is not bad for a demo but i can't enter full screen pls fix :(
Author Comments
Download the Windows version for a better experience =)
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Gameplay
Synopsis
The Planetologist is an immersive pixel art local multiplayer coop top-down shooter game. You take on the role of a daring scientist equipped with a portable scanner and laboratory. Your mission is to travel through diverse and perilous planets in your trusty spaceship, gathering invaluable data from the far reaches of the galaxy.
Story
As a Planetologist or planetary ecologist, your mission involves traveling to various planets, studying their diverse ecosystems and documenting your discoveries. Upon reaching your current destination, you encounter what seems to be some kind of pathogen that can infect all forms of life and somehow spread to other planets light-years away.
You realize that, by scanning this planet with one of your devices, you can trace the planet that infected this one. After some calculations, you estimate that the main source of the infection should be ten planets away. The universe's only hope now is to locate and eradicate this infection at its source.
Main Features
- 3 different game modes (Story, Survival and Extraction)... but maybe more!
- 10 unlockable worlds with stunning backgrounds and immersive environments.
- Level design based on each world's unique size, gravity, biome and atmosphere.
- Procedurally generated world layouts, ensuring a fresh experience on each visit.
- 12 unlockable characters, each with unique playstyles and abilities.
- Character leveling system with 17 different skills.
- 12 unlockable robot companions to add utility, support or raw firepower to your party.
- 3 unlockable ships for you to buy, upgrade and equip with special power-ups and weapons.
- Local coop multiplayer up to 12 players... if you find a way to hook up that many controllers!
- Steam achievements.
- Based on pixel art by Penusbmic and other awesome artists.
Game Modes
Story mode
Find the origin of the cosmic infection that's consuming civilizations and worlds. Scan infected planets to locate hives, abandoned equipment, bosses and other survivors to join your party. Buy ships and equipment to trace the infection to its very core and eradicate it from the universe.
Estimated play time: 14 hours to complete all 4 scan missions in all 10 worlds and a lot more to satisfy your greed for experience and equipment.
Survival Endless
Your ship failed on you and your only alternative is to get beamed down to the closest planet and survive as long as possible while battling infected critters... just for fun. I mean, you know you're doomed anyway, right?
Estimated play time: Depends a lot on your thirst for experience and brutal carnage.
Survival Extraction
Same as Survival Endless, except someone might actually bother to rescue you. The only caveat is you need to be at the right place at the right time or else your galactic-uber might rather "take another trip".
Estimated play time: 5 hours to complete all worlds with a single character. 60 hours to complete all worlds with all characters.
Art Samples
Characters
Companions
Ships
Worlds
Enemies
Credits
Game by
Engineering by
Art by
Music by
Made with GameMaker
Support us in Patreon
gares232 responds:
Edit: I just uploaded a new version (0.3.1) which will prevent a crash when trying to go full-screen on a zoomed browser. Display resolution will be a bit wonky if you don't un-zoom your browser though. I strongly recommend you go back to 100% zoom (or whatever's "no zoom" in your browser), reload the page (this is important!) and then try full-screen again. If everything's working as it should, you'll see your display's native resolution in the video settings. Otherwise you'll see... something else. Hope that helps! :)
Hi Frogy12345!
Sorry to hear you're encountering issues. Thanks for reporting! I just tested it out and it seems full-screen doesn't work when the page is zoomed in. I'll try to fix that, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to since full-screen is an engine level feature and I don't really have full control over how that works.
Meanwhile, you could try:
1. Resetting your browser's page zoom to 100% (no zoom), reloading the page with no zoom, then trying full-screen.
2. Try another browser.
3. You're probably running Windows, but if you aren't, I'd suggest you try it out on Windows as it is our target platform and hence the one we tested the most (or at all).
4. You could also try to play it in itch.io (https://jameschappfillmore.itch.io/the-planetologist).
5. In itch.io, there's also the downloadable Windows version of the game, which performs best and has a few more eye-candy features. The download link is right after the game's description.
Hope that helps! If you have the time, please let me know how it went :)
Regards!
My hardware acceleration is on and I tried turning off all effects and lowering the resolution and it still runs at around 0.3 speed. A pixel game doesn't really have an excuse for that. It also doesn't make sense for a pixel game to even have resolution options. You should be using a genuine pixel engine.
gares232 responds:
Hi TharosTheDragon!
Thanks for playing the game and for the feedback! :D
Yeah, I know the performance is pretty lacking in the web version of the game, it really bothers me too (I'm the programmer btw). I might eventually invest some time into improving the performance of the web version, but our main focus is on the Windows version as we don't intend to have anything more than a demo for web. TBH, this version is only meant to convince people to try out the Windows version.
