I'm so happy you like the shaders; they took a while to get just right – I'm planning on releasing the shaders because as far as I can tell, they do a few things more effectively and efficiently than anything else out there~ (If you're interested, it's actually a post effect that I also want to reimplement as a surface shader at some point, to allow different objects to have different palettes – sticking to the four-colours-per-ditherpattern, though :)

I hadn't even considered stuff to interact with in the ship while it's travelling, that's such a great idea – it actually currently has to be slow because everything gets loaded in the background while you travel and it barely loads in time; sometimes, if you go from one planet to a different one that's really close by, you can actually see it load in the surface!

I would've liked for every single planet type to have artifacts/souvenirs as well, and I was toying around with the idea of the probe sending back a "postcard" of sorts from the surface of each planet~

Thank you for your kind words~ they really make me happy and keep the developer in me wanting to make more :3

Aww, thank you for your sweet words~

I think a simple WASD + more stuff to interact with while flying would be welcome additions, but it was kinda fun to be restricted to only using the mouse – helped me avoid needless "interact/jump/whatever" verbs that wouldn't have added anything to the game :)

Phew, I'm happy it works on mac~

There is no end goal because I couldn't come up with a meaningful one other than like self-decided goals of discovering all planet types or gathering all artifacts – it's a very samey game, really. Maybe the game could open up more or like have an end-game-dialogue after the four artifacts but still let you continue exploring?

I've actually thought of letting people name undiscovered planets and stars (because the galaxy is deterministic, actually) and maybe have some ranks or something based on that? Also allowing people to visit the surfaces and take "photos" that could be attached as "postcards from the edge" to a central database thingie… I've actually had a lot of ideas, but 72 hours is not a lot :p

I'm really happy you like the scientific aspect, I have plans to add much more of that – fun fact: the star types are distributed almost exactly like in our own galaxy, and the apparent magnitude/visibility of stars is accurate to 7 decimal places :D there's a lot of scientific accuracy to build on, really…

I'll definitely have to check out the nasa website and see if I can't make something like "space engine but with a purpose" or something. Really happy to hear you enjoyed it and want more – I have plans!

Yeah, it actually gets really slow to play – once you've visited a few planets the travel time is a bit dull because nothing happens I guess?

I'm sooo happy you like the half-sorta-progression displays I added, they were a last-few-hours addition to sort of give a sense of "getting somewhere" and how much to expect from the game. And also happy that you think the game is good :3

Your comment means a lot to me, I was really scared submitting because this is the first game jam I've ever entered, but the feedback is so great~

Hah, it was actually meant to be a chiptune/gameboy-like sound (to go with the lo-fi art style), but I can totally hear now how it's more like slot machines and now it annoys me a bit too :p

Anyway, your comment really means a lot to me – this is my first jam, I watched you stream my game and the feedback is invaluable! Thank you!

So happy you enjoyed the game!

And yeah, I agree with Solroo too :p

I'm not sure how to make intuitive first person controls using only the mouse, but honestly the gameplay is simple enough that a smaller spaceship with the player fixed in the middle (like in a capsule) could've worked without having separate move and look controls – it's not like moving around the "spaceship" actually does anything~

Anyway, thank you for playing my game, it really means a lot to me~!