Limited in Space by MattHartley
A game inspired by the Classic arcade game Asteroids. You are trapped in an asteroid field, carefully make your way through the asteroids to safety. But be careful, not all asteroids are as they seem.
Arrow keys to move, and space to shoot. Enjoy :)
The game is programmed from scratch in pure C using only my own libraries with zero dependencies.
Made by Matt Hartley and Nathan Walker.
We hope you enjoy our game!
P.S. We had an issue with the audio system and it wouldn't initialize on one of our PCs and we didn't have time to look into it before the deadline. So apologies if you get no audio when playing.



| Link | https://github.com/m4tthartley/ld54 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/limited-in-space-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 506th | 3.633⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 320th | 3.733⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 825th | 3.033⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 587th | 3.617⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 798th | 3.183⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 599th | 2.963⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 856th | 2.196⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 948th | 2.914⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
Colored asteroids add decision making and stress. It was great !
I had "Wasapi Error" on launch, and, sadly, no sound at all :/
I like the idea, but in the first 7 levels I could win by staying at the bottom of the screen, barely moving and just shooting ahead. Starting from level 8 it seemed that wining was just tied to the RNG because I reached the funnel near the end of the level and the entrance was filled with yellow asteroid and no red ones to destroy them. After I don't know how many tries I managed to get by thanks to some lucky RNG where there was a way past the yellow asteroids. Level 9 was also related to chance and the discovery that I could spam my space bar to shoot a lot and almost clear a passage. Level 10 killed that method by having far too much blue asteroids and very little way to get around them, so I chose to stop there.
It was hard for me to have to handle movement and shooting at the same time. That and the auto-scrolling made it quite hard. One thing that might have helped would be to keep shooting while the space bar stay pressed.
I also had the WASAPI error at startup.
I made a game from scratch using only C too. Looking at your code, I'm assuming you're from the Handmade Network community. So Hello !
Edit: I really apricate that it saves your progress. I think there is a bit too much rng. This is a jam game so obviously its not going to be perfect, but sometimes the levels felt impossible, like this screnshot I got in level 8.
Starting from level 8 success relies heavily on random. Sometimes exit is clogged with golden asteroids and there is nothing you can do. Had to quit after 30+ tries on level 10 :disappointed_relieved:
I like how bottom side of the window smashes you between itself and asteroids. Combined with quite forgiving collision damage it pushes you be at the center of screen.
Great job!
There is a big difficulty spike at level 10. Then the plus levels are barely harder until level 8+. I didn’t notice a difference between level 1+ and level 1++. In the last levels you need to retry until the path is not completely blocked by indestructible asteroids.
Try to collapse all your level configs in a simple function that takes all the parameters, that would be cool and will shrink your code considerably. Cheers!
Independent of the technical achievement, this game is fun! This is a really compelling twist on classic Asteroids. The limited space from the walls and the different asteroid types really add a lot of variety. I think it changes the gameplay a little bit, as I wasn't as motivated to move around as I would be in the original game, but I did have to make sure to keep moving ahead so I didn't get swallowed up by the creeping edge of the screen :D It was nonobvious how much integrity my ship had, as it seemed like I could sustain a few bumps without dying. That was generous, but I would also appreciate knowing how much risk I could take!
Really, this is a lot of fun!! The auto-save feature was especially generous. Eventually (Level 10), the amount of non-white and non-red asteroids really got to be a progress barrier. This might require tuning some individual parameters, but I can definitely see there being a necessary cap to the chance for each type. I also wonder how the game would be with procedural noise, so that every play would be the same. That might require more work to ensure non-winnable situations, though, unlike "true" random, which can be resolved with a reload.
