The page on itch is empty

Hello, the itch link is broken. This looks interesting but the scrollbars make the embed pretty hard to play. I'll come back when it's visible on itch.

I tried to play it on the ldpage but it was way too small and itch: "We couldn't find your page
Go to Games by RJB's page"

Very atmospheric game but I completely suck at making out the shapes haha. I had to spam-click or use hints most of the time. The writing is really great, even though I'm pretty sure it's AI (which I don't mind).

P.S. As others said, the Itch.io link doesn't work, but I was able to play the game full-screen by opening [this link](https://files.jam.host/embed/$425524/46790/index.html) (you can get it from inspect element).

Thank you for the comments! I fixed the ITCH issue!!

The writing is not AI I'm just bad at writing but I work at a spaceborne radar company so i knew a few things lol. Thanks!

I really love the way the world is presented to you in this narrow way. This has such a high degree of polish and it sounds great. I was able to complete the first few levels but I didnt fully get a sense for what I'm looking for / what is anomalous. Regardless, the mood, graphics and audio is amazing

This is easily one of the best games on here, I wouldn't be surprised if this won the Compo. I really enjoyed the simple vector/pixel graphics, as well as the sound design. I was hooked immediately. The ending also subverted my expectations a bit too (in a good way). Keep up the good work!

Very cool, I completed the game, loved the story and the journey we went on. Really nice job with the audio as well. Overall, such a good fit for the theme. The relaxed mechanics with the hint system made the game as easy as it needed to be to just keep going and enjoy it all.

At the start when the compass is used briefly could have been expanded on, or adding a little challenge by having to find larger landmarks to narrow the search to an area rather than relying on the hints would have been cool (Ofc you probably considered that, time constraints and all, very cool to get this done in Compo). Nicely done, thanks for making!

This feels incredibly satisfying to play and look at. You nailed the vector look, feel and movement, and it makes an amazing atmosphere. Signals bouncing off the terrain look FANTASTIC!

Though I agree that it feels like I would be lost without hints, but I am sure it's very hard to balance these things in such a short amount of time. But all in all, one of my favorite entries, well done!

@jack-maxwell @dzejpi @liam @ethan-hammonds
Thanks all for the kind feedback!
I worried greatly about the difficulty, I'm glad I included the hints. You can see how (as the designer) it's hard to tell how hard a game like this is. I would've loved to have play testers to help with that... Ah well, I'm glad it was enjoyable nonetheless!

@dzejpi no joke I got that working in the first like 30 minutes LOL. I just had the player do raycast collisions with a surface and produce dots that connected to their neighbors. Obviously needed some refining after that... But the constant orbital movement of the player and sweeping of the rays means that the radar signal is always moving. Honestly, that visual effect was what gave me the encouragement to keep going and finish. Thanks so much!

@richjbaron that's what I call a lucky strike, getting this right this quickly would definitely keep me going, and very cleverly designed, I was kinda wondering how it all worked! :slight_smile:

@fassenberg @nathmate @mdotedot I'd love if you'd give the game another chance now that I've fixed the functionality :)

@richjbaron I stand corrected! You are not bad at writing at all, I was actually really impressed by it. I just got thrown off by some wording that sounded very AI-like. Turns out you're just someone who's very knowledgeable about the topic. Outstanding job!

@theoratkin thanks for the link, very useful now that it's itch that doesn't work instead lol.

Really nice visuals and mood. As others have mentioned I found myself relying on hints after a few levels, despite the distinct geometry of the target objects they were quite hard to find. I'm not sure if they were actually partially buried or if it just appeared that way due to the visuals. Just replayed and scanning with the tightest possible beam it seems that often only a very small part of the object was actually visible.

Obviously hindsight is 20-20, but if I were to do an effect like this I'd add something like additional visuals to show the tangent of the geometry being pinged by the raycasts to give a sense of upcoming crevices and the like that may need to be explored. As it is I was often confused as to the layout of the orbited object, though I understand that is partially the intended experience.


Hate it when I lose this object in an interior volume >_>

😨... What happened to finder-1, Rich? WHAT HAPPENED TO FINDER 1!?

@mrtroy :grimacing:

The music is AWESOME, one of the best I ever heard in a game jam! The smooth line art complements it all and makes it a coherent experience. What i did not get was the scanner width. Is there a penalty for making it too large? Also sometimes i just could not find the shape and had to press the hint button.
But overall this is such a nice experience, i'm glad i played this!

