Deep Space Journey by aaranos


The Earth has been explored and we have reached the limits of our curiosity. The first ship has been created that can travel at light speeds. You have been selected as the commander of this vessel and will have to balance your resources so you can explore deeper into space than any before or even after you.
| Link | https://github.com/crandalj/LudumDare48 |
| Link | https://dungeonengineer.itch.io/deep-space-journey |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deep-space-journey |
Ratings
| Overall | 1757th | 2.828⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1837th | 2.397⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1532th | 2.741⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1394th | 3.241⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1718th | 2.5⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1420th | 1.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1532th | 2.946⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
things like that would really make this more enjoyable. I can feel the story just from this little bit you did! Overall, pretty good job!
It's a really nice concept and with some storyline and animations and the ship maybe moving somewhere the game would have been more interesting, because now nothing really happens when you keep moving more lightyears away from earth, and I dont think there was an end goal? Correct me if im wrong 8) Music I thought was really epic, fit the game quite nicely. But yeah my only complaint is that it would have been a bit more fun with more of a story and animations and some stuff happening on the screen, but for a jam game that resource managing is well done and nice job to keep it so balanced!
@raffe The game was basically adventure/survival, with the goal to get as far from Earth as possible. I was hoping to get an animation for the ship warping, but I reworked the entire event system in the last few hours of the jam. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
(Also: runs in Firefox, but not in Chromium, for me. But it runs great in Firefox, so hey!)
Spend -12 MONEY for MONEY
*clicks that option*
You spend -12 MONEY and received 4 MONEY.
***
I did this about six times. Yes, my stock investment portfolio irl isn't particularly healthy either.
Balancing all the resources to keep the trip ongoing is interesting, but it feels difficult to lose. Spamming to click random options keeps the voyage going for a long time. Additional encounter types could breathe some extra life into the game, or maybe even just more varied descriptions of the events rather than "crew wants to focus on xxx."
The music was excellent and perfectly thematic, and the UI/graphics, while simple, were well polished. Overall, this feels like the foundation of what could be an interesting resource management/strategy game, if only just a little bit extra were added on!
I like games that manage to put grand ideas (in this case entire universe) behind simple rules, so this instantly gets my sympathy. Here a lot of makeup is discarded to reveal the very core of decision making in order to be in charge of something. You have to sacrifice either what you have plenty of or what you have to in order to keep the show going, in this case get the fuel, as the only vector of progress is distance from the earth.
While I did had fun playing, with this being a jam entry I kept feeling you could have done a bit more, like do some basic textual context charade over them raw trades in numbers. I don't mean whole story (that would quickly get repetitive to read), but like one sentence (title, 4x6=24 titles, sounds... doable) per resource trade combination could improve the atmosphere (ie "Blood Fuel" when trading morale for fuel). Or maybe I am wrong and these things are better left to imaginations of players fully.
Of course I know those things can get complicated, being a lone programmer can give you a writing block for simplest things, and maybe you had a late start or not enough time to dedicate more. Planets changing colors was at least somewhat satisfying. Either way, I am glad you made this, and I had fun with it.
I'd be interested in the sort of narrative that would arise from playing into the cold, clinical, "I'm dealing with numbers and not people" that's present in the game as it is right now.