Planetoids

[JL235]

Latest game at StudioFortress.com is complete…

http://www.studiofortress.com/banner_planetoids.png

In the Solar System you must guide ships to land at the orbiting space station by altering the gravity around them. Ensure they don’t crash into each other or the sun, and they must not get lost outside of the system.

http://www.studiofortress.com/planetoids/thumb_1.jpg

http://www.studiofortress.com/planetoids/thumb_2.jpg

You can left and right click with the mouse to push and pull the ships around you. This moves them away or towards the mouse pointer. Unlike previous games this also includes a score board, so you can all compete amongst yourselves.

Linky, play in your browser!
YouTube video

[teletubo]

very nice game , it is somewhat addicting …
but two comments

1. (and not so important) I think the anime guys are a bit out of place … I think they are unnecessary and the game would look “trippier” without them . The music is great, it matches the “space” athmosphere (different than the anime guys)

2. You really need more literal instructions . Though it has style, your instructions are not very instructive . I had a look at them, but before you really playing it, they dont mean much. I think a few more word would be better .
   By the way, I thought only the V shaped ship was mine, and all the others were enemies and I should avoid them (since the V shaped is the one that appears in the instructions)

[JL235]

Thanks for your comments.

[quote=“teletubo,post:2,topic:34396”]
They were added in order to try to experiment with having people title graphics (which none of my other games have). I personally still like the idea, but not the execution and would like to replace these with better ones.

@teletubo

2. You really need more literal instructions . Though it has style, your instructions are not very instructive . I had a look at them, but before you really playing it, they dont mean much. I think a few more word would be better .
   By the way, I thought only the V shaped ship was mine, and all the others were enemies and I should avoid them (since the V shaped is the one that appears in the instructions)

I’ve heard this several times, that people don’t know which ships are good and which are bad. So I’ve updated the instructions to use a UFO in the landing example and it now says to ‘land all ships’. Hopefully this should clarify it a little further.

But I really like minimalist instruction screens, especially the idea that it visually shows you what to do in the game (which is what it is meant to be doing). I’ve never found blocks of text in game instructions/tutorials useful. My ultimate goal would be instruction screens with no text at all.

[Abuse]

Yay, 4th =)

Fun game - one feature that might interesting would be a trajectory predictor, to make it easier to see when a ship is parked in a stable orbit.