For the first 2 levels I had to use the hint but after that when I realized the goal of the game I just went full in and scanned every milimeters on the map. This is what I call a 10/10 game. The visuals, sounds and the story were so good. I would play a sequel of this easily :)

Giving high marks here. This has an awesome mood and narrative that most jam games fail to portray. Well done!

Dude this was so cool, the story of it was simple and great, the way that the geometry was never quite consistent, the fact that we never truly see what we're scanning. Some of the structures were unusually patterened, especially the second to last level where you're inside of something. It's so good, I'm sad that I was relying heavily on the hints, but that really did not contract from the gameplay and story of the game. I got immediately invested even with that first level. You did an absolutely fantastic job. Great work :D

@drtizzle The scanner always plots 16 points within its width, at a fixed frequency. So, the wider your scanner, the more difficult it is to make out fine geometry.
The intended game loop is to manipulate your scanner width and orbit around the asteroids to first "map" the surface, then go in with a finer beam to pinpoint the target.
I played with a number of strategies, and had to do quite a lot to prevent it from being cheatable. The obvious strategy is to fly around and spam indicate everywhere, so I made the inidication take a second and freeze the player in place so there's a small "punishment" for using it. That was intended to force the player to follow thru on the rough scan/fine scan/mapping game loop.
Seems I had only medium success in that regard :) Thanks for playing anyway!

I've been a musician for >20 years so that's always my favorite and the easiest/quickest part of the jam for me. Helps to have all the tools available to me as well. I really appreciate your kind words.

@termight I'm so glad you got out of the game exactly what I intended. That's very humbling and exciting. I so appreciate you playing and commenting!!!

@baknik This was my first time attempting a mood/narrative so I'm thrilled to hear it had a positive impact. Thank you so much!

@mr-flower Genuinely made my day with this comment. I'm going to be on cloud-9 all day knowing you had such a good time and even the patience to play it through!!!

The thing about seeing something like this is that I discover the shortcomings on my own entry. I really really liked the aesthetics here and even though it was not "obvious" mechanics... they were pretty easy to figure out :smile:

Rating given :smile:

Update: Actually my favorite entry up until now

I really liked the design of the item finder)

@purpledartfrog That's very encouraging to hear! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'll have to give your entry a play later when I'm off work!

The concept is just awesome, no other way to put it. I see in the comments you are a musician first and foremost and that makes sense because the atmosphere that the music provides is second to none. The simple vector graphics and black/white color palette also work incredibly well together.

The gameplay idea is really cool, don't get me wrong, but you have to get used to it. I think the concept-side of the gameplay is almost a 100/100, and is very unique - but the execution is more like 3/4 of the way there.

Without clear directions its difficult to understand what you're actually doing at first and what narrowing the width of the beam does. I eventually (think?) I figured out that it makes it so that you can survey the geometry at a more fine-tune resolution. And, although the odd distortion of geometry when moving looks cool, it kind of throws you off in a gameplay sense and makes it difficult to get an initial idea of where something could be - some kind of sound distortion, or maybe a slight change in pitch to the music that's noticeable to the ears when getting within 45deg of the target could have helped with this.

The fact you have a compelling story in here as well is just the icing on the cake. Hopefully you don't take my comments the wrong way, I tend to leave serious feedback and you've made such an awesome game which is part of why it got me thinking about ways to improve it so much.

Seriously an awesome entry. I loved being in your world, it gave me that rare feeling in a LD game that I was actually immersed in what i was playing. Super awesome stuff!

@william-corrin hah! Not to freak you out but we actually know each other IRL. I had no idea you were a game dev. I really appreciate the feedback. I agree with everything you said definitely. The main game loop needs refinement for both clarity and fairness. As is it, you're basically randomly scanning and any method requires deep understanding of the sweep mechanic that the player isn't encouraged or guided to develop. Plus a lot of luck.
I'm going to check out your entry this evening after work!
I'm excited based on your images/gifs

@richjbaron Lol, wait, what? Are you sure? Thats crazy if true... :laughing:

The thing is, theres always stuff to change in these 48 hour Compos, but the fact of the matter is you created something really unique and in-theme, with a killer OST and atmosphere and I could totally see this winning.

