Skip to main content

On Sale: GamesAssetsToolsTabletopComics
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(+2)

I'm so mixed on this. I love the core of the game and its presentation is lovely. It immediately gives the player an intuition of what an orbit is and how the initial velocity of a body determines its orbit. The first three or so levels are perfect. I like that it basically teaches you to make nice circular orbits as they are the least likely to collide.

But it gets really frustrating quite quickly, once you need to place 3 or more planets. Having them not collide with each other is much, much too hard and punishing. Ironically this game makes space feel claustrophobic: there's hardly any room. Even on the level with no asteroids, just a sun and 3 planets, there isn't really enough space (due to the large size of the planets and limited screen space) to have 3 planets in non-overlapping circular orbits. The biggest issue is that when two of your planets collide, you didn't just fail the new planet but you also broke your original planet. It's like reaching a checkpoint in a platform game only to have the checkpoint deleted because you made a mistake later. I wonder if it would be better to say when two of your planets collide, only the most recently placed one gets destroyed, so you don't ruin your existing planets. Or just add more space. Let planets go off screen by a few hundred pixels before they're destroyed. Or shrink the planets' collision radius so they can graze each other without being destroyed. Let the difficulty of this game be about figuring out orbits, not having to redo work because of a collision.

Another idea would be to show the trajectory before you take a shot, to take the guesswork out of it and make it more about intuitively understanding the mechanics.

I liked the level with many asteriods placed to one side of the sun, so you were forced to create elliptical orbits. I love the harmonies. I love the feeling of having completed three concentric orbits and watching them go around.

(1 edit) (+1)

That is some well thought out feedback, thanks for taking the time to write it all out. 

We’ve definitely considered some of the items you mentioned, and will talk about some of the ideas that are new. All this play testing has been helpful feedback for us to make the experience more enjoyable for any one who picks up the game.  We intend to make changes after the game so we can slowly work everyone up to the higher difficulties while making it feel like the game is playing fair. 

With the time we had and the amount of play testing done, we were happy with what we put out and hope you can take advantage of the skip button to experience more of what the game has to offer. Again, things like shrinking the planets (like in the last level) and a projection of an orbit are things we intend to tweak and hope you come back to try those changes out after the jam :) 

(+1)

Honestly, maybe this is weird to say about a literal mixed review, but we love this comment. Thanks for seeing the potential in our game, it's amazing that you put this level of thought into commenting on it! We do want to take the game further after the jam and give it a proper release. We've started testing out some of the things you're talking about (trajectories, more vertical space) so we can reduce frustration and find the version of this game that feels the best. 

(+2)

Awesome replies. Yeah I totally understand the limited testing possible in a jam. I always comment honestly and hope to give ideas and constructive feedback. I have thought a lot about orbits as I'm building a game about orbital mechanics (not really like this at all but this stuff is always on my mind).

(PS I didn't realize there was a skip button. I might try it just to see what mechanics you had later.)