Play A Game Study
Outerspace Blues's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #4 | 3.913 | 3.913 |
| Overall (Fun and Playability) | #12 | 3.826 | 3.826 |
| Visuals | #12 | 4.087 | 4.087 |
| Creativity / Innovation | #15 | 3.696 | 3.696 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How was the theme(s) implemented?
The game is themed with retrofuturism imagery. I went for 70's comicbooks style.
Where did the assets come from?
Homemade graphics
Most Graphics were created by the team during the jam
External audio
Some audio assets were downloaded or made prior to the jam
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Comments
This was a fun AND funny. The music was a nice choice, though I was a little bummed to see it wasn’t made for the jam - the accordion and theremin fit the theme of the game really well.
I like how each combat encounter introduced a little bit more about the combat system rather than overwhelming with all of them in one combat encounter.
The only thing that felt a little off was the font choice. The smooth font with the pixelated graphics is an odd mix.
I did encounter a bug where depending on how I stepped into a space it sometimes wouldn’t show up in my automap.
I might be biased because I absolutely loved Dungeon Encounters, but I think your formula works and I had a lot of fun playing your game through the end. I think becoming dispirited mid-way through the jam is far from unusual, I wasn't sure myself if my game was any fun before publishing it.
The battle system worked very well and my old DE reflexes kicked in immediately, it's constant fun to try and get hit as little as possible, and when things start to go wrong, they can spiral down pretty quickly as your timing strategy collapses, so to me combat was a total blast. The combat UI is very clean, readable and polished.
I loved the art (characters, environments and monsters), the jazzy music hit the right notes to me, so the game feel was really smooth and chill.
I had a bit of trouble with the control scheme (I couldn't get used to A&D to turn until the very end), and wished the arrow keys worked in the menus.
I found a few bugs:
- On the first or second red map, I was able to trigger the map completion bonus as much as I wanted just by trying to get back on the teleporter (the teleporter didn't trigger, instead I got the bonus each time)
- When you're moving but not forward, I've noticed that:
- the tiles are not displayed on the minimap,
- the teleporters don't trigger,
- the encounters behave like walls
In terms of difficulty, I was in a very tight spot once or twice, so it felt just right to me. I didn't get to use the laser saber much because I was saving my energy for a potential boss, and I found that I was never really forced to use ranged weapons because no enemy had an absurd amount of melee def, but honestly I think you balanced the game pretty well for such a short dev time.
I really enjoyed your entry, that was great!! Thanks 😊
Very stylish game. I like the dungeons and enemy design. Character portraits i kinda have mixed feelings. Android looks good though. Cover art looks great too. Like the jazz music in the background, gave me Cowboy Bebop vibes. UI is absolutely excellent. I think UI is what a like the most in this game. It looks so clean, neat and stylish as hell. The fonts used, colors, crossfade effects. Love arrows coming out of enemies to show which player they will hit. I think this is from Dungeon Encounters. They all look so professional like something you'd expect to see in a high budget game(or i felt that way :P )
Game was hard for me. It took a couple of tries until i figure it out but i died again eventhough i figured it and threw the towel at last. The furthest i could go was B4F. I think difficulty spike is too sharp on B3F. My characters start to die like in 2 hits then those annoying bug things kept healing the enemy party. I lost 2 characters there and there was no resurrection pod so i went ahead to B4F to find one but died before i could. You respawn on the last resurrection pod you interact but game completely freezes when you do that, forcing you to restart the game. I got very disheartened by that. I use enemy scanner a lot and i think it is pretty useful but it wasn't enough for me to continue playing the game until i beat it. I like the idea very much though. I wonder if the the enemy encounter tiles are pre-determined everytime when the level loads.
I didn't like strafe keys being assigned to QE as other ppl:) and the fact that you can't remap them. Unqeuipping weapons with escape key in inventory annoyed me as hell at first too but i got used to it after a while.
The physical defense, cover defense mechanic confused me a lot at first, i guess it adds some tactical depth to combat but i can't say i found it particularly meaningful. Maybe it was an attempt to incorporate the elemental RPS theme but then you scrapped the idea and changed it to this idk.
I think overall it's a pretty solid crawler game. If some of the bugs and issues could've been fixed before deadline it could be one of the top contenders but i still enjoyed it both gameplay and visual wise. Thanks for your participation!
kept headbutting walls because QE were switched with AD which was a shame cos I really wanted to play this one more. the music is great, the art is good, it's a great effort otherwise!
trying to remap the keys on the title screen seems to refuse to remap properly - i get this
Yeah only one of them rebind because of a typo.
