This is pretty sweet! Unfortunately, it does seem a little bit buggy (or at least has UI problems).

For example, the first time I played, when told to place my relics on the glowing squares, I placed them on the most visible squares, which were the Battle Grid. It took a few plays before I even _noticed_ the nearly-invisible squares to the left of the battle grid that are where you're actually supposed to place them. So first suggestion, it shouldn't be possible to place your relics anywhere other than in one of the three lane source squares, during battle, and those squares should be easier to see. The "This way to the other planets" arrows are also very hard to see, at least on the WebGL version.

Also, when I died because I was placing my relics on the battle grid instead of target squares, the tutorial guy I was fighting seemed to just vanish, but the game didn't end (though in retrospect I suspect he just moved off-screen and if I looked around I would have found him again).

After battle, you should automatically pick the relics you used back up, rather than picking them up manually.

The other thing is, once I got to the fourth guy, he told me he was turning four, because it was his birthday, and then he just stopped. He never opened the battle grid, though I had defeated the previous three guys.

Anyway, those points aside I really do like the look of this

Wow, I was surprised with the whole mechanics and art of this game. The pixel art although simple is fantastic and the animations are incredibly well done. I like how the mechanics are placed in such a way that they come naturally and there's practically no learning curve to it.

The music fits the ambiance of the game and the whole game is tied up together in a way that makes it really enjoyable. I wish this was longer so I could develop more the weapons and such.

Overall an amazing game and experience, I loved it! :)

Cool idea. Seems to work well too.
Got an Out of memory error after a while though, and the game crashed.

Besides that, I liked the style, the animations look great, good job on those.
Moving your planet felt a bit slow, but hey, it's a planet.

The concept seems good to me. Maybe some mechanics needs to be fine tuned but the game is there.
I found traveling too slow, even if this allow to hear the great background track.

Nice play.

I enjoyed this game. Beautiful art style, and interesting game mechanics. Battle grid was a new take on turn based battle that I haven't seen before. Well done!

It did have it's problems though. Like someone mentioned above... couldn't get the guy who turned four to man up and fight me. It was also a little hard to fully understand what the different relics did... and how they interacted with each other in the battle grid.

However - there is definitely an interesting concept going on here that could be improved upon and turned into an interesting game.

Thanks for playing everyone!

For any future readers, I see that it's not the clearest hints but for the guy who turned four.
@realitycheck @philomory **SPOILER** since he is turning four and only has three candles, if you bring him a fourth candle he will continue the story.

This was definitely a great note on how to make objectives clearer in the game!

I really like the idea behind the battle system and how you can pick up and carry your weapons/items in your planet! The dialogue/humor was great, a highlight for me. The music works just fine.

However, the slowness of moving around with the planet, how huge the map is, and how scattered everything is, makes for a bad combination. A more linear approach would benefit the experience a lot, specially at the beginning (I fought the skull guy way too early, and when searching for better weapons, I found myself lost and forced to wander the empty space in a very sloooow fashion. The arrows helped, but it takes way too much time moving around when you are not sure what exactly you need and where it is. Also those duckies have some serious chikara)

Overall, great entry!

wow I really liked this! Super cool idea, i could fly around collecting upgrades all day :smile:

I also got an Out of Memory error a couple times, and gave up after that. But of what I did play, I really liked!

Nice job!

I like the sense of exploration and "farming" upgrades :P
Also the battle system is interesting, not my type of game but it was still fun :D
All in all nice entry!

Amazing game! It's got such a strong character to it. The crafting element along with the tips form the NPCs really elevated it. I'm the artist/animator on our entry and I really love your style. The art and animations are all beautifully done. I love the sound too, I was really surprised to see an entry of this quality so early on in my ratings!

Also thanks very much for checking out our game!

Cheers,

Rob

Loved the art and animations. I was blown away about how well all the different elements of game development came together. The tutorial felt good, and I liked the concept overall. Visually very good (I especially loved when the first planet was met, and just seeing the grid snap into place).

I was a bit confused on whether or not I was doing more/less damage than my opponent. And, as someone else mentioned, you can place your objects anywhere on the grid and I wasn't sure if that was intended or not (but it didn't feel like they were doing much). Love the quirkiness, and would want to come back and play more as things get fleshed out.

Overall a solid entry. Good job guys! Followed your programmer on Twitter to see what else comes out of it.

