Cool mood and visuals. It was unclear to me what velocity I needed to sleep.

Thanks for the comment! For you or anyone else that may encounter it, there are arrows next to the message window that allow you flip back through previous messages. Likely an incoming message advanced past the message from Mission Control with the required ship settings.

It is good feedback that I should have tried to avoid this situation at the start so that message remains visible. I think after the start that would always be the case.

I clicked yours cause we both had similar premises to our games. Yours is a little more techy though. Not 100% clear what to do with each thing. I love the concept though!

Cool theme! I like the pixel art and general idea. Gameplay could probably use a bit more though.... a lot of "waiting for gas to click the thrust button."

Thanks for commenting @blackopsben & @saintchristopher777 . There was a lot more I wanted to add in for the gameplay around power and course management. The intention was to capture the boredom and loneliness of space exploration along with some management elements for running a space probe. I was also trying to base it on real information from the Voyager probes. Hopefully, I at least got the boredom right! :)

@blockerz Ha ha! I am a big space nerd, so I def appreciated the Voyager connection! :)

pretty immersive space sim game. took me a while to understand what to do.

I'm a sucker for complex games so this caught my eye.
Once I got the hang of it it made a good background task while watching something.
I liked the messages from 1 (cept the last), it gave it some nice character in the otherwise empty void.
Love it.
For things that could be changed, speed up being the down button got me a few times, might have been better the other way around (also rotating the probe graphic to match), and having some visual change would be nice, e.g. having the probe face your heading.

I liked the mood in this game. The atmosphere made me feel alone, and I actually looked forward to the friendly chatter. The stars whizzing by in space was a great effect, and I like how it changed over time. I agree with others that the up/down velocity controls would be more intuitive if reversed. You might also consider adding to the course changes messages an indication of what the next planet's distance travelled will be, say for Mars, so I can more easily appreciate how far away it is and how much time must have passed while asleep. But I really enjoyed the game and the mood.

I loved the game, the messages were great, especially the Uranus joke. The gameplay felt a bit grindy at times, since waiting for enough fuel to set the course to what it should be took a good while. Did give me a lot of time to perfect my strategy though, I think the quickest way to get fuel is to turn off all science instruments and the loop through filling up the power and turning it into fuel at +10 speed until you can get the course to what it should be.

A really neat game with a cool concept. The messages gave the game some really nice character (top-tier Uranus joke). However, while fun at first, it quickly got tedious as you had to wait forever for the fuel to refill (even with all the instruments off). A bit more polish (and perhaps a slight rework of fuel management) and it could be really fun to play.

I kind of liked the low attention needed for setting course then more engaged for reading the comms. Works well as a casual gameplay to progress the story. RIP Journey 1. good job!

Love the theme, and the humour! And it really had this "one more turn" effect of wanting to continue.

Think my main feedback would be around UI - while it looked pretty, the "quests" were initially hard to find. And it felt a bit slow paced at times when having to wait for fuel to tick back up

@hruhf @scruffylooking2121 @towergame @phanty @jj2oo2 @goldone Thanks for the comments and completing it! The story arc with V1 was a key part of the concept. I wanted the player to feel something about the long trip. I didn't want to tell the player what they felt directly but instead convey a possible feeling through what was happening with V1. I tried to give some of the boredom and loneliness directly through gameplay but then deliver the rest through V1. I could not hold the player for a 40 year trip but was hoping to convey the toll in only 10 minutes.

I did want to get deeper into the probe management portion for each mission and have more visual interest in space like passing each of the planets. That would have been the next areas of focus.

Agreed on the buttons I was torn because I felt the thrust should be reverse of the velocity. I had wanted a thrust effect on the pod which would have helped. I also keep pushing the wrong way sometimes though. :)

Would be nice to refuil and rechard while I am sleeping.

Took me a minute to figure out what I was doing but once I did I had a lot of fun controlling this little vessel. Very clean graphic and UI design, and a great take on the theme. I'd say this is a successful jam game. Well done and I'd love to see more like this. :)

Style is neat, but game is mostly about waiting for fuel to refill and clicking one button x times. Overall gameplay is too slow for my taste. Log messages are nice tho.

I really like the idea! However it didn't turn out to be very fun as it was mostly just waiting for fuel to refill.

Just played through it. I like the way it looks a lot. I do like the concept and what it's trying to get at, but I'm not sure if boredom and loneliness is what I felt, unfortunately. More like annoyance, to be quite honest. I hope I don't sound too critical! Boredom is a hard theme to convey meaningfully within the context of playing a game, so I do very much admire the ambition.

