At first I thought I just needed to complete as many loops around the planet as I could without crashing, but I eventually realised I was supposed to scan the moons, I enjoyed that gameplay more then when I thought it was just about survival.
It did feel really satisfying to be able to sync up with the orbit of a moon an scan them. The time to scan felt pretty good, not 100% sold on the idea of having to scan them multiple times though.
I also liked it when your relative speed didn't match perfectly and you had to fineness it, that added a lot of tension.
Being able to be within the scan-range of multiple moons at once also felt really great! It played right into being able to make some risk / reward choices.
Some critiques I have are:
- The fuel system felt a bit redundant with how quickly it refilled, I understand that there might have been a need to stop the player from spamming inputs, but maybe this could have been solved in a different way.
- It did add some challenge to only be able to change your speed and orbit with incremental steps but I think the gameplay would feel nicer if it allowed you to adjust it more granularly.
- Lastly my biggest issue is the fact is the disconnect between the controls and the orbit system, depending at which state you are in the orbit the controls get inverted, this is what caused me to crash more than anything and it felt more frustrating then challenging. One band-aid solution might be to display some hints of the keys on the sides of the satellite at all times so you can constantly see a reminder that "A" will decrease your orbit.
lastly I thought the music was a good choice.