Get Outer Space! by Nick Rafalski
Play Tetris while dodging asteroids!
Collect the gold, but save up some armor too!
Click to play in browser!
Game Background
Get Outer Space combines an infinite runner and physics-based-Tetris to make you feel like you're running out of space in more ways than one!
Your objective is to collect as much gold as you can, stacking it neatly in the cargo bay of your get-away ship. However, your un-shielded ship will explode if it takes so much as a scratch from an asteroid. Thankfully, the asteroid field is also teeming with chunks of armor that you can also pick up, store, and use to absorb a hit.
You can manage the relative sizes of your gold and armor bays, but don't get too greedy!
This is really 2 games in 1:
The top half of the screen is a simple infinite runner: use A/D or Left/Right to dodge asteroids while picking up Gold and Armor pieces.
The bottom half of the screen is a view of your ship's airlock, and cargo bays for armor and gold. Once an armor/gold piece enters the airlock, you must click and drag it to the proper cargo bay. You cannot pick up another item until the airlock is empty.
As you fill up the gold cargo bay, you may feel like you're running out of space. This is when you should drag the cargo bay divider to expand the gold cargo bay. Of course, that will give you less room for armor.... So you better be on top of your flying, hot shot!
About Me:
This was my fourth LD game and I really enjoyed it again. The game was made in about 31 hours, because I will be busy all Sunday, and I'm very pleased with the game I made in the abridged time. I am happy the dragging mechanism seems fun and more or less reliable.
Tools:
- Unity
- Inkscape
- Audacity
| HTML5 (web) | https://nostyleguy.itch.io/get-outer-space |
| Source code | http://nostyleguy.com/ld/42/get-outer-space_1.0.0_src.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/get-outer-space |
Ratings
| Overall | 93th | 3.843⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 100th | 3.757⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 27th | 4.088⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 174th | 3.914⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 114th | 3.903⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 203th | 3.286⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 181th | 2.948⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 187th | 3.313⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 31🗨️ |
EDIT: oh I missed that you can adjust your hold size! Well - it still gave me a good laugh.
In terms of constructive criticism, I would recommend there being much less asteroids for the first minute or so, as the game feels far too frantic when you don't really know the mechanics. Also, I would ditch the physics-based mechanics for holding gold and armour. I think the game would feel much better if the player had a greater sense of control, and I believe that ditching the physics-based mechanics in the hold would do this.
However, take what I said with a grain of salt. It's very clear from playing this game that you are a much more experienced game developer than me, this is just my opinion on how the game could me made better, this game is amazing as it is.
@tuscany Whoops you are totally right about the fullscreen thing. I removed the button on itch.io now.
@speedysloth99 Thanks so much for the feedback and praise! I generally agree with your feelings about control. While I thought the physics twist on Tetris was fun, I also wanted to make the pieces 'lock' into position once they stopped moving and were aligned together. This would make it much easier for the player to make use of the space. Unfortunately it was beyond my abilities, especially given the time crunch, so I had to drop it. Thanks again for playing!
This was such a cool idea, really well done! And nice shader work :smile:
Super cool work! :D
One thing i would say is its a lot to take in right at the start of the game. It took me 2-3 tries after i died immediately to get the sense of progression and understand the gameplay. It might be good to ramp it up as the user gets the concept over time. :)
@shellbot 39 is really good! My all time high is 69, but most runs end in the 20s, ha! Thanks for the compliments!
@ossi Wow thanks for the praise. I definitely wanted to add a ramp-up period to the difficulty, but I ran out of time. Thanks for sticking with it long enough to get used to it :) Thanks for playing!
@mukult I definitely wanted to add a ramp-up period to the beginning, but I ran out of time. Thanks for persevering and not rage-quitting! Thanks for the feedback, and all the kind words, it's super motivating.
If I had any nits to pick it would be that the gold and armour blocks scroll onto the screen smoothly, but the asteroids do not -- they just pop in, kind of breaking the illusion/immersion/general feel of things. Some of the SFX were a bit strange too... maybe made with your mouth...?
Ahem. Nevertheless! Very good entry! :thumbsup:
Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)
Really fun game. For a compo the graphics are great. Music and 'mouth' sound effects are both good. I'm not sure I really have much negative to say about the game. Everything worked really well. If there were to be one change, I think having a 'perfect grid' mode where the gold and armor actually snapped into place and you had to fill up the grid that way could make it a lot more challenging to steer and puzzle simultaneously. You could even use tetris mechanics where if you got a complete hull (everything filled) it compacts into a denser cube that is worth more points. That kind of thing is definitely an after Jam expansion sort of thing though =P Great Job and have fun out there!
@jackou I definitely agree about it being overwhelming at first. I wish I had budgeted my time better and added a ramp-up period. Thanks for the feedback and kind words!
@gwinnell I take "The strangest of all the games played so far" as a huge compliment! Your criticsms are spot-on. I had to go back and look, but for some reason I'm spawning the asteroids from a different place than the stars and gold/armor pickups -- not sure why I did that! Thanks for playing
@phlip45 60 is a great score! I really really like your idea for a snap-to-grid mechanism. I had the initial thought to make it grid aligned, but couldn't come up with a reward for completing a line like Tetris (I rationalized that I'd have to remove the line, and therefore, your score would go down). Compacting the blocks, and giving a score bonus is so simple but elegant. Thanks for playing and the kind words!
It gets dull after a bit. Other than that you managed to pull it off pretty well. A very good entry all in all. Congrats on your game!
@gajop Yea it's basically just a high-score chaser (without even keeping track of your high-score, whoops!). I would have liked to flesh it out with more of a sense of progression, but it wasn't in the scope. Thanks for playing and the compliments!
@shp Yea I totally hear you on the controls. Some people seem okay with them, but I can definitely see how they're too sensitive. I probably should have added a sensitivity slider, but I ran out of time. Thanks for playing and the feedback!
I tried doing the split-control mechanics on another ludumdare and utterly failed, I should tell you **you nailed it!** It has the simplicity to understand it easily but needs skills to properly man it. Felt like going on a bicycle with one hand on the handle and the other picking things from the ground while driving, very funny.
Some thoughts:
I came to a point when I was full of gold occupying 2/3 of the cargo part (lost with 52), it would be nice to convert to ingots or somehow be able to reduce it's size but if you do it with a higher amount you get a bonus or something as a cash-in trade off.
A thing I liked that made me giggle was that the cargo was physics based all messy instead of puzzle-snapped (like it would happen in a runaway situation) AND that when you're full of things it starts to get in the way of the airlock.
The ship movement is a bit steep, too much acceleration and little drag made it a bit uncontrollable sometimes. Also going around the edges and coming back from the other side is strange for shmups and didn't see it coming.
Overall great experience. Good job!