Hmm, this is a bit weird, I don't really know how to start reviewing this game :D
I do want to say, first and foremost, congratulations to everyone involved! It was really ambitious to make a narrative-focused game in a 7 day jam and it turned out great!
The 3d models and the voice acting in particular were really impressive, especially for a gamejam! It really gave the game this air of being a complete game.
However, I did have some annoyances while playing the game, mostly stemming from the gameplay. I will say that walking simulators are generally not my cup of tea, unless they do something completely out there, like the Stanley Parable (I'm more of a gameplay first kind of guy), but I did find myself getting strangely drawn into this one, and I think that's because it's mixed in with a space-debris-exploration game.
Exploration is the biggest draw for me in a game and this game was basically begging me to jump to every floating corridor in order to find the jetpack upgrades.
Unfortunately, for me at least, this was dragged down by the mechanics that would've been acceptable for a pure walking sim, but were not up to task with the 3d platforming required for the exploration part.
(Now, before I list my annoyances, it is quite possible that they don't fit with the direction you've had for the game and that's entirely fine. I'm just listing some things that I, personally, would've preferred)
My first issue was with the controls; 3d platformers already have an uphill battle when it comes to responsiveness, and adding low-gravity didn't really help (tough, I do see it's place due to the story being told). Still, I think a pretty quick-ish fix would be to make the player decelerate way faster when they aren't holding a key down. That would honestly help a huge deal, since I found myself pressing back to stop myself after almost every jump.
Another thing relating to the controls: you should consider increasing the jump height & power of the jetpack. This will reduce the difficulty of the game, but I don't think difficulty is a main pillar of the game.
The time it takes to make it back to a place, after having slipped is also really long (this was adding the most to my annoyance). The character takes a few seconds to fall, then the fade to black takes another second and then, because of the sparse placement of checkpoints, reaching the place you were at takes a minute or two of finesse jumping. I would suggest either shortening the respawn delay and making the controls more responsive (so it takes less time to traverse the levels) or being more liberal with the checkpoint placement. (Again, a personal choice; I would lean more towards the former option)
The containers are not really easy to see from more than 5-10 meters away, as they are colored dark grey on top of a basically pure black background, with very little in the way of light shafts to guide the player. I actually decided to cheat and boost the contrast of my monitor to be able to see them more clearly. This alone wouldn't be much of a problem, but it would get compounded by the previous issue, because I would jump towards a distant container, hoping for it to have a gap big enough to fit through, then hitting a flat wall and then having to retrace my steps for the N-th time.
And speaking of hitting walls, they are waaay to bouncy. I would jump for a container, be lined up perfectly, then clip the top of it and be bounced 5 feet back and fall off because the jetpack can't change movement direction fast enough. (which, again, is made worse by the 3rd issue)
After playing it for a bit, I got too annoyed to continue and took a break to write this review (so I'm sorry if it's a bit too salty :D). I do plan on beating it tough, even with those annoyances still in place, and I do hope that, if you decide to flesh it out some more, that you'll consider placing a bigger emphasis on the exploration gameplay. (A great game you could take inspiration from in multiple areas would be 'Grow Home'. This game already reminded me a lot of it as it is :))
So to reiterate, as I feel that the tone of the review has shifted slightly down, the game is great and, as I've said, it was really impressive to see you tackle a narrative-focused game for a jam and do it so well! Best of luck with your projects in the future :D
Overall the game is very pretty and there is some very nice touches here and there for a start seeing the players feet and player model in general was very impressive and there was lots of detail on the player its quite hard to belive the player model was done within the time for the jam. The game feels very well polished to start off with an intro and everything,
My experience with this game was very stylish and i could feel alot of time has went into directing the player and reminding them that the world they are in is real, having somenoe speak to you while the game was being progressed was a fresh touch although it does bring me to wonder where the theme was being implmended a i didn't really seem to find a connection with the submission.
it's very hard for me to not be biased here (as i normaly hate most implemendations of 0g movement) but the movement can't help but feel like you're always floating and in some areas was just so hard to manage it was hard to progress through some sections. the world is very large and its quite nice to see how much is here and how much isn't its clear most submissions lack something due to the time being alotted to work on another aspect and in this game its clear that models and sound really do shine through, although somethings that are missing like more fleshed out UI and more featured gameplay my experience with Kardashev Station was quite pleasent. and it would be cool to see how much more could come out of this world if there was more time allowed for it.
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Hmm, this is a bit weird, I don't really know how to start reviewing this game :D
I do want to say, first and foremost, congratulations to everyone involved! It was really ambitious to make a narrative-focused game in a 7 day jam and it turned out great!
The 3d models and the voice acting in particular were really impressive, especially for a gamejam! It really gave the game this air of being a complete game.
However, I did have some annoyances while playing the game, mostly stemming from the gameplay. I will say that walking simulators are generally not my cup of tea, unless they do something completely out there, like the Stanley Parable (I'm more of a gameplay first kind of guy), but I did find myself getting strangely drawn into this one, and I think that's because it's mixed in with a space-debris-exploration game.
Exploration is the biggest draw for me in a game and this game was basically begging me to jump to every floating corridor in order to find the jetpack upgrades.
Unfortunately, for me at least, this was dragged down by the mechanics that would've been acceptable for a pure walking sim, but were not up to task with the 3d platforming required for the exploration part.
(Now, before I list my annoyances, it is quite possible that they don't fit with the direction you've had for the game and that's entirely fine. I'm just listing some things that I, personally, would've preferred)
After playing it for a bit, I got too annoyed to continue and took a break to write this review (so I'm sorry if it's a bit too salty :D). I do plan on beating it tough, even with those annoyances still in place, and I do hope that, if you decide to flesh it out some more, that you'll consider placing a bigger emphasis on the exploration gameplay. (A great game you could take inspiration from in multiple areas would be 'Grow Home'. This game already reminded me a lot of it as it is :))
So to reiterate, as I feel that the tone of the review has shifted slightly down, the game is great and, as I've said, it was really impressive to see you tackle a narrative-focused game for a jam and do it so well! Best of luck with your projects in the future :D
Overall the game is very pretty and there is some very nice touches here and there for a start seeing the players feet and player model in general was very impressive and there was lots of detail on the player its quite hard to belive the player model was done within the time for the jam. The game feels very well polished to start off with an intro and everything,
My experience with this game was very stylish and i could feel alot of time has went into directing the player and reminding them that the world they are in is real, having somenoe speak to you while the game was being progressed was a fresh touch although it does bring me to wonder where the theme was being implmended a i didn't really seem to find a connection with the submission.
it's very hard for me to not be biased here (as i normaly hate most implemendations of 0g movement) but the movement can't help but feel like you're always floating and in some areas was just so hard to manage it was hard to progress through some sections. the world is very large and its quite nice to see how much is here and how much isn't its clear most submissions lack something due to the time being alotted to work on another aspect and in this game its clear that models and sound really do shine through, although somethings that are missing like more fleshed out UI and more featured gameplay my experience with Kardashev Station was quite pleasent. and it would be cool to see how much more could come out of this world if there was more time allowed for it.