itch.io

I played some more this morning.  I see there is a full screen option now - maybe I missed it the last time.

This time I kept the stress window open permanently.

I failed after the cage section as the dog went to 100% stress according to the doctor. However, the display showed 10% the entire time:

I lost the screenshot so tried the same again and it gave same behaviour the second time too.

The other thing I wanted to point out was something I had a similar problem with in my entry:

This screenshot was my first time actually seeing the centrifugal animation!!

When playing, the eyes have to focus where the arrows are pointing and for me my brain shuts out the 'noise' of the rotating dog. When I did the screenshot I actually went  - oh that's what it looks like! On top of that each time I started this part, I automatically tried to click the chart instead of the button - maybe swap the button position with the counter. Would be good to have some feedback on whether my click was successful or not - I thought I did okay so was surprised when the doctor said the dog had failed.

 (In my entry I had a lunar landing sequence and I had to move the metrics (altitude etc) from the top left of the screen to above the lander so that people could see the lander while trying to manoevre it.)

I hope this helps!

I tried again and it's much clearer now. One nice improvement would be if hovering over the cards made them bigger rather than having to right-click. I kept forgetting to do that (RMB) and I couldn't read the card text in the reduced size - particularly when it's sideways :) - even when putting my browser to full-screen.

Still love the old TV effect.

Hey Frank,  you need to flip those burger or they're gonna burn. Oh sheep-dip is this thing on?

<garbled microphone noise> This is Houston. We Copy.

We have 10-4 on your success with the mission.

You fellahs have made quite a splash! We saw the whole thing on some Australian TV station.

We have a 10-4 affirmative  on your time and Astronauts: 00:06:10 (Isla, John and Isla).

NASA Here:

Roger your concerns on constructing the Apollo Spacecraft.

You need to place the sections from the bottom up as indicated by the yellow flashing squares on the launch pad. There is no drag and drop - just click on the completed section. 

We will add a novice section to the basic astronaut training program and an urgent review of our recruitment process is now progressing.

Ok I gave it another go on the download version. 

I still found it way too hard. It's also annoying have to wait through the sample each time on restart. Would be nice to be able to click past that like for the text.

I didn't hear a sound played when I hit the keys. If there were sounds for each of the 4 directions - e.g. snare, kick, hi-hat and toms then it would feel a lot more like playing along to the track. This should increase the immersion too.

As it it now, the buttons change position, the same button is synched sometime with kick drum, sometimes with snare - it's too much change all at once. 

Maybe keep the 4 buttons in the same place on the screen and oriented in the same 4 cardinal points (up/down/left/right) at least on the earlier levels. 
You might have to remix your track though.

Now what would be really interesting would be if you used more theme appropriate music such as the trolololol song or a Russian folk song from the time.

NASA Here:
Roger your concerns on constructing the Apollo Spacecraft.
You need to place the sections from the bottom up as indicated by the yellow flashing squares on the launch pad.
There is no drag and drop - just click on the completed section.
We though this was covered in basic astronaut training and will review same as well as our recruitment process.

NASA Here:
Congratulations on completing The Great Space Race.
We have a 10-4 affirmative  on your time and Astronauts: 00:08:08 (Zoey, King and Isla).

Good job commander!

I left this until last at it's the only entry that needs to be downloaded.
I really like the idea of playing as Laika and the first person 3D is very well executed.
The TV in the corner was a brilliant touch.

No support for the arrow keys though which can be a big problem for left-hander like me, especially when the jump key is space - my thumb is on the wrong side to press space when using WASD (left hand is using the mouse).

Would love to see a longer version of this maybe with more training for Laika and a longer period in the space ship, although we all know where that ends.

My first impression was that this looks like an old Mac game. Macs came out 1-20 years after the space race, depending on whether you count the start or finish. So the 'retro' look didn't really work for me even though it is implemented fantastically well. Full disclosure - I have never liked Macs so maybe a bit of bias going on here.

There is so much detail here that I found it totally overwhelming. I parked the game for a couple of days and am playing it now as it's one of the last ones I have left to rate.

It's like being made head of NASA with no prior experience and being asked to micro-manage the entire space program. 

I had a lot of trouble reading the text - great font but very hard to read even with the CRT effect turned off.
It took me a while to notice the Toggle CRT button by the way and I was pretty close to quitting.

The TV tuning is absolutely brilliant - I am old enough to remember the test card, the high pitched tone and TV controls like that and you nailed it.

Very cinematic approach. Music was a good match too.

No real gameplay though which is a shame - the lunar lander part has potential though - although the control directions seemed to be wrong. The moon surface looked great.
I didn't notice the monkey :) - will have to give it another go.