Would love if your team took a look at my game Sling Ship and provided rating/feedback:

**https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sling-ship-search-for-a-small-world**

Cheers!

This is the best game that I've played thus far. Fantastic job!

Awesome audio and animations! A really interesting concept, though sometimes I didn't really understand what some of the icons meant, if they were passive benefits or not. It kind of has a little prince vibe to it with the personalities of each planet.

This was pretty fun! I liked the strategy to it. The music was pretty ambient. It was a pleasant experience.
Try out my game!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/slovenly-shopper

This is really interesting, I love the idea of "battle grid", I never thought there will be some strategy RPG gameplay coming, and it fits the theme well.
Good job! :D

Definatley something good here although i didn't fully understand what each relic was i could still kind of play and have fun. I love the idea of a battle grid and the turn based game play. Good job.

I really liked this! I wish there was a way to tell what relic countered what, but I suppose experimentation and learning is part of the game. Was going to say that I wanted a recipe book also, but I noticed the planets would tell you how to craft certain things, so I'm going to assume that learning is what you intended the player to do. Great entry!

Finally, one game with aesthetically pleasant pixel art! The audio is pretty neat as well. My only complaint is that gameplay is rather slow.

Great idea and nice realization, the battle grid animation was really cool, just like setting a Yu-Gi-Oh battlefield ! But I found it a bit too easy, the only tricky battle was the one with 2 fighting objects. But it is a really smart concept, easy to understand, with funny weapons ! Good job on it ! :thumbsup:

Fun idea, neat mechanics, easy to pick up, intuitive if you manage to think a bit outide the box (modern titles dulled that a bit). And FUN! Really fun.

Some tweaks would be welcome to make the UI give more feedback to player, like outlines on items you're able to pick up vs those on your planet, 'cause sometimes it's confusing - for example in the combat where you're only allowed to bring 2 items. Also, it could use some background for the grid, not to confuse floating items with items placed on grid.

Great entry, really enjoyed it.

Leaving my rating.

Cheers!

Great entry, I like the art and music a lot. Interesting combat system. If you get a chance check out our entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/down-the-rabbit-hole

I wonder, if I shout "Battle Grid" can I get away with throwing miscellaneous objects at people?

That was really cool. A neat little row-based strategy game with the great idea that you can carry your weapons around with you on your tiny planet.

The pixel graphics were great. I loved it. The music and sound also did a great job conveying the kind of feel you went for. And the dialogue. Oh man. That was pretty great. I liked how each Mini had their specific requirement for battling you.

Overall, I really liked this game. Keep up the great work!

Good concept i like it. Maybe make more explitation on the goal, a mouv speedest and some loot stuff at the end of the combat :)

But it's a very good entry with solid idea, nice graph and sound. So good job :)

WOW really great game! I have nothing bad to say about it! It's astonishing, how you've managed to get this much done. GREAT WORK!

Really good game: fun, innovative, nice graphics, nice audio and good mood.

Sadly, I got out of memory from my browser. :laughing: Dat PC

It is awesome to see people making good games and trying these crazy ideas, haha. It is a "card game", man (cards are debris)! And you loot cards by exploring the world!

This was a really interesting game. The battle-grid system activating looked really cool and all the dialogue was well written. Great work!

Nice game! there was some really good content in here.

**What you did well**

I really liked the art style of this game. The beginning battle sequence was pretty cool and I really liked the combat system. The music and dialogue were also well thought out and the overall feel of the game was great.

**What you could improve on**

It was unclear at first which elements were effective against each other. Although it becomes clear over time, perhaps the enemies you fight could drop a few hints? Also, I felt like the fighting could be quite random at times as you have no idea in which order the enemy will place their elements. This is a minor thing though as I'm sure there are ways of guessing.

Overall, a great game idea with a great combat system.

Art and audio was spot on, and the exploration/upgrade system is well done. I felt the planet moved a little too slow though.

Very intersting fighting mechanics, great visuals and a lot of little neat touches which makes it almost perfect. Only complaint is that I got to carried away with crafting and spent all my skulls for red crystal before making a sacrifice. And then I couldn't find anything to make new weapon. Sad story but I guess I was too wasteful.

A really nice concept and mechanic :) As a negative point I'd say that the space feels a bit empty sometimes, you go up and down, left and right without discovering any world for a 'long' time, in some cases. Anyway, it's a great ludum game. Astonishing visuals, by the way.

