The Lost Probe by KotgeDev

made by KotgeDev for Ludum Dare 54 (COMPO)

This probe was sent to explore the very edge of the universe, but ended up in an alien space junkyard full of deadly traps. It is your job to navigate the probe back out into open space!

Controls: W: Fire bottom thruster (Will launch probe upward) S: Fire top thruster (Will launch probe downward) D: Fire back thruster (Will launch probe forward) Q: Fire counter-clockwise rotational thruster (Will cause probe to spin clockwise) E: Fire clockwise rotational thruster (Will cause probe to spin counterclockwise).

Remember, there is no air resistance in space, so if you fire a thruster in one direction, your probe will continue in that direction unless a thruster is fired in the other direction.

There is also no sound in this game, because you shouldn't be able to hear anything in space. This is definitely a creative decision and not something I did because I have zero musical skills /s

Link	https://github.com/KotgeDev/The-Lost-Probe
Link	https://kotgedev.itch.io/the-lost-probe
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/the-lost-probe

Ratings

Given

10🗳️

1🗨️

Feedback

mdotedot

02. Oct 2023 · 11:44 UTC

AHHHHH .. I thought : how nice that the walls are forgiving as the ship is difficult to control. And then came level 2 .. I would have spend more time on this if you had a smoother difficulty curve. starting with a very simple room with no curves and gradually making it more difficult. But that could be just my problem since I like making games more than playing them :D Interesting to see how others fair ! Good Job!

OWC

02. Oct 2023 · 21:06 UTC

It was a lot of fun! Unusually, the game made me angry at times, but was still fun. I wish the game increased the difficulty less dramatically, but it wasn't boring to play at all.

Endurion

03. Oct 2023 · 08:01 UTC

The hardest challenge here's that you did use nearly the WASD keys, but not in their usual ordering. That makes it incredibly hard to get to grips with it :)

Also, you seem to have a different orientation of the probe than I have in regards to where up/down is :)

The 2nd stage is just killing me! :)

Martin Bousquet

03. Oct 2023 · 11:38 UTC

Yeah 2nd stage was too hard of a sudden, I can't go past that :(

🎤 KotgeDev

03. Oct 2023 · 14:59 UTC

@mdotedot Thanks for playing! I have now realized that I probably should have added at least 2 to 3 more levels between level 1 and 2.

🎤 KotgeDev

03. Oct 2023 · 15:08 UTC

@endurion agreed, I probably should have added an option to change the key bindings.

LDJam user 238500

03. Oct 2023 · 16:53 UTC

I love these kinds of games, I made a similar one. Controls are a bit unintuitive for me, otherwise it is really nice. Very hard though :), got to level 3 I think (with the electricity). Theme is on point, space is veeery limited :)

DSFAN

03. Oct 2023 · 18:58 UTC

haha, nice justification about sounds, actually they would fit well for this game. The difficulty progression it indeed a bit hard, I barely passed level 1 and level 2 doesn't forgive mistakes. Good job on the physics here, looks really natural

Sentmoraap

04. Oct 2023 · 20:26 UTC

I managed to finish it but it was super hard. The biggest difficulty is the controls: I often used a different thruster than the one I wanted to. I would have liked to remap the controls.

I like Asteroid/Gravitar-style games, I like hardcore games, but this one was frustrating because of the controls issue.

spacecadet

05. Oct 2023 · 11:55 UTC

Incredibly frustrating but still somehow you cannot stop playing.

Defrag

08. Oct 2023 · 04:17 UTC

![Play_0.PNG](///raw/7bd/83/z/5ffec.png)

I think I had a similar struggle with the controls. Above is a snip of my 2 cents. I like the simple gameplay of this - no complexity to overcome. That didn't make it any easier though!

cheesepencil

09. Oct 2023 · 00:10 UTC

Looks cool, great concept, just a bit too difficult for me - level 2 was too much and I couldn't get past it.

The controls were confusing at first, but I figured them out pretty well i think.

Untitled Studios

10. Oct 2023 · 01:25 UTC

Tricky, with really silly (and, I have no doubt, intentionally obtuse) controls. Fantastically fun, I spent lots of time on this one. The art is really great, but felt like it could've been a bit more cohesive. (maybe make the background look more like it works with the excellent foreground art?)

![Screenshot 2023-10-09 202324.png](///raw/2c7/c/z/601b1.png)

SpaceyLake

15. Oct 2023 · 19:34 UTC

Interesting game. It was pretty hard. I think it would have been more natural to have the back thruster(move forward) activated by w, the down thruster(move up) by a, and the up thruster(move down) by d. I feels like more natural thinking regardless of the probes rotation. Other than that good game! Good job!