I'd say I'm a pretty seasoned programmer (~15 years of experience in the industry), but I'm also pretty new to game development (18 months or so). I don't completely understand what you mean by "genuine pixel engine", but I'd like to! Can you point me to an example? I'd say GameMaker is quite pixel-friendly as it is mainly a 2D engine. It might be worth clarifying that although the game features pixel art, it is not meant to be an actual retro game.
Regarding resolutions, yeah, I couldn't appreciate much of a difference when I added the resolution options (except it looks pretty bad when running low resolutions). I figured I'd leave it as an option as the code was already working and maybe it did make a difference for someone else's hardware.
Btw, I strongly recommend running the Windows version (you can get it from itch.io, there's a link in the game description), especially if you're having performance issues ;)
Regards!
Edit: Forgot to mention we just uploaded a new version (already available both here and in itch.io). Please try it out! We'll have a changelog post later today :)
although i like the concept and game-play your players base line ability and upgrade rate are vastly to low for the difficulty level you are going for. by this i mean the players abilitys are to low for how fast the amount of enemys increase and the upgrades dont tend to help enough when you get them barly helping you survive at all in this i would recommend tweaking this abit
gares232 responds:
Hi nanocon!
Thanks for playing the game and the feedback, it's really useful for us to keep improving on every release :D
We just released a new version (0.2.0). It's available both here and in itch.io. We'll be posting the changelog later today, but I can tell you there's been a lot of re-balancing, so you might want ot try it again now ;)
Btw, I strongly recommend running the Windows version from itch.io (link in game description) as it performs a lot better and it's better tested overall as we're currently focusing on the Windows platform.
Regards!
When I CHANGE THE CONCHROLES IT DOSN'T MAKE THE BUTTONS THE SAME THEN WHAT I PRESSED!!! 0/5 STARS
gares232 responds:
Hi elijapitt123!
First of all, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, that was a really nasty bug (I'm the programmer so I should know :S). We're only 2 people in the dev team, so you can imagine how cumbersome it is to test everything for all platforms every time we update the game. Your comment was very useful to detect this bug, so many many thanks!
We just uploaded a new version of the game, there's a dev update post coming soon today. I already uploaded the new version (0.2.0). The issue you experienced should be fixed now, so you should be able to set up the controls as you like without any issues.
Btw, I strongly recommend going to itch.io and downloading the Windows version. It not only has way better perfomance but it's also better tested in general as our focus is currently on that platform.
Regards!
Seems like a decent Survivors-esque twin-stick shooter! Certainly showcases some solid fundamentals, but I do have to admit that while the game isn't bad necessarily and provides some grindy shooty fun for a short time, in this world of millions of Survivors-esque games vying for attention, this really isn't exciting me or being memorable and I drop it rather quickly. You're free to make whatever you like, of course, and perhaps it's unfair of me to compare, but I feel like it's inevitable. There are some aspects on which it shows some potential to differentiate itself, such as the diverse cast of characters might allow for a lot of different playstyles, or maybe the story mode will be unique, but I don't have any proof of those yet in this small demo.
I'm spitballing here, but given that the game is named the Planetologist, I thought that there were going to be more planet or science-based mechanics, and that could be a nice way to make this game stand out in a unique way. For example, maybe the planet could have more hazardous weather conditions or natural disasters you need to deal with randomly to keep you on your toes or prepare beforehand. Maybe instead of just shooting hordes of mooks, your primary objective is to gather samples by searching for locations to setup drills you then need to defend, or hunting down unique boss enemies. You could also maybe have to build up turrets or defenses like an engineer.
Some other minor feedback would be that it'd be nice to have some sort of visual HUD element to see our roll cooldown (similar to the reload bar), and to see our EXP progress in a bigger way than tucked in the corner where it's barely visible. I also found it really weird that our gun doesn't fire a bullet but instead seems to be some sort of invisible laser: makes no sense why we get powerups about increasing bullet size or speed. More razzle-dazzle in general would be nice too.
JamesChapp responds:
Thank you so much for playing the game and leaving a review!
This feedback is fantastic because it gives us a lot to think about and work on. Guillermo and I aimed to get the demo out there to test the core mechanics of the game. It's still a work in progress, and we're receiving a ton of valuable feedback on the project.
Since it's published on Newgrounds, we're dealing with a very demanding audience that, at the same time, understands it's a project in development being carried out by just the two of us. =)
Credits & Info
- Views
- 10,950
- Faves:
- 88
- Votes
- 122
- Score
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4.21 / 5.00
- Uploaded
- Mar 6, 2023
- 1:25 PM EST
- Genre
- Action - Other
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Frontpaged August 2, 2024