Stargazer by plutonicrock
You are a lone, divine entity, the keeper of a forgotten lighthouse at the end of the world. Your purpose is not to guide ships, but to attend to the static of the cosmos. Turn your telescope not to see, but to hear. Find hidden celestial bodies by the sound of their unique heartsongs. Tune their fragile signals, harvesting a single word from each resonance. Finally, with the fragments of stardust you have gathered, compose a final poem for a silent universe.
Gameplay
Your task is twofold. First, scan the heavens with your telescope, guided only by sound. When a star's melody is strongest, press Space to attune to its frequency.
Then, step to your console. Here, you must sculpt its song. Manipulate two rotary knobs to filter out the cosmic static(two knobs corresponds to two static noises respectively), carving away the noise to reveal the song of the star itself. When the static is tuned to the weakest, press Space again to crystallize the melody into a verse, then use the telescope to find the next star. Gather three verses, and compose a final eulogy for the cosmos.
Try playing multiple times! There's multiple different planets as well as combinations of poems in the game
The amazing people that worked on this project:
Program & Game Design Phasmid！
Visual Design & UI Velvet
Animation & Special Effects 匿名函
Music & Sound Effects Tomshi-kabu
Special thanks to
NASA Sounds from Beyond on SoundCloud
free sfx from https://pixabay.com
And you.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/stargazer |
Ratings
| Overall | 445th | 3.551⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 693th | 2.91⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 325th | 3.538⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 265th | 4.013⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 42th | 4.55⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 116th | 4.026⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 428th | 2.766⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 104th | 4.2⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 59🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
The unique artistic style is really appealing. I really love the atmosphere. Especially when I first opened it and saw the character, it was extremely stunning!
There are two things I especially love. First, the use of stereo channels when searching for stars via sound makes the process of locating the source much more three-dimensional. Second, the tuning process combines audio and visual feedback perfectly. Even without text instructions, I understood how to play within seconds.
Overall, this is a slow-paced game that immerses you in artistic expression. I really admire your creative philosophy. It’s clear the artist has a distinct vision, and I hope you continue to create such distinctive works
Unfortunately I really don't understand how to play. I found a star with the telescope, but I can't figure out any sort of pattern to how the dials affect the frequency. By fiddling randomly with them (which takes a while because you have to spam-click), I managed to make the static go away a few times, but pressing Space did nothing but send a little ping sound. A moment later the static came back and I had to find a brand new dial combination. So I never managed to find any verses or build a poem, which sounded really cool.
If you have any guidance on how to play, I'd be glad to give the game another go :)
Thanks for playing ours!
I was interested in playing this game upon seeing a preview of the graphics and learning that the gameplay centred around discovery through audio. The visual style definitely delivered, but the audio was a bit hit-or-miss in terms of its execution. The gameplay was also difficult to understand, but reading through some of the previous comments, I understand that this was more a result of not having the full extent of the jam to work on the game. In the end, I think you delivered something playable that works, albeit confusingly - but still a good setup to work with and expand upon for the future.
## Fun
The gameplay was difficult for me to understand within the context of the game and its description - particularly when it came to the attuning. The telescope searching part of the gameplay worked quite well, and it was fun and satisfying to come across a planet with the limited scope of vision. The planets seem to have thoughtful names and appearances, from what I've seen thus far.
When it comes to the tuning, the biggest problem I had was that the knob-tuning was very tedious. Having to click each time to move the knob a notch clockwise just didn't work with not knowing what exactly the knobs do. In a game about tuning, I would have liked to have the knobs behave a little more like a dial. I think the incremental knobs could have worked if the audio feedback in response to those settings were more obvious, as the challenge would then be to not "overtune". But in this current setting, it's difficult to have these hard-to-manage controls without giving the player more direction as to what they are supposed to be playing for.
The page description mentions "static", but I only heard static in one of the planets out of the 4 I came across (the purple one with the eye, to be exact). The other 3 planets didn't seem to have any static, so I had no idea what I was tuning or affecting. I'm not sure what the intention here was supposed to be, but my intuition was that the two knobs maybe control two frequencies or maybe the panning. It also seemed like the audio itself was fading in and out of the static itself, so it wasn't really clear what was from the music itself vs. the audio in response to the dials being turned.
I love the idea of searching for particular planets to create unique combinations of poems. I didn't have a chance to explore all the planets, but I like that this game incentivizes multiple replays.
## Innovation
Using audio itself and tuning as the "signal" to find the other planets was a super neat idea, and I think it's distinct from the other entries I've played and seen thus far. That plus the overall aesthetic and gameplay makes this entry stand out - particularly the idea of using the planets as "songs" and building off of that.
## Theme
Two things stand out to me in regards to this entry's use of the theme: the "signal" of the audio cues when searching for planets and the signal calling out to the planets to attune them. Both elements are relatively clear, even if the signal is not noticeably visual - I think this was an interesting use of the theme that I think has a lot of potential within the game to be worked with and expanded upon.
## Graphics
The art in this game is gorgeous. I love the watercolour-esque style of the graphics. It gives the game a sort of ethereal aesthetic that works for a game about gazing at the cosmos.
That being said, I found the NPC on the right in the overworld to be a little disturbing to look at. Maybe the fact that they have no face, or that they kind of bounced up and down when I would re-focus on the game. They almost seemed 3D; it was a little off-putting to me (but still looked pretty cool for the most part).
The one graphical nitpick I have is that the knobs seem to have this square gradient border around them, which I'm not sure was intentional, since they are circles. And those gradient borders were moving at an angle when the knobs were turning, which seemed to be less intentional. You can even see it in the earlier screenshot I posted when looking closely.
## Audio
The use of audio when searching for the planets is well done. There's good sound design in the compositions that works with the graphics. You set up good audio cues for indicating where to look for the different planets and lock into them when using the telescope.
There are a couple of elements I think could be adjusted regarding the use of the audio:
- I wish the music transitioned more seamlessly from the overworld (with the tuner/telescope/NPC) into the tuner. It's weird to have no music in this overworld and then all of a sudden hear music when loading up the tuner. If there is to be silence here, I think this could be place to have more ambience and/or fade in the planet sounds when loading up the tuner machine.
- I don't like that the music stops and then loops again when interacting with the planet in the tuning room. I wish it played continuously in a loop so that the player can hear the differences more clearly. It just seems awkward for the loop to end on a few seconds of silence.
## Humor
This category does not feel applicable to this game. I couldn't find anything that necessarily came across as intentionally humourous (but if there is, let me know).
## Mood
The art style and audio work together harmoniously to create this beautiful, otherworldly sort of mood that I think fits with a more laidback gameplay of finding planets and tuning to them.
The gameplay was a bit hard to understand and to get the hang on though (turning the knobs was not really smooth for example).
Still had a very great time because you can see that it had loads of work poured into it !