As we are always told, time is relative, influenced, among other things, by gravity.

Never believed it?

Now you have prove!

The game shows you the world from the perspective of an external beholder, observing your actions.

You start as Cornel Snoopster on your home planet and have exactly 10 seconds to get to the carroty planet in the top right corner.
Unfortunately your ship is too slow, but alas, as gravity slows time relatively to the eye of our beholder, you can get close to planets and collect Wormholes that can be found close to the surface to make up for lost time.

The closer you are to the surface of a planet, the slower time ticks relatively to our omnisciont beholder (you).

Try to make it to the carroty planet without running out of time.

p.s.: the project was too ambitious, although i have more grafix implemented, there was no time to get them in the game. My geometry when placing the objects on the planet is seriously f**** flawed i mean. But my brain is just not able to handle it anymore, need sleep...
The space scene was supposed to scroll over a few screens and make it bigger, works, but still flawed, so couldn't get it in either.
Also the collision detection had to be removed for the planets, so pretty moot to fly around there.
All in all it was a great experience, wish i had more time to implement all that i planned.

When the rocket touches a green planet it gets stuck there and cannot move any further (and the clock stops).
Also, never reached the surface of a planet. Is there a particular planet I should visit? (the orange one, perphaps? could never reached it though!)

Fun game. :) On my first try I got stuck on a planet at the border — of the universe, is suppose :P —; every time I left the atmosphere and tried to get a way in space I was brought back to planet view. ^^

Anyway: liked the gameplay, switching between the two views, and loved the seemingly always partying houses. :D

I thought the instructions were a bit confusing, bulletpoints would have been clearer. But I did enjoy it, and got to the carroty planet ;) I think perhaps with some gravity, and some sort of colour-chart to figure out wormhole concentration, then it would be more enjoyable ;)

Really nice idea!
Would love to see it continued.

Reached the carroty planets! Very nice use of relativistic ;)

A few small bugs, but a good idea, well done

Congrats on entering & good luck with the post-compo version.

I like the idea, though I didn't really understand how to play.

I think this has a lot of potential, I love the time dilation mechanic. Some really great music could build up a very dense sense of atmosphere.

I haven't seen ths idea before yet, I like it! Good stuff.

Nice concept for the game, although a little short! A proper ending would be nice when you get to the carrot planet.

I see all the flaws Larzan points out but what I also see is a game that fits the theme and is somewhat educational. The graphics are fun and with a bit of tidying up that could be a nice introduction to relativity.

Interesting concept, was pretty tough though, especially since the random generation normally causes you to not be able to get to any planets before the end. By the time I actually took off from the first planet there was normally only 4 seconds left and the turning is floaty (makes sense in space) so only a close planet directly in a straight line from the rocket starting point really is plausible to get to. Even then I could never get more than 2 seconds on the timer by hitting the wormhole things for more time, even when being super close to the planet's surface, they simply didn't spawn enough for me to collect enough, I feel like I would have had to play for up to 5 minutes on a planet before having enough time to get to the next one. Either way, the concept is pretty cool. I feel like if the acceleration on the rocket was just a little bit better I would have been able to enjoy it a lot more. And the concept is pretty awesome.

Hi Beardbotnik, i hear you, i assume you have an older computer? I noticed this myself, because as didn't use a game framework, only a grafics framework, it is lacking a good timing mechanism and i am simply using the framerate. So depending on your framerate the ship is moving slower or faster (bad game design), making the thing effectively unplayable on older computer. I am planning to do a post-LD version, where i would use a game engine, or add a timing framework.

Love the idea of different scale of time.
Some bugs (rotating buildings).
I think you need... more time ... to polish everything up, and add some "dynamics" to the mechanics.

Curious to see a more finished version !

Cool concept! I liked this game. The way you transition from the world map to the plants is really smooth, and the tie-in to relativity helps. Also the circular levels and gyrating buildings really tripped me out, haha. You mentioned having bigger plans, totally feel you there man. My entry's concept was a mix between a farming sim and a item collection / enemy dodging game. Saturday rolled around and I realized I bit way more off than I could chew, so did the best with what I had. I'd love to see your game expanded!

