Sunfarers

Very chill and uplifting experience. Cool take on the "limited space". The idea that different buildings consume different resources (e.g. radio tower needs power, but flowers need water) is a really cool way to trade off available limits. It could probably have been a bit more challenging, I had lots of space left over in the end.

What was a bit finicky was the placement; the collision radiuses never matched the 3D models, so it was always guesswork. Maybe draw a debug circle around each object, or use something like tiles/hex tiles to make it more obvious.

The one soundtrack with the synth and piano is incredibly beautiful and contributes a lot to the mood. Did you make it yourself? Does it have a name?

Thanks for playing @bromeon!

We had an unofficial challenge in playtesting that we think it might be possible to meet the needs of 4 colonies in endless mode, so if you're looking for a bit of extra difficulty, feel free to attempt that!

Visible collision circles are a great suggestion! Due to the somewhat weird way the collision is calculated (which I probably wouldn't repeat if we did this again) all the radiuses are sort of eyeballed, so being able to see them would probably have helped us get them to match more accurately...

All the music in the game was made for it by the wonderful @tim-leach. I believe the tracks are named (in order of appearance) Breathe, Survive, and Develop after the first 3 phases of the game.

That was a very chill experience, complimented by the relaxing music and pleasant visuals. It's pretty basic "balance things out" stuff that isn't really challenging, but that's okay because it was satisfying to build all the stuff on the planet and see how thing evolve. The UI text was rather small and lacking contrast, that could be improved for better accessibility. Really enjoyed this one, good job.

Pluses:
* Relaxing and nice take on the theme.
* Just feels pleasant to put things down on the planet
* I left the game running so I could keep listening to the music because I enjoyed it so much. Fits nicely with the scifi/colonization theme with some pleasant synths and sits in the background without feeling like it's just background music (I really struggle with making distinct but unobtrusive background music when I produce, so it's nice to hear some good examples to learn from :smile:).

Minuses:
* There are only 3 tracks to listen to and they don't loop, so the game goes silent once there's no more music :cry:
* Colliders for the objects make placing things a bit tricky

Additional recommendations:
* Adding some resource production/subtraction feedback each time a building is placed would be a very helpful UI/UX touch - that information is available in the bottom right but I didn't really notice until mid-game :sweat_smile:

This was just one of the best games in the jam so far, great graphics and sounds and a good game cycle just a good job.

Really great game and probably the best game I've seen so far, only real feedback I would have is potentially adding effects when having negative production (to little water less seed growth for example) and also having the camera be completely free orbiting. Apart from that great game and well done!

Very fun and chill game ! You did amazing on the art and the audio !
I Had a great time figuring out the best ways to optimize the colony. The interface is very intuitive as well.

Thanks for playing @bauke-regnerus, @olenikimid, @infinitye and @cloverfall! I really appreciate you all taking the time to leave some feedback :heart:

Sorry about the music cutting out! It's supposed to loop (this might be a problem with the built version, so this might be fixable).

> Adding some resource production/subtraction feedback each time a building is placed would be a very helpful UI/UX touch

I completely agree- this was on our notes after playtesting but we ran out of time!

Thanks @gorglomux!

Hey, the toon shader looks good, and water is also cool. Would be nice to see how much seeds needed for a specific plant. The controls are super smooth. Nice job!

Amazingly chill experience. Really relaxing. Awesome matching soundtrack, with the right atmosphere. Not the most fun gameplay, but being that the intention was probably to make a relaxing experience, i would say you did a great job :smiley:

One addition i would add is to colour mark the resources, which are in the negatives. Because otherwise that get's ignored very easily, especially given, that there is no time pressure

nice concept. kinda demands tech levels and achievements

Fantastic game. Beautiful, smart, relaxing. Basically nothing bad to say !

Thanks @andrei-gusan! If I'm honest I probably spent too long tweaking shaders this jam, but it was too much fun!

If you still need it, you can see the seed/wood cost of each plant/building in the bottom right corner of the screen when it's selected. I'm not surprised it wasn't obvious though, I think the UI could definitely be improved!

Thanks @kamil124b that's a great suggestion! Tbh even I find it harder than I probably should to see which resources still need balancing so some kind of indicator would help there.

