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Stargazer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #583 | 3.930 | 3.930 |
| Creativity | #1210 | 3.442 | 3.442 |
| Overall | #1233 | 3.341 | 3.341 |
| Enjoyment | #2538 | 2.651 | 2.651 |
Ranked from 43 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The player is bound by a time limit that progresses each time with the roll of a set of dice.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
Love the atmosphere, as a space lover it felt great!
I sugget you display the instructions panel when the game starts, so you get a feeling of what you can do.
Very solid entry, congratulations on delivering this by yourself!
What a mysterious entry! I don't know if there's an actual end to the game, I just explored stars, recorded some... Perhaphs it's the journey that counts?
I like the minimalist presentation. I always missed the notes panel, which makes the start of the game pretty hard. :P Once I saw the commands, it was an interesting system to navigate. I like this kind of minimalist presentation that let the imagination run. Kinda gives me some Mirror Moon EP vibes. I wish there was a bit more than stars descriptions though, it quickly felt like I was just starring at different numbers.
Speaking of numbers, I didn't really grasped the effect of the dices on the timer. Since this one was analogic, it wasn't clear what the dices result was corresponding to. In the end I just ignored them and focused on the timer alone. Which has a nice design by the way, although it's not super clear where it's supposed to stop.
In the end it was a surprising game to experience! I liked the mood it set into, and the strange navigation system. Would love to explore more stars with it. Great job!
The real end was the friends we made along the way. Nah, but there isn't a proper end-end, you basically choose when to end or run out of time. I really should've made that more clear lol. Kinda wanted that like "push your luck" trying to find another star with xyz attributes, but in the short timeframe, that kinda got lost. I definitely can see how the descriptions can get repetitive--they all come from a set of 9, so it was inevitable, but I wanna expand that, or find a better way to approach it that gives a new experience more often.
As for the correlation between the dice and the clock, I'll try to make it more clear that the amount of time passing is tied to the number you roll on the dice. I think that it might need to be more exaggerated or have a comment in the command line.
Thanks for playing^^
Give me a cryptic highly aesthetic game any day. This is my jam. :D
Interesting game, very chill, mechanics were a bit hard to understand but overall really nice
This could definitely use a tutorial, but other then that once I figured this game out it was great. Awesome job!
the atmosphere was great. it took me a few minutes to understand the game but it was unique. the music was calming and the UI was clean. there is no negative thing to say other than what others said before me. good game overall.
Nice game and a very original idea. I was invested playing it. For some reason, reminded me of "Her Story". Great job! One of my favourite games of this jam.
This was definitely the most unique entry i've played. You get a short stint at seeing what its like to be a scientist reviewing Kepler and TESS data. There I showed my space nerd cred. So yeah this appealed to that space nerd side of me. I mean I look at exoplanet findings for fun in my spare time. Also great presentation and music selection.
Haha I'm glad you were able to enjoy^^ Honestly I was pretty scared that someone would play that was super into space and just destroy it with realism, so I hope that it wasn't too jarring on that front.
I was really confused at first, but the screenshots helped understanding it. I really like the art, looks beautiful. An interesting game, and pretty unique for what I've seen for this jam
What a bealtiful game, great work
The visuals are great! I did struggle to figure stuff out but I still had fun. Great idea and entry!
i'm sorry, after trying for a good 15 minutes i still didn't know how to play your game.
I took a look at the comments, and at the screenshot, but still had no idea how to actually record anything.
a tutorial would've been greatly appreciated
other than that,
the art looks really great
the sound design is great too
the game has such a nice atmosphere and honestly looks like a final release
it's a real shame because it looked interesting
nevertheless very impressive as a jam game
great job!
So sorry you weren't able to get to play properly. For recording it was "record planetName". I think that to make it clearer, I'll put in some examples as a guide. Totally agree on the need for better guidance through the game, but I'll definitely have to take the time to think bout how to introduce mechanics without it feeling too heavy. Thanks for the feedback and I hope what you were able to experience was worth your time^^
The atmosphere of this game is incredible, and it feels mysterious that the goal is to find some specific thing, though the player isn't sure what. Unfortunately, I wasn't ever able to find that thing :/ . I read through some of the comments and I know the capital letters are supposed to give hints, but I think it's not quite obvious enough. And while I kinda like the idea of the timer to keep players from brute forcing the game, I think it should be a lot longer so it's not as frustrating to have to figure stuff out while having to restart so often. But the atmosphere is really awesome and I feel like the game would be really awesome if it was just a bit easier to figure out.
