Sirius Galactica by Call_me_Nutty
You find yourself in the middle of the galaxy travelling towards your home planet, Sirius. The engineers thought the invincibility module was complete. It mostly was, however impact with projectiles will cause the SS (Space Ship) Luft Maschine to lose oxygen. It's your goal to bring your invaluable Ship back home, if sacrifices must be made, make them.
This game has 6 rounds with increasing difficulty, 3 completely unique enemies and two different allied ships all in all summing up to around 10 minutes of play-time.
Controls:
- LMB - Fire (can also hold)
- WASD - Move
- C - Eject Crew Member
- R - Reposition allies after round (if clipping)
- Q - Next Round
- Esc - Return to Main Menu
You can find out more about the game in the "Instructions" tab on the Home Screen
Known Issues:
- Ally ships will sometimes clip in the after round section (Workaround: Press "R" and they'll find a new position)
- Unity did an awful job at the audio compression and the music sounds off in some parts, this is NOT the fault of the music.
Changelog:
Version 1.1: December 12th 2018:
Additions:
- Added Version number to main menu
Improvements:
- Spelling mistakes sorted out
- Allied ships actually flicker now when shot in the after round screen
- Enemy projectiles now get cleared at the end of a round
- Made the enemy hit sounds louder (way too quiet last time)
- Made instructions slightly more concise
- Unity did a slightly better job at compressing the music this time round (still off in some sections, thanks Unity)
- Next round button is now on Q (Thanks @cute-dog-irl!)
- Screen shake is slightly more subtle (Thanks @manimal!)
Fixes:
- Player hit sound now plays
- Can no longer fail at trying to advance to the next stage at the end of a game
- Game doesn't grind to a halt when attempting to restart after a win
- Ricocheting Projectiles don't get stuck at the bottom of the screen anymore if they didn't ricochet already
==============
This game was made with the amazing BitPotion font by Joeb Rogers. Find it here: https://joebrogers.itch.io/bitpotion
Every and all feedback is wanted and appreciated. If you hated, despised or wanted this game to rot in the deepest, dankest depths of hell, please tell me why, so next time I can make something better. Thank You :)
| Source code | https://github.com/TheNuttyGamer/sirius |
| HTML5 (web) | https://call-me-nutty.itch.io/sirius-galactica |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/sirius-galactica |
Ratings
| Overall | 115th | 3.716⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 50th | 3.864⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 354th | 2.92⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 221th | 3.557⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 142th | 3.705⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 54th | 3.762⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 178th | 3.012⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 115th | 3.547⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
However I beat it without having to eject any crew members or sacrifice any other ships, so I'm not really sure what I was supposed to do with that option. I was also initially overwhelmed by the control scheme: I would get rid of the "c" and "p" commands from the instructions, because before I started playing I thought I'd have to eject crew members during the level, and so I'd need three hands to handle WASD, shooting, and ejecting. This is super morbid but I think a little animation of a little astronaut exiting the ship and fading out would really drive home the theme.
This is one of the few games this compo that made me immediately want to play through it a second time :) Good job!
I was expecting someone to be quite overwhelmed by the controls, getting rid of P from the instructions is probably a good idea, I may need to keep c though because I have some ideas for the future where you may actually need to eject some crew members mid flight ;)
Also that last sentence, good to hear! :D
I played it until the end and lost just enough oxygen to make sacrificing crew members meaningful.
One way to push the sacrifice dynamic might be to lose oxygen over time based on the number of crew members on board and take out one crew member per hit instead of oxygen. You'd have to let yourself be hit to regulate the use of oxygen and last long enough.
1. Have more value
2. Have a bigger reason for the player to actually _want_ to eject them before possibly destroying allies.
Thank you for the write-up, your feedback is invaluable :)
* Start with 5 lives (oxygen) and 5 crew.
* Gain 5 oxygen each round, minus 1 per crew alive.
* Keep the effect of crew fire rate, gain 2-3 oxygen per ally ship sacrificed.
* (optionally) Increase consumption of oxygen by 1 each round so you have to actually sacrifice something even if you're good.
(Imo, keeping numbers small makes it easier to reason about the game design and for players to strategize)
It was hard for me to track oxygen. Small numbers are easier to track. For example.
Love music and artwork.
Good job. It looks like it's not your first jam.
