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There's Little Space in Space's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Art Style / Visuals | #45 | 2.689 | 2.813 |
| Gameplay / Fun / Engagement | #47 | 2.390 | 2.500 |
| Theme | #49 | 2.630 | 2.750 |
| Overall | #50 | 2.361 | 2.469 |
| Audio / Sound Design | #52 | 1.733 | 1.813 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine / Tools
Raylib in C++ with VScode
How does your game fit the theme?
The player in the game must stay inside a limited area, which is heavily crowded by obstacles.
Anything else you'd like to share about your game or development process?
I only used one of the shapes provided (the sphere). Additionally, i did not use a game engine, and the music was made by me in Garageband during the jam duration
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Comments
Very nice project. I enjoyed the controls, although they can still be improved, and the idea of the game. Art wise the game is a bit lacking, but it's understandable given the strict limitation. about the theme... Weeell I feel like there is a lot of space in space!🤣 The player can move everywhere in a basically infite space, i found myself lost a couple of times, but still.
Overall this game could be expanded into something more polished and interesting. it gets extra points for the dificult things it is trying to do 💯
Well done! 👍👍
not the blood splat on death TT xd
The orbiting mechanic is really cool, must be some impressive physics stuff going on under the hood, congrats on making a game without an engine!! Whipping around the planet at mach speeds feels great and when you get a hang of the controls you're able to get a pretty nice flow state going. The game is wayyy to hard imo thought, I was able to beat the first planet after couple tries but couldn't even come close when other planets joined my orbit. You just move too fast and don't have enough control to navigate through all those obstacles. Maybe a dash button or a temporary shield with a cool down could help mitigate this. The visuals are nice enough if a bit simplistic, I enjoyed the particle trail on the sphere and the starry background. I'm not sure how succesfully the game handles the theme; yes you have to stay in orbit somewhat close to the planet, but on the other hand there's literally an infinite space surrounding that the player can soar off into lol. Overall, I had a fun time with your game and the orbiting mechanic is a really cool foundation. I think a bit more fine tuning of the difficulty curve and controls would help elevate it to the next level. Very impressive stuff making a physics based game with no engine, keep up the good work!!
Thanks for the comment!
The game is harder than I'd have liked it to be, perhaps it should play much slower, or the character could have special abilities like you said. As for the theme, my idea what that although space is infinite, in order to progress, you must stay in the "limited space" near the sun. Overall, I appreciate your feedback. After the jam I'll try to improve upon the game's mechanics, level the difficulty curve by a lot (lots of people said the game was too hard).
I am not sure of what to do or what the goal is. Also sometimes I go too far and beyond, probably infinite so this counter the limited space theme.
Grate job. Nice space game I do not know how this game fit in to limit space
First of all, I want to congratulate you for finishing the game without using a game engine. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been — and also how rewarding it must’ve felt to see something fully built from absolute scratch, especially since engines usually give us so many tools out of the box. I'm sure it was an incredibly valuable learning experience, maybe even a personal challenge. Huge congrats on that!
Now, speaking about the game itself — the core mechanic is really interesting. From what I understood, you're orbiting around a few stars and need to control the ship to avoid collisions, right? But wow, the game is extremely difficult haha.
I couldn't make it past the second star, because I kept losing control too quickly. To pass the first one, I had to basically leave the ship still and let it orbit on its own — any movement I made felt risky enough to ruin all my progress with a single collision.
I was also hesitant to move too much, because once I did, the ship would get launched endlessly into space with no chance of coming back — and there’s no clear indication that this could happen or that returning was even an option. A nice improvement here could be to allow some kind of return mechanic, like having the background loop until you reach the origin point again, or even making the ship shut down and force a game over that takes you back to the main menu.
Given that everything was built completely from scratch, it's totally understandable that there are a few bugs and balance issues. But that in no way takes away from what you’ve accomplished here or the effort you clearly put into it.
So again — congrats on the idea, your execution, and especially the courage to try something so ambitious. Not everyone would take that kind of risk. I wish you lots of success and best of luck moving forward!
I really appreciate all the positive feedback!
The game, I must say, is more difficult than I would have liked it to be, and perhaps a simple tutorial or a less steep difficulty curve between levels would've been nice.
I actually considered the return mechanic you stated- the "pacman effect", where the player loops back to the origin, but I completely forgot to actually implement it. There's another mechanic I did have though, the small yellow dot next to the ship that points towards the star, but it isn't referenced in the controls or anywhere else.
As for the lack of game engine, I mostly did it for the reasons you pointed out. It was a great learning experience, very rewarding, and I personally find it very fun to create a game from scratch.
Once again, thanks so much for playing and reviewing!
I think having sound in browser would be nice since a lot of people don't like to download games per se from itch unless they fully trust the source. I like the look of the game but I flew off from the system and traveled endlessly through the void alone with my thoughts, so 10/10 scary game.
EDIT: I read the comment that said you are supposed to stay near the sun and tried that, more engaging but I felt 1 small error and boom, crash or lost in space. I am curious, how far were you able to get yourself, or is there a trick that it useful?
Sorry for the late reply, was in school.
I couldn't get the sound to work in the browser within the time frame sadly, no idea why.
There's a feature that I added early on but forgot to reference in the controls- next to your spacecraft there are two colored dots. The yellow one points towards the star so you don't get lost, and the red one points to where you're going. Also, since the game in a physically-based sim, knowing how orbits work helps a ton, but i understand that the average player probably won't.
Anyways, thanks for playing!
I don't really understand it. I flew out into space and there's nothing?
you are meant to stay in the space near the sun, hence the correlation with the theme. Truth be told, I should have made that a bit clearer
Oh okay! ^^ No, problem. I thought I was supposed to go out and look for other stars on top and get close to those to unlock them. I haven't seen this concept yet. I'll rate it now.
The game is a little difficult