that isn't how I remembered the ending of James and the Giant Peach.

it reminds me of old sega games and it's cool. everytime i'm inside a sun, i get disoriented and don't know where to go, so signal is really helpful. Therefore, good take on theme. Nice one!

Very cool idea and mechanic!

Rest in peace star, I made it out before the implosion though, I lived!

Very fun exploration game! By the end of it, my solar dissipation beam made the sun look like swiss cheese. It's just fun terraforming the environment like that, heh. Backtracking to new objectives through the tunnels, digging new ones, listening to the audio cues for the target. Really a fun hunt with a fun digging mechanic. Great job on the game design here! Loved the audio as well, there was something about the sfx and the background noise that just draws you in, I think it really built that sci-fi space exploration mood. Great job on this game, very well done!

love the intro and story in general, you are obviously a fan of dark sci fi :)

took me a while to figure out what i was supposed to be doing - at first i thought i was shooting some kind of detection indicator on to the surface of the planet. Only after I started moving around did I realise I was boring tunnels into the 3d shape.

But once I realised that it was a cool and unique puzzle trying to track down the signal somewhere in this solid object.

I would maybe make the "signal" number get HIGHER as you get closer to the target. That would be more intuitive. Or otherwise label it "distance to signal".

creative idea, well done

Took me a bit to figure it out, but once I did I had a lot of fun! I'm super interested in whatever technique you used to construct the mesh of the sun. Marching cubes? I'm very impressed by that system, nice work.


Some kind of ambient soundtrack would have been killer to listen to while exploring the odd Sun-Mesh though, and a few of the SFX I would have liked to be more pleasing to the ears.

Programming/design/theme wise I think you nailed the mark though its such a fun concept! Great job.

@william-corrin I actually just used Godot's CSG combiner node with a few cylinders set to subtract! It worked surprisingly well (a bit of lag as the beam bores through the sun, which is kind of why I have you wait so long between shots (and you only get 5 holes at a time, not sure anyone will notice unless looking, I don't even notice it))

If you're into Godot, the source is there if you want to take a look (the code is really messy mind you). InsideASun/Sun is the CSGCombiner with PlayerBeam1-5 being the beams

The sun boring mechanic was very unique and well done. I've never come across a game with a proximity detector in 3D so the extra dimension added a fun twist to triangulating it. Interesting story, I wonder why humans are so determined not to interact with aliens, seems a shame. It was amusing how close to the surface the stars core was for me. The looping sound effect was a bit weird but all in all a great entry :)

The concept is simple but the "destruction" mechanic made it very fun. The audio is "strange" but i liked it.
Grood job !

Had a lot of fun with this one! Very unique mechanics. Reminded me of Acerola's video about recreating the smoke effect from CS which you can shoot bullets through, which creates holes in the smoke, so, I couldn't help but wonder how much of a pain this was to implement, haha.

As mentioned by other, it would be nice to have more sounds and music, but it's always a big challenge with compo. Though if you make space games in the future, then I can recommend checking Kairatune out, it's free and possible to stitch something together in like 20-30 minutes.

Anyway, very good entry, loved it!

Finished it! Cool concept.

"The prime directive says no contacting aliens, which I interpret to mean killing any I find." Unfortunate, indeed...

On my first playthrough I somehow bugged out the beam meter, which forced me to restart the game. I can't make it happen again, so I'm not quite sure what I did.

> I actually just used Godot’s CSG combiner node with a few cylinders set to subtract!

What a strange feature to have in a game engine. The Godot documentation is plastered with warnings not to use it for anything, which makes me wonder why they went to all the trouble to implement it in the first place...

wow, I got really into the story!
Great!
Liked the idea of using the signal.
Also working on 3D space gives some freedom. Congratulations!


@henk There was a bug I found where if you clicked when it was near empty it'd bug out (probably from relying too heavily on tweens for logic...), I kind of made a work around to ignore it but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still there and that's what you ran into. Really sorry about that. For the prime directive I'd like to explore that a bit more, it's an interesting concept to me (survival in space requiring no contact with aliens and any detection meaning eradication, which seems logical but is so inhumane, I think there's ways to explore the idea with accepting adaptation and change).

