Planet Hopping by Hjalte

Your ship has run out of fuel and you're stuck on a tiny planet. Fortunately, gravity is low and there's plenty of oil around. Refuel your ship and find your way back home!
Controls
- Move: Arrow left & right | A & D
- Interact: Arrow up / down | W & S
- Shoot: X | ,
- Jump: Z | .
FYI: You can jump on enemies to kill them!
Screenshots

Credits
Listen to the soundtrack! https://soundcloud.com/user-898153347/planet-hopping-theme
Ratings
| Overall | 444th | 3.755⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 506th | 3.592⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 377th | 3.714⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1004th | 3.418⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 251th | 4.184⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 355th | 3.694⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 695th | 2.833⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 323th | 3.848⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
I encountered a few bugs with the gravity and I found the slugs to be really hard to kill.
It felt smooth to play :)
Love the art style and the music also sets the mood. Good job!
More enemy types would be a good addition to the game. Great little game.
Very good idea!
The controls are great. The graphic looks fantastic. The orbiting through tiny planets works fine, even though when I jumped over to another tiny planet, I was stuck in a loop... but let's say, it wasn't in a good way... I just kept floating in space.
The gameplay is very enjoyable. I'd like to see more enemies in the game, but because it's a game jam I can understand why it ended up like that.
To sum up, the game is great and I like it.
Good luck!
The gravity was a bit wonky if you jumped directly under a planet, but otherwise I wonly wish there was more.
Great entry!
And sound track, I added to my SoundCloud ✌️
Good work guys
Friendly criticism:
I struggled with the controls a bit, flipping upside-down messed with my left-right orientation enough that it never really settled in, not sure how to solve that problem, you may have the best set up for it and this just be a monster problem that doesn't go away due to the nature of constantly flipping upside-down.
It would also be nice to let players decide between wasd or the arrow keys. Due to muscle memory, it's easier for me to handle movement with my left hand, so I ended up crossing my arms over my keyboard.
Design; I think it would be a great idea to make the first area with no enemies. Just let the player have fun jumping around between the planets, trying to get a hang of the controls and game rules
(in Mario 64 you start in the castle yard with just a simple goal of going to the castle, nothing to kill you but drowning in water or rare fall damage)
After the first level introduce enemies (one new enemy or mechanic per level). This would help hook a player's attention because it will suggest that the game is opening up to them with progress. "If level 2 introduced bats, I wonder what level 3 will be?"
I played 3 levels and got bored because I felt like I had seen everything there is to see. Level 3 looks and plays just like level 1. Did I actually make progress? Is it just pseudo random? Is there an ending?
The slugs are annoying because the gun mechanics! If they're in the zone between planets we have to try to jump back and forth into a sweet spot to land on their head and get them out of the way. The bats are a little cooler because of how the gun works.
Maybe allow the player to charge up a shot that will orbit the planet to clear slugs, or give them a melee that kicks them off the planet, possibly infesting another planet!
Overall it's a great entry with a lot of potential!
EDIT: Hey so I tried it!
I loved the mood and liked the idea, but as IsmaelRodriguez said, there's a lot of room for Level Design improvements. For what's worth I thought the slugs were part of the planets, and that the "bushes" (oil) were the ones harming me, so yeah +1 to the slowly showing content proposal.
Also about the interaction with the slugs: it feels a bit bulshity when you would swear you landed on its head but it harms you. I would make the astronaut more radically definitively lethal when landing on top of slugs, even if you having to justify it with a small "explosion effect" (a small area).
The rest of it is cool, the game felt like it has some potential if there's a story or some more tricky skill based progression involved.
Nice entry 8·3
The flipping problem is definitely annoying, we tried to have the camera rotate with the player, but that made it harder to keep track of your location and kinda ruined the planet feel..
I really like your level design ideas, we put the level together pretty haphazardly. The only reason, there's a slug on the starting planet, is because I used it for testing haha.
Might've been a bit mean to leave out WASD, I'll make a little post jam fix today and add them in :).
Thanks!
The only negative point is the controls, but I guess it was an headache for you too to find a good solution. I struggled to kill the snails, at first I thought I needed to shoot them
(your itch page is perfect, well done!)
Our planets basically has a circle trigger and it'll apply a force towards itself to every object in the trigger. The force is also based on the distance from the planet, so you stick to the planet you're closest to.
Then on top of everything is a bunch of ugly duct tape code, to make it all work :grimacing:.
My criticism is as follows:
1. You need a soundtrack to make the game more interesting and less dull
2. Add an invulnerability timer after each hit. On my first run, I got stuck between 2 bats that pingponged me into space and I was out of bounds. Luckily, you seem to have a system that triggers a game over when that happens (I was worried I was gonna float out in space forever)
3. The gun seems a bit useless as I can just stomp or ignore every enemy I encounter
The pros of the game are as follows:
1. Good art direction.
2. Gameplay loop is simple and straight-forward
3. A good amount of enemy variety (for a game made in 3 days)
4. Controls are good even though I lose my bearings when I'm upside down, but there isn't much you can do about that
Overall, a job well done. Keep it up
We build a similar game and implemented the gravity by rotating the global gravity around our RigidBody2D player. However, somehow this is heavily bound to the PC performance and the game is a lot "slower" than in development.
Anyhow, nice game =)
I love the gameplay and art style.
My main critic point is, the the slugs are very hard to hit, because when standing on a planet, I always shoot away from them. Or do I something wrong?
The art, colours and characters are excellent.
I did struggle with shooting things on planets. Would be awesome if the bullet travelled around the surface.
Good level of polish though and a great entry.
@majadroid Thanks! That's definitely a strategy, but jumping on them might be easier :).
P.S. Initially, we with our team also planed to implement "jump planet" mechanics for our game, but with lack or time ended up with a simple "teleport" instead :)