You can try a controller perhaps ?
I'm apparently missing a font, I see "27AB" in a box instead of an arrow on the levelup screen (playing on web).
I was having fun until I was ambushed by a party of 2 Big Greys who did 200+ AoE on my guys before I could possibly do anything, and that ended that :(
The music is a very nice fit.
Painting the map was really satisfying.
I've played through Dungeon Encounters, and am not really a fan of it, and this felt like it had some of the same problems - once I got 2 good melee weapons, I had almost no reason to do anything other than just choose melee attacks over and over again with all my characters, so the interesting choices disappeared as I grew. I only made it to the 3rd or 4th floor before a crash killed me, but maybe it gets more interesting later. That being said, the actual dungeon exploration and exploring the whole map seems to play so much better in a first person crawler perspective, so that part felt more engaging =).
The art was nice, and the environment had a really nice sense of style to it. Good game!
The grey ones are really difficult yeah! Didn't have time to balance them properly (wanted also to have ranged weapon to be slower but hit harder), and scout for bugs this year :X That's part of the game!
Thanks for trying it out!
Ooh, lovely looking dungeon. I think it might be a toon shader. I love the XP reward system after winning the battle and how each companion gets XP with it.
Also, I love the resurrection and health regeneration spots that I can use to heal my companions. I lost the game at dungeon 4 or 5. This game was really fun and I wish I could've resurrected some of my dead companions, but oh well.
The dungeon music goes hard.
Thank you! The dungeon is just a gradient taking world position into account, and then I slap a grey texture on top.
I spent a lot of time on that victory screen and I love it as well X)
Thank you for playing!
Damn, I came so far and then I died, buhuhuhu. The music sound very good and the homemade graphics are really nice. Movement is very smooth and the battle system flowed well. Choosing between melee and ranged to break the enemies defenses is a cool idea and keeps the player engaged throughout the battles. Very cool game! Just on thing, I wish there was a bit of banter between the members of the party. At least at the start of every floor.
I agree for banter, I had a little storyline, but I burnt out around mid jam and cut it out >.< Thanks for playing!
Love the whole atmosphere of this, with the spooky blues/jazz soundtrack and the comicbook style visuals. The Star Wars style intro was a nice touch too :-) Took me a while to realise that 'w' and 's' move combat selection up and down, although it's obvious now I think about it. The combat tips are useful too. The lighting up of the visited tiles is a also a great idea. Thanks for submitting!
Thank you for playing :D
This is really great! Anything I would say negatively about it would be nitpicks or pure jealousy. This plays well, looks great, and sounds incredible.
I ended up dying on (I think?) the last level and the game crashed for me. I wasn't able to continue my save, but honestly? It didn't even detract that much from the experience for me!
I also found a small bug that is actually worth pointing out: on the first orange level, if you go down a level and then back up, you can get the consumable reward infinitely by trying to go back to the checkpoint / resurrection pillar (I was trying to resurrect someone).
I don't say this about every entry (you can check my post history!) but I really hope you continue with this game and turn it into a full release. This is really excellent!
Thank you for your kind words. And yeah, the game "forgets" to give back the hand to the player on death ( I just didn't write the extra line to do so). I'm sorry about that and other issues.
Ah yeah Slippers found that bug too, but I think it's pretty funny X).
I'll think about doing a full clone of Dungeon Encounter one day (from which almost all the design is inspired from) but maybe after another game or two ~ In the meanwhile, you should definitely check out aforementioned game if you want more.
We're saved!
It was fantastic, my favourite after playing half of the entries.
My ending party was all LVL 12, 3 of them using Dagger+Cybersword? (the one which deals 100 damage) while the 4th one was using Dagger+ the Blade which deals 180 damage. The unintentional definitive Game Over made the game one order of magnitude extra fun for me, as this way the game is hard yet not insane.
The pulp theme is real and the presentation is phenomenal, the tunes are great, the sound effects fit and every part of the game looks amazing. The environments look great, the UI looks good and I love the portraits. Exploration was fun and the resurrection pillar not giving HPs back also lead to great moments as I spent the last 30 minutes? 1 hour? I'm not sure going back and fourth between the few last levels to revive my character(s) then heal them several times, with at least one very tense moment where only 2 of them were alive and I was almost certain I was going to die.
