Running out of Space by Harry Jacobs

made by Harry Jacobs for LD 42 (COMPO)

Hello!

This is my entry for LD42 for the theme "Running out of space". It's based loosely on Asteroids and follows the story of Brian, a man who has escaped his own rapidly collapsing universe in search of a new one before everything is crushed into nothingness. He's, quite literally, running out of Space.

Guide Brian to the wormhole and into a new parallel universe before his own collapses in on itself!

Controls: - WASD or arrow keys to move - Space or click to shoot - ESC to pause/go to main menu

Game made in 48 hours for the Compo using: - Unity 2017.something - Paint.net - Audacity - Ableton Live 9 Suite - VS Code

~~I don't currently have a WebGL build available due to a Unity bug (which I spent 3 hours trying to sort out instead of polishing the game grr) but there is a downloadable windows binary. If I get WebGL working I'll change the itch.io to a web player version.~~

I have a WebGL build now!

Thoughts: - Had a bit more free time this time round for Ludum Dare so I feel like the result is slightly better than previous ones - Wasted a good deal of time on computer issues instead of the game so need to make sure I've got everything set up and working before I start next time - Actually finished most of the game on the Saturday so just spent all of Sunday improving and polishing - Still a lot that could be improved-the randomness of the levels can cause a few problems as some levels are disproportionately difficult

Ideas for improvements would be very much appreciated :)

Hope you enjoy it!

Source code	https://github.com/harryjjacobs/Running-out-of-space
Windows	https://harryjjacobs.itch.io/ld42-running-out-of-space
HTML5 (web)	https://harryjjacobs.itch.io/ld42-running-out-of-space
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/running-out-of-space-9

Ratings

Overall	379^th	3.342⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	332^th	3.306⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	513^th	2.895⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Theme	170^th	3.921⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	298^th	3.395⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Audio	169^th	3.361⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Given		7🗳️	7🗨️

Feedback

PhillSerrazina

13. Aug 2018 · 18:29 UTC

The controls are a bit rough, but it's a good concept and it was pretty fun once I finally managed to go into the first wormhole!

Alexander Tan

13. Aug 2018 · 18:34 UTC

Controls are abit clunky but overall pretty nice

MrBehemoth

13. Aug 2018 · 18:40 UTC

An interesting concept - it would be cool to see it expanded on (no pun intended). It was fun, but there was a big difficulty spike at level 9 and I nearly gave up. I got quite frustrated (which is unusual for me) but I kept playing it anyway (which is unusual for me) and eventually got to the end of the game.

James Shipp

13. Aug 2018 · 18:45 UTC

I think the controls are the right amount of hard to control to make this fun. I like the sounds and music, I think the graphics could be a little more consistent and polished though. I was wondering if anyone would take the theme super literally, glad someone did :) I think some sort of shield or something to make the player not die on the first collision would make the game more fun- since right now it's kind of an all-or-nothing run. There's some great detail put in that I love:

- the option to skip the intro texts
- the cool highlight animation for the buttons
- the particle effects on the wormholes

Good shit!

0rganic

13. Aug 2018 · 18:47 UTC

I played it and I enjoyed it.

The pace of the game and the difficulty level was balanced very nicely. Naturally when player would get comfortable with the movement and the goal of the game, he would find himself a bit bored after a while, but the introduction of faster shrinking created two separate objectives for me: Be quick and think unconventionally to pass the level.

During last 2-3 levels I tried to either be extremely fast and mash player to everything upon spawn (the shield mechanism which prevented you from dying was good implementation) or to actually wait for the universe to shrink so i can simply let wormhole come to me, which actually didn't prove to be a bad idea.

Overall I liked the game. I was thinking about your intentions for the camera movement and player navigation in space, if you did intend the behavior, I agree with your decisions, because ultimately I think it made experience even more enjoyable.

Well done. :)

ludum1118

13. Aug 2018 · 18:48 UTC

Very zen, but those asteroids are just too dark and blend with the background too much.

StabAlarash

13. Aug 2018 · 18:48 UTC

Nice game !!! but yeah as other mentioned, the controls are a bit of a pain, maybe there's too much inertia in the physics or something

Frank Gevaerts

13. Aug 2018 · 19:17 UTC

Great game. Not my usual genre so I'm bad at it, but I did have fun playing it.

TheMonsterFromTheDeep

13. Aug 2018 · 19:18 UTC

I like the atmosphere, and the graphics and the sound. They're all very nice and work well together. The colorful particles when the planets explode are really nice.

But wow. The ship has so much momentum that it is essentially impossible to steer. The only way I could win was by barely tapping the movement controls and by spamming the shoot button. Otherwise, I would run into a planet simply by virtue of not being able to accelerate away from it.

For the same reason, many of the levels actually become easier if you can get lucky with how the universe shrinks. That is, if the planets close to the worm hole don't crush together, the shrinking of the universe brings you closer to the wormhole faster than you could yourself.

In general though, solid game. It just needs tweaking of the player momentum.

garris

14. Aug 2018 · 02:46 UTC

Presentation is very nice. While I do think that part of the challenge comes from having to manually rotate your ship, I feel like the rotation speed is still a bit too slow. If you keep working on this, maybe make rotation speed a powerup or a stat you can increase. I had a blast playing though. Good game!

🎤 Harry Jacobs

15. Aug 2018 · 20:13 UTC

@garris @0rganic @ludum1118 @mrbehemoth @stabalarash @james-shipp @alexander-tan @themonsterfromthedeep @frank-gevaerts @phillserrazina Thanks for all the feedback!

There seems to be mixed opinion about the controls haha. I was wondering about that before I submitted but settled on leaving the ship a bit harder to control to make the game a bit harder and feel a bit more like you're in space.

I think maybe I got used to the controls from testing it so much so probably should've made it a bit more responsive. I'll think about that in future

Thanks again for all the comments and advice/feedback- very helpful :))

Coda Highland

23. Aug 2018 · 16:18 UTC

I think the controls are fine. They feel just like an Asteroids game ought to. Yes, it's challenging, but that's the point. The only thing that might improve on the controls is to make the turn speed faster.

loonydrope

25. Aug 2018 · 11:29 UTC

I really like the music and the mood of your game.
The effects on the buttons and the way the planets explode are my favorite parts. :)

This game is hard but really enjoyable.
Congrats for making it!

NoNiMad

26. Aug 2018 · 13:12 UTC

I think there is a bug that prevents me from playing correctly, the ship is moving by itself. I tried disconnecting my controller but it's not getting better :/ Apart from that it looks like it's a great game :)