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Time for the Next Planet's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Jam Theme | #33 | 3.643 | 3.643 |
| Audio | #39 | 2.929 | 2.929 |
| Gameplay (Fun Factor) | #49 | 2.857 | 2.857 |
| Overall | #49 | 3.014 | 3.014 |
| Crafting Mechanics | #55 | 2.929 | 2.929 |
| Graphics | #69 | 2.714 | 2.714 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Which theme was used for the game, and in what way?
Expire - Timer counts down and kills you, Alien - you travel from planet to planet fighting aliens along the way, your also an alien btw
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Comments
I like how the dial inventory , health, and stamina looks
but the inventory to me is hard to use for some reason, I guess because it hides after awhile when I don't use it.
or maybe because of how it looked. first I thought because of how the inventory looked, maybe the game supports the controller. most PC games have "bar type" UI and it matches with keyboard layout really well but the circle doesn't.
And crafting needs some guides. I made both bronze+++ hammer and sword( kind of disappointed after I found out that it doesn't cut spider webs) and it was complete guesswork. it could be fun, but when you have to run between all the benches back and forth just to figure out what I can do with my items within the time limit that instantly kills you was frustrating.
Overall the game looked, sounds pretty good. It just has some flaws that I didn't like in my opinion.
Nice job!
Thank you! I made the inventory hide after a bit because it would be hard to tell if your interacting with anything if it stayed around you all the time. As for your analogy with ui and controls, yes I can see why the controls would be confusing. I wanted to add controller support but I ran out of time for the jam. As for the ui of "bar type" vs "circle type", I wanted my game to have a little flair of difference since "bar type" seemed to be all over the place. But I guess it maybe one of those cases for "ain't broke, don't fix" kind of situations.
As for the crafting, it does need more work but I'm glad you managed to get the strongest tools in the game. I am thinking of adding a small tutorial to explain key components of the game and to give the player some knowledge on how to approach crafting with the different benches (Furnaces are always ingots/alloys, Anvils are always weapons/weapon parts, Ovens are always food, and Crafting Benches are always miscellaneous items). Also, I designed the webs to be destroyed by another item (so that item had more purposes), the swords just make cutting trees easier.
I could easily implement a ui change feature to allow the game to change how it displays the inventory. Though I'll probably play around with the game's development a bit before hand, since I do plan on expanding on this game. Thank you for your time, have a nice and safe day!
Very nice-looking game! I dig the circular inventory :). The multiple soundtracks with the combination of new colors made the game feel fresh on each planet :). The character controls quite well (sometimes I wanted to use arrow keys though :D), I definitely like the ability to sprint. The game window is a bit small, which is cool :), but I'm used to fullscreen ;).
I found it hard to craft. I think it has to do with the game having a lot of different "tables" (each with their own recipes). Since you loose almost everything each time you die, it is tough to experiment and find new recipes.
The enemies, while fun to try to dodge them :D, were pretty unforgiving. With practicly no indication they're going to attack and the ability to jump at you from offscreen, they felt a bit unfair.
And for the upgrade system, it has suprisingly many levels of depth: you have to collect XP to then level up to get skill points to actually upgrade. I think it could use some simplification - especially since the upgrades don't share the skill points, so there is no real choice - you just have to come in and upgrade (so this could be automatic?).
But hey, it's a very nice game :). From the encyklopedia I can see there is a lot of depth to the game! There is a ton of content everywhere you look, from the planet variety to things to craft. Big thumbs up for that! And generally, well done :)!
Thank you! I always appreciate feedback, weather its positive or negative. I forget what button allows fullscreen (Gamemaker's default buttons) but I can add an option for fullscreen in game for the next update.
As for the crafting, I was thinking of implementing a system to allow you to analyze objects which would fill in recipe slots in the encyclopedia to give the player more clues on what could be crafted with. I suppose unless you "know" what recipe to go after, it does have a difficulty curve.
I tried giving enemies a visual indicator which would be them shaking, followed by an attack. The plant also changes to a brighter green when readying to spit. I do need to work on the enemy AI some more, maybe add a bit more visual flare to their attack. The spaceships were already a pain to try and code properly (before they'd just stop right in front of you without hitting, which was kinda boring). As for off screen "sucker-punches" such as walking into the next room, I could improve the check for the AI to not attack you until your IN that room. You are correct that it is unfair to be smacked by a ufo or burned by acid before entering a room.
I'm thinking of redoing the menu as an interactive menu that you can hop over to your skill computer* when it gives you an alert. (*Not necessarily a computer, but something perhaps?). Skills have 2 purposes. One is their level benefit which health skill (hard to ever notice) will increase your max health and survival (easier to notice) will increase your time. The second is the skill points benefit which (for the jam there was only 1 option, but I may add more options) health skill would increase bonus time when jumping planets and survival is adding more inventory slots after death. I may redesign it so player jump times are also a Survival skill, and then add skills like food gives health bonus and somethin else for the Health skill. But I do see your point about automatic upgrading. If that would be the case a small countdown thing would say "your X levels away from this bonus" rather than "come here to buy my wares!"
In late development I thought of a way to decrease the number of items I had to make since a lot of them were just grade variants, so the next update may have a few less items in the encyclopedia since I'd be rewriting it to say how to generally craft that item, but using better versions of the ingredients will make a better quality item. I hope you come check the game out once I get a juicy update released.
Thank you for your time, have a nice and safe day!
