Raidar by Paul Merkamp

Your ship is stranded directly below a supernova slinging octillions of deadly UV rays. Luckily, your ship's only remaining escape pod is outfitted with ancient "radar" tech, whatever that means. The remaining crew has rigged the rusty little rowboat for voyaging out amongst the rocks in search of supplies. Now it's time for you to do your part.
Controls: Main menu: - [ w/s ] - navigate - [ space/return ] - select Ingame: - [ w/s/a/d ] - pilot ship - [ n ] - fire laser - [ m ] - deploy drill - [ space ] - deploy 10 ft of tether
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/raidar |
Ratings
| Overall | 883th | 3.211⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1030th | 2.833⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 852th | 3⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 382th | 3.868⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 309th | 4⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 275th | 3.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 977th | 1.833⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 311th | 3.735⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 6🗨️ |
The art and audio were top notch, and I really like the interpretation of the theme. Great submission!
@dippitydoop I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much!
Thank you so much for your feedback! I enjoyed your game a ton!!
Fun: This game may just not have been my cup of tea. I wasn't able to really figure out what to do and the controls seems to fight against while being lost. -Isaac hurt himself in his confusion-
Innovation: I'm not sure I wasn't able to get very far.
Theme: sonar pulse every 10 seconds :ballot_box_with_check:
Graphics: Looked cool, I like very much
Audio: Very much enjoyed the audio!
Humor: No
Mood: Dark, confusing, dead.
You guys did so much right with this. The cockpit-view and ominous space sound effects made for amazing immersion, especially with the alarm lights, moving joystick, and all the little details. It would have been great if you had managed to incorporate the other HUD elements like the radar scanner into the cockpit design, but that definitely would have been a lot more work.
The gameplay was really interesting. Navigating around obstacles you could only see every ten seconds was quite a challenge, but the coordinates and tether helped a bit. It did feel like you were incentivized to just move really slowly; some other kind of time pressure, like an oxygen meter, or threat of aliens/meteors/radiation, could help push the player to take more risks and feel a little more pressure.
@paul-merkamp Cool to see you've assembled a team for this one (including an additional Merkamp!).
I drew a picture of what I think the ship could look like and added it to the fan art collage on [my profile.](https://ldjam.com/users/jeremy-ryan/)

Congrats on this entry and good luck during the rest of play and rate!
The sound didn't help either. But the graphic is wonderful, good job regarding the graphics. I really wish I could have fun with it.
There's a version of this game that's more forgiving about the fade-off between radar pulses and has a much larger health pool, and I think that would be more my pace. However, I think that's a balance pass thing, and I think it would be cool to see it in a future version of the game.
Also the tether seems to bug up a lot and get caught up on itself, getting tangled before being about to extend all the way.
I do feel like this game has a couple of rough edges that could be smoothed. First off, I actually quite like the radar pings every 10 seconds. It builds a bit of tension and I was often surprised where I had ended up after navigating blind for the duration. With that being said, it felt bad to take damage from something I was entirely unable to see or respond to. One idea might be to have a proximity sensor on board the ship that gave you some warning chirps if you came very close to an asteroid and were about to take damage. This means you'd still have to remember your surroundings from the radar ping earlier to know which direction you need to travel to avoid the asteroid, but it would give you some countermeasures to help preserve your health. Also, as mentioned by some previous commenters, a motivating system would be nice to prevent you from only moving when the radar ping is active (maybe oxygen meter, deadly space radiation, moving asteroids or aliens that might damage you if you sit still, etc).
This is a sweet start to a game with a great visual and audio style. You guys nailed the atmosphere and I think only a couple of small changes to the gameplay would make this something truly special.