I think potential improvements would be in showing a clearer overall sense for what I was doing (like additional visual feedback as previously suggested, or something like a map?), and in having more interesting/expressive points of interaction (maybe like using levers instead of buttons).

I love the concept of intentionally boring games, so if you'd like, I can also point out other similar games you might be interested to look at and discuss :slight_smile:

@audiobusting Thanks for the feedback. Definitely not too critical and I agree. I appreciate the suggestions. I am interested in the examples you mentioned. That would be cool to see how others have accomplished it.

I was thinking along the lines of what would a person (or anthropomorphized A.I satellite) feel on such a long trip in space? How could I give a sense of that feeling to the player in only 10 minutes? How could I make that into a game that would be enjoyable to some people?

Granted I did want to add more of a probe management gameplay and some more visual interest such as seeing each of the planets. I wasn't going for so few things to do between planets. Ultimately it is hard to feel I was successful because I didn't get to the point I wanted to in the timeframe. However, that is always the case in jams so its not really helpful to think only that it would be better if I had more time. It has me thinking more about how I could have used that time better.

I am also glad I submitted even feeling uncertain about where I was at the deadline. It lead to great suggestions from people like you who have experience and information to share. I am grateful that you and others took the time to play and provide honest information.

I enjoyed playing this. It definitely got boring, which seemed to be your intention. I think it would help to let the fuel and power recharge while you sleep, the tedium is present enough just when trying to maneuver. The messages from Journey 1 were fun to read, and thankfully didn't require anything more than hitting sleep again. It would be nice to be able to send messages of my own, even though they wouldn't reach Journey 1, they would reinforce my own isolation but also make the game more engaging. I didn't notice any sound, and I think it would be better with something even if it's just white noise or occasional beeps. The premise reminds me a lot of a web "comic", you should definitely check it out if you haven't already! https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/chapter-1

Overall, well done!

A rather neat idea. It wasn't really clear to me what all of the buttons did and what were the advantages and disadvantages of pressing each one. It has potential to be expanded further though.

@armytag - That comic is fantastic. The first chapter is definitely in the vein of what I was thinking and such a great way to implement it. I read a couple additional chapters and it seems to go a different way after that but really cool.

I think the idea of sending messages is good. I provided a reason why you can't talk back because I thought a branching narrative would not be doable. I also didn't want to make the player select words that were not theirs like in most RPGs. That's why I opted for one way communication. Just allowing messages to be sent would work though. Totally agree on the sounds - even just carving out a little time for it would have been good.

@blockerz I just remembered now actually, I once also wrote a short story about a space probe on a millennia-long trip into space. I'm not a good writer though, so it felt really embarassing and I buried and never looked at it again lol. I do admire you for so readily taking feedback for your game. Not that you should be embarassed of it like I was, because I do think the game is pretty cool.

One similar game I had in mind that's a recent favourite of mine is The Longing, which is an adventure game about waiting alone in a cave for something to happen in 400 real-time days. It has a lot of really neat little ideas for slow, boring, yet weirdly meaningful things you can do in the 400 days. It's a different sort of game (it's like a fantasy point-and-click adventure), but I think it's worth checking out as a point of reference. I also was thinking of Desert Bus, which I think is less ambitious than your game (lol) but I like how it has fairly simple things, like how it swerves a bit and a bug splats on the windshield, that add a bit of character and engagement to it. I hope these recommendations help!

I really felt for J1, when he said that he preferred not using sleep mode I started to realize where this was going, you really did a good job on delivering it. I would tend to look at the distance meter before pressing the sleep button, and every time the number jumped a lot I would think "oh god, oh no". Realizing you have been asleep for such a long time is a pretty bizarre thought, but not as scary as having to live throughout all of it alone and without having anything to do. I liked how you handled J1's ending, the overwriting being first brought up as a possible "punishment" and then later as his choice really showed how this all affected him. This is definitely the game that made me feel the most in this jam, and I doubt that's gonna change.

@guimm12 Wow! Your post described everything I was going for with the story and theme. It was really terrific to hear it came through that clearly for you and that it had some level of impact.

I would have loved to deliver more on the gameplay of managing the probe. However, it was ultimately Journey 1 that encouraged me to submit. Thanks for the feedback.

@audiobusting Thanks for sharing those games. I read a New Yorker article on Desert Bus and its fundraiser. It is a pretty fun piece of gaming lore. I will have to check out The Longing. I added to my wish list. It is cool that you wrote a story about a space probe!

