Shooting Stars in a Blocky Cosmose! by AweSkyBear
Capture the sharpest image of the green 🟩 signal star! Everything is squares (and pixels) in our cute little Universe! Get higher score by capturing sharply.. that is.. zooming in on those squary guys!
You are a blocky cosmographer - that is, you capture with your telescopic camera those... stars
But beware! There are bad RED 🟥 squares (which will trouble you if captured) and BLUE 🟦 good ones (which will make it easier for you)!
You've got 100 shots!
Use the mouse primarily... and CTRL key for fine-tuned sniper precision haha!
>>> Play online here!
HOW TO PLAY?!
🎯 Goal: Find and capture GREEN signals (🟩) in your cosmic-persicopic-sniper camera 🟢 (circle)!
🖱️ Controls:
- Mouse move: Move view circle
- Right click: Toggle scanner ON/OFF
- Left click: Capture signals in view
- Scroll: Zoom in/out (smaller = higher score)
- P / Space: Pause game
⭐ Stars / Signals:
- GREEN 🟩 = Points (smaller circle = more points!)
- RED 🟥 = Bad! (-points, +speed, -shots, level up)
- BLUE 🟦 = Good! (+speed, +shots, clear stars)
📊 Scoring: Score = 100 / (circle radius)²
⚡ Tips:
- HOLD CTRL for fine-grained ZOOMING (sniper mode!)
- Smaller circle = higher score!
- Minimap - the one on the bottom right zooms at the point you are looking at - useful if doing sniper shots... see next point
- Sniper shots - those that are with the smallest cursor ever : )) over small-enough green ones! Use the minimap to see what is going on there ;)
- Your circle 🟢 should be larger than the captured squary star able to - IT'S A CAMERA AFTER ALL!!
- Capture MULTIPLE signals at once! (this tip is dumb)
- Watch out for red ones! 🟥
- Blue ones help you! 🟦
- Level up (every 30 seconds) means the game gets harder = -5 shots, more stars (noise), faster speed!
Sniper shots (only if you got the nerves LOL :smile: )!
Non-sniper.. camera shots?
Enjoy!
Tech nerdy stuff
Tools used: VSCode, OpenCode - coding (over plain JavaScript); Strudel.cc - music via JavaScript (oh yes), Aseprite (the animated faces, gosh my limited skills here xD), Audacity - stitching/baking sounds/music together, Paint.NET for (for cutting and stitching some visual stuff), freesound.org for the cam shutter and zooming sound, ... did I miss anything?
Size is 1mb: entire game with all assets is around 1000kb, yes, since... we use plain JS hah; source is ugly, very ugly and slapped together rapidly
Ratings
| Overall | 176th | 3.348⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 116th | 3.455⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 65th | 3.727⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 192th | 3.379⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 199th | 3.197⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 104th | 3.485⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 112th | 2.79⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 170th | 3.344⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
Loved the immersion! The visuals were so cohesive and complete. I had to admin I had to read the directions a couple time to grasp the dynamics (red = bad, got it!). Nice work!
A lovely entry! Ended up with negative score - but enjoyed it the whole time! Really pretty to, in a way that is hard to describe.
Hey! I recognize that melody! Makes me want to point out constellations with celeste and blathers!
Minute later:
That got overwhelming really fast xD
The idea feels quite unique to me, and the starry sky is cute (before chaos). I tried looking for particles in that square on the bottom right but that didn't help much. I relied more on the line "Detected! Look closer!" down there. I wish I looked more at the sky itself ;-;
Really interesting concept tho!!
@kyanoss yes yes! Thanks for noticing! I spent half of my time on day 2 *rebalancing*. And red and blue stars were one of the mechanics added after my own playtesting.. + how those affected the game!
@guardaro truly, this game can be both relaxing and frustrating :D - not for everyone. I have to come up with a way to showcase one *intended* way of playing. I've noticed there is such a thing for many games!
@ugly-robot HA! Great you had fun playing!!! Suuper happy you felt the both-arcady-and-meditative feeling. :D Thought exactly the same but didn't know if it's just me... did we invent sth slightly new here ?? XD
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Thank you all! All feedback welcome!
- avoid capturing **RED** stars 🟥 - you lose points or the game gets faster :D
- just capture GREEN 🟩 ones with the smallest circle possible :P - the ones for points :)) - see **sniper mode** in the description if you got the nerves to use that XD or are an FPS fan
- capture **BLUE** 🟦 ones (no need for precision here) to negate red ones and make the game last longer
Feedback:
- I think the language behind "Level Up" was confusing. In this game, leveling up is bad! It took me a while to understand.
- UI was small/hard to read. I would have enjoyed a more prominent display of my points and remaining shots.
Yes, Level Up is "Things getting harder" :D will think on this
Loved the music, loved the visual effect on the circle when it grows and shrink, loved sifting for dem green dots !
@universeflow capture them all!
