Nr 1 best game

I played a planet with a giant reactor and I loved every second of it. I clearly didn't made the best out of my journey but it was a nice one for sure. Nice mix between the management mechanics and the "race" against the dying star.
(Oh, and it seems we have the same taste about great sci-fi 4X)

Wow the graphics in the are phenomenal! also the I love the concept of sticking giant booster on to an entire planet! The 4X elements are also really interesting and feel quite in-depth.

Very impressive for an LD submission. The graphics are incredible (I honestly enjoyed watching the sun engulf me), you created a gameplay loop, and the mechanics are simple but have depth.
Nice touch of dry humour too, this was great.

Besides the obvious that the graphics are fantastic, the game overall feels extremely polished which is rare in a jam with a short deadline like this.

Wow! Blown away by the quality of this entry. Graphics aside, the mechanics are fleshed out, and it kind of feels like building the rails in front of a train. I feel like my only bugbear is not being able to raise the camera upwards - I couldn't see the planets in my local area to skim some fuel.

Overall, I would not be surprised finding this kind of a thing on Steam with a little more development. Great work

@ollieoa Thanks! You can use the horizontal compass to see planets location relative to your position, you also see your velocity direction and planet forward vector.

Had a few crashes at the beginning but finally made it through the whole game, super cool experience. Love the feel of the sun catching up with you. Congrats :raised_hands:

I can't put my finger on why, but it really gives me that feeling of being in space - with the expanse of the void, the scale of the planets, the great camera movement, the bloom, the atmosphere. Really amazed that you managed to put this together in the time period - really good job! Not to mention the gameplay too :)

Wow, those graphics are sweeeeet! Would really love to have some music / sfx though!

@bernard-bumblebutt Thanks! There are soundtracks and a lot of SFX, it may be a little too low volume so maybe crank the volume up.

Really impressive game ! So much work done for a jam, Congrats !

This is so cool!! It's like a mix between a strategy game and a spaceship simulator, and the graphics are just gorgeous honestly. Really well done!

realy nice game whith a butiful graphic. I loved it.

This an incredibly inventive game loved the shaders you used.

Wow, this is really cool. I'm amazed this was made in such a short time. My favorite so far!

Amazing looking game, and loved the concept of flying a planet away from the sun. Loved it

It crashed a few times!! But its AWESOME! Incredible graphics and fun gameplay! You must make a steam game! Really loved it!!!

GOOD JOB!!!!!! I like that everything in the shop feels useful

Super interesting game. I didn't really notice the compass at first, I don't know if anything mentioned it but it might be a good idea to point that out earlier on. Other than that really great game

Super cool concept! Smooth experiance all around, awesome addition of the HUD effects when the sun gets super close to you, really puts the pressure on and keeps you on edge.

Really cool! Love seeing your stuff.
I will say the resource management and building didn't work out too well for me though.
Like the sun gave too much pressure and I didn't have time to read and understand what each building did on my first attempt so I wound up just building random buildings and hoped for the best.
Don't know if you considered having a pause or slow down time button, but those might give players more time to consider building options. Might take away from the stressful chaos of the game.
Flying around siphoning resources from planets while outrunning the sun is very fun.
And of course, amazing look and feel!

The UI wasn't showing up on the fullscreen version, but the windowed version did. I find it a bit annoying to have to hold the W button all the time, maybe an option to make it a toggle?

Btw how did you made the hex-sphere thing on the earth? Is it from any library/asset you're using? I've been wanting to make some games with the hex tiled system on a sphere.

absolutely a blast

wow that is a masterpiece - graphics are insame and the idea is so unique.

Most beautiful ludumdare game yet. The graphics are stunning and the intro cinematic was dramatic and set the mood perfectly. 10/10 would play again!

i also really liked how when you hit a planet they bounced off like billiard balls

very well done, nice mix of building and navigating space!

First of all the graphics are just fantastic. Being able to rotate the camera and at any time gaze at the glorious sun that is coming for you is great. I also love the effects as you the sun gets really close to you! Alongside the great graphics is just a great concept, it's hilarious to see the planet with a rocket booster attached boosting through space (this along side with the planets with faces and the description of converting fuel makes me wonder why you opted out of the humor category)
I love the intro tutorial, it's so funny how the message is at first like "oh by the way that's the sun, you can ignore it" and then it shifts to OH NO WE HAVE TO GO STOP THE TUTORIAL. Great mood setter for the urgency in the game.
It's also pretty interesting to have a tradeoff between wanting to go fast and wanting to have time to scavenge at planets. The game has a nice mix of strategy of deciding what to build and gameplay of piloting the planet, although it's probably a bit too easy: if you begin right then it seems pretty hard to lose. Even though mechanically I had the run in the bag after a while, that didn't bring it too much because of the mood and graphics are still urgent. (Also the game ends at the perfect time, right as I was starting to get bored).

