Lost Cluster by Raymoclaus
You're lost in a large, ever-changing field of asteroids. Your ship's scanners grow weaker as you run out of power. Your only hope of survival is to find and collect batteries scattered around the field to briefly restore power to your ship, only to gain a little time to search for more power.
The intention of this game is to break away from traditional ideals of trying to excite and keep the player engaged. Instead, I'm trying to bring the player down to a more relaxed state by focusing on the mood and keeping game play simple enough and avoid distractions like enemies and multiple objectives that would only serve to distract from that mood. That being said, I have no expectation of players to play more than once or twice and one play session can be roughly 1-5 minutes.
Links
- Browser: https://raymoclaus.itch.io/lost-cluster Some visual effects have been toned down for browser optimisation.
- Browser2: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/697212 Included this link later. It's still under judgement here so you might not have access to it yet unless you're already a Newgrounds user.
- Source: https://github.com/Raymoclaus/ld39 Source includes a Windows executable build in case the browser version runs slowly.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lost-cluster |
Ratings
| Overall | 561th | 2.833⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 626th | 2.278⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 578th | 2.444⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 474th | 3.222⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 409th | 3⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 84th | 3.611⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 93th | 3.611⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
The game is pleasant , but as it is focus on exploration, I would like more various scenery and more fluid movement.
Also, it is a little sad to encounter wall of asteroid when you explore, you should try to make an infinite world.
I'm not a fan of the control scheme, I'm very clumsy when using it, especially when I don't know which direction the ship rotates to orientate itself. It can be frustrating for the ship to get stuck unexpectedly because of the control scheme.
An improvement I would suggest is putting in a radar mechanic to find the batteries. Using the radar will send out a wave which generates an arrow on the edge of the screen to indicate the general direction of the batteries. But the catch is that using the radar would use battery so now the players have an interesting decision to make between locating the batteries at a cost or taking a risk wandering about without using the radar.
Keep up the good work.
@cakemonitor I intentionally made sure there was at least one battery right in front of you as a neat way to teach the objective of the game in case someone didn't read the instructions. The rest are not meant to be easy to find. The intrinsic reward of the game (or at least the part I wanted players to focus on) is the desperate search rather than the actual collection of batteries. If all you want out of the game is collecting batteries then you're just performing a menial task and I can't see that being very enjoyable. Even if you go through an entire play-through without finding a single hidden battery then you still experienced that struggle which is what the game is at its core. It's just supposed to make you feel something other than an excitement-high, but also avoiding boredom.