This game is a simulation game, where you play the role of a space trader. The twist is that part of your ship is destroyed upon landing.
Gameplay
The Game has two possible stages: 1. Flight 2. Planetary stationing
Going from planetary to flying can be done for free, by pressing the launch button. Flight to planetary costs you dearly; one layer of your ship gets destroyed.
Flying
When on the flight screen, you can click around your ship (the red dot in the middle of the screen) to set the direction of the next burn.
The slider on the side is used to set how quickly the ship should burn it's fuel. There's a button to set the burn speed to zero.
Use the 1-5 keys to set the simulation speed, and use the spacebar to set the simulation speed to zero.
If you're near enough to a planet, the landing button will appear. There's no penalty to speed differences nor position differences, the landing computer on your ship ensures a decent landing. Well, not really decent, but still.
Landing
When landing, you have to choose which direction will enter the atmosphere first. Every part of your ship that's exposed from that side will burn, and you will lose those parts.
Ship Control
Ship Control is used to enable and disable specific parts of the ship. It serves little purpose within this version of the game.
Planetary
The planetary screen is a screen from which multiple other screens can be reached. It can also be used to launch the ship again. You can reach the following screens from the planetary screen: 1. Edit Ship 2. Buy 3. Sell 4. Refuel
Edit Ship
This screen is used to add parts to your ship. There's no punishment to removing and re-adding parts.
Buy
This screen is used to buy cargo. You click the cargo type you want, and then the cargo bay in which you want to place it. Every time you buy something, the price goes up by fifty.
Sell
This screen is used to sell cargo. You click the cargo bay you want to sell from. Look in the bottom-right to see what's in there. A fee of sixty is subtracted from the buying price. Also, every time you sell something, the price goes down by fifty.
Refuel
The refuelling button is used to instantly re-add fuel to your ship.
Prices on all planets screen
This screen is used to see what which resource is worth where.
#What if I run out of fuel? Then you have to hope you run into a planet. No other outcomes are possible..
@morriss I could add Dutch if that helps, but that's it. I fear Ludum Dare games never get translated, it takes time which people prefer spending on polishing their games.
Took me a while to figure out how to launch the ship and then how the navigating worked. That aside however, the game is really neat! It feels like it could be a bigger game, and the music is really spot on for setting the mood in my opinion! Nice job! :smile:
The game made sense to me, only thing I missed was I could run out of fuel ^_^. I did a bit of trading between Venus and Mercury and that was fine until I decided to get to Earth... I seem to have lost Earth... it was *way* out there... I ran out of fuel trying to get there, though randomly ended up back on Venus... one more attempt, and I finally made it to Earth, cashing in for 3000 credits. I traded everything for fuel tanks and engines, and set out for another solar system... but failed to achieve escape velocity.
Would have been nice to have a little more feedback on buying/selling - I'd often click something and nothing would seem to happen (e.g. I think I have to click a cargo spot after clicking what to buy, but nothing indicates that).
Flying is very complicated, earth is gone so far away now, going to the destination is a lot of planning, and if you near two planets you don't know where you'll land.
The building stuff is too easy and only has one choice for your long freight ship.
Trading stuff is fine, and prices will probably end up similar enough someday.
Music is fine for this kind of game.
That's a lot of stuff you've made within 48 hours!
@nander yes, I can see all the game files but when I try to start the executable nothing happens. If you have a web version I could play it, otherwise I'll wait until I have another windows machine to try on.
Extremely cool idea. I like how you tied together the two big systems; piloting performance directly impacts how much you can buy at a given planet. The piloting for me, while difficult, was interesting, and I could see the paths to improvement. Unfortunately, as someone said above, the metagame of the heat shield is quite simple - just make a very long, single-wide ship. Perhaps it would be more interesting if this was also tied to piloting (i.e. you need to control facing as you enter the planet).
The biggest issue for me was that, when there are several planets nearby, I couldn't tell which one I was going to land at. Furthermore, when I hit land, it chose the wrong planet and I had no option to back out. Other small issues I noticed, in no particular order:
- seeing what's in cargo when selling - more info about planet rotation - indication that cargo needs to be clicked after buy - indication that you need to click close to the ship to change burn direction
But, hey, every LD game needs polish. Overall this is a very cool game with some interesting systems, and I'm impressed at just how many of those systems you managed to implement!
This was a fun game to play and rate, as others have pointed out, the simplicity of the heat shield mechanic meant that building strategy never really becomes a significant part of the game, I wonder whether simply making the side lost be random would force a more interesting set of tradeoffs about what cargo to put where.
It took me a while to figure out that clicking "Buy Hydrogen" didn't result in immediately purchasing Hydrogen until I click a storage compartment on the ship, some better instructions or more clear visuals could have made that part of the learning curve smoother.
Overall, there are a lot of pieces to this game, and I'm impressed that they integrate as well as they do.
Neat game. I didn't really understand how to play at first, but I figured it out as I went along. Game could use some more graphics. I liked the background music, it set the mood. One thing I really would suggest doing is adding sounds or an indicator saying that an action was completed when pushing a button, for example, when I hit refuel I couldn't really tell if my ship had refueled or if nothing happened. Overall it was a very interesting game. Nice job!
Comments17
Would have been nice to have a little more feedback on buying/selling - I'd often click something and nothing would seem to happen (e.g. I think I have to click a cargo spot after clicking what to buy, but nothing indicates that).
Music set a nice mood.
The building stuff is too easy and only has one choice for your long freight ship.
Trading stuff is fine, and prices will probably end up similar enough someday.
Music is fine for this kind of game.
That's a lot of stuff you've made within 48 hours!
The biggest issue for me was that, when there are several planets nearby, I couldn't tell which one I was going to land at. Furthermore, when I hit land, it chose the wrong planet and I had no option to back out. Other small issues I noticed, in no particular order:
- seeing what's in cargo when selling
- more info about planet rotation
- indication that cargo needs to be clicked after buy
- indication that you need to click close to the ship to change burn direction
But, hey, every LD game needs polish. Overall this is a very cool game with some interesting systems, and I'm impressed at just how many of those systems you managed to implement!
It took me a while to figure out that clicking "Buy Hydrogen" didn't result in immediately purchasing Hydrogen until I click a storage compartment on the ship, some better instructions or more clear visuals could have made that part of the learning curve smoother.
Overall, there are a lot of pieces to this game, and I'm impressed that they integrate as well as they do.