Flight of the Cepheus by thedashdude
Flight of the Cepheus is a turn-based simulation game where you try to safely and morally guide the outlawed and betrayed starship Cepheus to the other side of the Galaxy.
All assets + code made in under 48 Hours for the Ludum Dare 46.
All links go to the itch.io page, just seperated for clarity.

Update 4/22/2020:
Added HTML5 port of the game. One line of code added account for a different default text color on the web platform. Allowed by the rules of the compo. First time ever porting to HTML5, didn't do so during the submission hour because I forgot GameMaker could even do it. Whoops. No fullscreening, so Windows .exe might still be the best way to play it.
Ratings
| Overall | 485th | 3.477⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 710th | 3.063⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 405th | 3.438⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 381th | 3.82⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 642th | 3.242⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 718th | 2.575⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 696th | 2.375⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 342th | 3.449⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 76🗳️ | 100🗨️ |
... but the sounds are too blaring for simple actions. I get it when I get hit but it hurts the ears after a while. This fits very well and the mutiny was a surprise! I don't know what's the sense of a flashlight torch for looking at the whole crew though. Seems unnecessary.
You should expand on this honestly! Reminds me a lot of Oregon trail.
All in all, good concept.
Interesting concept, but on a personal note, not really my kind of game.
@whitefox The inspecting the crew didn't go as deep as I wanted, but the dialogue they give does indicate some things. They have different comments depending on morale and the hidden "evilness" stat. I think they're still nice just to keep the game feeling a little more lively.
Also, I love idea of images in the background of the intro. It was tossed together pretty quickly just to give some context to what the crew were saying.
@bereg @bigquacko I wasn't planning on the FTL comparison initially. I only realized I was making a game like FTL after a few hours. Kind of disappointing as I was really pleased with my originality. It was actually more inspired by a text based game I made years and years when I first started learning to code. That and Infinite Ryvius.
I dont think I fully understood all the interactions, would benefit a lot from a tutorial (even just on the game page). Intent behind the sounds seems ok but I did not like how it played out - too tinny and full on.
Interesting approach, felt a bit FTLish with almost a hint of Rimworld (character dispositions etc)
Interesting little submission.
Think the sound could do with some normalization. Was very loud.
Would be nice with something more than a red blink when engaged.
I ended up dying in a "dangerous" area because I couldn't find food. Lost me a bit there.
Would've played more given some more detail, but all in all well done for a compo entry!
First of all, I liked the feeling of it a lot! I think you did a great setup for it and that's what I look for the most in a game. The graphics and the sound, even if simple, go well with the gameplay and writing.
It came to me as a surprise that I couldn't repair the HULL. Since there are a lot of different resources, it just looked like another one of them. When I realized it was too late, it would have been great to have a way to familiarize with the various resources before the inevitable.
I also feel like the game advances slowly and you need to do a lot of similar turns, would have been great to be able to do more with each of my actions. I found myself spamming clicks on the same action without thinking just to see how things advanced.
About the art - I'm aware of the time constraints, something you could easily improve on in a future scenario is the use of colors. I see you use some 'typical' tones, sometimes tweaking those a little bit can help define your style. For this game in particular I feel like bright colors don't fit the atmosphere, I would have gone for less saturated, darker tones.
Happy to have played this, and hope you continue to make more games!
I also couldn't figure out how to fix Hull, so I only travelled 100 distance. Some more information on what the actions are supposed to do would be nice.
But I did like it overall, it just tried to do too much without polishing what it had. Sometimes, less is more.
@javasaurus I'm glad you like it! That's exactly the sort of thing I was going for. Even though that sort of game is actually before my time.
@renrith Balancing the speed/magnitude of the actions was the last thing on the list, and the list got a little truncated with a few hours to go. Definitely needs to be improved on.
Could you elaborate on the art? I'm not an artist by any means, but I ended up putting a bunch of effort into making the art look good. I knew not much was going to be going on movement wise, and I still wanted to keep the player engaged visually. I'm really curious where I need to improve most.
@finn-truman Color-coding the console is a great idea! Never even crossed my mind, but that is exactly what is called for.
I disagree with the assessment of Hull/Armour, although I may not have explained it well game. (Really, I know for a fact I didn't.) Armour is the stat that you can control, repair, and it changes up and down a fair amount. Hull was intended to be a slowly decreasing stat that served as a kind of ticking clock, encouraging you to keep up the pace to the safehaven, although you can keep it high up if you manage the Armour right. It might not have played out quite how I intended, but I think that having them separate adds a neat dynamic.
The thing that bothers me the most are the jumper colors: They remind me so much of the colors I could choose from back when I sold t-shirts - http://www.valento.es/?service=CatalogConsult&function=show_article&article_ref=CAVABAS . This is why I consider them standard colors. We've seen these kind of tones so much that they're a bit boring.
Some of the colors you're using are also too saturated. The blue for example, it sits almost at the top right corner of my color picker. I don't know why it happens, but people often prefer less saturated colors. With some screens, they even hurt people's eyes. When using a color picker, I recommend avoiding the top right corner the most.
There's also the fact that they're in a space ship, how come are their clothes so bright? I'd expect their clothes to be a little dirty, so again, less saturated tones - It's probably not easy to keep clothes sparkling clear under those circumstances. Moreover, the colors are a bit too bright for what I'd expect from ship crew. I think darker, less colorful tones would help.
Finally I tried a couple of color filters on a screenshot, this is the result:

