Can't vote fairly as I can only see bright and dark background, ship and light circle, but no collidable background. Played on Windows 7

Same goes for me

Thanks for the bug report, it should be fixed now!

I also don't see any background on Arch Linux.
Tried the Linux build and building from source, same result.

Thank you, fixed. Looks like I misunderstood SDL_assert. I'll look into that.

Can't download windows version, 404.

Ok, I built it from sources. You should remove the code that writes debug data to the console before publishing the game. Also, on windows you can add -mwindows flag if you don't want to open console window at all. And another thing: instead of asking users to download SDL, you can put SDL2.dll file in the `bin` folder of your executable.

Oops! 404. Be sure to let us all know when you get it up and running :)

Should be working again, I think Bitbucket went for a bit of a derp. Or maybe I did, not sure...
Building with build-release.sh passes -DNDEBUG which should disable most output. I'm not seeing a console appear on Windows 7.

Gameplay:

(Positive) + Mechanics of the game aren't difficult to pick up, making it easy to learn the game.
(Negative) - Very similar to Lunar Lander as far as controls and the idea of not crashing into the walls. Using ideas from other games is unavoidable, but there should be some effort in adding or destorting the existing mechanics into something that feels different. A simple example of something different could be having a puzzle aspect such as using the thruster to burn a piece of wood that is blocking the path.
(Negative) - Horizontal collision detection is far too unforgiving. It doesn't matter what speed the player is going at; if you collide with a wall to the left or the right then you have to start over. This was very frustrating in a game where the whole idea was to navigate your way through tight spaces.

Story:

(Positive) + The story itself is fairly interesting. The idea of an explorer going to new lands where he doesn't know the consequences is pertinent to real life, not knowing what exists in where we've not explored. You've left it rather open to interpretation, but this is how I viewed the story.
(Negative) - I feel that having the story drive the theme doesn't really make it based on the theme of Connected Worlds. I'm not saying that you did this, but it is completely possible to have a full game idea before the compo and then just adapt the story to the them without much effort. I prefer to think of having the theme drive the creation of the gameplay, but perhaps that is just me.

Graphics:

(Positive) + The graphics, while simple and primitive, were all consistent throughout the game and nothing felt out of place. Nicely done!

Final thoughts:

Overall there are definitely some improvements that can be done. Take a look at all the mistakes, and analyze what is actually a mistake and what is not so that you may not make them again. Congratulations on finishing, and good luck to all you game development endeavors in the future!

OK game, but doesn't fit the theme.

I didn't find it intuitive that I was supposed to go down, and I found the difficulty curve way too steep. Admittedly, using your thruster for light is a very cool idea.

Thanks for the feedback, glad it's working!
I had real trouble coming up with something that would fit the theme, I was getting a bit desperate because I only had twelve hours or so left after messing up.

I liked this, but it starts off really hard so I couldn't get very far at all. I like the progression of story, and I like the mood.

Tough game. I liked the concept of needing to move upwards to increase the lighting, great idea there.

It was a fun game, but when I got to the bottom nothing happened... I just died

Works good with the updated version.
I like the gameplay concept, but I found it a bit too hard, it just required a bit too pixel perfect positioning for me to handle with my keyboard.
Maybe making it a bit easier overall still with hard sections and with some kind of checkpoints.
I like the simple graphics and the mood, it feels well made.

That was hard! xD excellent work :D the mysterious gameplay is awesome :D

Good start of a game. I like the light effect.
Horizontal collision is a bit unforgiving.
It seems to just stop at the bottom.