Couldn't figure out the game for a few minutes. Do include some feedback mechanism, and an instruction screen. :)

Otherwise, it's a nice concept. Following this.

I really like the game mechanics once I figured them out :P. Good job!

I really liked the concept of the game, the fact that it is turn based and you use random cards for actions.

I would prefer it if the boost card had more thrust and the enemy turrets moved you less.

I liked the card-game-like conceit, though I found the game to be a bit too slow and methodical for my liking. You could have messed up really early and wouldn't know it until near the end.

To be honest, The game was at its most fun when you selected everything just to see what would happen.

Amazing mix of card game and asteroids. Nice work!
I couldn't understand the order in which cards are played in a turn and it seems to me that they all do it at the same time.
This game has a lot of potential. Congratulations!

Thanks for the feedback guys!

@hhsaez: the cards do in fact all execute at the same time. I thought about adding an execution order or something like that, but didn't have time to really test how that would work or how to show the order to the player.

@geeitsomelaldy: in most cases it's actually possible to recover even if you messed up early, because you can repair power drain and refill your power by collecting power ups. However, it's true that the game is quite slow.

@skyr: I was hesitant to set the boost (forward and turns) too high, because once the player presses ENGAGE he/she has no control, and I felt it was important to be able to make small delicate maneuvers to navigate the asteroid field. Having two different forward boost actions might have been a good solution; one with a small boost and one with a large boost. The enemy turrets might indeed be a bit too deadly; if you get too close to them having a Stabilizer card ready is a must, but avoiding them entirely or shooting them from afar is often the best strategy. They were the last thing I added to the game, in order to spice it up a bit, so I didn't have much time to fine-tune them unfortunately :)

The ship appear to experience too much drag (and rotation drag)... meaning that for example if you start rotating with 2 cards, it is then sometimes enough to use 1 to kill the rotation... Also some indication of ship's current velocity would be handy.

Interesting game mechanic. Good job!

@Hilvon: I tried to balance the drag to get a good feel. I found that it was much easier to control the ship with a relatively high drag, but given more time to balance / try different setups I'm sure it could have been a lot better. I'm not sure how to display the velocity in a way that would actually help the player. A number wouldn't help much I think. Perhaps an arrow displaying the velocity vector? I think watching the ships movement is the easiest way to judge the velocity, but obviously it requires a bit of time to get used to it. Anyway, thanks for the feedback :)

Cards should be less random, becouse I experienced lack of forward boost cards, for 5 turns i can only rotate in place (or shoting lasers), what was really sad. Concept was good but you need little improve that.

@Nordtraveller: actually some cards are more likely to show up than others, and the forward card is the most likely to show up! So I guess you were just unlucky. However, the point of the game (as with any card game) is the randomness of the card draw (and trying to plan around that to optimize your success-rate as a player), so I don't really feel like I can reduce the randomness there. You can always discard your entire hand if you don't like it and hope to get the cards you need next round.

** First Impression ** Now that looks interesting :D

** Graphics **: I generally like the style of your game it certaintly fits it, if you keep working on maybe you can change the power ui to something more fitting to the theme (maybe even but it on the rocket itself? :D)

** Sound **: The sound effects were really well executed :) also i like the simplistic sound of your game, but it gets a bit repetitive after some time^^

** Gameplay **: That's really an interesting concept you managed to create there :) i really liked the concept of managing my power against my target and moving around the asteroids, which wasn't always easy :D

** Overall **: Really great result for the limited time of the compo you can be proud of yourself :)

@Loktor: Thanks for the feedback! I'm really glad you liked it. Showing the power on the ship itself is a great idea! I will definitely steal that! :D

I spent very little time on the music, and I think that is probably the weakest part of the game; as you say it is way too repetitive. However, I spent a fare amount of time getting the sound effects right, so I'm glad you liked those :)

I love the idea, here's a couple of ideas I had on how this genre mash-up could be developed further.


The "flying a starship with thrusters and asteriods" games tend to be hard to control already, and they require a lot of fine tuning from the part of the player. Making it turn based removes the player's ability of fine-tuning.

The turn-based card-like model you're using could give the player a lot of flexibility via a wide variety of cards. These could be used to counter-act the fact that the player hast lost their fine-tuning ability. For example,

- Abilities to counteract the player's poor positioning abilities, such as attractive and repelling magnets to attract or repel both power-ups and asteroids.

- Different types of attacks. Stronger, weaker but with more knockback, with piercing abilities, AOEs, homing, etc. They'd be balanced by power used.

- Fine-tuning abilities like "rotate 45 degrees". Effectively the result of a short burst in oue direction, then a short burst in the other. Or a "sidestep", etc.

- It is very easy to ram into asteroids. It is not a good idea to do so. But maybe a rare card could give you the opportunity to "shiled you" for the next 2 seconds. Similarly a rare card could give you a reflector.

Also, you could increase the ways the player uses their cards; e.g. having only one "turning" card but being able to chose the direction, choosing how powerful a forward thruster card is, etc. You could balance each card's different uses by changing the power price.

The cool thing about card game mash-ups is that you can add loads of crazy abilities without having to assign a keyboard key to each one.

In general, I'd say this game is as impressive implementation of a genre mash-up I had no idea could work. It shows there was a lot of work done just to get the basics going, and you still managed to do it in such a short amount of time. Great job!

I keep getting surprised by these varied game genres. A turn based card game? The time to make all the cards? Very cool. Nice sound effects, clean UI. Nice physics. Solid core mechanic of the power/turn. Fits the theme well!

