Asteroidvania

by blubberquark

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.60

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.55

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.34

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.03

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.72

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.75

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.32

Story
-----
You never walk. You always run, and you never stop. Earth was too small for you, so you left for SPACE. You never run out of space in SPAAACE! Or so you thought. Unfortunately, your rocket ran out of fuel and you were stranded on an asteroid until you find some. Prepare for some not-quite-endless running - IN SPAAACE! Yes, not running OUT of space, but IN SPAAACE, I was a bit creative with the theme, sue me!

Gameplay
---------
Explore the asteroid, find Fuel Crystals, collect Power-Ups and light Bonfires. Y'know, basic endless runner things. You can never stop running except when you enter an area to get your bearings.

Controls
--------
This is mix of a runner and a metroidvania game. Play with arrows and spacebar, but mostly just hit the spacebar a bunch. You'll figure it out...

but if not:
- Left or Right Arrows Start running after entering area (only current forward-direction possible)
- Space Bar Jump
- Hold Space Bar High Jump, Float, Long Jump
- Down Arrow Downward Dash

Tags: #metroidvania, #runner, #space

Genres: action

Tools: Aseprite, GIMP, Tiled, pygame

Comments14

eott14 Aug 2018, 14:29

Nice little game :)
The way you have to switch between directions and the different routes within the same zone is a good combination of exploration and puzzle. The bonfires are also placed just right so the game doesn't get frustrating when you miss a jump but not so frequent to trivialize the platforming part.

Local Minimum14 Aug 2018, 19:56

I know the link above just says linux, but when I check on the itch-page there were versions for windows. For some reason they crash though. Says something about `Python.exe` missing.

blubberquarkauthor15 Aug 2018, 07:07

@local-minimum which version did you try exactly?

blubberquarkauthor15 Aug 2018, 07:26

@local-minimum I assume you tried the NSIS installer `.exe`.

I recently switched from Python2.7 to 3.6 (finally!), and I don't know how to package things for windows with it, yet. So far, it looks like it will be easier with `pynsist` from Linux than rebooting to make an installer with `pyInstaller` or `cx_freeze` from windows.

http://pynsist.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

I also made a self-contained `.zip` file for the itch app. If you download that and click on the launch.bat, or run it in the itch app, it should _hopefully_ just work.

blubberquarkauthor15 Aug 2018, 07:31

Packaging was mostly removing a bunch of functionality I used during development, like parsing command line args and saving .gif screenshots with `moviepy`, as well as stuff like Itch API integration with `requests` that wasn't really necessary for a single-player game.

Local Minimum15 Aug 2018, 17:27

I'm not sure which one, I took the one that the `itch`-app offered me. It didn't give any choice.

Nate Howard22 Aug 2018, 02:39

I tried the .zip version for windows and it works. Nice job! it's kind of infuriating, honestly, not being able to stop once I move the wrong way. I guess it makes it challenging but it would be less infuriating if there were more direction-switching blocks. :)

One sucky thing is my screen (1080p laptop screen... 1920x1080) cannot fit the game, so the bottom of the game is cut off.

Clicking makes a cool cursor animation but I do not see the point...does it do something?

g123451 Sep 2018, 16:03

I played and finished the game. It's interesting how you connect the 3 (or 4) maps together.

I think it's a bit boring that when you took a wrong turn, you have to kill yourself somehow before you can restart to try the correct route. But otherwise I like this small metroidvania-like game.

Andrei93 Sep 2018, 16:23

Nice game! interesting graphics :thumbsup:

HellSquirrel4 Sep 2018, 13:16

Fun) Nice pixel art

nervous-composers4 Sep 2018, 18:54

Objectively, there not a lot to like about this game. Lack of BGM/SFX, goofy graphics, seemingly poor gameplay... But I played... and I kept playing and playing, and I'm not sure why, but there's something about this game that kept me hooked. I'm giving this a great score, because I don't know how but this entry kept me playing the longest.

Barrier4 Sep 2018, 19:56

Interesting concept, was a bit confusing at first but then I figured it out, but I think I got stuck in the ravine? Can't jump over the tall wall and can't go back.