Thanks for playing @handsomeshan and @wrong-timeline! :heart:

Very neat game. It's calm and relaxing (which admittedly, seems to be at odds with the "limited space" idea). It must be one of the best looking games in this jam (although the UI seems a bit generic). I'd love to see more buildings and maybe even some interaction between them (e.g. trees working better when close to each other). It felt a bit strange to increase happiness a ton by placing 6 radio towers right next to each other... But at this point I might be asking for a full-featured game here :laughing: It's a cool game, I enjoyed it a lot!

A well polished zen game, the difficulty is well balanced, the graphics and music are beautiful too.

Very realistic game, had to delete trees to spam power plants to complete my tumor of a planet, gg :)

@olenikimid thanks so much for the feedback! The pleasant-ness of placing buildings is all thanks to @matt-barnfield 's particles and SFX :grin:

The music was me! I'm so happy you found it unobtrusive, I also struggle to walk the balance between "doesn't distract from the game" and "is good and interesting" :sweat_smile:

There's been a lot of love for the music, so I'm thinking of putting it up somewhere by itself so people can listen at leisure!

Thanks @kasmilus, I appreciate you taking the time to play and comment! Adjacency bonuses were actually something I really wanted (along with a tech tree), but we had to cut it for time!

Thanks @tmpxyz :heart:

@pepn love it! Personally I'm taking that as a sign of success :joy:

Fun game, great execution on the theme. Difficulty is just right - it wasn't frustrating to build everything closely enough together to work, but it also was hard enough so I had to move things to actually finish the game.
Great work!

Glad you enjoyed it @chris-ldgk :heart:

This jam entry is truly commendable, as it skillfully adheres to the theme while providing an enjoyable gaming experience. As you progress through the game, it becomes increasingly evident just how crucial your placement decisions are and how constrained the available space truly is. This aspect of the game added an extra layer of enjoyment for me, as it compelled me to think strategically and adapt to the challenging circumstances. Well done!

Ah this was a fun one! I wish this was how you viewed/made your planets in Stellaris!

Very nice game! I really enjoyed the chill vibe, and the content and aspect complement each other well. Bonus points for integrating the underlying message into the game system, it's much more subtle!

Loved this. While the homeland is proud of me for building a thriving community, by grouping all my utilities together I feel like I have instead built a dystopian hellscape (just with a lot more flowers). Can you imagine working all day in the Potato Field District, and the only thing you can do to relax after work is going to the Flower Patch District?

Seriously though, the difficulty felt just right and the level of polish and gradual introduction of new mechanics make it very easy to pick up. If I had to nitpick something, a button to rotate buildings would have been useful (I may have missed it?), and sometimes rotating the planet around felt like it lead to gimbal lock, but overall as someone who really enjoys management/city building games this was a lot of fun!

Really loved the atmosphere, well done! It reminded me of Terra Nil
The game walks you through the mechanics but I never felt like I wanted to rush things along. The opposite actually, I took my time to build up resources before trying the new one. It did eventually cause my demise, I didn't manage to destroy my buildings and was missing just one potato field to finish things up. I had the building description overlap with the destroy button, although I may have misunderstood something.
Regardless, well done!

@matt-barnfield thanks for the response! I think the audio should definitely be published somewhere separately, of course if you guys want that :)

I meant the very first song, starting with piano and then synth -- so probably "Breathe". It's always amazing to find such gems in unexpected places like game jams.

Hi @bromeon , so happy you enjoyed the game and the music - I've uploaded the soundtrack here, so please listen as much as you like!

@orold thanks so much for playing! Terra Nil is one of my favourite games, and I must say it did inspire a few of the aesthetic decisions!

Nice. easy, but very soothing

Great music and 3D

Could be a real game, with more planets, events, etc...

Really nice game and could see it being expanded upon, with more buildings weather, planets etc great job, like the graphics were simple but effective and I particularly enjoyed the foliage when it was all together. The audio was really nice well done one that.

I enjoyed it soo much I challenged myself to get a forth colony and sustain it :heart:

Rotating the plant around and placing things was really satisfying. I really liked the music, especially the track that reminded me of like technological birds?

I almost missed the UI in the bottom right that showed me details about specific buildings.

Nice economic-simulation game, that appeared to be small, but it has quite a lot of content. The GUI should have been sorted a bit different, more like:

1) What you build

2) Building Costs

3) abillities/productions/maintanance

4) Tootltip & Flavor text

Allowing playing sandbox after completing the "missions" was a nice addition

I see a bearded man, what do you see? Tell us in the comment section below!