This is fun although I'd love a larger screen. I boosted out of screen and then established a stable orbit where I couldn't see myself more than once!

Thanks for playing @josh-roby. It would been nice to have a camera that zoomed in and out depending on the player position but as usual, the deadline crept nearer and I had to turn my focus to other things but I agree.

Woah this is seriously fun!! I love trying to get into a tight and stable orbit. My best so far is 35GB! Awesome game!!

Thanks for playing the game @nate954. You can always polish that score =)

Took little while to create stable orbits. Zoom would have been nice as I managed to "lose" my satellite multiple times.

Unplayable:

Really fun game - although it turns out I'm pretty bad at rocket science. Going where you want to is actually quite difficult, even without worrying about random satellites!

My record is 258,68GB! (still only a A-) Funny to think about a new tec company that is only launching Sputniks into space :smile:

It is a funny game! One thing: There is a lot of data shown on the screen where actually only the battery percentage is really relevant. I just noticed, that there is a battery after I couldn't control the vehicle anymore, so maybe this could be presented a bit more prominently. Not a big issue though, cool entry!

Yes @denvil, zoom would have been great =)

@lancival the patterns are a bit problematic especially when you panic and start to get to big swings. The key to success is to make small adjustments.

@oadt, wow. 258,68 is a great score. I have only got an A score once. The higher the score you get the harder it is to improve. The steps is farther and farther away.

Thanks to all who plays it and leaves feedback, it´s so fun to read the comments.

Great job - genuinely really fun to play!

Quite funny game. The game looks visually nice and the audio amps up the atmosphere and mood. The controls felt off for me. I expected to thrust into towards a global direction instead of activating thruster on that side. That made me fly faaar into the outer space and in those moments I wish I had some sort of way to restart the game.

Well done!

Very nice idea, I remember playing a lot of KSP so I played a round trying to circularize my orbit !

Love the mechanic, the mood and everything. The embedded version is cropped but still playable!

Cool concept. As some people noted before the controls felt a little weird. Maybe if they were in world coordinates instead of local coordinates a more predictable steering could be achieved.

Besides that, nice game. I liked the UI and using "GB send" as score is also very creative.

Thanks a lot for playing my game @m11, @coderaurus, @dhim and @douwe-ravers.
As some of you have pointed out I could mak the controls a bit more arcady and change the orbital pattern change in world space, something I have to try.

Really fun to play. I'd like to have a bit more feedback on what thrusters I used since it sometimes was hard to tell if I pushed the correct button. Got really hectic after a couple of satellites :D

Seemed absolutely impossible at first but fun once I got the knack. Having said that I still haven't got better than C, but managing to actually dodge some satellites was nicely satisfying. Love the random space comms chatter as well, really adds to vibe. I found it was pretty impossible to look away from the satellite for long enough to actually read the screens. Good game!

Like te overall game feel would love some more feedback on the satelite bigger truster / sound or somthing.
Still impressive becuase its realy fun to play.

@madeofst: Seeing people play the game makes me realize that the cool idea of having a monitor did not work as well as in my mind, with a bit of more tweaking maybe but as it is, no not really. The screen is to small, to far away from the action. The information that is need to have drowns in the clutter of nice to have. Glad you liked the game.

@senso and @daandruff: Yes, With more time I could have made the audio/visual indicators easier to pick up when using the thrusters.

This was a really nice game concept... however I would like if the graphics improved... Othervise, you've got a great game in your hands

I can't help but play any n-body simulation based game I find. Great job!

One potential comment would be to coax in a pseudo-autopilot to help with controls; it can get disorienting as the player moves relative to the planet, which thruster needs to be thrusted. Although that could be considered part of the challenge ;)

@aryaman, are you saying that I suck at graphics? *Laughs* If you aren´t I am gonna go out and say it. If I shall keep on doing 3D games, I will have to learn blender. I can´t keep on using the Unity primitives forever =)

Thanks for playing it and your kind words. I know the graphics aint the best and that is OK for this jam.

Great idea @jcg, I will try and make a pseudo-autopilot and maybe make it so that it can be turned on and off.

What a fun little game! I really liked how it's fairly simple but it gets harder and crazier as more satellites are launched.

Thanks for playing the game @shimmerscale

Very interesting game, but I have a hard time controlling the satellite, he runs so fast hahaha

Thanks for trying the game @olddog.

really good game, hard to master but that's fine :D

The gameplay is refreshing, the graphics are really fine for the genre (especially given the time limits) but I struggled with the controls too much.

The mood is great but I always loose my satelite really early and it impossible to bring back around the planet.

I like the orbiting mechanic a lot, fun concept, I would like to see it polished and with more variety of things that could ruin your perfect orbit.