... ah I see the monkey now :).
This time around I didn't press any keys for the lander part and it landed fine.
Perhaps you could highlight the landing zone and crash if the player doesn't maneuver it there.

Nice hand drawn graphics.

I struggle with the controls though. The screen showed press E or W to walk into a door.
However when I pressed those keys they didn't do anything.
After some head scratching, I realised the arrow keys controlled walking.
However, I could go up - eventually I tried W and that worked.

The minigames were okay - the walk up the wall one is a great idea.
You need to be careful with quizzes - the country was the Soviet Union - not Russia.
There's always some so called smarty boots around to correct you :).

Some better questions might have been to ask stuff the astronaut might be expected to know such as the value for gravity, or the speed of light.

Nicely done platformer for a weeks work.
I hate platformers though so I gave up in the first level just before the  end - I think I have to jump over the guard just as (s)he turns around but having to restart on each fail was too irritating for me. Maybe make the first time you have to jump over the guard a bit easier.

Also the text was difficult to read in full screen mode. If you change u to "you" that should make it more readable.

Brilliant! I dropped the F bomb pretty soon into this - which is a good thing!
For a while I thought you have to press keys 1,2,3,4,5 so I thought the game was broken.
You might want to explicitly point out that the mouse/touch needs to be used.

Once I figured out to use the mouse it was great fun.
At one point I went "why oh why am I playing full screen - I have farther to move the mouse". 
Things got better when I turned off full screen.

But it's the voice over that makes this. Some fantastic humour in there and the accent is spot on.
Has a kind of Stanley Parable vibe to it . 

Well done!

This made me grin.
Instructions said press space for all the minigames.
Title screen comes up with "PUSH SPACE" in big letters.
I press space nothing happens LOL. 
I wanted to try the ANY key after that.

 I've never heard of Wario Ware.
Each of the mini-games was fun in a WhatTheHeck kind of way.
Some lovely touches in the graphics like the soviet flag on the docking craft.

Great game name, great fun.

Very well polished entry that unfortunately I found way too hard to play.
Being a musician, I have a reasonably good grasp of rhythm :) and I am not a stranger to EDM.
It looks like there are 2 problems here:
First, the pacing is off - it becomes virtually impossible within a few seconds on the first level. 
The other is the random placement of the arrows on screen appears completely disconnected from the music track.
Maybe this is why these games normally use a track where the timer events progress towards you in a predictable fashion. I didn't feel like I was playing along to the track at all - in fact scanning the screen for the arrows 'shut off' my listening to the music.
On one of my attempts, I thought I had completed the level as it seemed I hadn't done too bad - but I had failed it!
The graphics, sounds and presentation are fantastic though!

Professional quality audio and visuals - really outstanding job.
I played it to the end - I think the gameplay needs some tweaking - maybe better pacing or give the player real choices to make - between the cards available. There wasn't much difference between the difficulty levels - and the same strategy of pick the obvious best cards worked for all stages.
I didn't really see any strategy other than pick the best cards until I ran out of money for the 2nd last stage.
Also, when I picked up a card, it didn't centre on the mouse so I frequently missed the target slots in the middle. 
A small tweak to grab it in the middle would fix that.

Thanks for the very detailed feedback and thanks for playing - I'm delighted you enjoyed it!

I will start with the most important thing  :) - I saw your post on discord about Brutal and have already taken a look at the webpage.
I will have a more detailed dive into it when the jam is over as I do have a different 'space game' idea kicking around.
I have been using the Monogame engine https://monogame.net/ for a very long time - it has everything I need for my projects.

All your issues are valid and mainly there due to time constraints - I only finished the rocks sections on Friday so had to simplify the last 3 sections.  The issue with the lander is the worst one - it should crash when it hits the ground.
I suspect you can get the same problem with the rocket on earth takeoff if you are prepared to wait an hour or two.

Using the real sample or a parody of it would be cool - I have load of ideas for more comms / sound effects and will more than likely keep working it.

NASA here:
Congratulations on completing The Great Space Race.
A verifiable time requires the names of your three astronauts.
Your time has been recorded as "Unofficial".

We have confirmed the problem with the timing module restart button.
We are running a full diagnostic check at present - will revert with our findings once the analysis is complete. 
The engineers say performing a system restart should rectify the problem.
You need to press F5 on your onboard computer.

I played this all the way to completion - even though I'd didn't really know what I was doing.
Very addictive deck-builder gameplay but really hampered by not understanding what was going on - particularly with the various numbers around the screen. I had no clue what they were for.  Tooltips for those would be a big improvement.

