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RECORD SCORE SO FAR: 37 | @itsboats

What went right

• cat in ship good
• shapes good
• A lot of people liked the atmosphere, concept, and the gravity!
• The dynamic camera movements were overall well received and added to the game experience
• A simple control scheme (just mouse) offered a lot of accessibility and added to the chill vibe!
• The cat rotating, moving, and whirling around space.
• The incentive to play again was amplified by the music and the spawn animation.

What to focus more on

• More QA work would of been beneficial as since we played the game as we worked on it, we were biased when it came to dying. Dying ended up being a deterrent for people to play more (but hopefully the animation and the music helped push them to try again).
• A quick tutorial is always needed. Need to be either in the game or immediately on the Ludum page on launch.
• Preventing the possibility of players being spawned and sent into a very close blue shape too quickly with the likely outcome of them dying without knowing what happened.
• The hitboxes of everything felt off.
• maybe having the red shape take your jump is too mean?
• actually put in the jump indicator this time lol
• less "hope for the best with you shots" and more "do your best with your shots"

What went wrong (+ what to work on)

• Making a game based on dying and dying while feeling helpless is a good idea for the unstable theme but not a longterm effective pitch for a full fledged game. Players had feelings of no control and panic - some left it up to luck if their score would be high or not.
• Way too much RNG left the player losing control. The added possibility of their ship slowly descending to their death with every hope of them being caught by a random blue shape did not help either.
• The RNG cannot be a huge part (and main reason) of the unstable theme as that is an excuse for poor game design. We want the player to have control or the ability to take control. We did not have enough of the latter.
• It was unclear how to aim and what affects your speed. (The farther your mouse was from you, the bigger push it had)

We currently have no plans to continue working on NEKONOVA'S NOT HOME however, we love to see all the feedback as we will definitely continue to design games! :D

SIDE NOTES

@binaryprinciple I forgot to say, but I really like that you called it constellations. That gave me a whole lot more ideas. That and @pkzinpo's planet idea.

@ic-rainbow sums up the strategy very well: "...not all blue things are good for you and not all those red are bad. Sometimes you’ll want to take a risk with a red one, to save yourself from riding a wrong blue."

THANK YOU ALL FOR PLAYING OUR GAME <3

Links

Game Jam Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/nekonovas-not-home

Itch (Web): https://leyamez.itch.io/nekonovas-not-home

SOUNDTRACK: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1OFXjTpl97h3e0ZYu_c-KtndO7nctN0f

Credits

Andrei Cabungcal | https://ldjam.com/users/royalcookiex | Lead Programmer

James Hicks | https://ldjam.com/users/leyamez | Programmer

Justin Choy | https://ldjam.com/users/polkoii | Art* and Music

Joao Villela | https://ldjam.com/users/villeloso | Modelling and Programming

Josh Estillore | https://ldjam.com/users/joshthestriker | UI

Tyler Lee | https://ldjam.com/users/ | Design and Ideas

*Responsible for all animation, 2D art, graphics and most 3d modelling

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