I liked the idea where they switch between time, when you are on the planet and out of it. But i could never finish

Cool concept! It would be nice to see it developed a bit further, the time scaling mechanic was really interesting.

Nice job :)

Played the web version.

Concept is great and there's definitely a highly playable game in there but it's still a bit too buggy to be fun yet imo.

Main problem is the time it takes to get to the nearest planet in the space view. This isn't always possible, and even when it is you get very little time left on the planet. Also with 'leave planet' bound to the up arrow, it's easy to leave the planet before you want to - maybe bind this to another key? Also the spaceship didn't always restart on return to the spaceview. After a few goes I never did manage to make it to more than one planet.

Having said which, I think this is only a little bit of gameplay-tweaking and debugging away from something really quite fun.

Thanks Motty :) yes, the gameplay definately is still very buggy. After working so much on it i had serious problems with my math ;) I definately plan to fix that in a Post-Compo version.

I liked the movement of the building on the planets surface.
Nice interpretation of the theme and inclusion in the gameplay.

It's a bit difficult, but very interesting. Usually, by the time my ship starts moving, I'm at 7 seconds.

Very good, creative concept. Could use a bit more variety and some audio, but we all know the time was tight. Great work, could become even better if worked on.

good job

Both your windows link and web link are the same

Super solid entry! Unique use of the theme too :)

really nice use of the theme here, an interesting mix of side scrolling and top down gameplay that has worked well together, especially for you story/theme, good game grats

I liked this game, it was pretty cool, specially for how crunched you sounded at the end. Good job :) I featured it in my comilation video of Ludum Dare 27 Games, if you wanna check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1UJ96l2scE

Thanks Hadley, saw it, although i guess you did not see that the whole point was the fact that you save time on the planet because the time there passes way slower than when you are flying in space, relatively that is. Anyhow, thanks for the mentioning :)

I has some trouble when stuck in a planet and nothing happens, but when it works it is quite funny and good idea!

Love the concept! Like, a lot. I played the web version and it's a little rough (it's a jam, can't hold it against you) but it has so much potential.

Good work!

I like the idea, hope you expand upon it!

Really like the idea, but the instructions should have been a bit clearer, it was quite confusing at first what i had to do.

I like the separation of stages with different gameplay.

Great idea. Simple.

I love the idea, but I didn't really get how it was implemented in the game. Visualising the speed of time in some way other than a timer would be nice.
Nice art style, I love how the planets are full of orange skyscrapers! :)

I really like the art style. I hope you do make more progress on it later on. It was pretty cool

Very clever implementation of the theme, makes for an original, interesting game. You should definitely do more with this one.

Very good concept around space-time continuum / wormhole and all that stuff.
I found it need some polish because in some cases you can't reach the final planet because of other planet nearby you get stuck between a planet and the wall.
Adding some more game mecanism in the planet view could be great (like you have to avoid buildings).
Need some audio also.

I like it! Especially what you did with the theme. Poorly done, this could have been seen as a way of "cheating" your way out of the constraint but using relativity is actually a very clever idea.
Too bad the game is pretty short and quite easy to beat. Regardless, I like thi entry! :)

Very interesting idea!

I really like the concept but the game need to be more challenging on the earth surface. Good job.

Interesting concept,but I think the game froze when I tried to go in 1 of the smaller planets.

I got stuck when colliding with planets on spaceview two times, having to press f5.

I absolutely love the idea, but collecting wormholes on the plats is a very boring task to be honest.
I just stick to the ground and wait for wormholes. Then collect them and go down as far as I can again.

Nice idea, I like that you have two different views. :) Maybe a bit too easy as I finished it on my second try. :)

Yeah, time rewinding by messing with gravity and speed is great :)

Good work.

I like this entry very much. It has a nice explanation too. Maybe I could have played without it, but it adds context. I like the two modes too.