I think choosing which tile on your planet to place a building is pretty jank, and it clicking from the shop should either automatically place or you should commit harder and have placement location actually matter (say give certain buildings adjacency bonuses or penalties). Additionally on my first run somehow all the future planets disappeared at some point, which seemed unintentional

super fun game, played the web version and it ran just fine!, the atmosphere of the game was so fun, i didnt even realize til i started moving the camera that the sun was actually behind me the entire time!! i love that aspect and i love that there was the building to get resources thing..i did have the game crash the first time after trying to place 3 buildings in the same general area but i just went back and started again, i was pretty close to dying that round anyway...i liked the idea of choosing an unstable star as your thing for the theme! overall great job, loved the game!!

@mitjmcc Thank you, having skippable dialogues or a paused tutorial for the buildings would have helped a long way I think. Originally I went with only 3 buildings and added the 3 others and the converts on the last day.
If I develop the project more into a prototype I would develop the strategic part way more and turn it into a CIV or a 4x slow building type of game.

@kyboon Ah yea I feel you, holding W is a bit of an inconvenience if you want to go always straight forward but it was necessary to allow the player to have control on the navigation and ability to stop near planets to refuel quickly without bumping into them.

As for the Hex tiling system I did it the dirtiest way imaginable:

Each tile is actually an hex sphere I quickly made in blender and separated into different transforms, then added a sphere collider on each to detect mouse click (this was a real pain to deal with when the planet was going at high velocity) I wouldn't know how to do it properly with only codes though.

@ninjacreeper47 Thank you for taking the time to play and write so much about my game!
Like I said in a previous comment I will definitely go for a more strategic type of game rather than an arcady game when I polish the project into a full prototype. It just wasn't feasible for me to do a well balanced and in-depth strategic game for the jam and I quickly decided to add those navigation and scavenging mechanics.
And you're right about doing the placement bonus/malus mechanics that would add so much to the strategic side + it would add long term decision making while having to deal with urgent events.

@ninjacreeper47 ah thanks for the explanation on the hex tile system. That make sense for a game jam, I don't think it's wise to dive deep into some fancy algorithm in a time-constrained situation.

Ok, wow does this look great for one weekend. The gameplay is quite in depth and the overall quality and polish of the visuals and special effects just blew me away. It's one of those games where you have to learn on your feet for sure but it did a great job of easing me into it and is such a neat and novel take on the resource management genre. I tried something similar a while back (See LD46) but flopped a bit on the gameplay part because I relied too much on luck. You've just given me a case study to pick apart and see what exactly I did wrong there. The hex tiling system was neat and all and obviously took you a while but was it necessary? Is their any importance to where you place buildings? Couldn't it just have easily been press button to buy building and it appears and then I wouldn't have to mess around with the glitchy placing system while the sun is creeping up on me? Couldn't you then have spent your time on other parts of the game? Either way beautiful intro cinematic, visuals, polish and gameplay. This was a real treat to play, bravo!

Amazing work! Loved this effect of hiding ui, when sun near the planet. But now i want shield-upgrade in front of the planet to break some worlds, mwahahah.

@sharks thanks! You are right about it being a bad decision but to be fair if I had known it was a bad decision I wouldn't have made it. It's just one of those things you learn with experience, how to achieve the desired outcome faster and more efficiently!
The ideal mechanics would look like a bonus/malus placement system and very limited placement option but for a 2-3 hours gameplay.

@darthwaxus That's actually a great idea! I originally thought about having asteroids hitting earth if you're going too fast, it would be interesting to have to build defensive structures to protect earth.

I would've liked the ability to advance the tutorial text at my own speed. As I was spinning the planet around and just looking at things, I missed a couple lines of tutorial. But, as I'm aware in my own jam games, getting the player on boarded quickly is as challenging as coming up with the gameplay in the first place!

All that said.... wow, this is such a beautiful and cool game. It's so much fun making the Earth zip through space and collect resources. I can see, with some more balancing and gradual introduction of elements, this being a top notch title. Well done!