Art syle, sound effects, level transitions and controls were very well made.
Play game
Orbital #GodotWildJam22's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #2 | 4.542 | 4.542 |
| Overall | #4 | 4.160 | 4.160 |
| Controls | #5 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
| Audio | #5 | 3.958 | 3.958 |
| Originality | #9 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Fun | #11 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Graphics | #16 | 4.042 | 4.042 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
3.2.1
Source
No it's spaghetti :(
Game Description
A game revolving around revolving around.
Discord Username
Bobbi Burrs
Participation Level (GWJ)
Third Godot Wild Jam.
Jam Time
Fourth Game Jam overall.
Comments
Super cool mechanic and puzzle design, paired with cool art style and polish visual design. Very relaxed music fits relatively slow paced game. I can't find anything to complain about. :-)
Submitted
Monster RevolutionCool mechanic and a very polished game :) It is a personal preferance but I'd make the game much much faster, that way losing a level would be less punishing aswell
Submitted
Parliament MemberHello verbante! Thank you so much for playing it and for the feedback. I initially thought so too, but it felt too difficult at higher speeds. I could've made it an option but I didn't want to go through adding a menu for that (time budget issue). Maybe a speed up key could've been a nice add though.
Fantastic puzzle game. The mechanic is simple but great, easy to understand but gets surprisingly difficult.
Submitted
Revolution RevolutionGood sound and aesthetics, beautiful implementation of the theme
Submitted
One revolution after the otherWow! Just Wow!
Love the aesthetics, love the gameplay, love the small partical-animation when finishing a the level and the sound-effects there.
Really impressed. Game of the Jam for me ^^
Submitted
RatvolutionThis game was very well executed. I liked the game mechanic because there was a lot you as a player could do once you got the intuition by just timing the moves correctly.
Submitted
Rat RevolutionThe mechanic is great and I think you explored the idea's potential quite well! I ended up rage quitting on the last level though and have a few thoughts on improvements because of that:
- The level is quite long and you're unable to see to the end of the level to plan out your moves ahead which means that the player has to spend time getting to the part they're stuck at only to have a brief glimpse of what's next and try to work it out on the fly. I think one solution would be to allow you to pan through the entire level before clicking to start (similar to the binoculars from Celeste).
- The timing of the falling asteroids isn't consistent between deaths and since the timing is somewhat tight it's easy to waste retries that way. If the timing of the asteroids were reset on each death that would help.
- I spent quite a while on the first bit of the level before realizing that I didn't even need one of the orbits and later on in the level I found another orbit I didn't need. I think it'd be useful to remove those so it's easier to understand what the intended solution is.
- Finally, one thought in general is that a faint circle indicating your current trajectory would be immensely helpful, especially given that the hitbox isn't smaller than it looks and it can be frustrating to die when you're off by just a little bit.
Hopefully the above thoughts are helpful. I did really enjoy the game overall and think that a lot more creative levels can be done with this mechanic!
Submitted
RayvolutionHi kcaze! Thanks for the kind words and the most valuable insight and feedback. The last level is definitely a lot more challenging than the others.
- panning on level start is a great suggestion. I tried a few camera styles and it was difficult for me to find the right compromise.
- I thought different timings could create more interesting dynamics, but I get what you say. The game probably ended up being more about execution of a plan than adapting real time to situations. I thought it'd be ok because if you switch fast enough between two nodes, you can basically "stand still" and wait out a better window of opportunity, but I am unsure whether that can be good design.
- theoretically it's possible to move anywhere just by bouncing between two nodes, so I often added extra "comfort" nodes so that the player can have something close to do some quick switching. Those might have ended up just being confusing though. Or being placed in positions where they don't really help or give any comfort.
- orbit circle is a great QoL improvement that I also thought of. I cut it out because I was late on the deadline and couldn't figure out how to do it in a quick without refactoring too much. I found a method as I type, but I couldn't somehow yesterday.
The level design took around 4h so it's not very refined. It came out organically while exploring the design space for the game. The initial pitch was to use this mechanic to create some golf game where you had limited switches, but while playing around with it I settled with this because it felt ok fun. Some discarded mechanics because I am a lazy dev and a minimalist "less is more" guy:
- key pickups which unlock doors/obstacles: wouldn't have changed the game experience much as it would still be "going places with non conventional movement system"
- pickup which detaches you from your orbit and throws you along your current tangent as you pick it up. This could probably be interesting, but I was too short on time to add it. It would have also required additional level design.
- limited use nodes (nodes you can attach to a limited amount of times). Would have made it more of a puzzle and also more of a headache for me to design levels.
Sorry for the long reply and thanks again for playing the game. I would love to hear some of your level design ideas, should you have time for it.
Regarding timings to create interesting dynamics, I think this could work as a more real time / action based game but because the mechanic is so unique, it's difficult to intuitively control. Perhaps some sort of slowdown effect for 1-2 seconds upon switching would help give the player more time to react and think about their next move.
For the comfort nodes, I think if you're sufficiently skilled you should be able to use them to weave through the asteroids. In my playthrough I just ended up trying to find a consistent strategy though since I found executing in real time and adapting to situations to be pretty difficult.
I think the level design is very good for 4 hours worth of work! They seemed well thought out and had a good learning curve. I think the aspect I liked most is that with just two nodes you can grow and shrink your radius arbitrarily, so maybe a level with just two nodes that requires growing and then shrinking would be a good follow up to the 5th level.
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