First of all the concept of the game is basically just a regular bullet hell game but with oxygen mechanics added. Honestly for a large part of the game it just feels like a regular bullet hell, I got to round 5 on my first run without having to understand or think about the oxygen mechanic at all, then I died because I didn't sacrifice anything because I didn't entirely understand the mechanics (I did not read the instructions). Same thing on my second run, I got to round 5 then sacrificed 1 ship and some crew and ended up barely winning.
So the sacrificing mechanic should imo be more prevalent, since it's basically the main selling point.
I think there are 2 main ways to solve this problem that I can think of and those are:
1. Make the game harder so the average player has to sacrifice more to win.
2. Make it so that you lose and gain oxygen more quickly.
I haven't thoroughly thought about how to balance this, but I feel like option 2 would probably make for a more unique/interesting game, it means the player isn't only in danger after a few rounds and you could have more quick thinking with sacrificing during actual gameplay instead of only between rounds which could be fun.
Also for this kind of mechanic you basically do the reverse Mario Kart game balancing (not sure what the technical game designy term for this is) where you buff players for doing well and nerf players for doing poorly, so doing slightly worse early in the game might mean that you do significantly worse later because you don't have as much fire rate or as many ships to help you. Which might not work very well in a linear type of game but could maybe work in an endless game? Not sure honestly, just something to keep in mind if you ever continue with this game.
And a very small complaint but still wanted to mention it, I don't like that P is continue, I have my left hand on wasd and my right hand on the mouse, neither of those can quickly go to P!
This comment ended up being a lot longer than expected :p
I will admit that when I was play testing the game the mechanic also only really kicked in for me on the last two rounds. Again, oxygen pickups (which I ran out of time to implement) could've resolved this issue because it would create uncertainty in the player, (do I want to keep my crew but risk not getting a pickup next turn), even though I'll probably end up implementing a solution similar to what @fre said.
I've already been planning point 2 for quite a while though that reverse balancing point is something I'll consider. I sort of struggled balancing this game. Since I needed to make it easy enough so that someone doesn't get stuck on the same round over and over again but also difficult enough so you kind of have to die 3 or 4 times before victory (fastest I've speedrunned the game is 3:15).
With P for next level I wanted to pick a button which the player wouldn't accidentally press (like how C is eject), however I myself realised how tedious pressing P is. Will be changed!
Thank you for the feedback :D
Thank you all <3
I do agree with others that it's a bit easy to win the game without sacrificing any people or ships. I'd either make the game a little harder, or, make it so you have to sacrifice at least once if you want to make it to the last level. :thumbsup:
When I played first time I didn't understand that the substration of oxygen come every turn 🤔, so it took me 2 minutes more or less to notice that 😮. I don't think that is a mistake but a small improvement for first time players and 1 more feedback to add to what the others said.
Finally, what did you use for music and art? I have a small hunch about some of them 🧐
@nekonyo Thanks for playing and the feedback! I knew from the beginning that losing o2 at the start of a round would confuse quiet a lot of people, especially when sometimes you press Q and just die outright. I'll work on conveying that kind of information better in a post-jam version.
Also,
- For in-game art I used: Aseprite
- For art to be used outside of the game I used: Photoshop
- Music and Victory Jingle: Rytmik Studio
- Sound Effects: Mic and BFXR
- Improve the damage and die feedback and when the player has low oxygen... add particles, blink in red or another colors the ship texture and add different sounds. With these players can understand better what happens.
- Another thing is improving the feedback about the enemies: when the enemy dies add a particle system explosion or a sprite explosion.
- Be careful, because now at the game over screen the players can press actions like Q or C, cancel this inputs in this state to have a better experience.
But at the end is an amazing game! Congrats!
@paulhocker Thank you for playing :)
However, the sound fx and music played nicely with the game. Simple but a satisfying fun game :-)
Nicely done!
Here are some suggestions:
* Why using the mouse to fire? If am moving with the keyboard, I'd rather also fire with the keyboard.
* I found the allies a bit distracting. Not sure how to fix this, but the fact is that they make it harder to focus on the things that can kill me.
Thanks for developing and posting it!
For a compo I'm really impressed about the overall quality in art, music, code and gameplay.
Nice job :thumbsup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTeUPXVSPps
I didn't actually lose enough oxygen to make me want to eject my crew members. Of course, the LMB buttons didn't seem to do anything (I played the web version on itch.io), so I just kept dodging and that seemed to work fine.