next »

[PleasingFungus]

Starhaven

Starhaven is a game about mining in space. Blast rock away and sink drills deep into the earth, power and crew modules ranging from mineral launchers to rocket guns, and then defend your fragile station from swift-hurtling meteoroids!

I've been working on the game for the last 9 months, and I'm opening beta testing for the next three weeks (until March 24th) in the hopes of getting feedback on difficulty, bugs, and general playability. The game has limited, anonymized automated reporting for some events (tutorials skipped, level won, etc...), but I still want human feedback for things like "Mechanic X makes no sense!" or "Level Y is way too hard!" (Preferably with slightly more detail than that.)

The game can be played here, and you can follow development at my devlog. Have fun!

And it's out!

[Udderdude]

First thing I noticed is the key for rotating the yellow pieces was set to UNDEFINED by default.  Might want to fix that.

I only played the first tutorial so far, it's a simple concept, hopefully it gets more complex later on.  Will try to play it more later.

[ortoslon]

typo in the first tutorial: "connect to the drills to the station core"

pipes inside pieces mislead: they suggest that they need to connect but they only need to be adjacent

[PleasingFungus]

First thing I noticed is the key for rotating the yellow pieces was set to UNDEFINED by default.  Might want to fix that.

Intended. I don't use that key in the default bindings, but some people might want it.

typo in the first tutorial: "connect to the drills to the station core"

Thanks! Fixed.

pipes inside pieces mislead: they suggest that they need to connect but they only need to be adjacent

Good point; I'll look into it.

EDIT: Uploaded a tweaked version. Visually noisier, might solve the confusion you encountered. Undecided.

[dEnamed]

Alright I tried it yesterday but it was kinda late, so I retried it today. I like the idea of it, like some sort of super charged Tetris. I couldn't play for long though, the colors tend to blend into each other and are generelly quite bright, which makes it difficult for me to see them clearly.
Game is fun otherwise.

[PleasingFungus]

I couldn't play for long though, the colors tend to blend into each other and are generelly quite bright, which makes it difficult for me to see them clearly.

I've added an option to disable glow. Try it out and let me know if it helps.

[dEnamed]

I couldn't play for long though, the colors tend to blend into each other and are generelly quite bright, which makes it difficult for me to see them clearly.

I've added an option to disable glow. Try it out and let me know if it helps.

Tried, it does help a lot. Thanks.
So after playing it a bit more, it's a quite interesting concept which I'll try again in the next couple of days. Due to time constraints I once again didn't get very far but I'll come back to it.

[Hangedman]

It was pretty neat, although I found the block distribution kind of odd. During the launching minerals phase, I found I almost never got wires, and just stacked up tons of barracks and crap waiting for one to drop

[PleasingFungus]

It was pretty neat, although I found the block distribution kind of odd. During the launching minerals phase, I found I almost never got wires, and just stacked up tons of barracks and crap waiting for one to drop

That's very strange. The game pretty much guarantees that you get two conduits for every four blocks. What level was this?

[Hangedman]

The first one?

Not sure.

I was getting maybe one in three or four.

[PleasingFungus]

The first one?

Not sure.

I was getting maybe one in three or four.

If you mean the tutorials, the housing tutorial gives a lower conduit ratio, just because you don't really need as many. (Because the scenario comes with all the conduits you need pre-placed; the ones that drop are extra.)

[PleasingFungus]

Bumping for a few fixes. Most notably, I removed the block limit - it was only there for arcane debugging reasons! (Basically!) Check out the new version if that was giving you problems.

The other potentially notable change.

[punking]

pipes inside pieces mislead: they suggest that they need to connect but they only need to be adjacent

Good point; I'll look into it.

EDIT: Uploaded a tweaked version. Visually noisier, might solve the confusion you encountered. Undecided.

I watched a friend play today.
The pipes are still actively misleading.
He also expected the 3 square section of the drill to transport resources.

I might be a good idea for the defense section to be easier for now so that more feedback can be gotten on the interface.  I placed all barracks and missiles adequately but failed the second wave due to clicking too early.

[Maju]

Can we have some graphics other than cheap gradients and Atari 2600 pixels, please? Nothing in the game looks like anything.

[PleasingFungus]

I watched a friend play today.
The pipes are still actively misleading.
He also expected the 3 square section of the drill to transport resources.

Well, that's the sort of thing the beta is supposed to catch. Hmm.

Pretty much everyone I've talked expects the drill to serve as a conduit, at first, so both of those now count as "standing issues". I'll think about it and see if I can come up with a fix tomorrow.

I might be a good idea for the defense section to be easier for now so that more feedback can be gotten on the interface.  I placed all barracks and missiles adequately but failed the second wave due to clicking too early.

Hm, all right. The options I have are basically "decrease number of meteoroids" or "decrease meteoroid speed"; I'll think about which is more effective. Probably the latter, or a combination.

This is the sort of thing I have trouble judging, just because I've had too much experience with the game to see what's easy or hard for a new player.


Thanks for the feedback! It's very helpful, exactly the sort I'm looking for.

Can we have some graphics other than cheap gradients and Atari 2600 pixels, please? Nothing in the game looks like anything.

Nope!

The game doesn't have an artist, and so my options are in a range between 'abstract programmer art' and 'realistic programmer art'. Honestly, if I was going to do things over again, I'd opt for more abstraction - who complains about the graphics in Tetris, or Geometry Wars?

"This L-piece doesn't even look like anything!"