Pretty fun, took me a while to figure out i had to which buildings did which.

What a great concept! It was awesome to see a steady stream of ships flying at the enemy planets.

Interesting concept, but you should explain what the different buildings on the planets do...

Also things, seem to escalate quite quickly, after a few minutes I had 99999 gold and research...

Nevertheless I had fun while playing :)

Wow this game is complex :D I think i struck dead end, all my planest have zero health and cant regenerete and my ship are attacking planets that are also dead. I would be nic if could ship destroy other ships. Neverless great game, I had great time. Probably the best game I played on LD30 yet.

cool concept, got stomped on the first try though. Nice music too!!

It is good to visualize that they are fighting for getting area. I like the speedy progress.

The game is very fun)

Cool, enjoyed trying this. I like how fast things go. It took me way too long to find the science window though!

This was a good game overall. Took me a while to stop losing so fast. Interesting. Good job!

I decided early on that this was a game to be won by spamming out ships to destroy the enemy. I thus decided to forego all buildings but shipyards, and took techs which allowed faster ship construction time at the beginning. I would immediately pause after capturing a planet to fill it with shipyards.

This strategy handily won me the early-game, and I thought it would be a smooth sail to victory from there. I was wrong.

As my horde of ships delved further in to enemy territory I realised the flaw in my plan. The planets further back were too interconnected, too well influenced to be taken even by my mighty fleet. The enemy was able to recapture many of his cities using high influence growth rate, coupled with a flotilla not one twentieth the size of mine. I began to panic.

Thankfully my swarm was able to re-re-conquer one of their cities, which I instantly filled with radio towers, having realised my mistake. Thus began the period of stagnation. My infatile influence was able to sustain the cities I had against the meagre force of their squadreon, while my Grande Armee continued to fling themelves against the walls of their influence.

I was eventually able to capture one contentious planet. An insignificant speck in itself, but its fall marking the beginning of the end. I soon after took their capital (or whatever that asterisk means). There was some back and forth with them retaking it twice, but it was only a matter of time until my victory.

http://minus.com/lb2qdzEwPawueh


In conclusion, an amazing game. Consider porting to tablet.

It's a really fun game.

xgeovanni: Thanks for your amazing comment and screenshot :)

You're correct in assuming that the asterisked planet is their capital, but I never got around to implementing any additional functionality to it. Stealing it from your opponent usually cripples their ship network though.

The game plays pretty nicely on a tablet as is - save some screen size issues - but a native tablet version could definitely be a cool thing to make. Thanks again!

Wow, this is harsh! You definitely have to figure out a good strategy if you don't want your butt handed to you. Well done!

A fantastic game! Winning feels nice, though at some point it's obvious which side has the advantage ;). Very nice music and simple, yet functional graphics.

Great music, deep gameplay. Definitely would be easier if you gave us more of an intro to the mechanics, even just in the text here! And huzzah for Reason. So much fun!

This game needs a tutorial xD

THis took me a while to figure out, but once I did it became fun. Good luck!

One of my favorites so far. Please make a full game out of this. Simple and addicting!

It's quite a nice game, although I think I found a bug where planets that I captured would start auto-buying radio towers.
A few things that need improving:
The interface isn't quite obvious enough, mostly the research. It's not obvious that's a button, especially since you should probably also be able to click on the number. There are instructions, but I didn't read them until I had completely failed the first time.
Also, it seems that it's a bit unforgiving when it comes to picking a strategy, since if you do the wrong thing at first, there's no good way to correct your buildings.

@porglezomp: I've fixed the bug with the auto building towers in my code base after being informed of it last night, but as I understand the LD rules, I'm not allowed to update it because it's not a breaking bug.

I've actually already addressed your buliding concern (you can now destroy buildings to switch them around), but can't update it for the same reason.

Both the science icon and number should be clickable already (at least in my browsers), so that's a bit strange. I'll look further into it though.

I really appreciate that you took the time to give detailed feedback!


@Razoric: Thanks for the encouragement!

And thanks to everyone else for your comments :)

The aesthetic with the influence display is fantastic, and gameplay is solid. It's a shame that resources are accumulated so quickly though - I had to play basically the whole game while paused to make decisions quickly enough to win.

The galaxy is ravaged and utterly destroyed. Entire planets have been wiped out, rebuilt, wiped out, and rerebuilt countless times. Endless fleets senselessly massacre the same dead planets over and over again. Life has ended, and only Robotics remain. An eternal stalemate has been reached:
http://imgur.com/ZdaU8Mn

This is fantastic. Probably my favorite Ludum Dare game ever. Christ, it's just so much fun.

Would love for the ships to be a bit more intelligent though, like not targeting a planet with 0% health. And also some more information about what destroying a planet actually does?

So good though. Do something with this. I'll buy it.

Good Job.

Loved how the zone of influence was pushing against each other.

Awesome game, interesting strategy. I manage to survive for a little time first run due poor resource management on my behalf. But game is awesome, especially for 48 hour compo entry.

This is intense =P I like how fast paced yet complex it is. Great game.

