Radar Rider by 3LSTMsInATrenchcoat
Radar Rider
(or, Radars of the Lost Dark)

Guide a spaceship to safety with the aid of a very slowly updating radar display. A game made in 43-ish hours as a submission to both Ludum Dare 51 (Compo) and the Fall 2022 Waterloo Game Jam. You can play it online here.
Featuring: - Eight levels, at least four of which are good - Pretty glow/bloom effect - Fireworks if you win
Instructions
Use WASD or arrow keys to move.
Try to get to the stargate. Don't touch the red spikey things. Pretty self-explanatory.
Theme
The Ludum Dare theme was "Every 10 seconds." The radar sweeps a full circle once every 10 seconds. Thus, each part of the screen is also visible once every 10 seconds.
The Waterloo Game Jam theme was "Far from Close." Radar maps nearby objects by measuring how far away they are (i.e. it distinguishes far objects from close ones).
Ratings
| Overall | 94th | 3.775⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 147th | 3.563⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 16th | 4.179⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 43th | 4.175⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 195th | 3.575⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 271th | 3⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 262th | 2.483⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 143th | 3.526⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 56🗨️ |
If you continue on this game, I'd recommend some quiet/ambient spacey music to fill out the silence between pings, or even just a quiet hum to make it more eerie.
At first I thought the player ship moved too slow, but as the levels progressed, it was the perfect speed to match the difficulty and tension.
Well done!
(also, I love the name Lol)
Edit: @anxiousgamedev idea is also quite nice. For now it doesn't reward risk !
Though a lot of the time it just felt like playing blindfolded. The ten second sweep is really slow and a lot of the time, you can't figure out if enemies will reach you in time. (Especially since you never get to see enemies actually move for more than a split second.) I ended up beating the last level by just holding up and right for varying amounts of time until I hit the goal.
The controls felt really clean. Well, they felt clean in the tutorial level where I could actually see myself moving. Overall, interesting concept, but probably a good thing it doesn't go on for too long. Nice work!
If you keep working on it, I'd consider adding little visual effects to radar pings, giving the pings a softer sound effect, and putting in a simple ambient soundtrack. Gameplay-wise (and outside of the 10-second theme), I can imagine levels with faster or slower radar and longer or shorter pings to vary the pacing. This seriously has a lot of potential, and you should be proud.
I agree with some other comments, I'd love a subtle music track. The beeping got aggressive after a while, especially when there were more stars.
The graphics were great and really set the tone. Movement was smooth. Solid entry!
Though at times it's definitely a little crazy difficult I'd say, so some sort of mix up on the radar might help. Possibly multiple smaller radars (a suggestion from hittaus) or maybe, and this is just me, but a echo location sort of thing where you can try and find some stuff on the map just barely, maybe circles or zones around them to give you an idea of what you're dealing with, or even if it was just something that shows the general zone that the ship is in. Not the environment, but just the ship.
That would just make it a little easier to pilot, since a lot of the game was sort a just as I said, praying that I went the right direction. But making it so you can always see the ship would definitely kinda invalidate a lot so not really helpful. But maybe on a timer or a cooldown having the ability to do a short range sonar to get a slight idea of where you are.
Heck, even if it just showed stuff around the player and you have to guess which way you're facing. That way it still has the difficulty of you could run into the enemies, BUT it does give some sort of location as to where you are. That way letting you at least know distances, if not direction.
Though another way to do it would maybe be some sort of change in the enemies on the radar based off distance. Some sort of, light up or something else like they're attacking for example. That way there's a indication of your location as well as their distance to you letting you figure out where you are based off of that.
Overall though a very difficult and very interesting, I guess puzzle game. A nice setup and a very interesting execution that definitely adds some interesting difficulty. It takes very good advantage of the limited information it gives.
Thanks for submitting your game to stream!
I think this is my official favorite sleeper hit. I loved the way you utilized this concept, and all of the different ways that you iterated on the formula (adding enemies, decoy player characters, moving mines, etc.) was super cool and fun to figure out. Awesome job here!