I definitely pushed the CSG usage to the limits, it's a jam so why not. I think their main intention is for quickly prototyping things and then not changing the geometry at runtime (which I abuse :D)

> I think their main intention is for quickly prototyping things

Yeah, that's what the docs say, but I'm not sure I believe them. Making a CSG engine is a lot of effort to go through just so devs can avoid opening Blender sometimes.

cool game, i found the core then died in an explosion.

Bit of a bug for me; the sensitivity of the mouse look was at like a million! every tiny movement would sent my view spiraling all over. I did manage to beat it still though. Really cool dynamic destruction!

@isaac-hisey Sorry about that, I hardcoded the sensitivity. I was a bit worried that would happen for people. Next time I'll put more effort in to add a sensitivity option (or if anyone has suggestions on how to automatically adjust it that might be better)

At start, I wasn't expecting game with such deep plot! Well done, nice usage of CSG. After me beaming it, sun was resembling more of swiss cheese. Good luck!

I really like the idea here! Its a very unique take on it and I had fun just destroying the sun!

Very strange game, honestly. But I liked the narrative part. Also, there is a bug, when you collect the signal origin, but then you can touch this place second time and it'll trigger the dialog script again.

This entry found me while in the right mood for a trippy yet simple game, great job. I imagine the sphere deformation wasn't too hard to implement for you, yet you have managed to base the entire gameplay on it with much success.

I turned the star into Swiss cheese =)
Conceptually it works overall, I got into it. Punching holes in a star is fun in and of itself.

At times I lost my sense of direction and didn’t know if I was going forward, backward, up, or down XD. Although I guess that doesn’t really exist in space, it did make it a bit harder to reach the end. Overall, good job!

I am very confused by all of that story but there's some pretty cool tech going on there and I had fun! Would be curious to see what else you can do with that!

Ordinary people only dare to imagine exploring inside the moon. Exploring inside the sun by penetrating through it, what an astonishing imagination! This idea is very cool. Does it seem to be inspired by outer wilds? What surprises me the most is that the sun doesn't look very big from the outside, but when exploring inside, it feels very large. How is that made? However, during the exploration process, the camera perspective often jumps suddenly, making the exploration not confortable. This is the only relatively obvious obstacle.

That's a interesting short experience. I like that you took the time to have a proper intro and the writing has a new cryptic tone, it gives a unique mood. The mechanic works pretty well and it feels satisfying to dig into the sun. That could have been interesting to show all the holes and tunnels we dug right before the explosion.

It's an unusual game, but it can be too difficult to navigate in space.

Neat concept! Thanks for sharing your game. I enjoyed that there was a mix of story and player-driven action. I think some ambient music would really elevate the feeling, and finding some way to make the text & signal readout more diegetic could go a long way towards immersion. Having animations in the objects made the world feel more alive. A pro tip for textures, including a skybox...there are lots of things you can photograph during the compo & then edit (just by recoloring & fiddling with light/contrast/etc.) that can add to the graphics. For example, I took pictures of trees with lights in them, then pushed up the contrast so the lights looked like stars, and composed a skybox by placing a number of scaled & rotated copies of these "star" images.

My game also lets players "explore" the sun, so I was attracted to this :smile:

The tech of being able to dig into the sun is impressive. As others have mentioned, its a bit difficult to orient and explore with everything looking the same - some texture or a type of compass might have helped. I pushed through and imploded the star! Great job!

Interesting, unusual conception of game.

The idea is cool. I liked the destructiveness in the game

Awesome game! I was really careful at first, worried I’d burn up if I hit the sun, but when I realized it was harmless, I started digging everywhere recklessly.
Even though I eventually lost signal in the final explosion, haha

This was a crazy experience. I played through it a second time just to dig more tunnels through the sun (and see if I could escape the implosion at the end, not sure if that's possible). Kind of my favorite sort of jam game, just something experimental and unpolished, but with cool ideas and an interesting vibe.

@sudocoffee Thank a ton for that comment! Really means a lot (and I feel the same way about the jam games I played during this LDJam, my favourite games were experimental and unpolished and this jam kind of reignited my passion for indie games). There is in fact no way to escape the implosion in the game, although if people interpret that they did who am I to deny that :D

I like this method of transmitting signals using the sun. I think it's very creative. The sound effects are also very well-suited, making me feel very excited and enjoyable during the exploration process. The game concept is excellent. I think it's very difficult to achieve this level of quality in such a short time.