I'm glad the atmosphere carried through! I actually didn't have a complete story finished, so there wasn't a specific thing per se, but the idea was to try and find stars that might have planets with life (very incomplete at the moment). I totally agree with the timer not being long enough, will be changing it moving forward. I thought a shorter play time might've been better for the game jam since people might not wanna spend too long playing a single game. In hindsight, might've gone too short haha;;
I loved the graphics and the music, overall the artistic part is really well done. You are immediately in the ambiance of the game, well done !
The lack of tutorial make the first few moments really confusing. You have to find the little arrow that open the tutorial on the right. I think it would be better to have it open by default when opening the game.
The keyboard control is a great mechanic, it add a lot to the immersion and work really well with the visual. Great idea to make it the way to control the game, rather than an usual mouse control with on-screen button. The only issue is that you need to mouse click it after every command, so it's rather laborious to use.
Finally, there are a few bug that hinder the experience. As an example, the coordinate have to not be capitalized. The game will not understand "nav C4", you need to type "nav c4". That made the first few use of the command confusing, as I capitalized all my command and got weird result. Also, some stars have 2 word name, but the "record" command can't parse them, so they cannot be recorded.
Overall, I really like the presentation, the ambiance and the concept. The execution, however, was a bit too laborious...
Still a lot of good and an original idea. Good work !
Thank you^^
Completely agree with the focus issue on the text box. Even when testing, I found it really annoying that I had to keep clicking on the box just to focus (though I did find that pressing spacebar brought it back into focus). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a quick solution and had to move on, but I'll be sure to fix it when I continue.
I agree, the capitalization issue was such a big oversight and I should've seen it coming. I also found that bug with the 2 word names and thought I got rid of the names with a space, (apparently not), but to be fair, it was a lazy way of fixing it, so I'll definitely try to come up with a way that it doesn't become a problem at all.
Very cute concept. I don't think the dice rolling added a lot to the game, and overall it made the game harder to understand, but it is an appealing game with lots of potential, well done!
Yeah, so far the dice are pretty much a decoration plastered over a randomizer, so I'll try to incorporate them better into the gameplay. As for clarity, I can see that it might be kinda confusing, especially with the placement being a little far from the actual command box. Definitely will try to play around to see what feels right. Thanks for playing^^
A fun game, though (in my opinion) it doesn't have much connection to the theme. I love how every star has a unique description. There isn't really a goal besides recording as much data as possible before the time runs out. I really hope you make a upgraded version (although you may want to remove the dice entirely)
Yeah, unfortunately, I wasn't able to go as far as I wanted in the time allotted. Should've really included a more comprehensive guide on what the player is looking for (the capitalized words in each description was meant to clue in the player, but it's not that useful without a guide haha). I'll definitely be trying to make the goal of the game much clearer moving forward.
As for the dice, I agree that they were nothing but a glorified randomizer, but I hope that I can add some more functionality toward them such as something triggering on doube 1's or 6's
Ah, wasn't quite sure what the capitalization was for. I hope that everything goes well!
I really loved the ambiance for the game! Hard to figure out what to do at first, but even that kinda its the mood and feeling of the game.
I liked the aesthetics/background music and text-based gameplay. I agree with the other commenters about the UI. Since this is sort of mocking up a computer terminal, I think that adding a 'help' command or some other similar thing to display the possible commands would be a nice touch (that actually was the first thing I tried to type in before I went to the comments to figure out what to do).
The artwork is stunning, and the objective is really interesting. The music really adds to the atmosphere too. I'm not sure the dice adds to the experience, I felt like because it was out of my control it didn't affect how I was playing. If you took this further I wonder if there's a way of tying together the players actions to the timer, maybe with fuel based on distance travelled in one nav?
Fiki's comment is super comprehensive on the UX but these were my thoughts on the other parts
Great job!
MMm I really like that idea, seems like it'll make the player strategize some more. Will have to look into how to rig the dice without making them feel too predictable. Thank you for playing and glad you liked the art^^
This game is beautiful - the background art, the minimal but sophisticated-looking UI and the gorgeous palette all work together so well. Add in the perfectly chosen music and the atmosphere was incredible for some quiet exploration of the galaxy :)
Fiki's points in the comments are great, I'd add that ensuring commands are not case-sensitive would be great - definitely not a big issue though
Loved my time with this!
Thank you^^ Will definitely fix the casing issue, not sure why I didn't consider it during the initial development since it's such an easy fix rip