Thanks, appreciate that! Totally agree, it's difficult show off this kind of game in a jam setting. Believe it or not, we're not the biggest fans of 4X usually either haha, and we gravitate more toward RTSs. And that was the dream-- to have real-time combat, but we quickly realized that was going to be too difficult (maybe we will add it in the future). But the idea came from trying to give the feeling of the massive scale of the galaxy and also allowing players to play async. So, we're pretty happy with how that came together, and we found out that it was more fun than even we were expecting lol.
Yeah, the theme is also hard to get across quickly, but the diplomacy aspect really is at the heart of the game. The original core idea was really just Diplomacy is space, haha. It just shows up more in the mid-late game right now, because of the number of players and the time it takes to expand and meet them. But in a full launch with a more crowded galaxy it should be integral to the early game as well.
Thanks for the comments, and hope you do find time to come back and try it more.