Hi!

I played through this and thought it was a fun concept. I have a couple of crits though:

Since the majority of your time is spent floating through space the spaceship handling really needs to be the main draw and I think you could make this more satisfying. Right now the physics feel a bit off. Maybe look at Asteroids for reference or something similar.

The thrust when you activate the engine could be way more exaggerated in terms of feedback, rocket engine blasting away, HUGE flame, trail of smoke, etc, shaking from turbulence. Little details like that make it fun just to move around.

I would make the earth more recognizable. Right now the only way you know it's earth is that it was near the purple arrow.

Maybe make the text pop-ups less intrusive by not interrupting the game and not filling the screen as much... I would have them just hover near the relevant location (maybe with a fade in/out).

Same with docking with planets. Maybe don't freeze the game. Just show the "Explorer bot" options and such when the player is close.

My 2 cents. :)

(I missed the Jam link so I played the version without sound)

Quite neat and well done.
A bit annoying that you need to go visit the first explored planets again with the better explor-o-dans. It would also help to see on the map which planets are fully explored.

Thanks for playing! Press 1 on the map to see which planets are fully explored by Explor-o-bots, 2 for Explor-o-dons, and so on. :)

I have to say, that was a fun game! Great work. Reminded me of Star Control 2 - especially the secret at the end, which I purchased. I'd say it is very well hidden.

All the aliens with hats made me giggle. The secret was well-hidden, but pleasantly obvious once revealed (as all good secrets of this nature should be). Game somewhat overstayed its welcome, though - for such a basic premise (and such limited controls) it probably shouldn't take well over an hour to complete. There's certainly something interesting about trying to spread the most different explor-o-things around the universe with the least flight distance, but having to wait to get places so often (even with 3 or 4 thrust upgrades, and even to an extent with the portals) was pretty boring. Still, fully functional game, well done.

Thanks for the feedback! For what it's worth, I completely agree about it overstaying its welcome. I was chagrined when it took me 50 minutes to finish. Unfortunately I couldn't think of a way to make the game faster without eliminating content, which wouldn't have helped. Maybe just making the ship faster or upgrades cheaper would be enough; I'll have to try it out.

It's little comfort that it's technically possible to win the game in under 2 minutes. :)

Good stuff, bonus points for top hat and monocle inclusion! ^^