Solar Edge by mar3k
Escape the loop! Literally... You're on your mission to save your colony by escaping from the orbit of a solar system with rapidly expanding sun. But there's a catch...

This game uses custom Java engine with native libraries and was programmed on Linux, thus it runs and looks the best on it, but you can easily run it on windows (some pixels might be off), you just need to have the latest Java SDK (download Java).

Bugs
- The gas needed to leave planet increases by 100 but the button stays on 420.
- You don't need 80 Uranium to leave the solar system.
- Sometimes the game launches into white screen, closing and reopening should fix this.
Score
If you managed to win, let me know to honor you here! 1. Paja 2. @codertrevor 3. @crazyrems 4. @chickenchaser
| Youtube | https://bitbucket.org/sedlacek/ld47/src/master/ |
| Youtube | https://pixcom.itch.io/solar-edge |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/solar-edge |
Ratings
| Overall | 41th | 3.982⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 149th | 3.661⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 99th | 3.815⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 296th | 3.625⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 51th | 4.179⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 84th | 3.732⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 148th | 3.14⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 81th | 3.768⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
P.S. What linux tools did you use to make this?
IDE I used was Intellij; for pixel art I tried for the first Piskel (but I prefere PyxelEdit tbh) and Gimp; to record music I used audacity; and for sfx I used sfxr.
Kinda angry and sad, because it's really nice and I want to explore it further, but the difficulty is off the charts. Never survived past the second planet, and I have to move on to play other games. I wish it has more forgiving error margins, or a lower difficulty options.
Ambient guitar track - mad props.
It s not really my type of game but still got me hooked for quite some time. You really did a nice work and I am waiting now to see this in my recommanded games on steam. Go on, make more games like this, publish them, what you waiting for?
A last thing i want to add because i saw someone else point this out. The difficulty of the game is beyond your average player to be honest. It s really hard. Even with that nice introduction tutorial in the start, it still feels hard. But, now this is quite a big but, it s not a flaw of the game. The difficulty of the game as long as it's not unfair hard because of some non-sense it's not a flaw. This is your vision of the game and the way it should feel so it s exactly as hard as it should be.
Nice work mate and cheers. Have fun further into the jam and hope to see your game on some market, be it pc or mobile!
I'm really, really impressed with what you managed to make in 48 hours. Great job!!
**Well, this was a very neat management-sort of game! First off, kudos on everything you've achieved during the 48 hours of the compo!** There's a lot of neat ideas here, and having programmed everything in Java its an incredible achievement by its own! The pixel art is also pretty appealing, and I like the whole motif of the ~~heat death of the universe~~ expanding sun. :sunny:
As for the game design, I felt lost a bit at the beginning, the first times I played the game. The game starts off by suggesting to build a Metal Refinery, and since there were no tags to indicate which building it was, I assumed it was the first one in the toolbar, only to create the Gas building instead and having no way to recover at that point. I had to reset the game a few times to trial-and-error until I found the correct buildings. I think some labels when you hovered over the different buttons and what each of the buildings (and stats) were, would have helped make things clearer.
Something that someone else has already mentioned too, was the difficulty spike. I only managed to make it to the third planet, and even by then, I only had 11/80 Uranium. I kept sending the few survivors I had on expeditions, hoping to get more survivors and uranium, but it seems the fail-rate was too high. There were points where I ended up with negative survivors, and on my last planet, I eventually reached a point where I couldn't have an working ecosystem of Gas/Food/Metal due to no longer having enough survivors. I also didn't full grasp the concept of how Food was distributed by Survivors, when in contrast with the Oxygen.
Even then, I can see how it was intended to work, and I think some more clearness on what-does-what could help go a long way in future games! :sparkles:
I don't know if it's related to the game running on Windows instead of Linux, but the only real technical issue I found was that I felt my clicks weren't registering, and I sometimes had to click multiple times on the planets and on the buildings to get the prompts to fully appear. Nothing too major, but still thought I'd point it out!
**Major kudos for the guitar playing.** One of the great things about the compo games is getting the chance to see how people apply their other life skills when making their game, and I absolutely think you nailed it and it gave the game a very nice tune!
On a final note, as you pointed out, I had to install the Java SDK to run the game, which was no issue for me, but I can see it turning a few people away from rating your game more. Would there be a way to package it alongside the game in the future? **Cheers! :whale:**
Super fluid gameplay, the interface is a bit confusing at first but everything feels natural. Sometimes I hadn’t enough water of the first planet, which makes the game almost impossible.
Oh and the amount of art done in that time is huge! You’re crazy! 🎸🖌
A great take of the theme and well executed 👍👍👍 You got all my support and a new follower.
Sadly, at least on my linux system, the game just displays a white screen after failing for the first time, which I wasn't able to fix.
So I only had one chance, so I didn't complete the game. 😅
Reinstalling my linux or just using another machine would probably fix the problem 😂,
so I'm looking forward to playing this amazing game again in the future.
That said, there are a lot of things that make it not work as I would expect =/
I'll try to explain.
The tutorial/the first matches are not very funny, but frustrating. I had to start the game 5-6 times after 1 minutes because I literally wasn't able to build anything. The problem here is mostly that you don't use those overlay panel also when you put the mouse over the thing like the tools. I needed to build one to know which was. So I built the metal thing last (I thought it was some kind of armor guy to be honest). If you added some sort of explanation when you over your mouse on them this problem would probably be solved. Also, you could have forced me to build the metal thing as first building.
I liked your tutorial panels since they are short and let's say, immersive, but you should have done a bit more.
The overall balancing of the game is pretty broken to me. The stress it builds it's cool especially for the game, it fits the game perfectly, but it goes so fast I can't even learn what I'm supposed to do.
Besides, you have so few people, that more or less you have to build the same exact building in order to survive (at least 2 oxygen, 1-2 farm), so you have them always busy doing that + you have to built metal or fuel.
After the first planet, the stress of "how can I manage this" become more a thing I've to do again the same, because trying an alternative is too hard. I'm sure that there are weird strategy it's just too hard to try something different because it all goes up and down too quickly.
The last thing is about the uranium. I literally don't understand how it is possible to collect so much. The mechanic of having to send people is somewhat ok, but it's too punishing, 50% you lose someone, maybe you get 2 back (so only 1), and MAYBE you get 3 uranium.
Sure there is the planet description to help you know what will happen, but it seemed too random, and therefore, in my second playthrough with only 15 uranium on my 3rd planet when I was almost always sending someone out to find it, I just quit because it not only seemed impossible, but totally out of my control =/
Some bugs I've seen: you can go negative of people, info panel does not hide if I click outside, I have to click on something else (or a planet tile), music at some point went off, but could be related to my headphone that disconnected from bluetooth (the music tho just didn't play anymore, but sfx yes).
Probably the most annoying bug was that every info panel (like the one that appears when someone comes back from an exploration) cause the speed up to reset.
Don't get me wrong, the game is overall well made, has a nice "stressing" mood, is addicting, it's very "complete" and not just a prototype, it's polished, and being a compo it's all even more surprising. Also, the fact that u used java is another thing that makes it even more surprising. I just believe that with some balancing adjustment it could become funnier and less frustrating to play!
Using Windows this time, it worked perfectly for me.
My people always suffocated or starved on the first planet, but then I got the hang of it and actually managed to leave the last planet, though with only 4 Uranium.
It was really close, because I could only build one of the Oxygen thingys, so I was lucky I brought such a big reserve...
Thanks for this amazing game! 👍