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A jam submission

Starship ManagerView game page

Command your fleet in this simple RTS!
Submitted by Games By Derek — 30 minutes, 11 seconds before the deadline
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Starship Manager's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#23.2503.250
Visuals#63.2503.250
Overall#72.7752.775
Fun#82.3752.375
Completeness#82.5002.500
Audio#102.5002.500

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I'm not going to lie, I haven't played an educational math-based game since MathRacer on Flash game sites or even the Jumpstart on PC (shoutouts if you know that series). As Brad mentioned, the presentation of the idea is done well! Unique mechanics are iconic to your style of game design!

  • The idea for the gameplay loop is there, but it could have been iterated on and polished more!  
    • The game could have been a bit more enjoyable if there was a slight change: having a constant stream of enemies or having the enemy mothership more protected/defended! 
    • There is nothing stopping the player from skipping upgrades (and skipping the core-math mechanic presentation) and going straight to the mothership, if anything, you're a bit too powerful at the start for that
  • Otherwise, the art is well done and honestly reminds me of those 80s space-genre games (mostly because of the pixel square-shaped stars, honestly, but everything fits together)!
  • If anything, catching the infinite-math bug hampered this game quite a bit; I believe there should be some kind of indicator to how many problems the player should complete per upgrade station-clarity for the player is never detrimental in these kinds of games.

In all, just like this game, I do really enjoy the style and unique mechanics you put into your games! 

Developer

Thank you very much for the helpful and organized feedback! I'll be releasing a post-jam update by the end of the week fixing bugs and addressing criticisms/suggestions from everyone. I'm glad you enjoy the mechanics!

(+1)

Seems like a pretty good start for an RTS game! Commanding units feels pretty smooth and I like the concept of two different teams/sides battling over resources/terminals scattered around the map.  

Developer

Thank you! I'm glad you liked that.

Submitted(+1)

I like the idea and I think the game has a good presentation, but there are some issues that stop the game from being enjoyed the way I think you wanted it to be.

Starting with the art I think everything looks good and fits together well. The particles are a good edition that make things feel more alive (although I think the smoke behind the ships feels a bit too big). The title screen is very clean and gives a great first impression to the player. My only real issue with the art is all the default Unity UI. It doesn't really fit with the rest of your art and gives off "placeholder" vibes (It only takes a second to draw a custom white box with a black outline). As a final note, I think the numbers on the ships were a good idea but they cover up the art a bit to much.

Next I want to go over the audio. I think you picked a very fitting song for both the title and game sections, although the scene swap when hitting start game is quite jarring. I would suggest adding a fade to black and having the audio fade between the songs for a much cleaner feel. In regards to sound effects, I only noticed the ones when ships move and the upgrade is ready. Its a good start to giving the game some life, and I noticed it does get louder or quieter as you move the camera closer/farther which is a nice detail. My only suggestion would be to add more sound effects to things like shooting, terminals opening, buttons being pressed, etc.

Last I want to go into the actual gameplay. Like I said before the concept isn't bad, but due to some issues I don't think the game is the experience you wanted it to be. There are a few bugs but you already mentioned them on the itch page so I won't go over them here. First off, The game has a lot of controls and none of them are listed in the game (unless you count the numbers on the ships). I know they are on the itch page, but I strongly suggest you don't rely on that. If you don't have time for a proper tutorial, I would say even throwing them on the bottom of the screen as a static UI element is better than nothing.  

Next, I think the main concept behind your game is ruined by the fact that it is completely optional. From what I can tell the best way to win is to just attack the enemy ships on game start, ignoring the upgrades. I think a solution to this would have been to make ships respawn, and make winning only happen when you destroy the big red ship. Then maybe give the red ship its own guns to protect itself so that you need to upgrade a bit to actually take it down (this is just one idea to make the main mechanic more necessary, but I'm sure there's many ways you could have done it).

Overall the game is still interesting to mess around with for a bit, and I'm sure with more time many of the critiques mentioned above would have been fixed. I'm glad to see you tried something new, and you've improved a lot since the first games I saw from you. I apologize if this review was a bit much, but I'm doing this to all the games from this jam as I think critiques help us grow.

Developer

Thank you very much for the detailed feedback! I will use it and do my best to iterate on the game to make an enjoyable simple RTS that requires a bit more strategy to beat. I definitely ran out of time with this game since I planned it out with an expectation of about 35 hours to work on it and ended up spending only 23 hours around the New Year holidays (and 3 dnd sessions) this week.

Submitted(+1)

I can personally say I've never commanded a fleet and upgraded them by doing math problems until today. The game was easy to get into and the gameplay was smooth. I think some audio and some UI changes would help the experience.

Developer

Thank you very much for the feedback! As I have done for both my previous ISU jam submissions, I plan on releasing a post-jam update addressing any criticisms/suggestions as well as fixing bugs. I definitely will be adding more audio and making custom UI designs!