LudumData

The Hungry Planet by madalaski

[raw]
made by madalaski for LD 38 (COMPO)

Links:

Description:

You are a lonely asteroid, looking to make your way into the big leagues. The planets and the stars, colossal giants drifting through space, thinking they're so great. It's time for the status quo to change in a gripping adventure full of romance, betrayal and 16th century colloquialisms. Unfortunately, your epic story switched engines mid-way through development and some of the content was cut. It's still pretty fun though!

Controls:

Move your mouse around the asteroid and click to move towards your mouse pointer.

Your impulse towards that point depends on how far away you click!

Collide with stellar objects (such as asteroids) to absorb them.

Absorb stellar objects with a smaller mass than you to gain their mass!

Try to absorb an object that's larger than you, however, and it'll be game over...

Endgame:

Unfortunately, the game has no tear-jerking finale. However, do post the highest mass you obtain in the comments below and you can compare it to one of these many real life stellar objects:

  • Alpha Centauri:
    • 2.2E+30 kg
  • R135a1 (Most massive star):
    • 6.3E+32 kg
  • Min Supermassive Black Hole:
    • 2.0E+35 kg
  • Max Supermassive Black Hole:
    • 1.0E+41 kg

Ending Remarks

This is probably the most polished and complete game I have produced for Ludum Dare and in the shortest time! I've only been able to work on and off this weekend so I've probably only used 40% of those 48 hours. Thank you for taking the time to play it and please let me know any criticisms or bugs that you encounter!

Screenshots -

LD38(1).png

LD38(2).png

LD38(3).png

Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-hungry-planet

Ratings

Overall 482th 2.731⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 408th 2.769⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 404th 2.731⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 455th 2.731⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 496th 2.385⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 269th 2.885⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 416th 1.917⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 413th 2.731⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 32🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

Wati888
02. May 2017 · 04:59 UTC
Interesting little game. Great on browser but not a game you would sit down and play for more than five minutes at a time. But it works, because it goes with the theme of a small world.
makenai
02. May 2017 · 22:06 UTC
Pretty fun - I like the zoom effects. I didn't play through the entire thing, but it was hard to get a sense of scale without a reference point, so I didn't always get a sense that my little planet was growing. There were a few times where I feel like I got out into the bad neighborhoods of outer space because there were no bodies to absorb for a while and I was just clicking around aimlessly. I think with a more visual indicator of scale, I'd get more excited.

This is a total tangent but.. Have you ever seen this anime called Gurren Lagan? Toward the end of the series they keep getting bigger and bigger robots and eventually ones that are galaxy sized - they do a really good job of conveying that scale as they zoom out past planets, which become smaller, then solar systems, and then entire galaxies etc. I think that's something like I'd imagine for this game - maybe starting out in the orbit of some background moon and then seeing it shrink. I did see you have an Earth-like planet in the screens but I wasn't able to encounter it.

Anyway, well done on this entry!
GenericToast
04. May 2017 · 05:18 UTC
A really fun and simple game. The camera zoom could have been a bit bigger so more things can be seen on the screen at once.
🎤 madalaski
06. May 2017 · 19:11 UTC
@makenai
I wonder how hard it is to program a drill that pierces the heavens...
Vodzik
13. May 2017 · 13:40 UTC
Sometimes it is difficult to judge whether the asteroid is bigger or smaller than yours.

I think, that player model could change, when reach some mass threshold.