@tenthousandfireants haa that is fine :D :D - that's why there is a `Mute` button in
settings
@wo-ri-gou-le Glady glady glady I am :)
@jed :heart:
@carsten good, your score is the highest so far from the reported ones :D
My personal score was around ~500
I attempted to allow for this game for anybody to have fun. E.g. "snipers" / FPS guys - precision players; casual guys - who don't care about the score but the pure clicking and chaos should be ok too; meditation guys..? you can let the game just run - no clicking LoL. You must be between FPS and casual guys haha :smile:
@crak sift through them all then! Thanks! :spy: :four_leaf_clover:
Did you have fun, regardless the negative score? :)) Come ooon, be honest XD
So, I did what I like most and made it as big as possible and took as many cool pics as I could.
BTW I was planning to also add a Zen mode, which would be a meditative non-punishing experience. Maybe for a PostCompo. In that, maybe we could have the smallest star size... larger than 1x1 :)) yes.
Best sound design you've had so far -- the music really fits the mood. Except I'm not sure what's up with that Windows sound effect? Especially since I don't use Windows!
Fairly impressive that you have that many objects moving smoothly with a handcrafted engine. Well done. (I suppose it helps that you don't have to worry about collision!)
It was sort of tricky to manage the zoom scale (maybe ctrl should have been for making it faster instead of slower?), and the fact that the green stars blink slowly in the main view doesn't help with spotting them.
(Side nitpick: You have a typo in "periscopic" :wink: )
Not sure about the Windows sound xD, I have some "yay" and "noo" sounds that represent "pain" upon getting Red star but not much else.
About the engine/collisions, correct, it's pure JS this time, so doesn't go through much hoops I guess.
I am not sure if it's obvious enough, but when a green star is in view, it says "Detected" at the bottom-centre bar. Anyway, if one is for the points, they need to actually find them and zoom on, yes :D. I intentionally did not make the CTRL this way, but only for fine-grained zoom because of the assumption some people may never use/find that and without fast zoom in/out the game is pretty much unplayable :D So a UX decision.
Appreciate even the side nitpick :rofl: I actually care.
THANKS for all the feedback : )) and GL and have fun! :bow:
I found the Windows sound effect: it's at 0:30 in the background music! Did you have a notification come in while you were recording it or something?
A few other little comments:
* At least on my computer (Linux, using Chrome), the green circle doesn't show up until I click once, which forces a miss.
* Sometimes the game shows a "PAUSED" message but it's still taking clicks in the background without showing what's happening, and there's no message saying how to unpause it.
* The mute settings don't stick across plays.
All just points of polish that don't detract from the overall experience.
I think the green things give you way too few points, and the red stars are very punishing, from my experience playing you get like 0.3 points per green star and -10 points for a red star! I understand that you're meant to zoom in to get more points, but when you're trying to click on a single pixel flying through the screen and they disappear so fast, sometimes you don't have enough time! I think you should just get more points in general instead of percentages, brain dumb, brain like big number.
Also, I really love the music it's really chill, but as the other guy pointed out, yeah there's a Windows error sound in the middle of it x)
All in all this is def my favorite game you've made so far! It's cohesive and genuinely fun, if a little confusing at first, but when you get into the flow of it you just wanna keep going as long as you can. Good job!
Final Score: 109.27
Time Elapsed: 334s
Thank you for the thorough additional feedback! :)) All are bugs and are known but the focus was pretty much on getting fun gameplay (spent a few hours just replaying and rebalancing on Day 2). I [tried to and] am glad that it ended fun besides any of those points! Thank you.
Just adding on this:
> the green circle doesn’t show up until I click once, which forces a miss.
True, this is the case. I have a useless feature - Right click which toggles the "camera".. ended up useless since left click also activates it (with the aforementioned bug).
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Regardless, I got several cute ideas to extend upon. If I am able to get down to it I will likely release a Post Compo also clearing the bugs.
Thanks, buddy!
I do realize right now, no matter how simple and clear your own game looks to you - it *always* can be [initially] confusing to others! No matter what! :D
I would have to prioratize an interactive in-game tutorial next time, no matter how simple that ends up. Thank you!
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On the green stars giving few points, all is intentional but... your comment makes me come with more ideas to balance that. For one, capturing several stars at once could at least give some bonus. Oooor... simply allow for more points, yes. xD
Red stars are punishing by design - wondering if that could piss people off (I thought *no* but I am never for the points in games; so it's just me :D ).
> All in all this is def my favorite game you’ve made so far! It’s cohesive and genuinely fun, if a little confusing at first, but when you get into the flow of it you just wanna keep going as long as you can. Good job!
:bow: Great words from one of my masters here! Appreciate it!
And glad you played for a few min! :)))
I also had a ton of fun zooming out a lot and clicking randomly -- my score dropped in record time, but I loved seeing how fast I could get the stars to go!
PS: there are also Blue ones, but I hope I didn't torment you too much :S with your color blindness.. let me check how to tackle this better next time.. ! ✓ :sweat_smile:
Your recording is .999 gold in terms of feedback / end-to-end player perception! Cheers!
And yes, you made a few great feedback points, that I would definitely take into account if come to give a post jam update! E.g. it would definitely make a lot of sense to bonus the Blue ones too based on zoom (NB red and blue were added as one of the final features, so not that much time to iterate and think through). And sniper mode shortcut, again a good point. : ))
GL and HF! :v: