Nappi

[Released] (A Wish Upon) Some Kind of Star Drifter

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Played it, loved it. I really like the simple visuals and the music, and the interface is very slick.

 

Feedback/Suggestions:

-Make the first 5 levels or so have no modifiers. I got the space wind in the second level and had a hell of a time getting through it. You really need a grip of the core system before ramping up the difficulty like that.

-I think it might feel better if star-mass is set by dragging the mouse up/down instead of just out from the center in any direction.

-Put in a counter of traveled systems, perhaps on the dialogue screen. Even if it is infinite, I'd get some kind of a Desert Golfing-like enjoyment out of seeing the number go up.

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Thank you for playing and for the feedback!

 

All of the suggestions are very good.

- The modifier thing I need to fix as soon as possible. It is a result of me getting way too familiar with the controls due to all of the testing and implementing the modifiers at a very late stage, so that I didn't have time to think about how to introduce them properly. I think I will gradually increase the number of checkpoints (e.g. from 2 to 5) in the first few levels before introducing any modifiers.

- The mass increase can be quite confusing (especially if you want to decrease the size of the star). I considered setting it to one axis only, but thought that it might be confusing too if people try to drag in a different direction. I will try to come up with a visual cue or some other solution to resolve the issue.

- The counter system is a good idea, and easy to implement, as the game already keeps track of completed levels.

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20 hours ago, Henke said:

Played it, loved it. I really like the simple visuals and the music, and the interface is very slick.

Thank you!  I'd love to work with you again on something, In Search of Paradise was cool as hell.

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Oh hey badatstuff, I didn't realize it was you behind the tunes! :D

 

I will definitely let you know if I need some music for anything again.

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Awesome stuff! It took a few rounds to get used to how the whole thing works, but from then it was very satisfying to see the little rocket follow my lead. I also like the whole dragging in the menus :)

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Really love the presentation, the interstitial text and the music work really well to set an interesting tone!

 

The gameplay is a really interesting concept and initial really fun, I love the constellation review and actually discovered that I'd made the big dipper only after finishing the level!

 

However I did find the solar winds (I think?) pretty annoying since they seem, to me at least (I have no physics background) to just have a random effect, sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down and just wrecking the orbit I set with no explanation. For me it would be nice if they had a set effect that was explained and you could then play with, like the ship can't turn in it so you have to time your orbit so the ship can just go straight for a bit or something similarly simple.

2018-01-06_15-58-30.gif.1df543208df655ccad5785f10d091f64.gif

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Thank you both for playing! 

 

Mythalore: The way solar winds are set up at the moment is that, when sweeping by, they accelerate to the ship along the wind direction which is defined as the vector between the ship and the origin of the wind source (i.e. the tip of the cone that sweeps by, located outside the bottom left corner of the screen). It is easiest to see when the ship is moving relatively slowly and not in an extreme orbit. It can definitely fuck up close orbits. I will try to figure out to visualize this better and move it further back in the modifier introduction order.

 

(Also, sorry that the constellations are not actually saved at the moment.)

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I finally had time to implement constellation saving and the gallery. Version 1.2 is now available on itch.io:

https://ktomi.itch.io/some-kind-of-star-drifter

 

I loved watching people play the game on their streams. I tried to make the progression a bit gentler so that people will have more time to get a hang of the systems. The key points in making the game easier are:

-Try to avoid creating stars directly in front of or behind the ship. Instead, place the stars next to the ship, some distance away from it. 

- Use right click to disable existing stars. This way you don't have to finetune the the orbit so that it crosses the checkpoint.

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This is a super chill game. I really like the minimal graphics and soundtrack.

 

I did find the controls a bit wonky, in that I found it hard to make exactly the star/path that I wanted. I managed to beat the first level though. I am slowly getting the hang of it!

 

One feature that would be immensely helpful is a quick restart button. Sometimes the ship drifts off screen if I make a mistake, and I don't want to have to wait for the ship to eventually reset itself.

 

I think I'll be coming back to this later :)

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Thanks for playing!

 

Yeah, you only have control over the location and the mass of the star, so making the ship follow the path you want will be difficult (unless you are somehow naturally good with elliptical orbits). I eventually got the hang of it (see tips above), but then again, I played quite a bit while testing. 

 

Pressing ESC resets the level. :)

 

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