Orbit by ZEN

You control a spaceship that orbits Earth. Press 'spacebar' to move between rings and smash obstacles while collecting fuel to keep your spaceship alive. If you let your fuel run out, it's over. If you run into an orbiting obstacle your fuel will be seriously decreased.
Coded by @ZEN in Unity Art made by @ZEN and @huthuthunter in Aseprite Audio made by @huthuthunter in FL Studio and BFXR
| Youtube | https://zen-studios.itch.io/orbit |
| Youtube | https://zen-studios.itch.io/orbit |
| Youtube | https://zen-studios.itch.io/orbit |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/orbit-2 |
Ratings
| Overall | 841th | 3.471⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1023th | 3.157⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1065th | 3.086⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 694th | 3.729⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 622th | 3.768⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 471th | 3.551⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
I think the difficulty curve could use some tuning. The first time I played, I had like 8 asteroids on the field, and it was much more manageable when my next attempt started me with 2 :sweat_smile: I also got a level with 0 asteroids and immediately won.
Still though, I like the dichotomy created by having to use your own health meter to destroy the asteroids. It's a novel little risk/reward mechanic. With a little more polish, this could make for an awesome mobile game!
Definitely some RNG issues with the level - once I started with 0 and won immediately but that's not losing any points with me. :)
also i know people have already mentioned this but i had several instances where i started a level with zero obstacles, winning immediately. otherwise, good work!
Great game!! :)
I ran into some of the level generation issues others did. Nothing too major though.
Overall nice entry!
Apart from that - game is really well polished, gfx/audio is spot on. Great stuff!
It feels a bit odd that the ship moves at the same speed that the orbital radius rings do. I think it would be nice if they moved slower than the player's ship. It really stood out to me that they moved in sync.
But the spaceship could have been a bit faster or as people before me suggested: exchange fuel for speed
Don't rely too much on pure randomness, or you easily loose control over difficulty.
speed up the game each time you break an asteroid / a pack of ones, count it as score, controls the difficulty curve and tada ! you have a great mobile arcade game !
Please, port it to Android, it matches so much the genre of the store <3 (I would play it a lot if it becomes more difficult ! )
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
At first I was completely and utterly confused by what was happening. I ran into asteroids right after I spawned and got a game over screen time after time. Then suddenly it generated a level with no asteroids at all and I got a victory screen right away. Which was to put it lightly - a bit disorienting.
After a couple of quick restarts I got used to one button controls. And then I tried to figure out how to dispatch of all the asteroids without touching them and exploding. After some time I accidentally smashed into one not straight into but kinda knocking it sideways and I didn't explode because of it!
So yeah, I thought at the time that I finally figured out the mechanics and started actually engaging with the gameplay: grabbing fuel, dodging asteroids and then sidekicking them by switching lines at the exact right moment. And it was actually pretty cool and fun despite the fact that there is no gradual difficulty increase but completely random levels instead.
And after a couple of rounds I ran straight into the asteroid and did not explode! Then I figured out that you don't have to time your line switches to kick the asteroids sideways, you just need to have enough fuel left to not explode. Which I found to be less interesting that the thing that I imagined. So I kept playing the game by my imaginary rules :D
And yeah, it happened to be quite a lot of fun, so in the end I finished something like a ten rounds of varying difficulty. I really liked the minimalistic presentation and the nonstandard small window size.
So if you plan on creating a post-jam version I would suggest adding something like a tutorial stage and creating a couple of levels progressively increasing in difficulty. And maybe even create some additional mechanic of dispatching asteroids like the one I described or something entirely different so it would add a whole another dimension to the gameplay.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback ! :)
I still enjoy the game ;)
It would be cool if fuel decreased on orbit changes to make you think the best route beforehand. But it's great to be done in 24h :)
Here is my playtest:
https://youtu.be/zGnNFjkbbFI