PEACEKEEPER

The emperor is hard to please. %78 with all system under control. 4-5 play-throughs.

I like it. It took a while to realize just how many steps ahead I had to think.

I can't send messages to ships before they arrive at the planet. so when i send a ship to an outer planet I have to wait for them to arrive (7yrs) but then it takes another 7 years for the message to arrive. So they end up sitting around for a while after they are done mopping up rebel scum. I want to send a message five years after they set out ( 2 yrs before they arrive ) to head to the next system.

Maybe there's something I'm not considering that would break the game. This is pretty complicated.

I was going to mention coarse corrections but I then realized I'm sending messages to the planets not the ships, I think.

And the capital is just the worst at taking care of its self. I have no faith in this emperor and am going to join the rebellion.

The fact that you came up with this idea, went ahead with it, and pulled it off is very impressive.

Hey!

The concept is really nice (and the background music is very moody. I like it.), but maybe because it's "static by turn" actions, I got a little lost. I started to understand the game after some time, but I think actually seeing the ships or messages go to the planets would make it more efficient…still a great idea nevertheless.

@James_Deans_Jeans (Brilliant! Underscores work with @ now!)

80% is the limit for pleased!

Ships cannot receive course corrections because they are in "hyperspace" (I love hand-wavy-sci-fi-explanations!), but to be honest I didn't even think about sending further orders to the planet while the ship is still travelling. That is totally doable though.

Thanks for playing!

@caiqueassis

Yes, it is very static; kind of on purpose as I'm used to it (Master of Orion 1 is still the best!), but I can see the benefit of smoother movement for the ships between turns. Thanks for playing!

I'm not a huge strategy buff so this isn't quite my genre but I kinda enjoyed it anyway. And now seeing that the limit was 80% I think I was pretty damn close. And it looks like completely ignoring one system to better manage the others isn't a good strategy either.

And as I was already writing this, had to go for another try…

Some animations on the ships or at least rotating them so they face where they're travelling would be nice. Took me quite a lot of random clicking before I actually realized that those were the ships. It looked like a play button.

I think you could double up space as a give orders button when you had a route selected. I think I wasted several turns by doing it. I dunno why but I just kept instinctively doing it because it felt like that should be the case.

By the way, music doesn't loop. Didn't you think anyone was gonna be as bad at the game as me so they couldn't beat it before the music ends? :D

@anttihaavikko
Well done! You've mastered the vital skill of space-time projection.

There are a lot of things I forgot to do or just plain ran out of time for. Ship rotation and graphics were totally among those things.

A hotkey for giving an order is a good idea. I'll add that to the inevitable cleanup version somewhere down the line.

At least the WebGL version on Firefox does loop the music tracks (there are three in total). Which version did you play? (One more thing I forgot is testing the Windows build, so…)

Thanks for playing!

I played the web version on mac chrome. It could be just because the game was on an inactive tab for a while as I started to write the comment.

@anttihaavikko
Huh… That, or something to do with the coroutine hack responsible for the track switching. Will need to look into it.

Thanks again!

Maybe you need to change your name to CoroutineHacks then ;)

And btw, I didn't test the windows build of my game at all either. That is one of the best things in Unity, the builds are quite reliable. If editor, one standalone and even WebGL (the biggest issue causer) all work the same, the rest of the standalone builds will most certainly work too.

Time delay strategy is an interesting idea and not one i've seen before. The difficulty was pretty well balanced to take me 3-4 tries before i managed to get 85%. Initially i kept forgetting to hit the give orders button, (I think because once i see the line for the ship course i think its already set), maybe different colours for the line to show its set would help. I also wanted to be able to send messages to ships that hadn't arrived yet so i could queue them up better. The presentation while very clean currently feels a bit minimilist that for me detracts from the fun factor, just plain numbers of bars going up and down for activity and population, but i guess that is the kind of thing for a later version. Maybe it could also do with some random events or something to add another dimension. Anyway, interesting idea, had fun.

@automatonvx
Yeah, noticed the order button issue while testing, but forgot to do anything about it in the end. The line could be dashed too, why not. Something for the next version.

A little visual pizazz would do for sure. GUIwise minimalism and simplicity are my jam so there's that. Random events are usually the first thing I turn off in any strategy competition, but they might work here. Hmm, you're giving me ideas…

Thanks for playing!

Interesting concept, and quite a hard game! The UI could use some polish like others have said. I liked the worldbuilding.

Great idea! This game does one thing, but does it really well. It even seems fairly balanced, which is much appreciated! Graphics are OK if a bit generic, but the soundtrack adds a lot of atmosphere regardless.

I got 67% with one lost system on my first playthrough, 80% population with no lost systems on the second. Might have done slightly better if I hadn't forgotten to click the "Order" button at times.

UI-wise, it would be nice ifif the selected ship/planet would be highlighted somehow. Also I would like to dispatch ships by right-click. Actually, selecting planets wouldn't be needed if you could just show the details on hover already. Though if you mean for this to be playable on mobile, the latter two are both fair choices :) Also it wasn't immediately clear that the "play" symbols were, indeed, my fleet :)

@bradur
Worldbuilding, ah, my favorite. Thanks for playing!

@thomastc
I think the one button UI was indeed a mobile friendly decision (and I haven't even made an Android version yet!) The GUI is slightly messy, for instance it is possible to send multiple ships at a time, as that sounded like a good idea in the beginning. Design changes!

