Anomaly by Mat Stevenson

[raw]
made by Mat Stevenson for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

Anomaly

You are a scientist on a research vessel. Something goes terribly wrong. You find yourself fleeing the vessel in a badly damaged ship. You don't have the supplies needed to escape back to your dimension. Use the resources available on planets and asteroids nearby to reach the portal back to your world.

The research vessel is malfunctioning and every so often it outputs an electromagnetic force that draws you back. Your only chance for escape is to collect resources, discover the fastest route and when you're ready, try to reach the portal between pulses.

How To Play

Click on nodes to either navigate to them or apply an action.

Hovering over nodes will show available travel costs to the node as well as its resources if available.

You can build refineries on nodes that have the building space, that will generate fuel over time that you can come back and collect.

screenshot01.png

screenshot02.png

screenshot03.png

Change Log

  • Fixed click audio distortion in webgl build

Ratings

Overall 400th 3.788⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Fun 781th 3.364⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 468th 3.641⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Theme 187th 4.167⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 86th 4.47⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Audio 178th 3.924⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Humor 999th 2.404⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 353th 3.818⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Given 48🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

Conneli
05. Oct 2020 · 23:14 UTC
The music was very atmospheric. Loved the visuals, and the concept of upgrading and improving over time was enjoyable to figure out and explore!
Odyze
05. Oct 2020 · 23:14 UTC
I like the graphics. It looks really polished.
Ps: not a huge fan of the button click sound :}
azsteak
05. Oct 2020 · 23:15 UTC
Really interesting concept ! I would like to see this as a full game ! The art style is nice too, remind me a bit of old-schools level selection menus.
Rodgems
05. Oct 2020 · 23:16 UTC
Ship jumping between nodes gave me FTL nostalgia! Love the idea, would love to see more options for what you can do on the planets. Music and art are great, but some of the more minor sound effects were slightly jarring volume-wise compared to the soft atmospheric music.
Jakub Arnold
05. Oct 2020 · 23:18 UTC
Very nice graphics and level of polish. I'd maybe change the mouse click sound effect to be a little less intrusive.
HOOLOP
05. Oct 2020 · 23:20 UTC
Music and graphics are completing each other pretty well and I love the idea. It's awesome!
arifacid
05. Oct 2020 · 23:21 UTC
Cool resource management game. Bonus points because it took me no time to understand and get into it
AndyGates01
05. Oct 2020 · 23:25 UTC
@odyze @rodgems @darthdeus Looks like there's a bug with the web build that makes that click sound super jarring, its definitely not supposed to be like that! Thanks for letting us know!
Kassie Kitsune
05. Oct 2020 · 23:27 UTC
It has a nice slow contemplative mood to it and the visuals are quite nice, perhaps it could do with more things to discover at each planet instead of just restoring resources, but otherwise it's a solid foundation
🎤 Mat Stevenson
05. Oct 2020 · 23:35 UTC
Thanks for the feedback on the click audio. Turned out to be a webgl bug.
Odyze
05. Oct 2020 · 23:47 UTC
I feel you <3
grenk
05. Oct 2020 · 23:47 UTC
Great graphics, and an interesting concept. My main critique is that it was a bit slow. I think it would help to shorten travel time between planets, and make anomaly teleportation instantaneous. Also, potentially make it so the planet interaction menu doesn't open when you land on a planet, or maybe make it so you can click to travel to another planet while it's up. There were times where I knew that I was going to skip over 5-6 planets in a row without interacting with them and the menu continuously popping up was a minor inconvenience.
ryupold
06. Oct 2020 · 00:18 UTC
a meditative game
detectiveLosos
07. Oct 2020 · 01:56 UTC
Oh wow, it was a strange experience, but a welcome one nonetheless. Stylistically speaking it felt like I'm back on DOS emulator playing an old Master of Orion game. Don't know if that was intended, but visuals and soundscape are just perfect at triggering that nostalgia. You even have some element of a planetary base building there!

So yeah, aside from the overall style I also quite enjoyed the resource management aspect that was going on. It was cleverly designed with intent that you drain all the resources from your starting planets to the point there are none so you have to move up to the next ones and risk having no resources for ship repairs.

And it also felt like you can actually control the desired pace of the game right through gameplay which is brilliant: if you want to kinda speedrun it, you are perfectly able to do so and complete the entire game in just a couple of rollbacks, but if you like to horde all the resources and fuel (like I do :D) then you can stay a few cycles longer and then you also encounter an interesting mechanic of completely draining the planets of all the stuff that will hurry you up.

So yeah, a great jam entry! I have nothing really else to add.
Game_Coder28
09. Oct 2020 · 17:03 UTC
Wow great game! really fits in with the theme and graphics are amazing! great work.
Shaolin Dave
09. Oct 2020 · 17:15 UTC
Great concept, great art, the ambient music was very fitting.
The game ends pretty abruptly though, I didn't notice health going down, and when I realized that, I couldn't really figure out how to increase it.
LTyrosine
09. Oct 2020 · 21:53 UTC
Loved this game!

Amazing music! Seeing how a good music improves the game mood, I really regret that I didn't managed to create one in time.

Liked the graphics a lot too.

As a minor flaw, in game help would be very nice!

Amazing job! 😁
MikDionio
10. Oct 2020 · 03:57 UTC
Love the atmosphere in this game! I also love the small UI touches, like resources going red if you'll run out or explored routes being marked as white. They really helped a lot with the experience! I just wish there was more incentive to trying out different routes. Overall, great job!
Erlioniel
11. Oct 2020 · 11:01 UTC
Well done from atmosphere point of view, but for me (personally) it was hard to get what to do and what to expect. It was unclear that 'anomaly' is actually will just return you back to start point. As well not clear how to heal the ship.

Overall I like the style, but I guess gameplay might be polished. As well maybe small tutorial and intro for story line might help. But anyway well done, guys, I like it.
Vivien Fargette
11. Oct 2020 · 12:44 UTC
Very polished game with fun gameplay. I think the animation of the pulse should be done at constant time and not constant speed as it was quite long when far from the starting point, that would be my only downside to the game.

Now if you want to develop it further after the jam, I think having the ability to farm resources and not only fuel (maybe with a harder route to these) would add a bit more diversity to the gameplay (but being tight on resources add a nice stress to finish the run before you run out of resources so I like both ways). At least, adding a few other resources to collect would add a bit of variety. Also, adding more planet sprites would make the galaxy more interesting to explore (and would combine well with more resources)

Anyway, it was fun to play, with a nice music and I liked the graphics. Nice strategy game, congrats on the polishing, I especially liked having the cost in red if I couldn't pay it