Hi everybody!

I’ve been away for the first week after the deadline ended (vacation and travel time, woot!) but I’m back now to just sit and recap for a moment the ups & downs that took place during the creation of my last submission:

 What went right

The initial concept for the game involved a space station that destroyed planets by chomping them to pieces right after catching them with a gigantic intergalactic hook. That idea seemed fun enough but from the moment I started thinking about it I just became bored with it. Instead of committing to it and trying to make it work somehow I completely ditched it in favor for a new and completely different idea. That’s when I came up with the idea of planets loving or blasting each other with missiles inside a solar system, while letting the player control one of them, allowing the player to intervene in this cosmic relations simulation.

Once the idea was decided y prototyped it pretty fast and the art came up together really nicely. I wanted to give the game a 16 bit look so I spent some time looking at how games like Super Metroid and Starfox draw their space and planets, you can totally see the similarities in there, apart from the fact that my art is nowhere near as good as those two examples.

The other big staple came up with the AI. I was a bit scared when I started to program it, thinking that it might not be fun enough to play against or that it may turn up to be way too random. Turns out my fairly simple approach worked right from the start so I didn’t have to tweak or change it too much. It works really good, and totally gives the impression that it is far more intelligent that it really is, which for me is a complete triumph.

 
 What didn’t go so well

To be honest I don’t really have much to say here. I managed to finish everything on time and without facing many real roadblocks along the way, but If I must mention something it should be the trouble I had trying to make the turn system work out. I might also add that I would have liked to have better looking menus and text, which now look a bit bland in my opinion. Also, apparently the objectives are not easily noticeable so I guess the notification messages need to be larger or better presented. Lastly, I didn’t have time to come up with any good ambience music, which I think would have boosted up the experience a bit further.

 Conclusion

In general I am absolutely happy about my submission, considering that my only and most important goal was to be able to finish something up that was completely done and playable and that it managed to give players at least 5 minutes of fun.

And I think I somehow managed to do just that

Go ahead and give it a try!

Play+rate Universal Love!