Tau Zero by sharpcoder

[raw]
made by sharpcoder for LD 38 (JAM)

1017.jpg

It's time to seek bigger and better worlds than the tiny one you currenetly inhabit. Navigate the perils of space while you travel the final frontier.

NOTE: This game is not mobile friendly. Sorry.

Controls

It's all clicking. So, hold down the mouse to power up your ship and blast off. Be careful though, you only get one shot!

Links

  • (HTML5) http://sharpcoder.github.io/ludumdare/spring2017/
  • (Source) http://sharpcoder.github.io/ludumdare/spring2017/src.zip

Ratings

Overall 692th 2.737⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 644th 2.6⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 725th 2.211⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 600th 2.905⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 593th 2.85⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 553th 2.125⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 655th 2.611⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 4🗳️ 4🗨️

Feedback

alisoncox
01. May 2017 · 12:09 UTC
I thought the game looked good and was actually quite fun, I'm not sure how many planets there are to reach as I didn't get very far on my goes... But I did enjoy it :)
One idea would maybe to have the stars move a bit? As when I flew past my destination I wasn't sure if I was still moving!
pfeyffer
01. May 2017 · 14:24 UTC
Very nice game, fun to play. Some kind of radar would be nice to get an idea of how far the next planet is.
🎤 sharpcoder
01. May 2017 · 15:36 UTC
Thanks!
@alisoncox - that's a great idea! Parallaxing the background would add a subtle but cool effect.
@pfeyffer - that would also be a great idea.

I'm planning on making a post-compo version. These are great suggestions, I'll see what I can do :) thanks!
GenericToast
01. May 2017 · 17:28 UTC
Rally cool looking and fun. An ingame reset would have been nice, rather than having to refresh the page itself.
GertJohnny
01. May 2017 · 22:44 UTC
I like the idea, but it was a bit tough to figure out what was going on at first. One thing that would be a huge improvement is having the direction indicator showing all the time, not just while on the planet. Many times after I blasted off my ship would be floating around with no reference for where it was in relation to my target, so it was just idle waiting time. If you had the indicator showing (along with the distance to the target) that part of the experience would be a lot more interesting. The in-game reset would be great, too!
dennyrocketdev
01. May 2017 · 22:58 UTC
Charging feels really nice, animations and sounds are spot on. Having to refresh the page seems kinda odd, a retry button is obviously better, but you probably ran out of time (like most of us).

Gameplay is lacking a bit, you can't see how far you have to go before you actually leave the planet so you can basically only charge the thing and try to hit the arrow.

All in all, it's a good entry.
mikea
04. May 2017 · 23:07 UTC
I think I've stumbled in a couple of bugs. I'm not sure how I can have a better score. Maybe more user feedback is needed.
Erik Brunnstrom
08. May 2017 · 12:06 UTC
The concept is probably nice but the game is a bit hard to understand. The game is also quite buggy and I kept getting stuck in "mid-space". It's also incredibly hard to judge how much to charge as you don't know how far the planets are.
Odefus
17. May 2017 · 23:26 UTC
Seeing the destination would be useful to gauge the strength of the blast off. For some reason would not function on firefox (everything was cropped to a very small space on the screen), but worked fine on chrome.
Maximo Pech
18. May 2017 · 23:28 UTC
This was very good and fun. I think I found a bug in which the rocket gets stuck charging. Wonderful music. I like the stars background.
geeitsomelaldy
19. May 2017 · 11:51 UTC
I don't think this game works at all on Firefox, the music plays, and it seems like I can control things, but there's no graphics once you take off.
CabbageCrow
19. May 2017 · 12:58 UTC
The game is a bit unforgiving. You don't know how far the planets are apart and also some times the hitbox doesn't seem fair.
theDoodleGuy
19. May 2017 · 13:22 UTC
The game does not appear to be working for me (tried chrome and firefox).
the main menu loads on chrome but as soon as I fire the rocket it sticks to the top left corner and the camera just stays on the launch planet.
Nice graphics and sounds, but unfortunately can't really rate the gameplay :worried:
jelch
19. May 2017 · 13:56 UTC
I would have like a level reset instead of having to refresh and start from the beginning :(
dick-claus
19. May 2017 · 15:02 UTC
Hey, really nice game.

But I don't know why but in Firefox the game always opens at 1000x150 px canvas. I had to resize it manually to play correctly.

Managed to go to level 4.

Some suggestions:
It would be cool while gaining the power zoom out from planet to see the actual target.

Gravity was cool. But without zoom in, zoom out it is difficult to understand where am I in the space.

Well done.
Kaisean Games
19. May 2017 · 16:52 UTC
So that's how people end up floating in space. Misaligned launches.
Cool. I had a similar idea for a previous LD, didn't do it though.

At one time, I launched so hard that my plane exited the play view. I could here sounds of it launching, but there was nothing on the screen.