Thanks! We heard about FTL when we started doing our research, and decided not to play it so we don't copy that game. But glad to know we've achieved the casual genre! 🚀

Yes some of the game isn't super obvious to anyone except us 😅 We wanted to achieve the rogue-like feel of "explore and experiment to find out what stuff does", as well as add to the replayability so you play again and again to discover all the "rules", but perhaps we went a little too far. In future versions, we plan to make some kind of first run of the game as well as add animation and sound effects to make it more obvious what's going on / what the goals are.  

As for your specific questions: 

What exactly was I trying to do to escape the solar system? You have to build up your ship / space station and pick up residents of planets along the way to make it out before the sun explodes, because you were given just a starter ship. So you can't fit everyone on at the beginning of the game since it's just a bridge.

If you meant why was I trying to escape the solar system? Because the sun will explode! And all the planetary objects will be destroyed. So get through all the planets as fast as you can before the sun goes supernova! 

Why was I able to add so few or so many parts to my ship? Each card costs ⚡Energy (denoted in the top right corner with the little energy symbol), which you have (shown in the "status area" at the bottom of the screen, with the same Energy symbol).  The amount of energy you have is written as "X/Y" where "X" is the current amount of energy you have left in that turn, and "Y" is the total amount of energy you can "hold" at the beginning of your turn, based partially on how much 👨‍🚀 population you have (which is based on how many beds you have), as well as how many farms you have (which produce energy at the beginning of every turn). So spending energy to build things is like asking the population of your ship to help out and build a farm, shield module, etc. Then when you end your turn, everyone goes to sleep and is well-rested the next morning, ready to help again! At least, that was the idea 😁

Why would I want to travel to different areas of the map? We wanted to give the same kind rogue-like feeling of choice by making a randomly generated, branching map. Each type of location (planet, asteroid, satellite, UFO) gives different benefits and presents different kinds of dangers. For example, planets always have a lot of residents on them,  so if you're build requires a lot of population, you should probably aim for routes that have planets on them. As for the other benefits or dangers... I'll leave that up to you and your play-throughs! (Note: we plan to make these more distinct in future versions, like potentially adding special cards only to UFOs etc).

 
Thanks for your time, appreciate it! 

Thanks for playing! We wanted to add more cards but opted to make at least a "playable" game to submit with plans to add more cards and support different strategies after the jam. Funnily enough, one of us like to stack all the sleep, farm, and shield modules, while the other one spreads out for the most amount of health and very little defense (since all the other modules get damaged before hitting your bridge).

Glad you enjoyed! 

Thanks so much for taking the time to play it! 🚀