Astral Abyss by Alexascher


In this mesmerising game you can discover the long lost secrets of the Dying Shards. How long will you last against the inevitable danger of the Abyss?
Controls: mouse
Team:
- Balakchin Victor - code
- Balakchina Anastasia - art
- Goryachev Dmitriy - code
- Mosin Alexander - gamedesign
- Scherbakov Alexander - art
Music:
Scott Buckley - Decoherence
| Link | https://orange-grunge.itch.io/astral-abyss |
| Link | https://orange-grunge.itch.io/astral-abyss |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/astral-abyss |
Ratings
| Overall | 6th | 4.422⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 62th | 4.125⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 44th | 4.156⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 40th | 4.391⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 11th | 4.727⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 8th | 4.625⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 21🗨️ |

Such a unique idea and masterful execution! I appreciate how simple this game is on its surface and yet how complex it can get mechanically. It reminds me a bit of Osmos but i really haven't played a game like it. I love how it balances a sense of melancholy, the feel of a chill 2048-like sim, and a replayable high score game all at the same time. Truly incredible!
--
Be me.
Build a nice small working factory. Destroy encroaching abyss shards. 7:00 - nice...
Random fluctuation shifts my factory and it starts spawning shards like crazy March rabbits on Viagra. Everything explodes. Everything goes into the freaking abyss. 7:59
5 stars. Would fail again.
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Nice graphics.
Interesting physics.
Exploration.
The game is quite challenging due to random spawn, orbital mechanics and space constraints.

The merging and all the fiddrent mechanism coming out of it is so satisfying. the visuals& the whole ambiance are stunning. The music fit perfectly. & you even managed to pull off achievements (which i am a total sucker for)
this is my fav from this jam so far... by far
You guys did an incredible works. cheers <3
I'm sure I was making mistakes in the gameplay, but everything was so calming that I didn't mind that I was a little lost. It's a shame that the theme infers an ending, because this game would be great to just chill out to and create ever more complex star systems.
Excellent entry, my favourite so far.
The music certainly set the mood and the sounds meshed with it very well.
There was a level of frustration involved with the abyss converting my shards seemingly out of nowhere, or a shard spawning and merging into something I didn't want and then pushing other shards around causing chain reactions of losing shards.
Great entry.
Beautiful and soothing while still being rather intense. It was interesting to explore the space of different elements. Nice touch requiring a dip into corruption to reach the most powerful shards. Would be a good before bed (and then end up staying up late with "one more time") kind of game.
2 tries took me 15 minutes of pure relax ^^

finally done! now i ll go for all achivements


10 min is a really hard mark, I was trying to prepare a field of Corrupted Sapphires in advance in one half of the screen, and just produce yellows to merge into them, but still it seems you need exceptional mechanical (Starcraft) skills to pull that off.
the largest versions might have special activations like so:
- vigor burning himself down once activated and maybe light up its perimeter for a few seconds removing the darkness/preventing spread?
- or maybe sapphires slows down curroption around them?
also if you ever make a postjam version i believe the play time can be extended with an ever expanding map and even corrupted star spawns.
- corruption would be faster than expansion so it will still get us?
all in all i really liked this whole thing thank you for making it.
Idk the copy thingy can go a bit crazy sometimes xD It slowed down to 2 fps (in browser)