Hello everyone!

This is my second LD jam. Last time I participated in a team as a programmer. But this time I decided to go alone and prove to myself that I can do all aspects of the game so that in the end it will be something fun.

I am generally happy with the result, but... I would like to finish the game a little after the jam and would be very happy to get more feedback.

Game page

At this point, I have already collected some feedback and outlined a list of fixes:

• Some training period is needed at the beginning. I am thinking of making something like a zero level, which will be available once and then transition to the main game.
• It will be necessary to make dying less annoying by visualizing progress on the defeat screen. And perhaps add some metaprogression, in addition to opening new upgrades.
• I think it is worthwhile to better signal the opening of new upgrades.
• Add a few more upgrade options to remove the need for the same ones to drop (since this is currently done due to a small pool)
• Change the music to a more dynamic one and replace the sound of volume change.
• Make a faster progression of mechanics changes (for example, add obstacles with a more obvious change in behavior to the second stage).
• Perhaps it’s worth changing the visuals towards something darker, but I’m still thinking about this. If anything on this list seems questionable to you, feel free to write about it.

In any case, I'm glad that I was able to take part in the jam. Thank you for your interest!

I'v made it, but it's not what I expected.

At the start I had this big vision. Radar scanning! Frequency alignment! Multi‑planet travel! A decoding puzzle! A code assembly system! Sounded incredible on paper. But in real game it looks borning.

The “one more mechanic” trap

Every new system felt so cool while I was adding it. But then came the bugs. Then the UI nightmares. By the time everything technically worked, I had zero time left to make any of it actually feel good. No juice. No polish. Just raw, functional, slightly painful gameplay.

So if you’re about to start your next jam, please learn from my stupidity: pick one mechanic and make it sing.

The real motivation struggle

Nobody warns you about this, but exploration/puzzle games in a jam can get realy boring if you don’t have the right hook. Is not fun on its own. I asking myself: why would the player care?

Eventually I landed on something a little weird - a real‑world reward. There’s a Steam game key hidden inside the game itself. You decode signals across 9 planets and find 6 specific fragments, then assemble them in the right order, and get an actual activation code. It’s meta, like ARG, and I like it.

Fun's broken, I know

The radar feels sluggish. Travelling between planets is borning and same. There are no small rewards along the way just the big one at the end. There are no the “annoyance mechanics” I never got to add: the little friction points and payoffs that turn a functional game into an engaging one. I knew I needed them. I just ran out of hours.

One last thing

Ship it anyway. Even if it’s janky. A broken, submitted game beats a perfect idea that never leaves your hard drive. But next time? I’m keeping scope tight.

Thanks for playing. And good luck decoding – you’ll need it

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/echo-signal-drift

Hey everyone!

I participated in this game jam and managed to finish and release my game, but unfortunately I ran out of time after the release to properly promote it.

As a result, I'm sitting at only 13.8 ratings received, and the minimum threshold to pass the initial evaluation is 20. I'm at risk of being disqualified due to lack of votes.

If you have a few minutes, I'd really appreciate it if you could check out my game and leave a rating.

Thank you so much!