values for all the meters add up to your ship's reactor value. By default your reactor starts at a 100 so you get to distribute 100 points between the 3 meters. There are research options and crew perks that increase this. And yes, you use the sliders (left side, front console) to set the meters. The gun and shield sliders have 3 buttons each above them to set their respective element.
Nukes deal 100 damage instantly and stop you taking any damage for that round, but also injure all crew members so it's a risk-reward tradeoff. The nuke also takes about 5 seconds to arm so you have to make the decision to use it fairly quickly.
The element system
The element system is rock-paper-scissors. The 3 elements are called: Ballistics, Laser & Plasma. We made the "weak against" and "resistant to" based off pokemon's typing matchup system. If you match your shield to properly block the enemy gun, you're resistant and take very little damage. If you get completely the wrong type (the type that's weak against it, think a fire type in pokemon fighting a water type), then you take high damage. If you use the same element as them then you're partly effective and take medium damage. The element strength matchup goes likes this:
Ballistics > Laser > Plasma > Ballistics
This applies for both when you're choosing your gun type against the enemy's shield, and also when you're choosing your shield type against the enemy gun.
Injuries
Your crew members also have a chance to get injured, proportional to how much damage you take in that fight. So if you fight recklessly and don't block much, your crew will have a much higher chance of getting injured. A dead crew member doesn't contribute their perks anymore so that's a big loss. If all 4 crew members die, that ends the run.
Round example
Enemy sets: 50 guns (plasma), 30 shields (ballistics), 20 thrusters
I'll set my shield to about 40 so I can block most of the damage. I want it to be laser, since laser is strong against the enemy's plasma gun. (If I chose plasma, the same element as the attack, I would only block half of the damage, or 20. If I chose ballistics, which is weak to plasma, I would block 0 damage!)
Since I used up 40 on shields, I have 60 left for guns and thrusters. I'll set thrusters to 20. This gives me a 10% chance to dodge and a 5% chance to crit.
Now I have 40 left and I'll use that for guns. I'll set the element to plasma, since my plasma guns will beat the enemy's ballistic shields. Because I got the typing right, the enemy will block 0 damage so I get the full 40 damage in. If i crit then that's 2.5 x 40 = 100 damage.
My final setup: 40 guns (plasma), 40 shields (laser), 20 thrusters
Another round example (w/ Nuke)
Enemy sets: 80 guns, 10 shields, 40 thrusters (higher level enemy with 130 total reactor, 90hp left)
Lets assume my ship only has 140 hp left. The enemy has a high chance (10%) to crit here and kill me. I can either set high thrusters myself and try to dodge, or set my shields very high (~80) with the right element and try to tank the hit, or I can use a Nuke.
I decide on the Nuke. I take no damage for the round so I save my ship, and the nuke does 100 damage and destroys the enemy. The drawback was that all my crew members took injury damage and I'll now have to use biomass to heal them up.
Conclusion
Hope that explained the inner working of the combat system. It's a lot to throw the player into without properly guiding them through the mechanics. We tried to explain the basic system in the in-game help (H key brings up help any time in-game and explains whatever activity you're currently doing) but of course that's not really an ideal way to do it. The post-jam version of the game will hopefully do a much much better job of guiding the player through the mechanics so they can pick it up intuitively and then naturally get better at it over time.
Thanks a lot for your interest in the game and making the effort to understand it. We put a lot of thought into making the mechanics fun and strategic and really appreciate your effort!
Thanks you ColorPalette for the very detailed info about the combat system.
Now I definitely have a better grasp of the combat system. Time for another run!
There is quite a bit to get used to at first, but once you get the hang of things it's pretty fun! Sadly there's a bit of a lack of precision, so I accidentally ended up setting a slider to max and crashing later on despite reading the warning. If you guys have the time to fix the crashing issues, you're well within the rules to do so! Overall though, very interesting concept and ideas. :)
Thanks Tasha! We're definitely working on easing the learning curve. Sorry about the crashes! We already have the fixes ready, and are planning to do an update once the jam ends. Thanks for playing!