Ghost Ship (Jam Edition) by Dylan Fries

Escape an unknown threat in a hostile world.
Collect more fuel from the glowing blue particles and try to conserve the fuel you have.
Controls:
Arrows / Joystick - Fly - (Inverted) Spacebar / Triggers - Booster (Uses more fuel) Escape - Quit Return/Enter - Reset
(At Game Over) - Spacebar / Triggers - Reset Game.
Credits
Programming / Art - Dylan Fries Music / Ambient Audio / Story Development - Marshal Fries
Tools Used:
Unity / Houdini
I hope to post a Post Mortum video soon.
Known Bugs:
- Sometimes ship keeps flying when dead
- Slight Jump in camera transitions
Controls should work cross platform fairly widely but if you encounter problems please let me know!
Any feedback is appreciated.
Ratings
| Overall | 1799th | 3.242⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2050th | 2.887⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1888th | 2.933⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1919th | 3.283⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1611th | 3.323⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1156th | 3.113⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 812th | 3.617⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 35🗨️ |

It's a little unclear what the goal of the game is, and how the fuel mechanic works. It could use a tutorial or an intro for that.
It's not entirely clear that blue particles are there to refill fuel. Adding a sound effect to gaining fuel could have made this clearer. It's cool that you tried to use different camera views for a more cinematic feel but some of them can be pretty jarring because of how pulled back they are compared to the main camera.
Getting the missiles to explode by colliding with each other was pretty fun. The game world felt properly ghostly and I enjoyed my time with it.
Cool villains & concept, they remind me of the robo-octopai villains in the Matrix.
Visually, I like starting from the wide shot to give scale to the scene, but maybe it should zoom right in to the ship so you can see what you're doing or at least give player some control of the cam, or make the ship a lighter shade of grey? I found myself maxing out screen brightness and still squinting and I have damn good eyes, but maybe that's the intention of "Ghost Ship?"
Were those refueling/re-energizing platforms? Not sure they all worked or if I
I'm surprised there wasn't a crash/explosion sound. If there's one more sound fx to add, it's that one.
The music set a good mood until the granular synthesis stuff; that got painful to hear pretty fast.
Seems you can fly through the concrete of those abandoned structures, but not fly through mountains.
Really nice alien landscape, there. eerie as hell.
Also, thanks for playing our game. Glad you liked it. :)
I'm working with my brother who did the audio. He just gave me a bunch of random sounds he made and I dropped then in so we could definitely hit it with some more specific audio. I would like an ambient engine sound as well.
I hear your input on the camera controls. I could probably disable input on the ship until you are closer or even just start you higher up but to be honest I sort of like that it punishes you early for the sense of danger it gives on the second run. I was going for that learn by hard experience sort of thing with a fast reset. I could probably find a middle ground so people don't crash immediately but I will probably not mess with it too much for the LD version. It might be enough to start you up higher off the ground. I do like that it feels unsafe tho. There is actually very little danger other then running out of fuel so I am having fun playing around with losing yourself in the shadows. I have a dust effect as you get closer to the ground in mind so you can tell how high you are and I think that would help as well.
Refueling is the biggest complaint to date and although I like the subtlety of it but the effect when you collect could be more obvious. It is sort of the only thing in the world so I would hope people experiment it. The engine already lights up a bit but I could put in a larger effect. I beefed it up a bit in my bug fixes but it needs to be more obvious I think.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to leave detailed notes.
Are you actually able to reach those floating blue particles up in the sky? At least that's what I was aiming for but never had even close to enough fuel
Does losing yourself in the shadows actually protect you from those red-eyed robots? Can you hide from them or will they find you either way? (Not that there's enough fuel to 'hide') Maybe there should be a way to coast further if you stop touching arrows, but changing direction is what makes you sink & crash?