Interesting concept and cool music ;-)
Had fun!

Great game man! Very well done! found it quite a bit challenging as well!

Real good base, i saw several game like that but here the realtime of the grow create a intense challenge. The difficulty had to be lower a little bit, and the GUI over the planet as to be more clear, and big to allow the player to make goog decision. The name of planet create maybe a useless confusion, in game who is fully abstract.
Hard but good.

Pretty fun! Took me two tries to beat back the enemy. Watching their influence sphere shrink was incredibly satisfying. SHIP RUSH!

[I started out with gold mines, then to radio enhancers when reaching "contested areas" - after influence stopped being a thing, I switched over to full robotics/fleet until the first line of planets was captured. Switched to balanced eco/macro and it seemed to be a landslide victory from there!]

Nice game, need a tutorial xD

Overall a well made entry, I am very bad at these types of games though, one issue that I found was that the income far greater than what I could possibly spend. This kind of removes the strategy out of the game.

@ZeppelinCaptain; Thanks for your in-depth comment and screenshot! The way ships behave is something I wanted to improve upon, but didn't have time to during the compo. It's definitely something I'm thinking about, and am going to change going forward.

@Stepwise: Sounds like you found a winning strategy :)

@Windmill Games: Thanks for your input! Balancing the income/expenses is something I didn't get the time to work on as much as I'd have liked, but gold income especially is indeed higher than it should, especially with the right build/research path. I have some ideas that I'm working on that should improve the balance.


And thanks again for everyone's comments - they're very much appreciated :)

The AI took my by a storm in the first round, but then I learned about the tech window and whooped some robot but with my superior military tactics! Well, actually I just produced ships on most planets, with some central planets being filled with radio towers and planetary shields, but still.

Really cool game, and the technical aspects are really nice too. It works surprisingly well even with a high amount of ships.

Anssi@MooseflyGames

Wow, this had a challenging learning curve, but the easy game mode helped learn. Amazing you made an entire 4x game here :)

Now make a 3+ player version!

Took awhile to figure out, good music though

Wow this is a really awesome concept. The influence bulbs are really cool too. It was a little hard to pickup the game at first. If you could draw icons on the planets so you could see what you have at a glance, that would help immensely. Readability is the main issue but if you solve that, it could be a really great game. Good job.

Nice and clean, some instructions would be nice but anyway, was fun to play. Also nice music

Great to see an strategy game here. Well done with so little time.

Platformers and other action games are not hard to design. Core mechanic is well known, you only wrap it with some goodies. But Strategy genre is a different story. Designing and implementing it in 48h is close to impossible, so your entry is just awesome. Good job!

Awesome game. Well done!

Nice concept i like the game! It is difficult at first go immediately grasp what does what. :) I really like the game! :)

Nice game, congrats! I want more :)

Challenging and strategic gameplay! The music is quite good too. Well done!

There is some complexity but it evolves to fast for me. Refreshing take on the connected worlds theme. Good job!

It really is fast. o.o
And I still don't quite know what factors play the main part in taking over the enemy, despite having read instructions et al. In particular, where/when should I build radio towers, and where/when shield towers, and how the ships affect the gameplay and such...

(instructions, instructions, it's always them instructions... u_u")

Fun game.

Very interesting concept, but it all happens so fast and I had no idea what to build. I hated the music :P. Not because of taste, but I thought it didn't match the game. Good job, overall.

@smizmeal: It's running with up to 4 players in my current build :)

@Zathalos: Thanks for the idea! I'll look into something like that.

@Sunflower: I agree the instructions aren't the best at this point. Part of the strategy is deciding what to build where and when, though. But generally you'll want radio towers on your border planets to push for territory, and shipyards somewhere close to build ships to attack with. The others are situational, but shields help planets under attack for instance.

@hbocao: Appreciate the honesty :)

And thanks to everyone else for your comments!

Awesome! loved it! It's really cool and fun! Graphics are a bit too simple but the overall experience is just so much fun! Congratulations on a solid entry!

I liked how boundaries are pushed, as if it was some kind of dense liquid. The game is too complicated, too many rules so I dont even feel like figuring out how to play.

Hi there, I put this game on my recommendation list for this LD: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2014/09/13/5-1-games-of-greatness/
Good luck with the placement :)

Wow, great entry, loved every second, a lot of fun to play. I noticed that in the end my conquered planets were building radio towers automatically, bug or feature?

@ZeppelinCaptain: Thanks! Appreciate that a lot :) Good luck to you as well.

@Larzan: Glad you liked it :) The radio tower thing was a bug I unfortunately didn't catch before I submitted. It was fixed the day after when I found out about it for the post-compo version. I don't think it was breaking enough to qualify for a fix in my submission though.

loved watching the board turn to my colour, very satisfying. reminds me a bit of perimeter or creeper world what with the fluid nature of influence. a bit of a steep learning curve at the start trying to figure out the controls.

The game's really hard, but fun to play nonetheless!
Great music, too :)

Waw. solid concept on such a short deadline. Good Job !