@blockerz I compiled it for MacOS in order to run it, it's here in case anyone else needs it: https://openfu.com/ld/ld48/LonelyJourney.zip

Loved this game! A minimal soundtrack would have been neat, or some UI effects. Speaking of UI, the inverted up/down arrow buttons for acceleration threw me off more than once :laughing: This game is pretty much complete and self-contained, which is an awesome feat for a Compo game! Loved the AI/MC drama

I would pretty much only change two things about this game:
- since the craft is solar powered, decrease the amount of power that comes in with distance from the sun
- allow the game to run in the background (because right now it pauses when you switch to another window)

@udo2 Thanks for compiling on Mac!

I agree on all points. I have not done music and there was so much gameplay I didn't get to in time that I was afraid to spend time there. It does motivate me to learn more about some of the music and sound generators in case I do a future LD. After playing some other LD games I see how much even a basic track and sounds add to the game jam entry.

I did want to have power decrease as you got further out and require more choices about instruments. I had imaging more to the data collection as a way of score. I also had planned to have OS upgrades sent to you in flight that added functionality or evolved the story. I think more probe management would have been interesting.

The background pause was not intended. Sorry to you and others who encountered that issue. That would definitely make sense.

I really appreciate the feedback!

Quite interesting as for me, it's too complicated with the management. There is also no music here but in my opinion it makes the atmosphere more good.

Interesting concept, played to the end to see how it ended but a bit meh ending. I think you could have done a lot more with it since a lot of the course corrections where pretty similar, and the resource management was not really as interesting as it could be. That said id play a game like this with a story and upgrades and interesting resource management choices that impacted the story.

Neat game! Dug the atmosphere, and Journey 1 felt like an interesting character. I liked that I was only getting messages, and not the whole story. It leaves space in the mind for speculation.

I get that you were going for a sparse, lonely experience, but I do wish there was more value in the other controls besides thrust and angle. Even just having the message command you to toggle some of those instruments could have made the experience feel less straightforward. But as it is, you've made a very unique experience. Good effort!

That was a rollercoaster of emotions. The initial feeling of being overwhelmed by amount of controls (like in a real spaceship), slowly giving place to tedium (like in a real long spaceflight). And on the other axis the happy funny AI with hints of not being ok, eventually ending sadly.

Managing power/fuel was nice gameplay, and with amount of controls it was pretty engaging, but power generation could have been just a bit faster - while the sedate pace does invoke the feeling of going deeper into lonely space, it is just a bit too lonely without any audio. Well, at least your game did have actual gameplay.. Either way, I think we should both pledge to always add even just the tiniest bits of audio :)

P.S. I think I missed some text due to it not fitting into box. The button at the bottom right corner bight have been for scrolling but it didn't work for me.

@nonumbersgames Thanks or checking out my game! I agree with your feedback. I know for sure the last word of the game was chopped (unintentionally).

I will join you in the pledge for audio next time. :) I have already started trying to learn a little more about audio production. The part I am trying to work out in my brain is how to devote time to it in the weekend. In this jam if I had another hour, I would have wanted to spend it building out my gameplay concept. I think it will just be to prioritize it over other things and to have confidence (which I do not have now) that I can pull it off in a small time budget.

We do indeed tend to gravitate towards tools we are more comfortable with, which makes sense if there is immediate time pressure like in a jam. So I'm thinking to just have a clear project/goal - create audio for my game after the jam is finished, even if it's bad (should be good motivation to improve once it is there).

Having a clear first step also helps - let's say to create and add a sound effect for submitting a command (button press in your case, enter in mine).
That should be enough to get it done, but if still having trouble can always break it down into even smaller steps (like watching a basic tutorial, opening sound editing software, creating/recording any sound, saving, exporting, importing into game editor, etc.)

After creating a few sounds, even if they are horrible, should become at least somewhat more comfortable with using the tools, which in turn will make it easier to continue practicing. Initial few hours are usually the hardest, but always worth enduring.

That's my official pledge, plan, process and pep talk. Now only progress remains, so let's go ahead and make some!

@nonumbersgames That sounds like a great way to approach it! I like the idea of making audio post jam for the game for practice. I think making some basic sounds with sfxr or similar tools is also a good minimum. Then, jumping to some music from there makes sense after that is covered. I will have to try that next time too.

This jam was a fun experience overall and having the opportunity to connect with people like you and others in the jam was the best part. Thanks for sharing.

@nonumbersgames Hey! Not sure if you will get this but just following up on our pledge in LD48. I made a game for LD50 and included audio this time! Hope you are doing well.

Hey, it has been a while, glad you made it! I got distracted, life happened and somehow two years passed... Thank you for the reminder, it is a good motivator to finish what I started!

@blockerz Finally pulled through with help from a good friend - while he does most of audio work, I'm helping and learning along the way.

Thank you for your inspiration - even if it took way longer than it should have, the pledge is complete! Hope you are doing well too <3