Hotkeys are going to be a thing, right mouse button should be ok for quick orders. Hover over ain't a bad idea either.

Thanks for playing!

It took a while to grasp the concept, but an excellent game design. I think there's a bug in the final evaluation routine, as I lost two systems to Rebel but still got 92% of population density and the pleased emperor? I should suck at this kind of game!

@euske

That's odd. You sure the rebels were still in charge? A systems is only under rebel control if there are no ships in the orbit (the name is red). Not very realistic that, but it's what I ended up with.

Thanks for playing!

It is a cool concept, the idea of not having all the latest information at your fingertips. It's something I've always wanted to see in open world games, specifically for the AI. I hated that I could kill a guard, ride to the closest town, and everyone there would already know. Didn't even at once consider the implication something like that would have on a strategy game. Imagine how much more challenging Stellaris would be if it did something like this.

I don't think it's clear that the message time is how long it takes for the ship to be told the order though. Maybe a little tutorial that could be based 5-10 years before the start of the game? It would also allow you to spread out the text in the beginning as you introduce the player to the mechanics, and the situation bit by bit.

Instead of clicking on the ship, the planet, and then confirm order. Maybe allow the player to drag the ship over the planet. It would then pop up with a confirmation diaogue that assumes you only want to send one ship. If you want to send more, you change the number. Otherwise, you simply hit the enter key on your keyboard, or press the confirm button to give the order.

Other than that, similar feedback to everyone else:

• Took me a few seconds to figure out that the grey triangles were ships
• When I gave them orders, they should point in the direct they're going
• Graphics could do with improvements, but they do the job

@NSFletcher
I'm positively surprised how well this delayed information concept worked out. One of my long term projects is a 4X strategy competition and I think I'll be using a similar system for that too (before FTL tech is developed of course). This is years in the (real-life) future, though.

Usually I try to tutorialize little by little over multiple levels, but when it comes to "hardcore" scifi I expect the player to figure things out on their own. Sure, not a great thing for a jam or anything.

Thanks for playing!

Yay I managed a 85%!

My first impression after playing it, is that the game really feels like damage control, ie. the situation can only get worse but your goal is to limit how bad things get by at the 50 year mark. It's a detail but making rebels a little bit slower to expand would have made the differences between a good & a bad playthrough more obvious & satisfying. Now I've never designed a such game but I can assume it must be a pita to balance :P

The biggest strength of the game is definitely that delayed message mechanic, which adds a whole new depth to the game. Trying to take in account the travel times for both the messages & the ships was interesting. My regret was just not being able to send messages to ships currently travelling.

Otherwise, the presentation is pretty good for this type of game, you took the time to make the UI informative and nice to watch so props for that. I'll nitpick but I'm not a big fan of control scheme for the units, which was not obvious at first, and after a while felt clicky. I would have preferred if the orders were immediately registered after clicking on a planet, with the option to cancel/change them before you click "next year".

Overall this is a polished entry with some great ideas, satisfying visuals and an inspiring take on how one could make a minimalist strategy game.

@Wan

Yes, the difference between doing well and less well isn't that dramatic. I started with 50 years and more ships. After some testing settled down to three ships. Then tweaked the numbers more until there wasn't too much waiting around. Lastly I ran out of time and patience so I just let it go.

It would have been nice to have a tighter design for the jam. In the end I like to think of this as more of a glimpse at a bigger world where you are just a cog in the machine, not the center of the universe. Fantasizing about the future project again…

Thanks for playing!

When I read your post about your game concept, I thought it sounded very interesting, and the final result was not disappointing. I was a bit surprised at how well a delay in information actually works out.

Especially the combination of there being a delay in both message travel time, and actual travel time, had an interesting consequence on the decision process, in that you not only had to consider how long it would take to move the fleet to a new planet, but also how long you should wait in order to send the order. The resulting two-layered decision process was quite interesting. You had to think quite many moves ahead.

The information presentation was clear, if a bit minimalistic. Having both the ships and the outgoing orders represented "en route" on the map (in addition to the order summaries in the planet panels themselves) was useful as well. The planet information itself was a bit obscure. It was hard to gauge from the descriptions, how fast the rebel sentiment would increase, and how fast it could be eliminated. So there was a great deal of guesswork involved, especially in the beginning.

The ambient music was well chosen, it fit the gameplay very well.

I achieved 82% population, with all systems still under Imperial control, at the end of the 50 long years.

This was definitely an interesting experiment, and it worked very well!

With no ducks in space,
Rebel sentiment increased.
Defeat the rebels!

@Somnium
I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for playing!

PS. The north most star, "Ankka", translates to duck.

@HuvaaKoodia Heh, excellent, and very subtle. I did look for a "duck silouette" in the pattern of the systems, but it didn't occur to me that it was hidden in the name itself. I stand corrected!

That being said, I'm still blaming the rebel presence on the ducks from Ankka, since it cannot possibly have been caused by the politics of the benevolent Emperor. First they meddle in celebrity tours, then mayoral management, and now, interstellar politics!

Pretty interesting approach on the theme, and very nice concept! I could play it for a lot of time. I guess I don't have any other observations apart from the once already made.

Thank you again for judging all our games and analysing them very deeply

Nice Job!

@RodMolina

Thanks for playing! (and for the words.)