The Only Rocketeer by Monxcleyr Productions
Over the course of three separate days in the middle of an interstellar voyage, take control of the astronaut Rachel Miller as she manages and maintains the vessel that will take her to a distant planet.
WASD keys to move, E to interact, spacebar to progress through the text. Mouse/left click during the puzzle sequences.
We approached the theme of 'Minimalism' in a sort of roundabout way, hoping to focus on narrative and mechanics. We fell short on a lot of our goals, but we hope you find something worth remembering in there regardless. We will continue working on and updating the game in the near future, so let us know what you think and what we can do better!
WASD keys to move, E to interact, spacebar to progress through the text. Mouse/left click during the puzzle sequences.
We approached the theme of 'Minimalism' in a sort of roundabout way, hoping to focus on narrative and mechanics. We fell short on a lot of our goals, but we hope you find something worth remembering in there regardless. We will continue working on and updating the game in the near future, so let us know what you think and what we can do better!
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall(Jam) | 2.83 | 389 |
| Audio(Jam) | 2.40 | 372 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.44 | 423 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.82 | 375 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.31 | 228 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.67 | 365 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.43 | 126 |
| Theme(Jam) | 2.74 | 437 |
Intentional or not, it was a unique feeling that I enjoyed. 4 stars of Mood for that.
With the addition of more puzzles, more "event driven" ones, this might actually be a good FTL-like game!
$ python 'The Only Rocketeer.pyw'
I love the story here; it really hints at a depth and background that anchors the whole thing, so five stars for mood.
But there are some gameplay annoyances: the non-timed puzzles are too easy and don't really prepare you for the harder ones, which are timed to boot. And there's no way to start working on the next puzzle until the AI tells you to, which means you'll just have to sit around and wait for it to happen. Within the puzzles, it would be nice if you could click and drag, rather than click-click-click; and it could pick up the colour from the tile you're dragging from, rather than having to choose explicitly. The walking through the ship also seems a bit pointless, but maybe that becomes more interesting later on?
I'm not quite sure where the theme comes in.
The engine hum works quite well as a background track, and graphics look great in a semi-retro way.
I found a bug: Clicking the Play button after the credits have rolled once when you fail a puzzle causes the screen to flicker, but nothing else happens.
The sound effects and graphics were nice, (though I wasn't sure what the boat scene was about), and uh... Well, I didn't really get to experience too much more, because after 3 restarts I still couldn't solve the first puzzle or make sense of it. I'm unfamiliar with such a puzzle, and wasn't sure exactly where each wire trailed off to. Like, the coloured blocks with the diagonal lines, I assumed connected to the block diagonal, but then where 2 wires were trailing off to the right of a block, I wasn't sure where each line was going -- if one of them was going to the right, or both (cause no blocks had 2 wires trailing off to the left to match it). Then, I wasn't sure where the beginning of the whole puzzle started or ended, assuming it was circuitry, so I was pretty stuck and couldn't figure out what to do. I also couldn't figure out a way to check if what I had done was correct or not, or a way of exiting the puzzle.
I think you built a solid foundation, and thus was the reason I was interested enough to try multiple times, but the lacking in portrayal of information to the player broke down the structure your foundation was trying to hold.
It feels weird writing a comment like this, cause I mean, as a seasoned gamer of sorts, I don't really run into the issue of not knowing what to do, but yeah.
So, for constructive criticism, I have this for you:
I think the coloured tabs at the top of the puzzle should have shown what block it was, so that I could see all my options right there and not scattered over the grid.
Each block could have shown more accurately which line/s it was connecting to and from.
The goal of the puzzle could have been clearer, as well as the UI.
Oh and the sound randomly cut out a bit into the puzzle, each time.
It feels bad that my experience was this, because it looks like you had something really nice going on, but I couldn't manage my way around these relatively small obstacles to be able to experience it.