It would be nice if you could hold on to the cards that you don't play - particularly for the engineering / assembly ones. There appeared to be bugs along the way - in particular I succeeded to get to the moon even though I only had 2 engineer cards in the bay of values 1+2+2 = total 5 but the screen tool tip says 8 required.
Something similar happened for the earlier 2 objective - it popped up the success window before I reached the required engineering value.

It kept me entertained for ages though - much longer than the other entries I have played so far.

Really well executed with a great sense of humour. I like the way the tasks are randomised each time. Great variety in the jobs - having to clean all the crumbs after a while is a brilliant balancing mechanism.
Only complaint is I found it pretty hard.

NASA Here again:
We have a 10-4 affirmative  on your time and Astronauts: 00:05:11 (Beau, Nora and Isla).
Good job commander!

NASA Here:
Congratulations on completing The Great Space Race.
A verifiable time requires the names of your three astronauts.
Your time has been recorded as "Unofficial".

NASA Here:
Congratulations on completing The Great Space Race.
We have a 10-4 affirmative  on your time and Astronauts: 00:06:58 (Isla, King and Isla).
Good job commander!

NASA here:

Congratulations. Time and astronauts have been logged.

Not sure if this strictly adheres to the jam theme. Ignoring that, it is a very well executed first person 3D simulation of a 1930s balloon flight. I kept dying due to not being able to follow the popup instructions in time. They don't stay on screen very long either. I made 3 attempts which all ended in failure (= death). I got as far as needing to wind the barograph. I have no idea what a barograph is and I could find it anywhere.

I didn't realise WASD could be used to move around (tricky for me being left handed) so maybe that helps find it.

Still, I laughed at my incompetence each time I died which is the sign of a good game (blaming yourself instead of the game for failure). 

I gave this a go but I could not figure out how to finish the tutorial I was stuck in there for 10 minutes at least.
The music became very grating at that point so I had to quit. 
I understood the conversation simulation idea. However, I soon forgot the instructions that were delivered on screen and couldn't remember which symbol meant which stance. 
I also could not figure out what the lines at the top indicated. I got the red line all the way to the right which I thought would end the conversation but it looped back to the left.

Really nice visuals in this and the interface is very polished. A tad confusing to play though - there is no full screen option. I had to keep referring to the instructions below, I found it difficult to find the actual game when scrolling back up.
I didn't see any reason to have the stress indicator hidden - this caught me out on the first play - the poor little doggie went to 100% without me noticing.

The dialogue with the scientist is done very well and does suck you in emotionally and I do want to give this another try.

Very ambitious to attempt a boardgame implementation in just over a week.
What you have done is nice but as I have not heard of this particular boardgame, I would have been lost without your instructions. I had to open a second browser tab so that I could read them as I played along.
I did the first 2 turns but accidentally moved my rocket to sub-orbital flight instead of orbit. It used up the Juno rocket with that move so it looks like it was stuck there .
I build another rocket and got it into orbit this time - and that got stuck too once the Saturn rocket was gone.

But now I start to see how things work - would be  cool to play a finished and polished version.

NASA Here:
Congratulations on completing The Great Space Race.
To record your entry, we need verifiable time taken and the names of your three astronauts.
No time has been recorded.
You are roger to retry.

NASA Here:
Congratulations on completing The Great Space Race.
A verifiable time requires the names of your three astronauts.
Your time has been recorded as "Unofficial".
 

The full game Dragon's Lunch is now available to download here. Pay whatever you like!

ANNOUNCE:
Version 0.3 Alpha released - playable in the browser at the top of this page.

There is a lot of untested code so if anyone finds issues with combat/invasions etc please let me know. 

Thanks Tuile! Yes, I'm going to work some more on this. I already changed the map dragging to the right mouse button based on the feedback here. There are many things to fix and I had lots of other ideas to add but there wasn't time - fuel, weather, different plane types, german tactics etc

I was very wary of downloading a 600Mb exe but I gave it a go this morning. Unfortunately, I got the same error as dangalletti and was not able to play. 

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately I only had time to put the instructions on the itch page and not in the game. One week is just not enough for everything :). 

Thanks for the comments! You are right - map scroll should be on the right mouse button.  I also had plans for showing losses etc at end of day and more detailed morale effects. I will work on this more in the future.

Thanks for the detailed feedback - really appreciate it. I think there is a bug when a Luftwaffe unit decides to return to base, the corresponding RAF unit goes instead - all the way to France! The sand table is spot on - I was trying to make it like those WW2 Battle of Britain movies will all the women calling out the movements as they are received. But I didn't have time to get my wife to record the samples - she was away the final weekend.

It was the waviness that was off-putting - although the green / black aesthetic is more like 1980s terminals than 1944.
The interface is really great though - very clear on what the choices are and what to click to proceed.