Onerous Orbits by Ian McD

[raw]
made by Ian McD for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

Play on itch.io: https://someotherguy.itch.io/onerous-orbits

What!?!? Humanity has discovered wormholes! Control the deep space probe Oracle 1, as you journey through space. What kind of planets are there out there in the depths of space?

Use your command terminal to guide the probe through the depths of space by instructing it to weave between the stars!

Guide:

Your job is to send commands to the Oracle 1 probe via your terminal.

Generally, your interface should look like this: uispace.png

there are 3 commands you can send: 1. Thrust 2. Rotate 3. Wait

You can add them to your terminal by clicking their respective buttons

For each function, you can modify the Parameters to influence how each action behaves. params.png By clicking on the parameters (Circled here) a dropdown will apear showing options.

  1. Thrust:

    • Param1 - Duration: How many seconds to thrust for
    • Param2 - Power: How powerful of a thrust to execute
  2. Rotate:

    • Param1 - Degrees: How many degrees to rotate clockwise (or negative for counterclockwise)
  3. Wait:

    • Param1 - Duration: do nothing for a duration

Note that each of these is color coded: - Green -> Thrust - Yellow -> Rotate - Grey -> Wait

When you execute your commands by clicking the reset button, a line will follow, the color indicating what command was ran during that segment of the path.

Credits:

Kevin Lam - Programming

Ian McDonald - Programming, Sound Design, UI

Justine Olshan - Programming

Christian MacNeill - 3D Art

Wade Bribach - Space Probe

Justin Wu - VFX

Gahwon Lee - Music

Please post your favorite solutions in the comments!

o-o-screenshots.png

Ratings

Overall 31th 4.276⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Fun 32th 4.214⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 6th 4.431⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Theme 433th 3.696⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 387th 3.786⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 166th 3.796⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 318th 3.104⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 144th 4.036⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 36🗨️

Feedback

Rustywolf
07. Apr 2025 · 19:05 UTC
Fun game. I really appreciate how many options we get when issuing commands, seems like a lot of detail for a jam game!
LDJam user 219121
08. Apr 2025 · 01:36 UTC
Didn't play through the whole thing (I plan to later!!) but this is SO cool for a jam game. I love the decision to require the player to actually manually slow their velocity instead of applying a magical space drag! I would totally play a full game of this.
wheelsx
08. Apr 2025 · 02:30 UTC
I was really annoyed when it was over, I just wanted it to keep going. I love physics games like this, and to combine it with a programming game is just over the top.
TolMera
08. Apr 2025 · 02:42 UTC
Pretty impressed with this course :)

Awesome amazing little game!

![Screenshot from 2025-04-08 12-41-38.png](///raw/5e2/1/z/6b2b8.png)

Edit: Oh hell yes last map win!

![Screenshot from 2025-04-08 12-44-37.png](///raw/5e2/1/z/6b2c2.png)
🎤 Ian McD
08. Apr 2025 · 03:06 UTC
Yay @tolmera Great work! nice clean simple solutions
milano23
08. Apr 2025 · 03:18 UTC
The game is a lot of fun. Great job!
![OnerousOrbit.png](///raw/5ce/z/6b321.png)
matthew545
08. Apr 2025 · 03:23 UTC
This is fun! I wish there were more fine grained controls for waiting, rotating, and thrusting, but that's part of the challenge. I prefer the levels that have gravity.
milano23
08. Apr 2025 · 03:43 UTC
Yeah i kept going, i couldnt stop.![OnerousOrbit3.png](///raw/5ce/z/6b343.png)![OnerousOrbit2.png](///raw/5ce/z/6b344.png)
🎤 Ian McD
08. Apr 2025 · 04:00 UTC
ncie solutions @milano23 very clean
paragonraptors
08. Apr 2025 · 04:23 UTC
Oh what an excellent take on the puzzle game genre! I could easily get lost in this for hours. Great work!
Darwinigan
08. Apr 2025 · 17:25 UTC
Super fun! The graphics look really nice (I love the little keyboard UI), and the entire concept was fun to play around with. Took me a second to get the hang of things (esp with rotation), but that process was enjoyable too.
LDJam user 0
08. Apr 2025 · 19:38 UTC
Very satisfying to play. Was a bit confused on the fact that I could not delete previous actions be pushing reset, but otherwise very nice gameplay and nicely teamed graphics.
mgear
08. Apr 2025 · 19:44 UTC
Cool game, has potential!
Brian Russell
08. Apr 2025 · 19:45 UTC
Holy moly it is supercool. I know for sure i'll never work for NASA now haha. But really felt the mood as i tried to figure out how to order everything to reach the objectives. Wish there was a speed up option sometimes because it probably took me 25 tries on the 3rd level with asteroids lol.
Justine Olshan
08. Apr 2025 · 20:12 UTC
@brian-russell The speed up option would be cool! Thanks for playing!
jtap
08. Apr 2025 · 21:48 UTC
Amazing game, I really enjoyed controlling the little probe.
Thanks!
threegoldeneggs
09. Apr 2025 · 00:43 UTC
What a fun challenge! I loved the trial and error aspect of it. My poor little probe exploded so many times, but it got there eventually :)
Tsaot
09. Apr 2025 · 01:54 UTC
This is great! It's nice to see another robot programming game. I like your interface too. The camera button surprised me. I wasn't aware it was a 3D game until I clicked it. Well done!
Adamwigs
11. Apr 2025 · 05:47 UTC
This was a lot of fun! It took me a little bit too long to realize I could pick different values for each command and I killed far too many little probes! Maybe I should've tried more math instead of trial and error! Really enjoyed the game!
Flokami
13. Apr 2025 · 10:33 UTC
A really solid concept!
With a few additions to diversify the gameplay—like ship upgrades or different types of obstacles—I’d definitely buy a full version of this game!
muriel
13. Apr 2025 · 13:41 UTC
Super clean entry, good music, nice game mechanics, good art... Very well done!
jacobingalls
15. Apr 2025 · 04:35 UTC
The sounds that plays when the satellite leaves the play area is super familiar... but can't place it. Great game. Really liked the pseudo programming aspect. The line changing colors to match the commands was a good touch. Would be nice to get leaderboards for fewest commands, least fuel, and shortest duration. Would be really cool to have to control multiple ships and have them dock / or miss each other. + moving obstacles etc. Nice entry!
fabonacci
20. Apr 2025 · 13:17 UTC
Nice game, it was really hard to master. I was so surpised to find it was 3D when i clicked the camera button. Great work