Cool, I liked the physics, the music, and the art... Had a good atmosphere, not a big fan of the controls, was a little confused as to what I was doing, but nonetheless would play again given more time, would be a great smartphone game to kill time and explore.

overall really great job the only issue was while i was fighting that chick who said i can only bring two items the game kinda broke on my turn and it would not let me end my turn so ya other then that good job

Hey, first off, a very solid entry. Sounds, music, art, the effects, programming. Everything was solid, I'd even say very good to great. Nothing bad to say about that.

However, game design felt off. The game just wasn't fun for me.
- I feel that the traveling is very emtpy. It felt like was waay too much downtime. A system like FTL for example would be a lot better, where you just get to places and skip all the emptiness.
- the battle system is underexplained and feels super overwhelming and even random. I think you need to introduce the battle mechanics step by step in a neat way that let's me figure out what everything means.
- All in all, the game felt like I was floating in space for way to long to collect things I didn't understand what they were for and they fought enemies for no reason with an opaque battle system.

In conclusion, you are a talented bunch of people, that was obvious from the beginning. I feel like if you work on your game design, you have a potential 5 star game here.

Excellent game! I liked the graphics and I love the combat system! Maybe you need a minimap to see where to go! Anyway, really well done guys! :)

After I discovered a bug that did not let me choose an item in a battle i tried to resize the screen and accidently closed the game with "escape". Sadly i lost all my progress. Maybe you should put that "end game button" somewhere else. :)
However I really enjoyed the game until that happend. very interesting and innovative experience.
The physics felt very smooth and the whole game feels really polished.
I think there is a lot of potential in that kind of gameplay.
Well done!

Very well executed, super polished and lovely graphics! You guys implemented tons of things in very short time, that's pretty awesome. And the combat system is very interesting as well. Are you thinking about working more on it?

Congrats! Great job!

Wow great overall. I love the concept and the combat is pretty neat as well. Amazing job overall, Kudos! Sometimes going places takes a little too long though. But other than that I had a good time!

Very nice! Sorta a space rock, paper, scissors. Well polished and interesting design. Movement felt a little slow and I would have liked to have some sort of movement control with the mouse, but for a LD game it's pretty darn good.

The fourth won't accept my candle...

edit: oh, aparently you have to aproach him while you have your candle on your planet. If you're holding the candle and then put it on your planet while you're next to him, it won't work.

One of the best games I've played for this LD.

The battle system and the crafting system are really cool and I had a lot of fun figuring all that out. The audio and graphics really pull it together, it has a great level of polish.

My first issue with the game was exploring, at first it was alright, but movement speed is so slow that it starts to feel quite boring. I also managed to craft myself into a corner, I ran out of junk to make any skulls with so I couldn't fight the final boss :disappointed:, but I guess I got a bit a head of myself by crafting a red gem :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, fantastic game!

I encountered a few bugs: I lost to the tutorial guy and my health didn't regenerate, clicking on an item sometimes gets them stuck in their blue selected form but cannot be clicked or moved anymore, and sometimes the camera is off-center so half my items are offscreen and I can't select them during a battle. Still, every time it made the game unwinnable, I reloaded and tried again, because this game is FUN! After beating the seven I even played it through a second time, trying to optimize my resource usage to beat the secret skull boss.

If you will move to two planets you begin two wars in the same time. It's give "out of memory" exception and game is freeze. In any case art and sound is very good. Great job!

The idea seems quite original and the design/pixel art is all really nice. My main issue was that I think maybe there was more to this game than I was getting? It wasn't clear how the relics worked in the battle grid, if I'd won or lost, what the goal was etc. It also seemed like there was some story hidden in there? So I think you've made something unique and interesting, but maybe not succeeded at communicating a lot of things to the player

That's some solid gameplay right here. It took me 35 minutes to play it (LD38 record for me).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeecHnfm6NY

- :ballot_box_with_check: Art
- :ballot_box_with_check: Music
- :ballot_box_with_check: Story
- :ballot_box_with_check: Fun
- :ballot_box_with_check: Gameplay
- :ballot_box_with_check: Polishing

I don't even know what to add. Amazing.

This is one of the best games 5/5 no source code?

Really fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9fOEQeXAs

I also included your game in an article of my favorites here: http://fireside.gamejolt.com/post/jam-favorites-ludum-dare-38-vepwgamy