I really like the look of it, cant wait to try it out!

I could be doing something wrong but I can't seem to explore, colonize, or transport people to other planets. I've tried click the planet then hitting explore, I've tried hitting explore then the planet, I've tried clicking the planet while holding e. Nothing I do seems to work.

This is with the windows build by the way

@minimurgle We also experienced the same issue. We weren't able to interact with planets or launch ships to explore with. There was one occasion in which a ship successfully explored a planet, but nothing else would work after that.

The how to play seems to be a little unclear, as it the Explore, Transport, Colonize doesn't work like it says exactly. The instructions state to press the [E], [T], or [C] key and click a planet to do that action. I tried several times, but nothing would actually happen. I was thinking at first maybe something was wrong on my end, and closed and relaunched the game several times.

@minimurgle @dirkinz I think I've figured out finally how the controls/game works. When you hit the [E], [T], or [C] keys, you first have to click the planet you want to sent the ships "from", then click the planet you want to send them to. I was able to get a bit going doing it this way.


@julianeder33, @fireflame74 I like the concept of the game and the management aspect of it, but after figuring out how to play it, there are some other things I would have loved to have on the screen to assist. Maybe a HUD that displays a list of the planets to see the numbers for population and growth a little easier? Or even let me click a planet and when I click it i can see the stats until i click off, instead of only seeing it when the mouse is over it. The movement of the some of the planets made it harder to keep the information screen about the planet open since the they move away from the mouse.

The gif that was provided at in the post also shows contextual information when clicking, it seems that when you clicked the buttons or planets with the little red circle where you clicked, but this was missing from it when I played it. Not sure if it was a bug or removed, but it would be a welcome addition to help the clicks feel responsive.

Haha nice idea x) Quite fun ! GG guys !
PS : I would have loved, as I always say on reviews for LD, some reflexion about the theme in the audio... You can still work on it !
See ya !
(our game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-darkest-light )

@manbeardgames Yes that is how the controlls work. I know it is a bit difficult to understand but I had no better explanation. The clicking feedback on the gif comes from the programm I recorded the screen with.

Didn't work on my machine sadly :(

Hey, this is a really good concept! Had lots of fun once it started working, by that I mean I didn't realise you had to click twice to send ships >.< no worries, but a more in-depth tutorial would have been great. The graphics were great too! But perhaps the over/population bars were a little too small? I knew slightly how my planets were doing but the game over can be quite sudden if you forget about a little planet somehwere.
Overall, great game! :D

Can't send ships, only when I started the game it managed to send 1 ship after a while.

Am I doing something wrong?

23.233 MRD
You could've told us that you have to click on the planet from where the ship is coming and then on the planet where it is to go.

Really nice visuals, good sound, nice theme. Congrats on this quality job! Just one thing, after scrolling and zooming a bit the graphics started to warp.

And thanks for the linux build!

Like everyone else, I had problems with the controls at first, until I figured out, that you have to click on the planet from where to send the ship first. After that it was great! And definitly the best main-menu I have seen so far in the jam!

It was frustrating trying to click on the moving planets. The orbits and graphics were pretty cool though

Nice Game, a tutorial would have been nice! Sometimes the ships are so slow they can't catch up with the planet so they just fly behind it all the time. Also, my score wasn't shown at the end and the overpopulation bars are a bit small.

PS: I love the small references on the top(especially the portal one!)

I really had problems with the controls at first, thanks to @manbeardgames I finally could play !
The art and music are great but I think you should make the bars over the planets bigger. I didn't quite saw the theme in it but I might just not fully understand ^^'
Anyway, great job ! And +1 for the quality main menu !

There's a bug in windows' version of the game, the E,C,T function keys didn't work

This is a really cool game. Some things were quite hard to understand, but they can be fixed. Once you understand what is happening you slip in the tragedy of overpopulated plants, something which can be solved if you are careful not to burn the ships.

Great graphics and interesting gameplay! It's difficult to monitor every colonized planet at the same time (but I think that was intended to better follow the theme). Overall great entry!

Once I understood how to play (I had to read the comments) the game was good. The main menu is supercool. I had issues with the gui, some sentences were written over other stuff, the button to leave the highscores (I got second!) was barely visible on my computer. The game is a little uncomfortable beacause of the view and the size of the planets (Really difficult to have a revision on how your planets are), it's not obvious what have you selected (even when you click on Explore, for example, it looks like it turns off instead of looking selected). Maybe a much smaller solar system or just an overhead view would help much the player. Also, My citizen are not really good with the galileo's model and I have catch them pursuing a planet for quite a long time.

:thumbsup: I absolutely loved the intro menu ^_^ flaying around the solar system and mounting the camera to different planets was awesome. The graphics were great, I liked to see all the different planet styles, and even wish I could have seen them in a bit more detail. **Edit:** And the news ticker was great too!

:point_right: The game could have used better feedback, I could hardly tell what mode I was in (lighting up a button the entire time that mode was active would have gone a long way). It was also hard to tell if I had clicked on a starting planet and the interface was ready for the second. This mental and actual disconnect about the current mode lead to a lot of confusion for me. ^_^

:bug: I think the high score query is selecting the lowest (or maybe first) entry of a given user name. (if using a SQL-like language and "GROUP BY" you may need to return something like "MAX(score)" instead of "score")

:star: All is all, great work, I really enjoyed this. With a bit more polishing this could be a really fun game to compete for the high score over!

I really could not understand what was going on with XD, but when I understood it, everything became clear and good!