You've got some blue highlights on the game already, and I think that overall the blue filter helps your game's atmosphere. It makes it feel colder, so the atmosphere seems a little harsher. Of course, I'm not suggesting these are the exact colors you should use, this was a quick test.
I hope this was helpful!
The thing that bothers me the most are the jumper colors: They remind me so much of the colors I could choose from back when I sold t-shirts - http://www.valento.es/?service=CatalogConsult&function=show_article&article_ref=CAVABAS . This is why I consider them standard colors. We've seen these kind of tones so much that they're a bit boring.
Some of the colors you're using are also too saturated. The blue for example, it sits almost at the top right corner of my color picker. I don't know why it happens, but people often prefer less saturated colors. With some screens, they even hurt people's eyes. When using a color picker, I recommend avoiding the top right corner the most.
There's also the fact that they're in a space ship, how come are their clothes so bright? I'd expect their clothes to be a little dirty, so again, less saturated tones - It's probably not%2LS
The thing that bothers me the most are the jumper colors: They remind me so much of the colors I could choose from back when I sold t-shirts - http://www.valento.es/?service=CatalogConsult&function=show_article&article_ref=CAVABAS . This is why I consider them standard colors. We've seen these kind of tones so much that they're a bit boring.
Some of the colors you're using are also too saturated. The blue for example, it sits almost at the top right corner of my color picker. I don't know why it happens, but people often prefer less saturated colors. With some screens, they even hurt people's eyes. When using a color picker, I recommend avoiding the top right corner the most.
There's also the fact that they're in a space ship, how come are their clothes so bright? I'd expect their clothes to be a little dirty, so again, less saturated tones - It's probably not easy to keep clothes sparkling clear under those circumstances. Moreover, the colors are a bit too bright for what I'd expect from ship crew. I think darker, less colorful tones would help.
Finally I tried a couple of color filters on a screenshot, this is the result:

You've got some blue highlights on the game already, and I think that overall the blue filter helps your game's atmosphere. It makes it feel colder, so the atmosphere seems a little harsher. Of course, I'm not suggesting these are the exact colors you should use, this was a quick test.
I hope this was helpful!
One small thing, I think the sound effects are waaay to loud. But it could just be me :)
Well done!
@renrith Thanks for the update. I get what you're saying now, and I agree.
@kevin-prehn Yeah, I really liked the sounds I came up with. Can't argue with the people saying they're a little too loud, though.
@baby-dino-herd Tooltips were the last think I made, so they're a little light. Between the tooltips for the resources and the ones for the actions you can get close to a full picture, though.
@blobo Glad you had fun. I worked hard to make sure the game had no WIP graphics.
~~The only thing missing in my opinion is some sort of help screen, describing all the actions and possible things to gain, as well as resource requirement to execute them.~~
As I was writing that I noticed your previous comment about tooltips. I thought the "inspect" button worked only to check the people, not menu options. Perhaps it would be better if those tooltips appeared on their own when you hover over a button instead of having to right-click?
Overall it's a fun little game. I enjoyed playing it. ;)
It is hard to grasp all the indicators and options. For example, what is traveling good for? It seems that doing military actions + creating more ammo + creating more armor can be done infinitely :)
The sound effects were a bit loud. Maybe some background music would help, to make the contrast of silence/effects lower.
Thanks for uploading!
And thanks for playing my game :)