@richjbaron dude, email me at my work email: william@bytebackstudios.com

I gotta know if you actually know me lol but don't Doxx me here :laughing:

Don't ask me how long it took me to realize scroll-click was middle mouse click... and only after get what R-click is too... I want to punch self for trying to press scroll lock and click and thinking 'what an odd control theme' hahaha

You made an atmosphere spot on. I have bit of fright of space horror and it gave me that! Really awesome job with all that music and mystery within briefing messages! I found last piece by accident - I aimed wrong and it was there!

Made through whole game without using the hint prompt (only pressed it once at start because I was confused with controls), to make experience overall better it maybe could show a bit more that target is somewhere at vicinity (like when you already aiming and missed the spot by just a bit - it could blip or do something so you will know its close). But even without that it was quite satisfying to scan around and find things!

I enjoyed it a lot! Thank you :)

Captivating art direction from the very first frames. Really cohesive execution. The atmosphere is spot-on throughout. Gameplay fell a bit short — I never quite figured out what I was playing, just kept clicking random spots on the asteroid until I found what I needed. But everything around it is masterfully crafted. For some reason it gave me strong overworld map vibes from Kentucky Route Zero. I might just have to steal this style for a future project of my own — the result feels so satisfying, even though the execution looks deceptively simple.

@avhatar That's a totally fair critique. I agree that the core gameplay loop suffers from maybe being too simple, or at the very least, unrefined. I really appreciate you taking the time to play and comment :)

The game is one of the best looking I’ve seen here. The gameplay is interesting and very simple (maybe even a bit too simple). The music also fits the style of the game really well and enhances the overall experience.

Really great atmosphere, intriguing play. The presentation was stellar, only really critique is the gameplay loop needs some work. Without the hints, it would be impossible to find anything, but in using them the game basically plays itself. Really, really enjoyed it!

So first loved the vector graphics look.

I was able to beat the game without hints, but I felt like I was really just guessing the whole time.

Felt the music and overall sound design really complemented the game

This game looks very pleasant - it definitely has a style that I like. I honestly haven’t seen an idea like this on the jam so far, so it feels quite unique to me. It’s great that there were hints - thanks to them, I understood what I needed to do and was able to learn how to play the game. Good job!

@smolbigby I try to keep it as simple as possible but sometimes there's a line where it loses any semblance of "play" and ends up being "work" lol. I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway.

@soothsayer I agree, the maps + level description do almost nothing to let the player "solve" it, and I don't do anything to describe how a radar in the real world actually works to hint the player towards the "official" technique. It's more just like I-Spy than anything without those details. Glad you were able to find some enjoyment anyway!

@jesse-martin I'm glad you were able to beat it and enjoy the sound/music. There's some technique to be had but it requires either time to learn or instruction that I didn't provide, so I'm not surprised you did any better.

@oleksandr-marynenko Thanks for the kind feedback!

I uploaded a gameplay tutorial here that explains the intended gameplay loop more clearly since I did a less than stellar job in the game: https://youtu.be/bSP-6V5TALE

Top notch compo game! Striking visuals, moody atmosphere and innovative game design. I appreciate the hint system and the video you recently added ^. It was intuitive that the wide would be a rough estimate and narrow would be for detail examination, but I initially underestimated how useful the beam is at its narrowest setting!

Nice enticing story got me hooked and I really liked the graphics stile when scanning the surface. I'm glad you included a hint button because it would've taken me ages to reach the end otherwise :laughing:

Really cool concept! The aesthetic and overall vibes are immaculate. I don't feel like I got the full experience due to playing on a trackpad, as I couldn't really adjust the scan width with great precision. So I ended up just indicating along the entire surface until I found the targets. That aside it was still a really good experience.

Your music and the minimalistic graphics created an amazing atmosphere! The game mechanic is a cool idea, though I feel like the targets should be a bit easier to spot (maybe more recognisable shapes or make them bigger?) Especially in later levels it seemed like they were additionally burried in some kind of cave, so I was very happy about the hint system :smile: Nice work!

this game does a lot with very little, the audio/bg music is probably contributing the most to the building tension, but the writing and graphics are also helping a lot. I almost started to imagine that something moved when there never was anything moving/changing. The scanning mechanic is really impressively implemented. Great job all around.