Star Slammer by AlexHoratio

Since the dawn of mankind, stars have been the focus of much mysticism and interest. Inspiring constellations, astrology and countless instances of childhood intrigue, stars have always been influential to humanity.
Fortunately, humanity got spaceships and now we can fly into them at high speeds for fuel. Hooray!
You can turn left and right using either A/D or the left/right arrow keys, and you can accelerate forwards by pressing either W or the up arrow key. Use the space bar to shoot and use your ship to smash into stars.
Good luck with your inter-stellar tantrum! You can find the executables for Windows, Linux and Mac versions along with the Godot project file (aka source code) below.
- DOWNLOAD: http://gamejolt.com/games/starslammer/272830
- TIMELAPSE: Coming soon!
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/star-slammer |
Ratings
| Given | 16🗳️ | 4🗨️ |
1. There was a problem with the resolution so I could never see the entirety of the game at once.
2. Enemies don't seem to be doing much other than just ramming me around however they don't seem to be getting in the way.
3. The ramming force seems to be a constant, what I mean is, is that it always seems to take 4 rams to destroy a star, no matter the speed you are ramming at.
4. I think it would have been a better decision if you made the points automatically get collected by the player instead of you having to collide with the points in order to collect them as focusing too much on collecting the points seems to deplete too much fuel but the goal of the game is to get as many points as possible. So it seems that there are 2 conflicting game mechanics playing at role.
5. For some reason sometimes the projectiles get shot behind the player instead of in front.
6. I ran out of fuel instantly after getting to ~210, it seems impossible to reach any higher that. (Or maybe I am just bad at the game) but you seem to get a heat shield after 200 and I have no idea what that does as I never got around to ramming after getting it because I ran out of fuel.
======PROS======
1. Smashing into stars is hella fun until you realize that your speed does not really matter, it was good while it lasted.
2. The art and the soundtrack is really good, well done.
3. The movement controls are pretty fluid and the ship moves just as expected.
=====In Conclusion===
Game is..at first confusing (since I could not see thing like the fuel and notoriety because my screen is too small.) and it does kinda get repetitive after the first 5 minutes. I hate to be harsh but I don't think this is a good game. It is gonna take a lot of work to make it at least playable for more than 5 minutes and I personally don't think its worth it. Also I am still new to writing stuff like this and I have no idea how to end this so I am just gonna stop typing right no-
Re: Con 1. Shit, you're right, I entirely forgot to fix that. It's a very small technical fix, I don't think it's breaking guidelines(?)
Re: Con 3. Speed does matter! It takes a sample of the player's speed in the last 3 frames and picks the highest one to calculate the damage dealt to the star.
Re: Con 6. Again, I should have made it more clear. You're meant to ram a significantly larger star to the right, indicated with a white arrow. This would win the game.
Thanks for the detailed feedback, though! I agree that it's not my finest work.
Art was pretty good, although things got pretty repetitive with the stars in the background after a while, since they were all the same shape and size.
I wasn't a huge fan of the sound, but it wasn't bad, that's for sure. The background music was probably the part I didn't really like all that much, but the sound effects were pretty cool.
Game mechanics were spot-on. It defintely felt like flying in space, even though there was friction (or you slowed down over time). Without that though, things get really hard to control after a while.
Good job!
Additionally, the fact that everything in the game is orange - and worse, most of it is the same shade - it was difficult to tell what was good and what was bad - making the game feel busy and confusing. The power points should be a different colour to the laser shots, which should also be different colours and/or shapes to the enemy shots.
That said, the game was quite fun, but it needs some balancing and polish.