My game Derelict Star - Out now!

[Gate88]

Hi I have been working on a video game for a while it’s called Derelict Star. It’s out now on Steam and itch.io.

The initial idea for the game was to make somewhat advanced Super Mario World controls make intuitive sense. When you hold the jump button in Super Mario World you fall slower, so I gave the protagonist a jetpack to sell that idea with a visual metaphor.

I prototyped the game in PICO-8 and really liked how the low resolution platforming felt in terms of precision and quantization, so when I ported the game to Godot I kept a few of those pico-8 limitations (128x128 resolution, 16 color palettes) but ditched the constraints that felt like they held the project back more than they helped (sound, code complexity, etc).

While prototyping I had some debug UI elements to keep track of momentum, jump height, and various other quirks of the platforming. I found these visuals were a really nice way to provide an observant player clarity on subtle platforming mechanics so I ended up polishing those up and keeping that “debug” display at the bottom of the screen to act as your spacesuit’s UI.

The game ended up being pretty big. It’s somewhere north of 500 screens. Nothing is explicitly gated, so you can theoretically complete each of the main areas in any order you choose, but some areas are harder than others and may require knowledge of mechanics that are taught in easier areas. I’d say it’s a healthy mix of exploration, precision platforming, and rules discovery.

I made basically everything myself (for better or worse), the sound effects, music, programming, design, graphics, you name it. However I did have quite a few play testers (including some folks from here) that made a positive impact on the game so if you were one of those people thank you!

It’s certainly not for everyone, but there’s definitely a core contingent of players that really love it so I’m very happy with how it turned out! I did implement an in-game hint system (in the form of wiki-like pages with “spoilers” that you can reveal) and some in-game assist options that may help, but I’m not convinced they’ll be completely transformative for someone who doesn’t jive with the base ideas.

Anywho, you can see the full trailer here:

[matt]

Congrats! Looks great.

I love that you kept the debug UI.

[bib]

goty

[Mothra]

Oh wow, this looks awesome

[spacetown]

yessssssssssssssss

[Father.Torque]

Looks like maybe your best yet, can’t wait to play

[Gate88]

Derelict Star is out now!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3641010/Derelict_Star/
Itch: https://gate.itch.io/derelict-star

Oh yeah and I’m also selling the soundtrack! You don’t have necessarily have to play the songs through Steam. It gives you MP3s/flacs in the install folder for the soundtrack.
Soundtrack: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4085630/Derelict_Star_Soundtrack/

[Gate88]

ahhhhhhh!!! super cool if maddy plays my game! i’ve been enjoying her games since the GameMaker days.

[RT-55J]

[21012]

as a metroid scrub i had to make an effort to not get immediately discouraged by the discovery of shinespark-like momentum storage seeming to be a primary navigation mechanic as i never felt confident in my ability to sniff out and improvise makeshift runways in those games. i’ve enjoyed the experimentation process, though! and anyway i ended up fixating for 5000 years on forcing myself to try to learn a masocore platforming sequence before i likely should have as i am often wont to do. seems like the sort of thing i’ll have found i’ve internalized better after sleeping on it and be able to take what i learned back into exploration mode next time i pick it up.

because of the dumbass way i tend to play games i still have an unclear sense of how difficult the “critical path” is going to be vs the some of the optional stuff i’ve run into [that frankly seems to require damn near pixel-tight execution] but i’m into it so far!

i like how the music tends to punctuate new areas without lingering perpetually, sort of a corollary to how the big music stings mostly only occur during bosses in fromsoft games. i was going to say the sound design is simple but impeccable but that applies to pretty much everything here! great!

and yeah i agree with your reasons for including the visual motion indicators in the UI. though i’ve taught myself how velocity seems to work as a rule it’s still not exactly intuitive to me the way that horizontal momentum affects verticality sometimes and the gauges help me rationalize it as sort of built and stored suit energy for the jetpack in a way that i don’t know if i’d be able to make intelligible for myself otherwise

[Gate88]

@21012

because of the dumbass way i play tend to play games i still have an unclear sense of how difficult the “critical path” is going to be vs the some of the optional stuff i’ve run into [that frankly seems to require damn near pixel-tight execution] but i’m into it so far!

oh yeah i do very little to protect the player from themselves. well, i try to contextualize the reward (or lack thereof) correctly for them, but that’s about it.

i had some testers who just tried the same difficult optional area over and over again for an hour as one of the first things they did in the larger area, and they ended up still enjoying themselves so who knows.

[VastleCania]

i saw this and like, hyperventilated a little hahaha

i havent played yet but im gonna

[RT-55J]

played this for an hour or so. explored a lot. managed to get 13% power.

those easy screens near the ship take on new meaning (stress) when you’re carrying a power cell. kinda don’t want to find out what happens if you die in that situation.

[Tulpa]

@Gate88

i had some testers who just tried the same difficult optional area over and over again for an hour as one of the first things they did in the larger area, and they ended up still enjoying themselves so who knows.

good to know my playstyle is supported

[username]

Oh yeah, there was an invite to play test this here some time back, I was busy that week but meant to get back around to it that next one and… forgot. Whoops >_>

Put about an hour into this tonight and its take on momentum (particularly vertical) feels pretty clever so far. I am glad for the warping system as I have poked a bit into some areas that feel very… particular and I could only make so much headway in, glad to be able to leave and also theoretically get back there at some future point. Picked up 2 batteries (13% charged) , got to a place where it feels like I can maybe press forward but am not quite certain how (it is on numbered floor 5 someplace if that sticks out to anyone ) that would probably require some amount of backtracking if it is beyond current me so felt like a good place to call it a night.

Anyways definitely does feel of pretty good quality so congrats! Hopefully I don’t come back here in a few days yelling about how impossible it gets

[Gate88]

ahh Raigan of N fame has a lot of nice things to say about it!

[daphaknee]

youre the game designer that everyones favorite game designers love!!!

[boojiboy7]

this is absolutely a game I am going to be awful at and I am really excited to try it out. congrats!

[Gate88]

people are legit writing the nicest things ever about this i feel very seen and i might cry

[username]

I guess I’ll share my progress here rather than in the big “what game you played today” topic, unless one’d rather leave this topic for more general “now released/initial reaction” stuff.

This game has so many neat little set pieces, did a couple moving platform ones earlier that spanned several screens and had a real good feel to them. I also hit my first “oh god I’m screwed” moment of the game, I grabbed a screen that anyone who’s been there should recognize immediately:

This text will be blurred

Here is where it dawned on me that I can’t use checkpoints with a battery, I gotta go backwards through… well at least a pair of gauntlets and moreso I don’t actually know how to get back from here (that was an unfortunately late realization). There is also a non-zero percent chance I am missing something that’d be helpful as that is sort of the nature of the game. Luckily I can go warp away a bit and poke around but this was definitely the big “game baring its fangs for the first time” moment for me.

…I’mma gonna get me that battery though.