The overall combat part is extremely fun. The mix between this shield system when extra damage are not dealt as long as your shield was not depleted before this turn and the cooldown system based on the attack works very well but most of all I think the game made a great use of it with the roster of weapons and enemies, the level up system with which stats it raises and the weapons always hitting with fixed damage not depending on the character work very well with it too. The enemies not only look super cool but they're also mechanically great, the bestiary's great. The first time a Big Grey targeted the party and the first time an Ancient Ones managed to target a character before I could kill it were super cool "Oh oh" moments. The game is perfectly balanced, each enemy is its own appropriate threat.
After I stopped mashing the buttons the game stopped freezing after some early fight, forcing me to restart. I almost gave up yet seeing that you mentioned some bugs in the page but not this thing I figured out that a big part of the problem was probably me. I'm very glad I acknowledged this as it would have been a shame.
I never got any resource. Left Mouse Button could probably work everywhere ENTER works.
Thanks for sharing!
Woaw, I never thought someone would beat it with the perma death bug lol. Thank you for playing, it's really kind!
Too bad you didn't get any resources, someone else mentioned that, but you should get one when you step on every tile of the level. I actually got the idea for resource from your 2024 entry, but could not implement it. Wanted each character to have a power, and if the characters dies you can't use it anymore until they are rezed (minimap, seeing monsters, healing, seeing enemies time).
I'm pretty happy that you could finish despite all the problems!
You should definitely check out Dungeon Encounter, from which this entry is almost a direct clone.
That's funny as I was loosely trying to step on every tile yet not obsessively (I thought maybe the exit tile could never be counted or something), I guess sometimes being obsessive is rewarded.
Thanks for the tip, I'll check Dungeon Encounters at some point.
Love this game! The writing was great, music nice to listen to, and it's really impressive for nine days! Some bugs here and there, but nothing too bad. Couldn't really figure out the scanner, but I've never had anything against random encounters so it was fine for me. Overall really like the game :)!
Thank you for playing!
I looooove Dungeon Encounters. Great job at implementing its systems and putting your own spin on them. Really great music as well.
The Escape key was a problem when playing on web, but that’s a minor issue.
Ah, I'll put a warning to rebind the key on the title screen then! Thank you for playing!
Interesting little game. I didnt figure out how to use the scanner, it was red in the menu and I couldnt interact with it so I just left it be. I got some way into the floors until my healer died, and I couldnt find any way to revive his, so I died on level 4 I think.
I'm not that big of a fan of random encounters, so keeping them on and visible to the player is a better choice imo. I think last years winner kinda was fixed position enemies but they were visible. And that made it much more enjoyable to play.
The game looks nice and pretty polished, but there are some bugs lurking there, to take care of for any post jam release.
Keep at it.
Ahah, sorry! The encounters are seeded and you can see them and avoid them with the scanner ;/ (placement do changes, whenever you go up/down the labyrinth).
You get energy for the scanner, by mapping the map! I even wrote some text about how people dont like random encounter ahah
Love the tiles lighting up as you go (and getting a reward for doing it too!). I wish the camera was a little higher up though. All in all, the game looked fantastic and was fun to play. The combat and the music make me want to go back and watch Cowboy Bebop.
Thank you! I spent so long on Dice'n Goblins that I always put camera near the ground now, it just feel right lol
I really very much like tiles lighting up like that and giving you a reward for mapping out the entire level! Very neat thing.
I enjoyed the combat but unfortunately I got confused at on e point and then it snowballed and there was no way for me to not die from it in the end. We’ll see later if I come back and give it another try.
There were some unfortunate keybinding things (it wasn’t possible to rebind strafe vs turn) but fortunately escape could be changed as it is quite problematic on web builds!
As always I liked the art style and the transition into battle was very good!
Play-through:
Thank you! Yeah the game should have gone through some playtesting pass
Cutesy, endearing game with a nice combat system. I did run into a couple of bugs as others have mentioned, but it's a very enjoyable game.
The tiles lighting up is a really great system; I was very incentivised to fully explore everything. I had fun, thanks!
Got to floor 6 or so before I game over and the game got stuck. Also after go up and down stairs quickly multiple times, my view became skewed, the monitor is facing left when i'm facing up on the map. Excellent game if not for the bugs! Tile stepping + Dungeon Encounters combat is fascinating!
Sorry for the bugs! I really didn't test this enough! I'm glad you spent that much time on it though. Thank you!
Very fun and interesting!
Guns seem a little too weak, however. And with the way the HP works, I found there was never really a scenario I actually wanted to use them.
Yeah! You're right! The game needs a bit of a balancing thing. I thought it was interesting to leave an "easy way in" for players at the start, but you start to drop better stuff way too late.
I like the tiles updating in the game world for visited/not visited!
Thanks! We all love filling them!