Reached escape velocity in 5.5 minutes, now the satellite is researching Sun.


I just realized its not about staying alive its about staying close

Really love your game. It's a multi-purpose game. You can strive for the longest time on the orbit or try to transmit as much data as possible. Or even try to crash as quickly as possible. By the way my crash record is 2.32 sec, who can beat it? :laughing:

The trick is to use small corrections on the sattelite @vhalenn.

LOL. It might seem as that @fstleo and the first version of the prototype had the possibility to reach escape velocity but I removed that. You have just created the worlds largest orbit. =)

That is a hard record to beat @xpycm. Thanks for playing =)

Yes @reevest2. The instructions could be a bit clearer on that. And even more then that, to keep the link consistent. Every 30 seconds the link adds another node and you transfer more data.

A really fun game, although I got game over for some reason? I had managed to manoeuvre into an elliptical orbit that was dodging everything!

First I thought controlling the satellite was too difficult. But then I started getting hang of it and the game actually became very interesting and fun. It reminds me of games where the tricky movement is main part of the game (e.g. Getting Over It or Octodad).

Sometimes I felt the controls were overly complicated. It is due how the satellite turns and suddently thrusters start working differently than your brains would expect.

Especially in the beginning of my journey to a professional satellite pilot, I found my self outside of the screen. It is really hard to get back from there. Possibly adding a small indicator to the edge of the screen to tell where you are could help with that. Or just straight up killing the player if the satellite is too long outside of the screen.

But overall, this was a fun game! Great work!

Nice! Though, as it turns out, I'm pretty rubbish at orbital mechanics. Def got "KSP if it were in an arcade" vibes! Great work!

Damn, Starlink is very hard to handle.

I like the concept, and spent good amount time playing this game.

Definitely on the tougher side, but it really got me trying again and again! Didn't get anything above C- though 😅 Nice job!

At some point the screen gets filled by so many trails and explosions, it becomes a yolo and hope for the best. Fun game! Quite challenging

Interesting! I feel the game is somewhat Avant Garde. I enjoyed the complexity to the precision of movement needed. The only thing I'd notice is the html is off screen slightly and the instructions at the beginning are daunting. Very good game overall!

Very fun game! I loved how the satellites can crash into each other :D Really neat touch. Game was a bit difficult but once the controls were figured out, staying in orbit was not too bad. A very interesting way of dealing with the theme. I didn't manage to get anything above C- though :(

I feel like this game might be a commentary on SpaceXs launch cadence! :D Seeing the traces is also very neat .

I think I'd like to see a bit more information about the orbit, speed, and an axis for direction of thrust. But maybe that's my too many hours in KSP talking :)

The game is great! It would be nice to see an indication that something is about to launch, I got hit by rockets just launching a couple times.

My record is 24GB, I don't know if this is good or not. This is a really hard game, took me like 10 tries to control a bit the satellite. I guess drive a satellite in space is hard, and you manage to make it realistic from this point of view.
Love the music from the menu, very entertaining, and also the text "and the instructions are lacking, deal with it" :smile:
I think we don't see the fire pushes enough, you should make them more obvious.
Anyway I enjoyed it!

Truly innovative game with somewhat hard to grasp controls.

This is a really entertaining game, especially if you understand orbital mechanics. It's difficult but I think that makes it fun!

I found the how to play / menu screen a bit too dense. Otherwise cool game/concept.

Through experimentation, I found a sweet spot location. My challenge to everyone else is to try hug the planet - close enough that even the bravest satellites dare not venture near you. (I put a pic of that strat here). Great game, steep learning curve, takes a while to get used to the velocity of space. Only recommendation is to add some sort of hardlock - I flew so far away, that I was basically lost forever. Anyways, record is 53.82GB . Great work!

Man, I love orbital mechanics, surprised to see this kind of game in this jam. Very nice game!

Great concept, I'd love to see full blown game of this type. Keep it up!

I would never like to be a satellite when Tesla launches Starlink lol

Pros:

- This is quite addictive game!
- I love the 'just put stuff together' earth model, it's adorable!
- The graphical fidelity It takes me back to the 90's (which is of course a positive!)
- The game gets quite tricky pretty fast
- I like that you went honest with the music opt-out
- Oh my the scoring is brutal (but hey, it's at least honest, because I couldn't even transfer half of a modern game these days haha)

Cons:

- The controls are quite challenging at first to get around, especially down-up movement
- Is it me or is the spawner not every 10 seconds, but every 4-5? Therefore I just find it fard to get it around the theme a bit (however, my screen is 165hz refresh rate, would that affect unity Update method or Coroutines?)

Good Job nonetheless!

