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Oxygen Drifter Panic's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artwork | #6591 | 2.592 | 2.818 |
| Audio | #7284 | 2.174 | 2.364 |
| Creativity | #7518 | 2.592 | 2.818 |
| Narrative | #8124 | 1.840 | 2.000 |
| Enjoyment | #9764 | 1.672 | 1.818 |
Ranked from 11 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?
Count Down got me thinking about rockets, eventually I landed on making an astronaut themed "running out of air" game with panic indusing obnoxious thruster controls.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Pretty much made the entire thing myself.
The song's melody that I made on LMMS comes from the song Twisted Nerve by Bernard Herrmann.
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Comments
This is a great and very creative idea (one of the best in the jam imo). I liked how the countdown works as the health of the player and the fuel that controls its movement. But I found the game very difficult especially how long it takes to get the items and enter the ship. But overall you did a good job.
Houston we're so cooked
It took me a while to understand the controls, but I eventually got it. I like the way it makes you feel like you barely have control, even though it's perfectly fair. My main critique is that using the thrust drains your oxygen quickly, while your oxygen normally drains extremely slowly, which means that the optimal strategy is generally to drift from goal to goal at a slow speed, which is time-consuming.
I could think of a few potential ways to make the game more frantic: One is to adjust the ratios to punish the player less for boosting and more for taking a long time, and another is to reward the player for beating each level quickly, making them evaluate risk vs. reward of trying to beat the level with just enough oxygen after boosting excessively to save time.
Originally the player did have a hefty oxygen drain rate, but that felt unfair since the boosters also taxed oxygen. By the end, I chose to make the boost increase and the rate of depletion decrease per round to encourage floating around 〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜 (But in retrospect that IS time consuming ˙𐃷˙).
Oh, as for targets ideas, here are some that didn't made the cut:
If I ever retake this project, I'll consider having a curve for the boost cost, where doing small periodic taps depletes very little, but holding or rapid tapping the boosters makes the depletion skyrocket! (૭ •̀ ᵕ •́ )૭
Thanks for playing, your feedback is appreciated (ㅅ´ ˘ `).
Hello from a fellow oxygen fan!
really cool to see how you did all of this as a solo dev! I really liked the art style and colours (or lack of).
the controls were super difficult to begin with, i think i failed 6 times before getting to level 3.
but once you got the hang of it it really gave space physics drifting vibes. felt very helpless as the poor spaceman. really cool!
Literally, I'm addicted to oxygen; I'd die without a puff of the stuff ;)
Jokes aside, thank you for playing! :D The controls were obnoxious on purpose to get that panic feel but once you get the hang of them then it's just aim and sail (maybe a bit slowly since you'd have to counteract your speed to actually stop :P)