Nice submission, I made quite some time to understand that there are different kind of craft-bench with different recipes. The overall experiment is very great and we see the work behind with the different planets, replayability.
Great job !
Thank you, when I come back to update this, I plan to make the planets more diverse from one another and to improve the style of it a little more. Was it a little confusing with the craft bench system? I'll try to give them more of a unique style around them so they stand apart from one another when runnin' about. Thank you for your time, have a nice and safe day!
The style is great, the problem is that I first saw only one craft bench, so for me it was the only one in the game. I think the styles are enough different, maybe just pop the name of the object when you are close to interact or something like this
Your game was fantastic :) I love games where theres some depth and exploration. I spent quite a while studying how everything was put together.
Thank you! I hope to expand on this shortly after the jam, so many ideas went through my head on night one that only the key parts got into this. I'll also see about refining the enemies and world generation more as well :3
Thank you, the timer mechanic was for the expiration theme. Though I think my execution of "explore more, get more time" was a nice counterbalance to the shortness it gave.
I loved this inventory system! The game makes you run across the map for resources and you still need to escape from the aliens! it's quite fun, but I thought you put a lot of inputs and I was a little confused, especially at the beginning. And when I open the credits the game closes: c
Anyway, for a game made for a jam it's pretty cool. One feedback I can give you is to try to reduce the number of inputs and make a more visual explanation of the game.
Good job!
Thank you! The “credits = quit” is a bug because I failed to get all the code indexed correctly when I added the options since I wanted to give folks the option to turn off my lousy music (That I made). Because of this a second bug is present since “quit” doesn’t do anything. I temporarily have the credits on the game’s page until I can fix that, thank you for bringing this to my attention.
And as for inputs, I could of gone a lil overboard. But I felt I was hitting all my bases for “a” standard craft game with movement, sprint, item interact/use, item drop, pause (encyclopedia/progression check), and inventory select + inventory shortcuts. (Yeah, that could be a lot) I hoped I implemented the bow & arrow mechanic well enough that if you forgot what button reload was, it would automatically load with some arrows. I also intentionally forgone mouse input since I thought I might of had time for controller input. How helpful was the “how to play” since I tried writing it along side development to help remember key info about the game’s play loop.
How would you cut back on the number of inputs? I could see the inventory select buttons [1-8] are pretty close to ignored. And what example(s) of visual explanation do you mean? I did think about a tutorial level that would help you get familiar with the controls, but time didn’t permit. (Tutorial would of taken place on a ship which once complete you could choose to beam down to a planet to start play, or interact with a window to go back to the menu). I’m just drawing a blank on how to provide visual feedback (since I was executing a bit of other visual feedback with rocks and trees shaking, items slide when dropped, inventory would fade + expand/shrink when doing something with it) since I was trying to go for a minimal UI that kept all the player’s information relative to them.
Thank you again for the feedback, I always love receiving it :3
In fact, it doesn’t have many inputs, but maybe what I’ve missed is showing up on the screen.
In this case, on the first screen of the game, you could put the inputs to move on the floor, and the first time you appear to interact, "space" appears and so on. I wanted to implement something like that on my game, but didn't have time to and this is what I intended for visual explanation, literally appears on screen.
On the HUD, If it were with the mouse it would be more intuitive to interact with, cause I tested it with the mouse first, then I went to the arrows and in the end I tried WASD hehe
As you said the 1-8 of the inventory can be removed since it is even difficult to know where each slot is because it is a circle, leaving only in rotation with "QE" one more interesting challenge.
Great job! I like the dungeon crawler feel it has while also feeling open world at the same time. Nicely done!
Thank you! It felt odd calling it a dungeon crawler when there was no dungeon, but what else could ya call it? :3
This game was honestly a lot more in depth than it initially looks, nicely done! The music was well fitting even if it was a bit on the simple side.
I like the fact that you managed to incorporate both themes! The items were certainly interesting especially design wise but they do fit. I hope there will be more added onto this later on, would love to see how it could evolve!
All in all it was certainly and interesting experience, nicely done, :D!
Thank you! I do aim to add complexity to my games if I get the right inspiration (this is my 5th jam, and I've made ~15+ games though not all are listed here). The nth Tilecraft is another "looks simple, but has depth" game I made (my first game jam game for JamCraft 3). I was having the worst time finding music so I hashed these out in under 10-20mins (not counting learning how to use LMMS and tried making instruments I would like).
My goal for game jams is to try and incorporate as many of the restrictions and requirements as possible since a great idea could come out of it. It doesn't always happen (My JamCraft 4 submission 2119 Simulator) but there's a chance. For the items, quite a few are just recolors, though when I revisit it I'll probably give them a proper sprite. As for what I could add to it, let me tell you that night 1 of the jam was hell on my brain since it just wouldn't turn off, so I have a document of probably 200+ items/crafting recipes and other various ideas.
Some designs in the game I should mention were lately made and I admit were not fully made with as much care as I would have liked to of given it. The player for instance was the very last sprite to be made XP The tree was done pretty quickly since you could probably tell it's design borrows from The nth Tilecraft's trees. I would have liked to make different trees for the different worlds (A cactus palm tree for Yellow, and a coral kelp tree for blue) just to give a feel of diversity. The flying enemy was also suppose to be a bird, but I was like "What can I make quickly but is consistent with angle" and which explains why it drops bones and feathers. I was hoping too of had enough time to make 1-2 more enemies, but ya know how jams go. :) I should really make a post-jam devlog instead of rambling here.
Thank you for your time and kind words, have a nice and safe day!