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A jam submission

Chain ReactionView game page

Don't let the reactor spiral out of control!
Submitted by MichaelBer — 34 minutes, 50 seconds before the deadline
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Chain Reaction's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#3683.9043.904
Presentation#21522.9812.981
Overall#22952.8082.808
Fun#29312.4622.462

Ranked from 52 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
Chain reaction is all about not letting a nuclear reaction spiral out of control.

Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?

Yes

We created all art during the game jam

Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?

No

We used pre-existing audio

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Comments

Viewing comments 28 to 9 of 28 · Next page · Last page
Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Well, first of all, I can't say it's not original. While most of participants were fiddling with taking away control over player in their games, you built a damn reactor and put the player inside it. I dig this idea. Is it fun though? I wouldn't say so, sadly. Seems like it got lost somewhere between a clever "8 ball pool-like" take and more serious simulation game, it just doesn't fit and feel right in any category. And the controls doesn't help - especially if you're on a laptop, playing with a touchpad :P Nevertheless, there's a lot of great work put into this, congrats on finishing on time! :)

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention - you're hiding the mouse cursor and not showing it in the ingame menu, making it pretty unusable.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!
I would say the closest genre this game fits is "flight sim" because that's what I loosely based my control scheme off of. It's definitely rough around the edges and needs more polish to be functional in a way that is intuitive to pick up and play. Unfortunately I don't think that will be very easy to do with a mouse track pad. That could be a really interesting design challenge though!

Submitted(+1)

very cool and unique game, taking a real world concept and immersing the player in the experience! great job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Very original take on the theme! I'm surprised I haven't come across more games about nuclear fission. Really cool concept!

Developer

Thank you for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

This game puts you right into the action, I like it. felt like I was in science class again!  This one of the more unique games I've played, liked everything about it once I got a handle on the controls! 

Developer

Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+1)

Going to be controversial here and say I think that the controls are absolutely fine. I think they are just different from the norm, which isn't necessarily bad, just different. After playing for 10 minutes it was pretty natural, the only thing I found difficult sometimes was collecting the coolant as the speed was a little too fast to line up with it correctly.

I mentioned in another comment that the way the coolant works prevented me from completing the game for a while, as I had assumed that any neutron (rather than just my own) passing through the clouds would reduce the temperature. Once I noticed this, I was able to get to the end.

With those two points out of the way; I think this is my favourite game of the jam that I've played so far! I love how it puts you right in the middle of the simulation and allows you to influence it from the inside as well as the outside. I also think it's brilliant how all the particles are simulated and that lowering control rods into the reactor doesn't just adjust some weighting in the background, you can actually see the rods lower into the chamber and see that more particles bash into it. Awesome job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm really glad you enjoyed my game so much. I spent a lot of time tuning the simulation to get it to behave the way that it does and I'm so pleased that you enjoyed interacting with it!
When I first put together the controls and tested them they were difficult for me to handle and I had every intention of fixing them, but after a couple of tries I too found it very natural. I still intend to clean them up and allow for some customization to help players get over that initial hump of the difficulty curve (well, cliff in this case).
I wanted the coolant to give the player indirect control over the reaction, but I hadn't considered making other neutrons interact with it. Currently, neutrons that are not under the player's control move at a constant speed, while the player's neutron increases in velocity (until they go through cool water). There's no reason that I couldn't treat other neutrons the same way, it would also probably add to the chaos of the simulation if neutrons were speeding up!

Submitted

Oh I didn't actually realise that the neutron slows down when it goes through the cloud, I was mainly focusing on the effect on the reactor temperature (since this was what ended my game in most instances). Perhaps I misunderstood how the temperature works, is it tied to the velocity of the active neutron?

Developer

The neutron's velocity is separate from overall temperature, but going through the cool water will reduce both.

Submitted

The controls were a bit difficult to manage, but after a while, I got used to it, and the game was pretty fun. My only nitpick is that starting at a point where you are facing the wall sometimes took me out of the zone a bit.

Developer

Thanks for giving it a shot!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked this mouse movement, and the theme was really cool! I really liked all of the complexity and moving parts. Good work

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked  the unique idea of the game! It took some time to get used to the controls but once I got it I had a blast ;) Well done!

Developer

Thanks for giving it a shot!

Submitted(+1)

Really cool concept, but I also had some hard time getting used to the controls. Once it's out of the list, it's really good to play. Well done!