This is a great game. Took a few tries to get hang of it and to create stable orbits and once you've got that figured out, you have to keep track of all the chaos around you. Had a bit of trouble orienting myself with the controls, I think I would have preferred if the controls were based on where I saw the satellite in world space rather than the local orientation of it.

This is fantastic. I definitely learned that I should not work at any type of aeronautics facility but my crashed kerbal space ships should have informed me of that years ago.

I don't know why you opted out of Audio, that was my favourite part ahah (unless it wasn't custom for the compo).

I found the controls really hard to navigate, but still I played like 20 times. So you must have done something right!

Great concept, definitely something I would have played with my friends back in the coffeebreak arcade days :)

It's a very different game. I had a little trouble understanding the controls (how it worked). The graphics are simple but interesting. In general, I think it's a game with a peculiar concept.

I like the gameplay, feels pretty unique. Thanks for being honest that your audio was not original--but my understanding is that it's not allowed by the [rules for the Compo](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules). You should have submitted to the Jam instead. Anyway, I just reviewed your game as if it had no audio.

Wow, The feeling of waking up and read all these great comments. Thanks everyone for playing and rating my game. Earlier I said that it is a feeling almost as nice as making the game but with all the kindness I have got I would say that it tops coding. So thanks a lot for playing my game and coming with constructive feedback. I love the LD community.

Fun game - it was quite challenging though!

I like the choice between survival and score

Thanks for playing @phillip-scott

fun idea, but very challenging at the beginnning! a restart function would be nice to be able to learn faster how to control the satelite.

Loved the sound design. That game over screen music felt dramatic every time :D I was a bit bad at controlling it initially, but slowly got better - though always felt a little out of control. Wonder how it'd feel if it zoomed out when you when outside of the screens bounds?

@angrybeard thanks for playing the game.

@honest-dan: yes. An auto-zoom to keep the player visible at all times would be great. You only score while close to the planet but it is too easy to lose control over the ship as is now.

Man, inhabitants of that planet suck at orbital mechanics. Stable orbit? Who needs that~
As others said - add zoom. It'd also be cool to make it about Kessler Syndrome, where sattelites leave debris that destroys other satellites, increasing a death-zone for your satellite.

Fun game, and from the looks of it not too far from reality is it, given how much space junk a internet satellites seem to be going up :) I really like the theme and the controls were quite nice, though I must admit I struggled to get above a C rating - am I back in school? Great entry!

@cremmy: yes, adding debries should make it even more chaotic =)

@waterfowler: There seems to be a bug making the satellites spawn to fast making it even harder and if you have C+ you have a quite high score actually. The rating is a bit harsh.

I play a lot of kerbal space program but I never thought controlling the ship in real-time would be this hard :smile: Really nice game! I wonder if we can enter into a stable orbit and transmit data continuously? I never managed to do it

I really enjoyed playing your game. I love the trails the satellites leave behind and how the game gets more frantic the longer you last. The only tactic which worked form me was simply using up or down button. Acceleration and deceleration brought me very fast into an unstable orbit, but I guess that's how it is meant to be.

Here's my highscore after several tries:


The longer you have continious transmission the more nodes are connected. You get a new node every 30 seconds and I have seen player have 4 connections @wolderado. I don´t know how they do it but it can apperently be done =)
Thanks for playing my game and leave feedback.

Wow, B+ is a great score. Well done @zubspace.

I got C+ at last.

It's really difficult to enter a round orbit.

Wow, Impressive @linktail

The game was fun and a really interesting concept. The graphics were clean and easy to understand. I liked the trails left by the satelites, they made some pretty cool patterns.
Also, I know you opted out of audio, but I just have to say I found the radio gibberish hilarious :laughing:

Thanks for playing and coming with feedback @vidarn

Challenging game!
I found it difficult to understand the controls initially, but once I got the hang of it I felt pretty comfortable flying around. Love the trailrenderers!

this game is sooooooooooo hard! but I like it!(rate back plz!)

Fun, but kind of hard for me. Never been able to get over C.

Maybe the controls could be relative (up away fron the planet, right retrograde...) ?

Interesting and original, at first try my satellite was lost in the deep, dark space! Nice entry!

Great game. I love the havoc that every next satellite brings in. Controls are at first hard to just to, but navigating satellites can be easy, I guess xd

I found it a little difficult to handle the sattelite's rotation at first (it might be easier if, for example, D was always prograde and A was always retrograde rather than being slightly off sometimes)

This music is intense.

music and sound effects are really good, controls even simple are quite a challenge to get the hang of it
All in all it's a nice game even if i didnt manage to get a really high score x)

Hey, thanks for making the game! I played through it and recorded my thoughts.

https://youtu.be/r7ysXN5q934