Space Orbit

Space Orbit was made in 7 days with my good friend  Scott Reily  for the  Blackthornprod GAME JAM #2  under the theme of Tiny Planets. Your goal in this game is to escape the dying solar system by hopping from planet to planet in an attempt to get to your spaceship. 

To escape you will have to collect fuel for your jetpack so you can escape each planets’ gravitational pull, and catch onto another planet.

The idea for this game came from two sources, initially, the game that came to mind was “Super Mario Galaxy”, with its emphasis on planet-hopping, this, however, reminded me of a game called “Ratchet & Clank: Up your arsenal”, the influences from that game can be more clearly seen in Space Orbit. In Ratchet and Clank, there were small planet levels similar to those of Mario Galaxy, where the player would need to complete a certain task before moving on to another planet. That along with the sci-fi themes and inclusion of a Jetpack item in each allowing you to reach greater heights were translated over to Space Orbit. 

However, one thing that makes our game stand out from both of those titles, is the strong push factors that force the player to keep moving. 

The primary push factor that players will experience if they idle too long on the first planet is the sun encroaching from the centre of the galaxy. During the first level this doesn’t pose a huge threat as there isn’t much penalty for dying, only resetting you a short distance, but the further you go in the galaxy, the more of a penalty dying is. The second push factor is seen in the second level, with an enemy circling the planet close to the ground, this forces players up onto platforms and attempts to teach players that fuel will be up and away from the planet.

In an attempt to not discourage players from exploration of the planets/attempting to jump to the next planet, we created the refuelling station. These handy little landmarks allow the player to reset the fuel on the planet in case they collected most and did not manage the jump over to the next planet. One thing that I believe we could have done better with this game is explaining the mechanics in the first level, as the feedback has shown that it’s unclear how to use the refuelling station or what it does.