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Solar Express's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artwork | #1522 | 3.850 | 3.850 |
| Audio | #2051 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
| Enjoyment | #2408 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
| Creativity | #2923 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Narrative | #3120 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
Ranked from 20 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?
Started off with the idea that the ship's temperature counts down as your altitude goes up. Evolved further, with multiple stacking passenger requests all counting down in time...
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Comments
It looks amazing!
Thanks for playing!
Absolutely incredible. I've never expected to see such gorgeous 3D art and lighting from a game jam. More often than not, I die from getting distracted looking at the scenery. I also love how it serves a purpose as well, to visually indicate the temperature in an immersive way. And the detailed modeling on the UI is stunning as well. My only gripe is that it took me a little while to get used to the controls, and I feel like the steering was too sensitive at low speeds. The audio was a bit too loud by default as well for me as well, but I really enjoyed the composition and sound design.
Thanks for playing! Also thanks for such high praise for the visuals its really great to hear yah the cold to hot visuals were hard to tune to look right but I think I got most of the way there. Thats good feedback to know ill keep it in mind!
Really cool ! I love the Artwork, the game is pretty well polished for the time you had GG !! I think obstacles were a bit too punitive, in addition of the difficulty to drive the spaceship. But it was really fun !
Arthur from studio lapiraterie
Thank you for playing! Im glad you like the artwork I put a lot of effort into it and it makes it worth it when I hear people enjoy it. Its always nice when you get the time to do some polish on the game jam games its rare but nice. Thanks for feedback I do think we could have done some more for making the obstacles more apparent they really do catch you by surprise sometimes :)
didn't understand tbh. but i have around 77 IQ so..
May I ask what confused you? The game has a built in tutorial the game's page also explains how to play. if you were confused by what to do I can help explain it to you.
Super fun stuff! I love having multiple customers that all have diffrent requests. I also really like how the ship feels to control. Great entry!
Note: Ive seen in the comments that the ship is a bit to sensitive but in my experience it was kinda good that way because I actually had to learn how to fly the ship so idk maybe thats just my oppinion.
Thanks for playing! It seems the ship controls are a very decisive topic which I did not expect but its good to hear you liked them! :)
VERY COOL GAME!
Damn it's really good
The style and the gameplay is a chef's kiss!
Really well done
Thank you for playing and the kind words!
I really love the idea of this game. Most of my feedback has already been mentioned!The controls feel a bit too sensitive to me (at least when playing with a keyboard; maybe it would feel better with a controller). Overall, I’d love to see clearer guidance for some passengers’ quests, as well as more variety in the types of quests.
Also, I really love the UI of this game. It creates such an immersive experience, and you did an amazing job. I think this game has a lot of potential to become a full release!
Thanks for playing and the motivation! Yah we started with just 3ish types of request and then expanded so sometimes the wording can feel like wording that should have been on a different type of request because of that and because this is jank game jam code the messages could not be over a certain length so it was hard to come up with the wording but that is good to know! Thanks for the feedback it is appreciated!
It's a really fun concept and I love the theming! The game actually has surprising a lot of strategic elements since you can stack a lot of passengers all at once and then choose when to bail out of a request. It's fun to try and find the best route to pick up as many passengers along the way to a destination!
The controls are fine in high-speed sections but VERY very wonky in low speed! Turning the ship is way too sensitive when the ship is slow, which makes it really difficult to control. But in high speed the ship controls just fine! I also like that the higher you go the more dangerous it is. I got one-shotted by a gear when flying straight up since a passenger wanted me to go full speed! It's quite fun to play and balance the risk of whether doing the request is worth it..
I like the obstacle arrows, but to me it isn't sufficient to actually dodge anything when going fast. I think the arrow shouldn't be based on distance but rather based on time-to-collision, (eg. show arrows on obstacles that the player will collide with soon, scaling the detection radius with player speed). This would make the game a lot more fair to me, since then it'd actually be a test of skill to dodge the obstacles while going fast!
[Unless of course if the detection is already based on time-to-collision and I just never noticed the arrows while going fast. It could just be a skill issue!]*
I like the UI as well, it's a very creative way to display information instead of just slapping text elements, love the dials! You could fix the issue about obstacles by adding a radar / marker on the Map, it'd be an interesting approach.
Still I like the theming a lot and it fits well with the jam's theme too and the gameplay loop is awesome!
WOW thank you so much for playing and all the fantastic feedback!!
Its really good to know that about the controls I think that was one aspect that because we the dev's played it so much while making the game we or at least I did not see the issue. I am the art person so I dont know the backed too much but from what I do know the ship kind of uses two flight modes one for gliding at high speeds and one for normal movement at slow speeds the idea was that at high speeds turning would be hard but at low speeds it would be easy hence incentivizing slowing down and also to help with the problem of flying into obstacles at full speed but I think at high speeds you can turn better and at low speeds you turn too fast and also gravity is fighting you.
The idea for the obstacle indicators was also great another person had a problem of thinking the arrows were pointing towards the drop off points for a bit and ended up crashing a lot so your suggestion was great because it solves a few issues at once!
The UI is just a result of my weaknesses because I suck at 2D things but I have around 5000 hours in blender so if I can make something in 3D it is easier for me. We also had the idea at some point to make the dials show indicators on them for what range you need to be in for the passenger requests because the initial design was about balancing looking at the HUD and the screen like detracted driving lol but you probably know how it is during a jam you get done what you get done and you have to make the most of it so some of that stuff got cut but I am glad people are still enjoying it and and the dials.
Fun game, like Crazy Taxi in space. I did get confused and thought the arrows were telling me where the passengers were and spent some time repeatedly crashing into an asteroid before I figured it out lol. Control was hard but fun, I enjoyed just doing loopty loops.
Lmao yah that checks out the arrows were a little bit of a bandaid fix because when you go fast the obstacles come out of nowhere and zooming the camera out made the ship hard to see so we added the arrows but perhaps it would have been better to have red arrows for obstacles and blue for pickup points or something or make the arrows sculls or something good feedback thanks!
Loved the graphics and the UI. Controlling the ship was difficult but I had fun :)
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you like the graphics the UI was definitely a challenge but worth it! Yah from what I have gathered for some the controls click and feel natural but for others its a pain point I keep wracking my brain on how they could be better for everyone.
cool game !! love the ui and all !! controlls are a bit hard
Thanks for the feedback and kind words! Its good to know the controls felt hard I think I got too used to them over the jam and did not notice so its good info to know! :)
I really love this
Thanks for playing!
I didn't have too much trouble loading the game on my PC -- the graphics are good and I love the odd space-steampunk environment.
Controlling the ship could be frustrating with its direction controls. If it flipped I would have to rotate the controls. Not an easy thing to solve, but I think with the joystick inputs it'd be a bit easier to have the joystick thrust in the direction you want to thrust. Dropping passengers off could be annoying with the flight model -- since you have to hover in place.
All in all, fun space-based taxi game. Well done.
Thanks for the fantastic feedback! Yah we were worried because when we built some of the last builds we got a 10 second grey loading screen but it seems its shader compilation or something because it only happens once per computer. Thanks for liking the visuals I put a lot of effort into them I feel as the game jam goes on and I get more sleep deprived the style gets more convoluted and abstract its unusual but I felt the gears were just cool and fun.
Thanks for pointing out the controls I think because I played the game so much over the jam I just got used to them and did not notice the issue. As for dropping off passengers I personalty learned that doing loopy loops to stay in the circle is the best way to drop them off without killing momentum.