Gravity Well by Sam Bigos

[raw]
made by Sam Bigos for Ludum Dare 56 (COMPO)

Gravity Well is an incremental game about guiding your colony of Glorps out of the planet's gravity well. To do so, they'll need to destroy the planet they're on to get to the alien artifact in the middle.

Screenshot 2024-10-06 225354.png

IMPORTANT: After launching the game there is a welcome window, click the button to begin the game. Extra windows will appear, they might be stacked onto each other, you can drag them around to convenient locations. Apologies for the poor initial UX!

Ratings

Overall 91th 3.75⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Fun 106th 3.607⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 134th 3.5⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Theme 91th 3.893⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 171th 3.5⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Humor 88th 3.536⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Mood 147th 3.429⭐ 16🧑‍⚖️
Given 9🗳️ 15🗨️

Feedback

designernap
07. Oct 2024 · 20:47 UTC
You know... this took me at LEAST a couple of minutes to figure out how to start it. I was pressing all buttons on my keyboard and game pad and thought it was bugged. Then realized I could click and move the windows. I am SO glad I did as this is great. A sort of structured clicker with excellent writing and a wonderful end! Really enjoyed this. Lovely work.

![gravity.png](///raw/7fa/z/66bc5.png)
DecadeDecaf
07. Oct 2024 · 21:04 UTC
Very satisfying seeing my units dig into and shape the planet. I love all the flavor text for the upgrades, too. Would be nice if you could sell upgrades, because I bought WAY too many lasers and not enough energy regeneration! Great work on the compo.
🎤 Sam Bigos
07. Oct 2024 · 21:40 UTC
@designernap Thank you for sticking through the first time experience, and for the kind words! Yes it's a bit unintuitive, if I had some more time I'd try and improve it.

@decadedecaf Thank you so much! Yes as you discovered, the balance between the upgrades and energy isn't balanced correctly, due mainly to time constraints. The limiting factor is energy, I didn't add enough ways to scale it.
SHAKIROVICH
07. Oct 2024 · 23:28 UTC
This game is great for playing it in the background during work.
Baturinsky
07. Oct 2024 · 23:29 UTC
Looks amazing, but some innovation/depth in gameplay would be great too.
jellyfishhunter
08. Oct 2024 · 16:11 UTC
Feels like a very interesting idle game. Though I also managed to break the framerate by spamming certain options. Still great fun!
LDJam user 4886
12. Oct 2024 · 21:29 UTC
Thanks to lasers and solar sails I ended up removing every single piece of matter from the planet :D I imagine this must be a game quite difficult to balance, right? Never got problems with energy!
bentglasstube
12. Oct 2024 · 21:38 UTC
This was a fun sort of idle/clicker game. I really enjoyed the visuals of the glorps consuming the planet. It seemed pretty easy to completely break things but it was still fun.
ShallowKong
15. Oct 2024 · 11:55 UTC
Fun to play!! I really enjoy playing it. BTW, I also have a jam work. If you can have a try and leave some suggestions, we will be very grateful! THX! :smiley: )
Frogman
25. Oct 2024 · 17:39 UTC
Managed to get back home! Some expeditious Glorps managed to dig a few tunnels to the core some time before that happened though - and the lasers had to destroy almost everything else before it registered a victory!
![Screenshot 2024-10-25 203451.png](///raw/5d0/72/z/691c8.png)

Anyway, this was great! I was impressed by the amount of upgrades and different mechanics it had. As always in idle games, watching things grow (or in this case, shrink) massively by the end is always satisfying. I particularly enjoyed using Glorps over excavators, and with the help of enough catering and replication upgrades I couldn't afford enough hovels to contain them :) I also enjoyed all the humorous descriptions. I don't have much feedback, it looks like you achieved what you set out to do and everything (aside from the aforementioned victory bug) works great. Overall, very fun entry!