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game, concept is really unique, at first i thought it's chain reaction from android but glad it's different

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

I had to get used to the controls first before worrying about anything about what the UI meant and I found that avoiding moving the mouse left to right was the easiest way to move. But after getting the hang of it, it was really fun to move around and that's what kept me playing to figure out the meter management. It was all quite overwhelming at first but really fun!

Developer

Thank you so much for playing! I know the controls are really rough, so thank you for taking the time to work through them!

Submitted(+1)

Really cool concept, great execution of the being out of your control idea. Neat that it was REALLY about changing the environment that all the actors were in and it didn't ultra matter that you were specifically just controlling one of them as it did it's thing.

I found it pretty hard to control but that was ultimately part of the challenge of the game and I love a game with a unique control scheme that's hard to learn. Cool!

Developer

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

The controls seems really unintuitive. I would probably either swap the Yaw and Roll controls or put Pitch on the keyboard. The idea is clever, but the controls let it down for me.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

The idea is great, but the game is a little rough around the edges. I exploded twice without entirely understanding why. I liked how the reactor became more and more crowded the more power you generated.

Developer

Thanks for giving it a shot!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Okay, first of it starts with an overwhelming guide. I think it should really be changed to explaining it in-game one way or another. That way it would be a lot easier to take.

Next up, gameplay: The gameplay has so much potential, but the controls are just bad. I understand it might be meant to feel less in control, but making the Mouse X the roll instead of the yaw is just annoying. Although, the main concept is really good, managing the power to stay in the sweet spot, it really does feel like I'm operating a Nuclear Power Plant, and am trying to be in control, whilst that is impossible.
But then the heat gauge messes me up. It's already hard enough to manage - especially with such strange controls -, but the rising temperature is nearly impossible to deal with. I thought at first that one ice-thingy would cool down the gauge by half, or so; but no, it cools it down by a barely noticeable amount.

Also, when the game over screen shows up, the mouse cursor doesn't, which makes it a huge pain it the butt to restart.

Overall, this game has a lot of potential, and would love to play it after the jam, when these get fixed/changed. However these really make the game not that fun to play.

Developer

Thank you so much for all of your feedback! I think most of the problems people are having definitely stem from the poor flight controls. I'll be honest, it never occurred to me to control roll with the keys and yaw with mouseX. I'll certainly be doing some experimenting with that.
Once I sort all that out I'll do another pass over gameplay and balance. I had plans to implement three difficulties for the game but I ran out of time. There are a couple of bugs (as you can see) that I'd like to clean up too.

Thank you so much for playing my game!

Submitted

I meant that almost every FPS and TPS uses mouse X to control Yaw. And so most of the people are used to that instead.

Also, I would recommend to include a GTA V styled control scheme as well, which uses only buttons. (Left - Roll left; Right - Roll right; Up - Pitch up; Down - Pitch down; A - Yaw left; D - Yaw Right. Or something similar.)

Submitted(+1)

Hey, just weighing in to say I had this same issue, but I found that the heat gauge only goes down if the specific neutron you are controlling goes through it. I had made the assumption that any neutron in the simulation that went through the coolant cloud would decrease the temperature, so maybe you made the same assumption as me.

Submitted

Oh, thank you for letting me know! Now this makes a lot more sense!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Original idea, but very hard to play. Even after insisting and getting used (a little bit) to the controls, I still was far from being able to take care of the energy, watching temperature, etc... as I needed to be fully focused on the navigation.

Making the movement a bit slower and more simple (perhaps without the roll, fully controlled with the mouse, less rods in the room, etc...) could help handling the rest.

Developer

Thank you so much for sticking with it and giving my game a shot! I really appreciate the feedback!

I think when I go back I will be re-thinking the control scheme, as well as giving the player some different control options. I'd also like to implement a tutorial level that helps acclimate the player to controlling the neutrons.

Submitted(+1)

It looks good but I find the control a bit too difficult.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback!

Submitted(+1)

The controls were a little difficult to use, but everything else was good.

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

I had some difficulty on the controllers, but I thing that was the idea of the Jam.. Haha

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+2)

I really like the idea. The controls are a bit too difficult for me to handle while keeping in check everything else. Also had the problems of falling out of the map (through the corners I think) and that the mouse wouldn't work in the menu. 

Developer

Thanks for giving it a shot! I'll have to test the corners for holes, not exactly what you want in a reactor xD

Viewing comments 28 to 9 of 28 · Next page · Last page