Uncertain Orbits

by malcolm
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.60
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.77
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.17
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.00
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.47
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.75
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.68
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.94
My first (completed) game and my first Ludum Dare. It's just a simple web game.

You work on an asteroid mining ore. Ore is sent off to a space station for refining. It is your job to fire the ore off into space using the magnetic launcher. Once fired the payload cannot be steered. It is on a ballistic trajectory that is influenced by the gravity of nearby planets. Your path is unstable and you will need to use gravity to your advantage.

Written in Javascript with P5.js. It was my first time using P5.js or doing more than dabbling with Javascript but I have used Processing before (which is why I chose P5.js).

My only goal was to have a completed game. I had more ideas for the game (which I may implement later) but I kept having to reduce the scope of the project to make it manageable in the time frame and with my limited knowledge and experience.

As a learning experience it has been invaluable and I now await your feedback with trepidation.

Comments35

Teo Miklethun
Teo Miklethun4 Oct 2021, 23:22
Really fun concept. Love using gravity to move things. It'd be cool to add blockers or something to prevent the solution of shooting at the right angle below the level, rather than going through it.
PetTurtle
PetTurtle4 Oct 2021, 23:37
Fun game and impressive that its all write p5.js. I did feel like I cheesed the later levels.
Cynthia Clementine5 Oct 2021, 02:57
Very cool! A bit sad that even with the minimum number of attempts, 7, the text at the end doesn't change.
Rustywolf5 Oct 2021, 03:10
Really well polished entry, awesome work
djcoil5 Oct 2021, 05:38
Nicely done. I can feel a lot of potential in this design; the core mechanic is well-executed.
Cr_nch
Cr_nch5 Oct 2021, 05:40
I feel like it's a bit guess and check-ish, I would just adjust what I did if it failed and hope that it works, then retry if it didn't. The menu music sounds really good, and I feel that you could take this some where with some quality-of-life improvents (such as a trail of where the last attempt went). Overall, it was decent, fairly short though.
neputevshina5 Oct 2021, 12:33
got great gravitee wars vibes from that. haven't seen a game with such planet gravity in a while.
LDJam user 270875author5 Oct 2021, 12:36
@cynthia-clementine Every time you launch a projectile it counts as an attempt, so the lowest number should be 6 (for the 6 levels). I think there's an off by one error in there.
The whole thing was a last minute change as I had a lives system for most of the 72 hours. In hindsight it would have been better to just count the crashes. Thanks for playing!
IndigoWolf5 Oct 2021, 15:11
I completed it! Absolutely terrible score but I enjoyed this quite a bit
Johnathan Peres5 Oct 2021, 15:48
I love the angle and force in this kind of games, but it took away part of the Unstable factor. Hope my contract be extended in the future XD
Koolruz
Koolruz5 Oct 2021, 17:51
Great job with this game! It's an extremely impressive first game ever!

The game felt extremely playable and cohesive from start to finish, and even though I cheesed the last few levels by aiming down to the left, rather than weaving through the planets, I still had fun! :)
Tory
Tory5 Oct 2021, 19:42
Nice game for the first time, and congratulations on the first jam passed.
gdman
gdman5 Oct 2021, 21:04
Nice game, I have enjoyed playing through it. Good luck!
ytniminty
ytniminty5 Oct 2021, 21:52
Really nice game, the gravity mechanic was really fun to play with
guimoliveira
guimoliveira6 Oct 2021, 02:33
Nice game! I like lightweight HTML5 games that don't burn my PC. Good job. :v:
Jon_Nova6 Oct 2021, 22:19
Great game! It's really cool to see a game made in p5.js. i used p5 to make some art, but never tried to make a game. Great Job!
Silurus7 Oct 2021, 14:57
Solid game!
The mechanics are really well done, I had fun finishing the game.

Good job!
SimonL
SimonL7 Oct 2021, 22:01
Nice little game. The gravity mechanic felt really nice. Well done!

It was a little annoying to always click on the small gun. Being able to click drag everywhere would have could have been userful.

19 attempts.
hwaet
hwaet8 Oct 2021, 01:08
Great game! I really like the level progression. A little spacey music during play would add a lot.
Riper
Riper8 Oct 2021, 09:09
Congratulations on your first game, which is good by the way!
Xeke-Death8 Oct 2021, 10:07
The attempts didn't reset after I played, I wanted to get a better score.
Nice work, the trajectories worked well.
DarthBoseiju9 Oct 2021, 08:35
This game is great. I took 20 attempts!

I'd have liked a few more visual clues about gravity but honestly it was a lot of fun. After the first level I was a bit confused as to what we were doing but when the planet arrived immediately got excited. Having the angle at the top right was super useful to allow for small adjustments.
joonamo
joonamo10 Oct 2021, 14:46
Plantetary physics is one of my favourite genres! I certainly enjoyed this game and finished in 30 tries!
kuggenhoffen
kuggenhoffen10 Oct 2021, 19:23
I like it, clean and simple and a lot of potential for gameplay mechanics. Good job!
Piper Thompson10 Oct 2021, 19:30
always like them gravity games! fun little thing - love how it always counts up on attempts during multiple sessions ;)
Sibi
Sibi11 Oct 2021, 20:50
This was short and sweet. Well done on keeping the scope small! It really feels like a small complete game and the core mechanic is actually fun. Great basis to build more stuff on :)
Wilko11 Oct 2021, 21:04
Got it in 17! Is that any good?
Jeff Kerman11 Oct 2021, 21:12
Fun game and straight to the point. Like the art and user interface is very well thought out. We had a similar idea for our game.
LDJam user 27078312 Oct 2021, 16:41
Congrats on completing your first game! And it's a good game, I hope you continue making games :) The graphics are very cool and having to take into account how gravity influence your shots is a cool mechanic that has a lot of potential. Hopefully you implement some of your ideas in a sequel and we see Uncertain Orbits 2 in the future.
Also, bonus points for including a story, it's a nice touch.
PS: I've heard of P5.js from the brilliant The Coding Train channel, but I've never seen any games completed with it. It's super cool that you managed to do it.
Legolula13 Oct 2021, 15:06
Cool game! Its definitely fun and having the angle/power on the top right is a very nice touch!
rubenwardy
rubenwardy15 Oct 2021, 20:53
Very nice mechanic. I wish that you didn't have to drag on the turret though, and it would just be based on mouse position. This would be nicer to use
James_7777
James_777715 Oct 2021, 20:56
Really cool concept, I loved it! I managed to finish in 30 attempts. The physics felt nice and it was really satisfying to pull off a 2-planet gravity assist. Only thing it needs is some music!
ValiantSugar19 Oct 2021, 06:56
Nice hyper casual game, I would play it on my phone!
lilkrit20 Oct 2021, 03:43
My contract didn't get renewed, 2 / 10.
JK. Really cool game!
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