Welcome! This is a recorded training message for new commanders! This message will only play in case of an extinction-level event. Maybe climate change was real after all, mh?
Our beloved home planet is slowly running out of resources, and people are in need for a charismatic leader (that's you!)
Population grows constantly, and consumes resources. The more you have, the more it consumes.
Feed your people by building mines. But remember that planets have limited resources. Your homeland will eventually be exhausted by your own avarice, and soon you will look into the stars for a new home to cherish.
Send enthusiastic volunteers to unexpectedly hostile planets! And maybe food too.
Dispatching your resources and population efficiently among planets is the key to survival.
But here is the thing: only your remaining resources at the end will count for your final score!
So, will you feed people with the resources that will count for your final score?
Or will you accept the starvation of billions of virtual human beings just to show the world who is the best at this stupid game?
Quite an interesting simulation you've created. The balancing is done well and requires to wait for enough resources to be able to colonize - although waiting too long and your population over-breeds.
As for execution, I did like audio and graphics in the game. It suits the game well.
I was missing some button to execute people for resources, it would make the game a lot darker and allow you to get back after you get beyond point of no return. And yes, I've put whole race into oblivion in just 6 minutes!
The game overall is pritty good. It did annoy me that when you zoom out, you still cannot see the planet names, so it is difficult to know what planet is what. It also doesn't help that on the left side the planet list is not sorted form close to the center to far away...
The game is also really hard, i was not able to have any points at the end despite trying twice.
The music is cool and the game is close to the theme witch I always like to see :)
Thank you all for your feedback, it is much appreciated :) Your ideas and critics are really important to us.
@zgragselus Actually, one of the dev team members has invented the so called "trash planet" technique to store population, which works great with the current version of the game to earn more ressources ;)
okay... just tell me how did you managed to balanced it in few days without having any kind of visible exploits in design? Fantastic work! I really had fun playing it! I like graphics and attention to detail! :)
Big fan of space colonization! UI was a little overwhelming at first but went fluid soon after. Gameplay is really solid had a fun time playing this simulation game. Great work guys!
Really cool space game with a hidden message :) Have you thought about letting the ships cost a bit of resources to build? that would maybe prevent people from sending all people to a barren rock to reduce the cost...
@merlin Thanks for you feed-back :) we’ve actually thought about it. Unfortunately, regarding the time we had to finish the game and to make an interesting and well balanced gameplay, we finally chose not to implement it in the Jam version. We’re thinking about a more elaborated ship travel system for next updates.
This game really shows the benefits of having a dedicated game designer. Everything is exceptionally well balanced and the game is very fun to play because of it. It also looks and sounds great. Fantastic work guys :)
So... It looks good, the concept is sound. The whole game is basically a series of UI, and it feels like the UI hinders more than it helps your mission. For example, the planets on the left doesn't map in any meaningful way to the planets shown to the right (if it is I couldn't see the relationship) and that makes finding planets a pain. Then the interface has three focuses - the centre, the left and the right, and doing anything requires you to move from the left to the right and back again, etc. The drop downs don't meaningfully map to the planets at all - if I want to send ships to a close by planet - see the planet that's close, find its name, check on the left how much resource there is, go to the right, hit the drop down and look for the name... It's all very cumbersome.
If the UI can be more refined to present relevant information where the player needs them most, and issue commands easier (e.g. hover over a planet to see commands, click send and drag, or click send x times then click destination... It might not be perfect and there might be other problems but I just spitballed that), then playing the game wouldn't feel like that much a problem.
The UI problems are especially pronounced because it's a race against time game, and knowing what I want to do and it taking so long to parse and execute feels like an artificial barrier. It's like giving someone a rubics cube, and telling them they could only solve it with one hand. It's much harder, but the difficulty isn't the mental or skill challenge but the execution.
It feels like a clicker with really complicated controls. It has potential, but the UI needs much improvement!
Brilliant game, very fun and unique. Music did get a little repetitive and when you had selected a planet scrolling with the mouse was ineffective, overall though: Fantastic
Me playing Space Dominator: Starting game, pressing space to go through the introduction, "You have 600 light years to decide the fate of your people", me: They know that light years describe a distance and not time, right? :rolling_eyes:
@tuism Thanks a lot for having taken the time to write such a feedback. We're gonna take your comments in consideration for the future of the game, it is really important to us. None of us are UI specialists, and it's truly meaningful to get that kind of objective comments ! :) We actually rebuilt the whole UI 3 hours before the end of the jam to get something more closer to what a player would call a "comfortable UI", but we're aware that there are still many problems.
@robert-collings Thanks ! The scrolling has already been fixed. The music is, indeed, a bit repetitive, but we're planning to add more of them in the future :)
@the-triumvirate We actually know it :D we were supposed to change it before posting the game, but you know how it goes, you always have so many things to do in the final hours of the jam that you forget the half of them.
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As for execution, I did like audio and graphics in the game. It suits the game well.
I was missing some button to execute people for resources, it would make the game a lot darker and allow you to get back after you get beyond point of no return. And yes, I've put whole race into oblivion in just 6 minutes!
The game is also really hard, i was not able to have any points at the end despite trying twice.
The music is cool and the game is close to the theme witch I always like to see :)
Good job though. Keep it up!
@zgragselus Actually, one of the dev team members has invented the so called "trash planet" technique to store population, which works great with the current version of the game to earn more ressources ;)
Fantastic work! I really had fun playing it! I like graphics and attention to detail! :)
Thank you all for your feedback !
Great job ^^
Little tutorial to that (at first glance) overwhelming UI would be nice though :)
Have you thought about letting the ships cost a bit of resources to build? that would maybe prevent people from sending all people to a barren rock to reduce the cost...
UI is a bit big, I think. But this simple mechanic works well...
Thank you all for your feedback, we're taking each of your comments into consideration !
If the UI can be more refined to present relevant information where the player needs them most, and issue commands easier (e.g. hover over a planet to see commands, click send and drag, or click send x times then click destination... It might not be perfect and there might be other problems but I just spitballed that), then playing the game wouldn't feel like that much a problem.
The UI problems are especially pronounced because it's a race against time game, and knowing what I want to do and it taking so long to parse and execute feels like an artificial barrier. It's like giving someone a rubics cube, and telling them they could only solve it with one hand. It's much harder, but the difficulty isn't the mental or skill challenge but the execution.
It feels like a clicker with really complicated controls. It has potential, but the UI needs much improvement!
@robert-collings Thanks ! The scrolling has already been fixed. The music is, indeed, a bit repetitive, but we're planning to add more of them in the future :)
@the-triumvirate We actually know it :D we were supposed to change it before posting the game, but you know how it goes, you always have so many things to do in the final hours of the jam that you forget the half of them.