It's a really fun concept and I love the theming! The game actually has surprising a lot of strategic elements since you can stack a lot of passengers all at once and then choose when to bail out of a request. It's fun to try and find the best route to pick up as many passengers along the way to a destination!
The controls are fine in high-speed sections but VERY very wonky in low speed! Turning the ship is way too sensitive when the ship is slow, which makes it really difficult to control. But in high speed the ship controls just fine! I also like that the higher you go the more dangerous it is. I got one-shotted by a gear when flying straight up since a passenger wanted me to go full speed! It's quite fun to play and balance the risk of whether doing the request is worth it..
I like the obstacle arrows, but to me it isn't sufficient to actually dodge anything when going fast. I think the arrow shouldn't be based on distance but rather based on time-to-collision, (eg. show arrows on obstacles that the player will collide with soon, scaling the detection radius with player speed). This would make the game a lot more fair to me, since then it'd actually be a test of skill to dodge the obstacles while going fast!
[Unless of course if the detection is already based on time-to-collision and I just never noticed the arrows while going fast. It could just be a skill issue!]*
I like the UI as well, it's a very creative way to display information instead of just slapping text elements, love the dials! You could fix the issue about obstacles by adding a radar / marker on the Map, it'd be an interesting approach.
Still I like the theming a lot and it fits well with the jam's theme too and the gameplay loop is awesome!
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WOW thank you so much for playing and all the fantastic feedback!!
Its really good to know that about the controls I think that was one aspect that because we the dev's played it so much while making the game we or at least I did not see the issue. I am the art person so I dont know the backed too much but from what I do know the ship kind of uses two flight modes one for gliding at high speeds and one for normal movement at slow speeds the idea was that at high speeds turning would be hard but at low speeds it would be easy hence incentivizing slowing down and also to help with the problem of flying into obstacles at full speed but I think at high speeds you can turn better and at low speeds you turn too fast and also gravity is fighting you.
The idea for the obstacle indicators was also great another person had a problem of thinking the arrows were pointing towards the drop off points for a bit and ended up crashing a lot so your suggestion was great because it solves a few issues at once!
The UI is just a result of my weaknesses because I suck at 2D things but I have around 5000 hours in blender so if I can make something in 3D it is easier for me. We also had the idea at some point to make the dials show indicators on them for what range you need to be in for the passenger requests because the initial design was about balancing looking at the HUD and the screen like detracted driving lol but you probably know how it is during a jam you get done what you get done and you have to make the most of it so some of that stuff got cut but I am glad people are still enjoying it and and the dials.