JellyCar meets Kerbal Space Program meets QWOP: build a spaceship to retrieve new spaceship parts from procedurally-generated planets and add them to your ship, all in a hand-crafted wiggly soft-body physics engine. This game turned out about as hard as it is fun. The learning curve is a bit stiff, but the reward is being able to build stupidly large and largely stupid spacecrafts :)
Detailed info
There are 4 types of ship building blocks: * Structure frames - very solid, but otherwise useless * Engines - can be powered with WASD keys, depending on the engine's type * Fuel tanks * Gravity hooks - used to grab flying spacecraft parts and deliver them to the launchpad
The game has no specific objective or winning condition; just gather as much stuff as you can, and build as strange a spaceship as you can!
If you struggle building your first ship, try something like this:
Starting out is not really simple. I ended out running out of fuel quite a few times before I managed to understand how to reach my first piece of spaceship to bring back to the launchpad. It definitely has a quite steep learning curve but the more you play the more fun it becomes. And then you end up with a silly looking spaceship that is pretty much impossible to maneuver 😄 I love the wobbly thingie you put into this game. I would also have loved to have some goals apart from collecting pieces here and there and building up the ship. It feels more like a sandbox than a game in the long run
It was... FUN! Maybe my 700h+ experience in KSP stands out here, but I quickly managed to collect and build a nice easy to maneuver spaceship and had a great time with this game! Although it was not so long run, because the most valuable pieces was on the planet next to the base, and I didn't see the reason to travel further into the outer space. So, in my opinion, the game would get better if the more valuable pieces would be further from the base.
I really like the idea and implementation though! Those wobbly spaceships are really fun to fly and interesting to design. And I really liked that you don't worry about hitting a planet and loose, it lifted a preassure from my shoulders for me and made the game more fun!
Really fun and funny game. Really satisfying when you launch yourself in just the right way to get where you wanted to go. I also really liked the gravity mechanics between different planets.
I'm a huge KSP fan, so this definitely ticked a box for me. The wobbley spaceships were really fun, but part of me wishes there had been orbital mechanics to deal with. The moment a second planet sprung into existence I was kind of stuck, because my next two pieces were wedged in between.
I'm so excited! I love KSP and the space theme, and this game really touched me. The graphics and physics are great, and the atmosphere and sound design are cool. Nice job!
Very nice game! I loved making those messes of contraptions and fly them around the place. Though as another user mentioned, I too would have loved if you could be incentivised to venture further out into space to get more valuable pieces :) Either way, a very original concept and a great submission
Very funny and interesting sandbox. I can easily see it made in some kind of io game, where you spawn in arena with other players and try to fight awkward controls to gather more resources or something like this. I think there's a lot of different ideas for other pieces you can add, the first comming to mind is like stabilizer, that will help you to keep direction. This entry also got my attention as I tried to do something like this couple of years ago to other jam, but it was on the earth and more like creating a machine from baloons, propellers, engines and fuel tanks. But I didn't come up with anything clever as the goal of the game. Well done!)
I think the design of this game was very well thought out. I appreciated that starting out, it was a bit hard. It forced me to understand the controls well so that when I did end up building more complex structures, I was well equipped to man the spaceship. It was super enjoyable too. I ended up trying weirder and weirder structures. A really well done sandbox game. One feedback that I would have liked is to have had something highlighted when I accidentally blocked a rocket with a block. When i started out, I would accidentally put a block where a rocket would thrust and inadvertently get stuck. That kind of feedback at the launchpad would have been great. Definitely one of the better entries in this jam!
I love it when a game without a clear objective can be so time consuming. Great addictive concept, that really gives that feeling of getting better and getting a bit further. The building blocks, the way to control the physics, is absolutely spot on. Bit of a learning curve but that's okay. Awesome job!
Pretty fun, interesting, and I really liked the building mechanic. I enjoyed building the ship and trying to keep it relatively stable while expanding. Iit did start feeling slightly too repetitive for my taste, but overall a pretty good game.
Great game... and we all know what you did here ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), as i said on stream, maybe yeah, a couple reactors for rotating could be nice, great idea and great implementation!
Really fun game, spent quite a while trying to avoid building rockets with a questionable shape.
Maybe it would be great mentioning somewhere that there is an option to zoom out, it makes navigation so much easier. Another nice QoL change for navigation would be a velocity vector display, so you know at least know which way the ship is going while it's spinning out of control 😅
Very fun game. I just couldn't stop playing it, I love how much freedom you have when building. I did find a bug in the game where if you press R with engines running, the sounds of those engines never stops.
@grizeldi It says that you can zoom somewhere at the start, before you've delivered your first piece. Agree that it is easy to miss, though!
I wanted to avoid an explicit velocity vector, instead you have background stars that indicate your velocity and also the engines produce smoke. I've made the smoke even more dynamic in the (not yet released, of course) post-jam version.
Wow! This might be my favorite physics-based LD entry ever. It does have the same quality as KSP, where you can sometimes feel stupid for not finding a solution immediately, but the satisfaction you get when you do find one is even greater.
I found the fuel amount to be maybe a bit too generous (even when traveling to far-off planets I never came close to being out of fuel), but that's not an issue for a jam game. Plus it allowed me to do a lot of experiments with various types of constructions and see them flopping around.
The light background music fit really well too, and I like how the engine sound was just another note to play. I don't know if this would fit this kind of game well, but maybe this could be a bigger element of the game - have each WASD key have a specific pitch, so the player can play simple melodies by firing the right engines at the right time. :P
Ultimately, I chose to explore the universe with my tried and true flying brick:
Just a very innovative, fun game. Felt very motivating to collect more parts and grow your ship (and ending up with some wacky designs). Very impressive!
An excellent game from the category to entertain yourself, all the main mechanics are perfectly aligned. The core is excellent, now it would be interesting to play a campaign with various levels and challenges.
I loved this. The building made sense right away to me and it was fun once I had a few grappling hooks going seeing how my compact ship reacted to the physics. It's very different but I got a similar feel to how JetPac gave all those years ago with collecting fuel to build up your ship so you could move on and explore.
I really appreciate how there doesn't really seem to be a fail state, if something doesn't work then you just go back and change your build and get back to it. It makes it all feel very relaxing. One of these games I may book up every now and then to switch off tbh! I know you're busy with another game as a focus but I'd love to see this kind of thing explored more at some point in the future!
Reminds me of Nimbatus, but with a much faster turnaround between gathering resources and updating your ship. I like it. It'd be neat if there was a way to save the game so I could come back later and keep growing my ship.
I love the wobbly thingie you put into this game. I would also have loved to have some goals apart from collecting pieces here and there and building up the ship. It feels more like a sandbox than a game in the long run