Really liked this game.

A space shooter/card game... What a nice and original piece of work.

Liked the sounds, I think they all fit well with the game, as well as the sprites.
The UI is very good too as well as the mechanics envolved in the movements.

No down-sides for me, maybe there's some features that could be implemented as well, but the way the game is right now, for me is very good.

Can't wait to see what you will present to us next Ludum Dare.

Keep Coding! :wink:

I found myself constantly discarding cards since I couldn't go forward. I could never get up to speed, as it would just slow down after a few turns, which seems fine in gameplay but didn't make sense in a space setting (where you would have no resistance to slow you down). Even still, it was a good little game and I could tell with more work it could be even better!

I was only hoping for "rear engine" and "laser blaster" for the rest of my turn because it was really hard. Good mechanics implemented on this game by the way :D

Very cool game!
It´s always impressive to see games with a gameplay apart from platformer etc..
Liked especially the combination of cards and physics.
It is really hard to estimate how your ship will fly, but there is a good learning curve.
Graphics and sounds also score.

@Agecaf: Thanks for the feedback! I really like your ideas for new cards, and also the idea of letting the player customize each card that is used (modify the power, or turning direction, etc.). I guess it will be a difficult balance of not making the cards overly complex, but still allowing for many different uses and fine tuning.

@Incobalt: I thought about that too (that in space there is no drag/resistance). At first I tried without any drag, but controlling the ship was nearly impossible. Control became much easier when I added some drag, so I decided to go with good game-play over "reality". I was also sort of imagining that the spaceship probably has some built-in systems which help slow it down so it doesn't just drift around forever (but that isn't explained in the game of course). I can imagine it's a bit annoying if you never get the cards you need of course. I can recommend discarding all your unwanted cards every turn, to increase the chance of drawing what you need. Actually "boost forward" is the card with the highest draw chance, so I guess you got a bit unlucky!

Thanks everyone for the excellent feedback! :)

I really like the game mechanic. It has potential. Congrats!

I love turn based games, so I had great fun with this one! The general aesthetic is great and the sound and graphics fit well with each other! Good job!

This is really innovative idea, you use your cards to stir the ship and movement is in real time. That is brilliant and i would love to see this game mechanic expanded. Graphics are decent and audio is also pretty good. Gameplay is pretty engaging and it requires a lot predicting how spaceship will fly, dodging asteroids is pretty challenging and fun. In overall really neat game.

Very cool game, I love the visuals, audio and general atmosphere. I didn't understand the gameplay system at first but I soon got the hang of it. It's quite a fun challenge to try to intercept the powerups and avoid the asteroids in a turn based system. The only thing I thought was a bit too much was being spun around completely. It seems like it would be really difficult to actually escape from the drones. But that's just a balance issue I think. For the time available I think you made a great an unique game and I enjoyed it, nice work!

This is a really cool game.

There are a couple of things which I think would be nice additions.

- First I think it would be nice to see a visual indication of your current velocity (e.g. where you would end up if you didn't do anything this turn or something like that).

- It's a little bit tricky to aim the phasers, so it would be nice if they honed in on objects very slightly.

- It would be really cool if there was some sort of a deck building element to the game. Maybe your crew member's could level up which could give you the option of picking new cards to add to your deck? Idk.

Other than that, a really cool game :).

I really enjoyed this game. The concept is really cool. The audio was good, the graphics were good. Though the mechanics a bit weird to get used to, it was still really fun. Overall this was really fun. Good Game :)

Thanks for the feedback guys!

@wh05herlock: I like your ideas! Showing the velocity would require some experimentation, but I think it would be a very nice addition. The lasers system can definitely be improved, with different types of weapons and such, perhaps a rapid fire / spread attack, or as you say a homing attack. A deck building element would be awesome. It was a bit out of scope for 48 hours, but it would be a very nice addition for the future :)

Nice concept. Initially I though it would be a comet busters look-alike but was agreeably surprised. Really fun. Strategically interesting. It seems it damps energy and slows down (My plan was to shoot ahead and fly forward shooting my way through but the damn ship was stopped after 4 turn, crushing my strategy :( ). There is a lot of randomness, and I'm not sure it's balanced enough to give the player a chance. You probably should add a discard card option at a reduce cost because when you have 2 or 3 10-cost repair cards you are not well engaged. It's a little to slow to play (I would probably allow to chose card for the next turn while simulation is running and have the simulation always on) and be funny for a long time. Good work, but there is still a lot of potential.

@GistNoesis: You can right-click cards (mark them red) to discard them. Without taking advantage of discarding cards the game is indeed very difficult/random :)

Nice concept !

The game is maybe a little bit hard and slow, but you got really well with the LD theme. Good job !

Interesting turn based game. Felt a bit slow but I liked the card-like mechanic.

The concept is really cool, good job.

This is a really cool concept, with a great implementation. Graphics are good, music is decent. And most importantly it is fun. A bit hard and clumsy though, but thats part of the fun. Thanks for putting a smile on my face/

Card games is something I respect a lot. I find it difficult to make one in the first place. Well done on the concept, I ended spending quite some time at playing this. Unfortunately I ended up often with a handful of going straight cards so I end up dying. Nonetheless, the game was very fun.

One easy way to improve is to perhaps add more variety to the cards? You have the concept done now, you can add so much more by adding more things on top of this current card game.

Good job!!