Airman57 by Prvaak

[raw]
made by Prvaak for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

Deliver urgent message into the depths of the gravity well.

clip.gif

Controls

W - Forward

A, D - Rotate

Attributions

Music: Futuristic 3 by Alexander Nakarada (www.creatorchords.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

Ratings

Overall 652th 3.227⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 552th 3.205⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 823th 2.432⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 613th 3.364⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 639th 3.205⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 536th 2.579⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 508th 3.455⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 18🗨️

Feedback

SvenErik
07. Apr 2025 · 17:45 UTC
I must say, this is hard, feels much harder than usual asteroid type games, though those who like a challenge will love it, or maybe I am just really bad at it haha. Solid game!
Antti Haavikko
07. Apr 2025 · 18:43 UTC
Took me few failures to get there but I did it in ~7 minutes on Airman 62.

Going fast seems just like a bad idea as you have really low amount of control of the pod. And going too slow gets kinda boring. And in the end bit where it gets kinda dense and hard, I just lucked out and found out you can pretty much go around everything and travel in the void. Made the ending a bit anticlimactic.

A bit more structure/content would have been nice. Like shorter mission but having multiple of em. Going a different direction too! Dunno why but that bottom right angle just seemed unintuitive to me. Also kinda annoying that you were mainly going down and have less visibility due to game being landscape.

So yeah, it controlled pretty well and flying around was quite nice. Except in the most dense bits getting bumped around from asteroid to asteroid because a small nick wasn't too fun. It feels to me like the bounce amount is a bit too much due to how little control you have to recover. Shorter missions and more variety/things to do would have made it stay its welcome better and not get that boring.

The music was nice, moody and a good fit (though I guess it wasn't made by you or for the jam). The acceleration sound effect sounded a bit harsh on startup. It was especially noticeable when trying to do small adjustments which was pretty much how I always played. A bit of a fade on it would probably have been better as it just was too harsh too fast from nothing.

Anyways, that's all I've got, good job! 👍
🎤 Prvaak
08. Apr 2025 · 12:01 UTC
@antti-haavikko Thank you for such a thorough feedback! I didn't make the music, it is from Alexander Nakarada licensed CC-BY.
Stef_Studio_7
08. Apr 2025 · 17:03 UTC
fun! i liked the ship intro
cRoxx
08. Apr 2025 · 17:14 UTC
it's really hard
Schlock
08. Apr 2025 · 17:24 UTC
Airman 67 gave up 312 meters from the base. Was interesting to play. It mostly made me think that it was the righ descision to romove the healthbar from our game.
LogovoStudio
08. Apr 2025 · 17:44 UTC
Nice, but too hard for me)
otherwards
08. Apr 2025 · 22:25 UTC
This was fun! It was pretty hard. Best I did "normally" was about 250m, and then I saw the comment about just going round so I did that. Very nearly crashed into the space station at the end which was pretty funny.

I sort of want the stars in the background to sparkle and shine a little bit. I'd also really like some visual feedback when the ship hits an asteroid. Like a lil screenshake or something maybe?
🎤 Prvaak
09. Apr 2025 · 18:08 UTC
@otherwards Those are great ideas. I wanted to add so many small visual things but in the end I was glad that I managed to implement asteroids :)
Alexis Brochec
22. Apr 2025 · 16:36 UTC
great entry, quit hard.
manage to get below 350m away.
VJ031206
22. Apr 2025 · 20:08 UTC
The physics was a bit weird for me, i would like it to turn and move simultaneously. However, the gameplay is responsive and good, and the art and audio suit the game. I liked it a lot.
vangrail
23. Apr 2025 · 11:33 UTC
Very hard game, I had much trouble getting trough the asteroids. A single collision is a bit unforgiving, but you have a really good and simple concept with in a polished setting! Well done!

I finished in 2 minutes using the warp drive.
![Screenshot 2025-04-23 133217.png](///raw/a4a/06/z/6c694.png)
jtap
23. Apr 2025 · 12:01 UTC
Good game, I liked the concept, nice visuals and audio. I had a little trouble getting through the asteroid belt. Thanks
zimny11
23. Apr 2025 · 14:17 UTC
As other said the game is super hard, I got to 400m and going quite slow. But I like the idea and art style! "Normally" in games of this type spaceship has also "breaks" - forward thruster and side thruster for quick change of direction (not only use for rotating). Besides that, well done! It was fun!
Neon
23. Apr 2025 · 15:02 UTC
A great lesson on Newton's first law :grin: I got a pretty good strategy going, but didn't manage to finish since the distance was so great given the speed I was going at. Still, very snappy controls and difficult-but-fair gameplay. The ship graphics are simple, but fit very nicely, and communicate the gameplay effects very well.
angry-cyboot
23. Apr 2025 · 15:54 UTC
I don't know if it's just me but it gets laggy within 200m of the station, also a fullscreen mode would have been helpful here ^^

but even though I failed too reach the end I still had fun playing, well done !
🎤 Prvaak
23. Apr 2025 · 17:56 UTC
@angry-cyboot As you get closer to the station, there are more and more asteroids. I didn't have time to optimize it so it can get laggy. Sorry about that :pensive:
angry-cyboot
23. Apr 2025 · 19:21 UTC
@prvaak No worries optimisation is rarely a priority in a jam ^^, though with bigger asteroids in average you could clutter more of the screen without adding to their number, and the bigger ones seems slower so that might help for balancing maybe?
LDJam user 276121
23. Apr 2025 · 23:34 UTC
The lack of a moving background makes it pretty difficult to judge the player's speed.
🎤 Prvaak
24. Apr 2025 · 06:24 UTC
@hexyvexy True. I wanted to have some sort of paralax background with a distant space battle, the Moon or just some space ships. Alas... not enough time :pensive:
MatthewDrake
24. Apr 2025 · 15:16 UTC
Afraid it's a little too hard for me and I couldn't get very far, but I thought the basic premise was well done. I found it pretty funny how the number went up each time while keeping the same message that they were "confident you will succeed", despite me crashing most of them very soon after the launch.

Nicely done! Sorry I couldn't get very far.
MoD_Wiz
24. Apr 2025 · 23:20 UTC
This is very well done, but also very hard. I can describe it as First 2 Newton's laws of motion: The Game!
The graphics are well done, the variety of asteroids are especially impressive. And gameplay is super solid, easy to understand, but hard to master. The music is suitably chosen and i didn't find sfx grading, surprisingly it's not annoying, despite all you do is fire thrusters (including rotational ones) so sfx could have been annoying easily, but they are not in my opinion. But perhaps it's down to audio situation of specific players.

Nice idea with mission starting with 57 and then incrementing.

Parallax background would be welcomed indeed. And I also like the idea (by @antti-haavikko) of structuring game with missions to have a more graduate difficulty curve.

The strong force applied to the rocket after the impact feels a bit strong and for me it often lead to more collisions and fast demise. Also I sometimes forget which way rocket is facing and it's hard to tell at a glance. While nose is rounder and it has thrusters (but they are dark on dark background) i think something like a colored stripe near nose (or back) of the rocket would enhance reliability.

I enjoyed the game it's fun and have a nice audio visual appeal, but difficulty is a bit high I personally feel. But still fun, I feel i will replay it from time to time, it has good vibes from flash era of games!