Smalltrek

Wow, so many missions! And new species!

It’s very polished, I’ll keep this game as a reference for old school polish. Travel with looping and warping is fun too! Mechanically it’s equivalent to a classic level hub with discrete level selection, but it adds a nice feel!

I thought it was PICO-8 but then saw it was compiled with Nim + your own NICO engine I just discovered. Although it’s still an impressive “emulation” of its constraints and feel! (I was also impressed by Sugar engine made in C++).

I’m still at mission 15, but thanks to the save system I’ll be able to continue later!

Here are some issues I found along the way:

Info: “Omnatrus like their own company” -> I thought it meant to be alone, not company of their own species! It became clear when testing though

Bug: Omnatrus mission briefing appears twice (it appears once in the mission before they actually appear)

Bug: you can move one last time quickly between resolution and level finish, so you can finish with a visually incorrect setup. At least in Episode 12, I separated the characters then moved them back together quickly and I still succeeded the mission (just a cosmetic issue)

Bug: after typing this I switched back to the game and found my ship stuck in the top-left corner, could not play anymore. I had to restart (fortunately it auto-saves progression!)

I see the project is 6 years old so they may not be fixed, but the game is impressive anyway esp. for LD 48h format.

In fact, LD55 theme is Limited Space so it could have been a recent entry too!

UPDATE 2023-11-07

Episode 17: looks like I could solve the issue splitting a Cuwudle in two. I don’t see how it solve it elsewhere, so it must be by design, but it’s not explained and seems uninituitive (unless they can multiply even if alone?) so not too sure about this one.

Partari: not sure what “needs the company of others species meant”, I thought they needed to be with 2+ different kind of species, apparently they need to be with 3+ creatures of another species, but the number of different species doesn’t matter.

If you get this error on Linux Ubuntu:

./smalltrek.x86: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL2_mixer-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

You can install it with:

$ sudo apt install sagi libsdl2-mixer-2.0-0

(it’s an older version that was there in 2017)

That's my most favorite game you ever made. <3 The puzzle design is sooo goddamn good, it's kind of challenging to figure out how the placing of the nine alien types can be best managed! Also, the pixel art is so cute. :) And oh, let me congratulate you to the 1st place in the Ludum Dare 38 for "Smalltrek"! Well deserved. <3 That way it's not far to seek why I not just wrote an article about it as well as uploaded a gameplay video of your game, but also included it in our GOTY 2017 list. It was an absolute blast to play! <3 Keep up the wonderful work, looking forward to your new (puzzle?) games, you're super talented. :)

Best wishes,
Sebastian

Loved it!

Very cool!

Really enjoyed this. Very clever way to do Star Trek. :)

Awesome game!!