Surface by lb01
You've been tasked with exploring an exoplanet. However, the atmosphere of the planet is mostly argon, so your oxygen-filled cabin is not dense enough to actually descend to the surface...unless you can find a way to make your cabin heavier.
Controls:
Mouse or WASD - move Space bar or click - shoot P - pause the game Shoot the meteoroids to make them small enough to take on board The more meteoroids you shoot, the heavier your spacecraft will be and the deeper into the planet you can go
| Link | https://liambrady.itch.io/surface |
| Link | https://github.com/blu25/Surface |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/surface |
Ratings
| Overall | 25th | 4.2⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 46th | 4.114⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 245th | 3.595⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 334th | 3.763⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 39th | 4.309⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 6th | 4.369⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 41th | 4.147⭐ | 80🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 47🗨️ |
I did notice that quick mouse movements will jerk the ship a crazy amount but it was actually useful in combat haha
PS. add a barrel roll
Great job :D
The only improvement I would suggest is a radar or some other way of telling where enemy ships are. Sometimes you're just flying around living your best life and suddenly you're in a laser light show. I think there might be an audio cue for it? But it's quite subtle.
Fantastic work!
One thing I would love would be a timer/score at the end of the game.
A little bit laggy on web... Maybe build a windows version afterwards?
Nice job!
My only suggestion is that when clicking on the how to play button, you present a giant wall of text in the same font color, same size. No one has time for that! It's better to give info in bits and pieces during the gameplay if there's more to digest than just the controls.
The controls are smooth, but maybe player lasers could be a bit faster for better feel, while the enemy lasers a bit slower for more opportunities to dodge (them being very visible and kind of slow-ish is nice change for a flight game where usually bullets are super fast and you just have to avoid being in the enemy line of fire - I really liked that I could actually see the projectiles and was kind of able to dodge). Then could add more enemies to increase difficulty.
Lock-on crosshair is a nice touch, adds some good game feel.
Music is really good, and the change after descending felt very appropriate. But then it glitched out, got cut off, then a while later continued playing slowly with glitchy noises. Then was fine for a while. So yeah, very nice when it isn't glitching out :)
By the way the crashed smoking enemy ships at the ending screen is a nice touch, added to the feel of victory.
Overall, a really nice game, felt quite polished, I enjoyed it - actually wish it was a bit more challenging so I would have a reason to play it more.
I used mouse controls, which was a little bit awkward (maybe should have used keyboard). The lock-on seemed to actually make it hard for you aim towards the movement during dogfights. I'd kinda like to be able to boost my speed a little bit too in case you get dogpiled by several enemies at once.
As a compo game it's very impressive. Well done!
I did feel like if you wanted you could just farm the metorites at the top and never be in danger of the enemies, which I guess could be a playstyle (more stealthy), but it did feel like cheating a bit. Maybe have less metorites further up and make it denser as you get closer to the planet?
All in all, a really good, solid entry! I liked it :)
[Ludum Dare 48 staff picks](https://github.blog/2021-05-19-ludum-dare-48-staff-picks/#surface) :slight_smile:
[](https://github.blog/2021-05-19-ludum-dare-48-staff-picks/#surface)