SkyWays by Steerschips
SkyWays.
SkyWays is a game inspired by Skyroads with its own twist. Navigate the solar system and find new planets to take on their "Sky HighWays". Fly into the planets' rings to begin your stage.
P.S. Be sure to look at the planets map screenshot showing the location of each of the 4 planets!
GLHF:)
Google Drive Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B13g3FsdXQ4MUGp5anQzb20zams?usp=sharing
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/skyways |
Ratings
| Given | 6🗳️ | 7🗨️ |
Either way, excellent work for only 48 hours!
I came first to the red planet and wow it wrecked me hard, I tried many times but could never string together the final series of the last three or so jumps. I went back out to space and tried the blue planet, which was a nice place to learn the ropes. I came back to red, and this time after about ten tries I was finally able to just manage to snag the pill thing before I flew off the platform - satisfying!
Jumping conrols felt pretty nice, which is critical in a jumping-focused game like this. The ability to only change forward speed slowly was an interesting twist that I wasn't used to, so it was fun to explore that aspect, although tough. The horizontal movement took a bit of getting used to as well, since the explore mode taught me that the ship turns when I press left and right, whereas in jumping mode it strafes. No big deal, I figured that out really quickly.
I think if you added a drop shadow to the track so I can see where I'm at with precision even while jumping, I might have had a tick up in feeling under control.
The game could feel more alive with some juice, of course - the jet effect was nice outside in explore mode, but things were a little sterile in the jumping mode. Jets, sound effects, and some way of showing off the speed would have spiced it up.
Fun entry, the controls were interesting, the ship could run away out of control on me, but I also felt like that was my fault and not the fault of the game, which is super-important in a tough-jump challenge. Good job!
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I wasn't sure what to download from google drive. There were data files so I figured the exe was not enough. So I zipped the windows release folder, but it was a 67MB download and included the pdb files.
Thank you so much for your review! Mini map is a must-needed addition. Great suggestion.
Please find my review of your game on your page. Great job man, great job.
I have also reviewed your game which I loved by the way. Well done, especially for starting the end design on Sunday!
- audio. especially for a space game like this, music is a must. Understandably it was compo so you probably didn't have time to compose your own, but even taking royalty-free tracks from the internet would have added to the experience! (btw, you should probably opt-out of this category! and maybe opt-out of humour too?)
- controls. felt very hard to get control of the space ship, both in the 'world exploring' mode (where I would seem to mostly just spin in circles, and also I didn't know where I was going) and the platforming mode (really unforgiving! except it felt like the game's fault not mine). Changing speed with W and S rather than just moving forward normally is an interesting idea, but makes it a bit too random for platforming imo (especially for the yellow world)
- lighting - I could hardly see anything it was so dark! Definitely brighten it up, especially colours like dark blue :)
Also I would recommend using a game hosting site like itch.io or gamejolt rather than Google Drive as it makes your game more accessible to others and more presentable!
Hopefully this feedback was helpful and hope you don't take it too harshly (it's a learning experience after all)! I respect anyone who competes in compo because you only get 48 hours and have to do it all by yourself. :smile:
I can see, that there went a lot of work in this game, but you could've give just one planet with it's ring and really polish it up...