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A jam submission

Hidden Star (LOWREZJAM 2016)View game page

An in-development low res space exploration/trading/combat initially game created for LOWREZJAM2016
Submitted by Cheeseness (@ValiantCheese), Nemoder — 3 days, 12 hours before the deadline
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Hidden Star (LOWREZJAM 2016)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
64x64 Authenticity (was it truly lowrez?)#2163.7805.000
Overall Enjoyment#2632.0792.750
Overall#2632.5513.375
Aesthetic (sound and visual)#2682.2683.000
Game Feel (playability and control)#2902.0792.750

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(+1)

Great start. I included it in my compilation video series of the Low Rez Jam games, if you would like to take a look :)

Developer

@gl.itch The combat is based on static movement/firing patterns. There's only one in the end of jam snapshot builds. The enemies in that will move up, down, left or right (cycling between those in a clockwise manner), and then use their second action point to fire straight. If you're moving for your second action point, you'll never get hit.

Did you manage to get any terminal output from when it froze? Is it possible that you jumped to the next system successfully, but it was uninhabited and so didn't trigger a comms screen (when this happens, you can just jump to another system)?

Submitted(+1)

Rad! The combat is REALLY hard. (Tried to jump to another star system and it froze, I think.)

Developer

@Gazzapper The end-of-jam snapshot build is playable and lets you jump around a random starmap and do combat.

It might be another month or two before we do another build - I'd like to have initial trading and more solid travel mechanics in before we do that.

Submitted(+1)

Look forward to seeing the playable demo version - looks really nice!

Developer

Ah yes, it's not currently possible to jump ahead and show the full line (something we've got planned, but not something we felt was worth trying to squeeze in in time for the end of the jam when things got tight).

I'd not heard of "Spaceward Ho!" before, but stuff like Gazillionaire and Ports of Call were a bit of an influence for where I'd like to see the trading side of things end up. We've also been playing a little Windward and have found the economy dynamics of that to resonate along similar lines to what we're planning.

Submitted

@Cheeseness ah yes, you're right, the text is skippable. But I cannot skip the scrolling in, ie. if I want to be able to read it, I have to wait for the scroll effect to finish. It would be nice to be able to click that text and have it appear instantly. You know, for us low-attention-span internet gamers. =)

But really, the idea is very nice and it's sad that you didn't get around to implementing more of it for the Jam.

Did you, by any chance, play "Spaceward Ho!" twenty years ago?

Developer

@Longest Egg Games: Thanks for your kind words. We'll be continuing development over time. I'm not sure when we'll get new builds up, but there's already more progress on GitHub.


@shezi: Which text was unskippable? All NPC text is skippable, and the player choices show instantly. You can even click on the main menu options before they appear if you're super impatient.

Submitted(+1)

It's nowhere near finished and that sucks. I want the full version :p

Seriously though, I can't give it a particularly high rating just because it's so unfinished, but it looks really cool and I can't wait to see a more complete version!

Submitted(+1)

It's not finished and you can see that. Also unskippable text. =)

Developer

I popped up Linux, Mac and Windows builds of an end-of-jam snapshot up yesterday. They include a placeholder random starmap for navigation, comms screens with placeholder text for random encounters and the combat mode with one enemy move/shoot pattern.

It's still super rough, but it's nice to have most of the systems we built across the past two weeks together in something that starts to show the kind of thing we'll be aiming for with continued development.

Enjoy! :D

Developer

At this point in time, our downloads are of our planet generation tests rather than the game itself. We're hoping to have game builds up before the end of the jam :)