Besides that, nice game! :)
FuriousWitch
18. May 2017 · 14:34 UTC
Great game! I enjoyed playing it but I think it needs more to be added to motivate you to keep going. Still, considering the time frame and you said you worked 40% of it I think the output is pretty decent :)
tommakesgames
18. May 2017 · 16:13 UTC
Excellent idea. Good work with the music and sounds which although basic, seemed to work well. It's a shame that you can't really tell which rocks are bigger or smaller than you most of the time - which makes it a little unplayable. But if polished this could be an excellent web or mobile game!
LiamLime
18. May 2017 · 16:15 UTC
I enjoyed the control scheme and the visual touches (such as the zoom-in effect at the start of the game). At the start I had trouble hitting other asteroids and would end passing in front of them, but I got used to that relatively quickly. Seems like sometimes space becomes fairly empty though, I couldn't find an asteroid to crash into on one of my playhroughs though. It can also be fairly difficult to tell whether something is bigger or smaller than you sometimes, especially in the beginning. Still, I like the game and had fun with it :)
applejam
18. May 2017 · 18:32 UTC
Pretty old idea and sadly you didn't do anything new with it. I kinda liked the idea of this control scheme, but other objects seemed to be moving too fast for this kind of controls. Maybe it is not control scheme fault though. Maybe it is the fact that I had to chase other object since there were almost none of them around. Maybe spawning more objects could've solved this problem.

Good job with the music though!
🎤 madalaski
18. May 2017 · 18:56 UTC
@applejam That is strange, the system is designed so that more objects spawn in once you get further away from the initial objects... Will have to look into that! :)
AwesomeAlliterationAlliance
18. May 2017 · 19:20 UTC
The controls are quite unique, i enjoyed that.
Besides that, it would be nice to have a bit more gameplay, as it gets a bit repetitive after a short time.
Maybe more asteroides or something to increase the difficulty.
jk5000
18. May 2017 · 19:34 UTC
The idea is really interesting and fun, and both the graphics and music is good, but it is really difficult to find a small enough rock to collide with.
rojo
18. May 2017 · 19:37 UTC
I had a good time playing around with the locomotion mechanics. It was a bit tough to get started due to the zoomed in view and the speed of most of the other asteroids.
C0nst4ntin
18. May 2017 · 19:43 UTC
Hope this helps you!
M2tias
18. May 2017 · 19:46 UTC
Next in line for those .io games! Nice idea for controls, but other things need a bit of scaling. Sometimes I managed to get out of the screen and at first it's really hard to find and follow the asteroids. It's a bit hard to recognize which objects are bigger than you sometimes. Good job, anyhow :)
hunttis
18. May 2017 · 19:55 UTC
The first time I ran this game, I just got a few meteors fly past me and then nothing anymore :/ I reloaded the page and in the second try I got a lot of meteors. My main issues are probably that you have to keep tapping to move and the camera follow is a bit slow and sometimes the other meteors fly so fast that you barely see them before they're gone :D

Otherwise this is a fun little game, liked the music especially :)
Seb_degraff
18. May 2017 · 20:47 UTC
Nice! The music is awesome and really helps the fell of the game. I like that the masses are given in scientific notation, it makes it feel a little nerdy :)
A little work on the camera could help a lot: when you're moving fast, the slowly leaping camera can't catch up and you end up not knowing what's coming ahead. You could easily improve that by offsetting the target of the lerp with the planet velocity vector * some factor. I think it would make it more exiting, allowing you to move at higher speed while staying in control
coomzy
18. May 2017 · 20:58 UTC
Nice work, not sure if it's inspired by, but kind of reminded me of http://agar.io/

If you have a chance please rate my game.

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/final-front-planetary-defence
Siridakis
18. May 2017 · 23:58 UTC
The music is awesome and the propulsion mechanic is cool but I kept going and finding nothing for a long long time in the game.... I think you should drop out the zoomed in vision, it's a little annoying if you are in the game and still have to "keep searching for the game" a lot right on :/
tddawson
19. May 2017 · 04:01 UTC
My first time playing through, just about all of the asteroids I saw were moving way too fast for me to catch them. After I died, I tried again and was able to track some down and then I started enjoying it more. I did have some difficulty gauging my speed and momentum when I got places without stars in the background, which made it harder to control. I like the concept and it was very easy to understand. You should definitely be proud with what you were able to put together in such limited time!
pcmaster
19. May 2017 · 07:14 UTC
Ha, this was crazy but also funny. I had a hard time guessing if the other asteroids roughly my size were heavier or not so I took a lot of risk (and death) but it was really fun. The movement and camera were a bit chaotic but it doesn't matter much -- good job!