Pale White Dot by cosine
Pale White Dot is an incremental game set in the solar system. You start as Earth's moon, A Small World, known as Luna. You can accumulate resources and build an army to take over the solar system! Try keeping it open while you play other games, and check in once in a while.
Instructions:
It should be pretty self-explanatory for the most part, but it's a little complicated, and I didn't have time to make a tutorial. So if you want to read it:
You get some resources every second for each planet / moon you control. On the left, you have the interactions bar. You can build things. Hover over each item to see what resources it takes. If you click the button to the top left of the graphic, just below the label, you will go up one level, to Earth. And again, to the Solar System. To go to a planet, click it. To go to a planet's moon, click the name of the moon in the list on the right(-ish).
If you want to attack a planet possessed by someone else, you have to first build a fleet. First, you must build ships on a planet of your choice (in the beginning, Luna). Then, click on them in the list of items. They'll be added to your fleet. Now you can go to a planet of your choice and
Ok, so I didn't quite get to polish it as much as I wanted, but it's playable. Please forgive the lack of balance / many bugs / some missing art.
Links
- WEB: https://cosinegaming.com/static/pale-white-dot/index.html
- Source: https://github.com/CosineGaming/pale-white-dot
- Development timelapse: https://youtu.be/pSrm77Qc3Wo
- Post-compo version: https://cosinegaming.com/static/pwd-post/index.html
The post-compo version fixes a major bug where attacking can never end. It also adds the AI attacking, interface improvements suggested in the comments, and significant balance improvements.
Ratings
| Overall | 371th | 3.087⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 430th | 2.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 353th | 2.913⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 414th | 2.909⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 302th | 3.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 449th | 1.684⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 341th | 2.905⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
I really like the pixel art.
I however got a game breaking bug. I cannot click on other planets in the solar system.
I think I will need more time to play it like it deserves but I just wanted to let you know that I will do it. Loved the pixel art planets too.
Cheers!
If you continue to develop this as a post launch game, there are a number of balance and QoL tweaks I would suggest - for example the feedback as to what is happening when attacking is non-existent and it becomes unclear whether the game has crashed or is just resolving conflicts when large forces are fighting on a contested planet, and things like a "add all to fleet" would be very welcome, but these are not the sort of things I expect to find in a compo entry given the time limits involved.
Some suggestions:
* Make it so that you can't select text, because when you're clicking the links quickly, you often accidentally select text instead. (Also, you could make the UI elements buttons instead of text links.)
* Add in some ways to buy multiple items at once. 10x, 100x, and max, for instance.
* Some visualization of the fleet strength other than numbers would be nice.
Anyway, a strong offering for the time period. Quite fun for the time spent!
But it's really long to create a big fleet, you should add something to create faster.
Well done.
Rate us https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/deep-bottom
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The pixel art syle for the planets was nice, though some of the planet's moon seem weird? Guessing you didn't have time for them.
Really hard to rate on mood considering there isnt any music nor any story/text.
Also, it seems that the game bugs out if you click stuff while contesting a planet and wouldn't let you do anything. (for me it was mars)
Wished there were more content like mutiplayer/more solar systems/random events etc
tl;dr you, the programmer, certainly know how your game works mechanically, but nobody else does, and if you make no attempt to communicate anything to your players, then you're the only one who will be able to have fun playing your game.
@impbox Thanks for the advice. I suck at pixel art, so we'll see when I get around to drawing ships :)
@mrnyarlathotep @lone-spelunker @merrak Thank you very much for your advice, I incorporated your advice into my ongoing [post-compo version](https://cosinegaming.com/static/pwd-post/index.html).
@tuteupaituamae How about instead, you rate games, and then you'll get ratings. -_-
@stuntddude Thank you for your honest advice, I really appreciate it. I was worried about exactly that. Because I wrote this with DOM instead of `<canvas>`, it's difficult to make graphics. Nonetheless, I think I will make graphics of the fight, due to many comments requesting it. But I'm curious, because your review was particularly scathing (in a good way): Do you think it's salvageable? A number of people have commented it's "flat," which I agree with, and I'm not sure if I could fix that.
@stuntddude (edit): Ok, interesting. Thanks for playing, and no hard feelings o.o you have no obligation to play the post-compo version before commenting :)
@ragnta Thanks for your feedback. I'm really curious about what you mean by "overview view," it sounds like a good idea! I was thinking about having a page where it shows all your planets and their resource accumulation. Is this sort of what you mean?