You are a space traveler alone in the vast expanse. Your engine is lonely, too. It misses its friend, fuel.
Stranded in orbit around a planet, you must venture down to the surface to gather resources.
Ludum Dare
I wanted to do a lot more with this game. A lot more than was possible in 48 hours even though I worked on it almost the full time. Hopefully I will continue to stay motivated.
Gameplay
The game is a sort of exploration roguelike featuring procedurally generated planets that you must explore to find the titular etracyte crystals which power your ship. Each planet is new and offers new platforming obstacles. Your space suit has boosters which allow you to jump in mid air, but over-reliance on them will drain your suit's limited batteries.
There is no ending. You simply play until you decide to leave the loop.
Controls
Arrows/WASD - move Space/Z - jump/select Enter - pause/menu
Hold tab on the title screen to skip the introductory "lore".
Known Issues
The collision detection will not do well if the game lags, as it just checks the end position. There's a limit to the length of the update cycle that should prevent huge problems.
The horizontal movement calculations are framerate dependent so if the game runs slower than 60 fps you will move faster. If it runs faster (e.g. you have a 144Hz display or something) you will move very slowly. Sorry about that :(
Tools
* Game engine was done with my own, SDL2 based framework, gam * Art was made with aseprite * Music and sound effects were all made with my modular synthesizer.
Very cool for 48 hours! Not sure if there is a way to access all the crystals but I only managed to get some of them. Also the description says the planet is procedurally generated, but it seems to always be the same to me, so I'm not sure if that's a random seeding bug or if the feature is not currently in effect.
The pixel art was really good. the controls felt very responsive. I'm not sure if I encountered a bug but I found over 30 crystals, and it kept saying it found a new planet. But it would never take me to a new one. It just kept spawning me at 1st planet over and over again. Nice game though.
Kudos to using your own Framework for the game! As for the gameplay, seems like 2d Version of No Man's Sky. Unfortunately, 3 of my first planets (all I played) were exactly the same, so maybe there's a bug in procedular generation system. The game seems to be lagging a bit (each 10-15 steps I take it freezes the player, move the background a bit backwards to where I am moving my player to). Also, on my first gameplay, I got stuck without any Crystals and no jetpack fuel, so being 'rougelike' I assume a game over screen would be cool :D
This looks great! Really stellar art for the splash screen and interstitals.
Enjoyed how the double jump had an actual reason for existing, although I kept running out of jump fuel and there didn't seem to be any way to replenish it.
Absolutely adored how the bats aren't badguys that need to be avoided. They're just bats, they won't hurt you. :D
I had an error in the random number seeding in the Windows build which made it always produce the same planet. This is fixed now along with the text on the title screen.
There is no way to replenish your suit energy, which fuels the air jump. One of the upgrades I wanted to add was a converter that would consume a crystal to power your suit. Another was a solar panel that would charge your suit if you were on the surface. Alas, I didn't have time to implement the upgrade system at all.
I really liked the pixel art and the introductory cut scene. The game mechanics are fluid and easy to pick up. I think its also really cool that its your own engine and uses cellular automata. I did see a crystal or two that seemed to be stuck in an inaccessible region. Well done.
I like the pixel art of the game and also the sfx. Movement felt good but I would have preferred to have the jetpack on a different button than the jump one. I wasted a lot of jetpack fuel when I wanted a normal jump just because I was slightly airborne. I see a lot of people mentioning the same planet over and over, had the same issue.
@bjornstahl Interesting. I just tested the web version on windows and it generated different planets each time. I'm sorry you didn't get the full experience of the game :(
I'm not sure that I understand what I need to do, but I have fun running around, until I ran out of jetpack fuel. Nice work on character pixel art and on intro! Good luck.
> have fun running around, until I ran out of jetpack fuel.
@capt-theo That is all you are supposed to do. When you run out you can press enter to bring up a menu and return to your ship. From there, you can explore a new planet and repeat.
Really nice, and impressive that you made it with your own engine! The cave bats were a nice touch and kept the exploration from getting boring too quickly. Audio and graphics were great.
The core gameplay loop is kind of disappointing though. I spend a good amount of time exploring the caves and collected 14 crystals. When I got back to the ship, I thought I'd be able to use them for something, but nope. I lost interest the second time, but the first time on the planet was pretty entertaining despite there not really being much to do. If you add some more systems (upgrades, combat, construction, etc), this could be a fun little exploration game!
Yes, the entire point was to use the crystals to upgrade systems and explore further but unfortunately 48 hours is not very long and I spent too much time on graphics, audio, and bugs. I'm glad you enjoyed the first planet in any case. Thanks for playing!
I enjoyed watching marcmagus play further into this on his stream when you came by; your comments there were how I knew there was a minimum crystals requirement for each planet. So first planet I fell right down into a deep cavern immediately after somehow using a third of my fuel on the first jump. Thought I was a goner, but there were thankfully a total of 3 crystals reachable in that cave and I lived to maroon another day.
Anyway, I am impressed with the game you have so far. And much like in real life, the adorable bats help with the bugs. :smile:
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Enjoyed how the double jump had an actual reason for existing, although I kept running out of jump fuel and there didn't seem to be any way to replenish it.
Absolutely adored how the bats aren't badguys that need to be avoided. They're just bats, they won't hurt you. :D
There is no way to replenish your suit energy, which fuels the air jump. One of the upgrades I wanted to add was a converter that would consume a crystal to power your suit. Another was a solar panel that would charge your suit if you were on the surface. Alas, I didn't have time to implement the upgrade system at all.
dont realy have to much to say, gg. intro scene was nice tho xD
I agree it is too easy to accidentally use the jetpack. I'll fix that in a future version for sure. Thanks everyone for the feedback.
@capt-theo That is all you are supposed to do. When you run out you can press enter to bring up a menu and return to your ship. From there, you can explore a new planet and repeat.
The core gameplay loop is kind of disappointing though. I spend a good amount of time exploring the caves and collected 14 crystals. When I got back to the ship, I thought I'd be able to use them for something, but nope. I lost interest the second time, but the first time on the planet was pretty entertaining despite there not really being much to do. If you add some more systems (upgrades, combat, construction, etc), this could be a fun little exploration game!
Anyway, I am impressed with the game you have so far. And much like in real life, the adorable bats help with the bugs. :smile: