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Rocket to the Top

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Author Comments

Jet Cat’s ship uses challenging controls built for kitties, and can be difficult to master. Do you have what it takes? Only YOU can Rocket to the Top in this kitty spaceflight simulator!


You’re Jet Cat, a rookie cat pilot in the M30-W fleet. You’ve been dispatched to an uncharted planet to investigate the surface’s potential for life. Near the end of your mission, you find yourself trapped in a mysterious tower, filled with floating coins and cursed rubies! Do you have what it takes to master your ship’s challenging controls, navigate the tight corridors, escape to the top of the tower, and return home with the treasure?


Controls

  • Up / down: change thruster angles
  • Left / right: fire thrusters
  • Z / X: fire cannons

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difficulty is mostly balanced but the timer is pretty annoying, id rather spend time trying to beat the levels. anyways its really fun

platformalist responds:

Glad you had fun, knif4! I've had a few requests about the timer now, so I may patch that in down the line. Thanks so much for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :)

It is a great game it is really fun but can you add an option where you can take off the timer, other than that this is a great game i love that it is hard. thank you for this game.

platformalist responds:

I'm so glad that you enjoyed Rocket to the Top, gorillatag3! My next game (Stickyfoot) doesn't have a timer, and I'll keep your feedback in mind for future games! Thanks so much for playing. :)

I am definitely not this game's target audience. That having been said, it looks well done and if you add a speed slider or different difficulty options, I'll give you another half a star and all the other casuals like me will probably thank you too.

platformalist responds:

Hey ajbgreybird! The difficulty wall that people have hit has been a big learning experience for me, and I'll definitely keep your comments in mind going forward. Thanks for giving it a shot, and appreciate the feedback! :)

Oh no! I have to press down to go up and up to go down! If only they were reversed!

*gets cursed ruby*

I changed my mind!

platformalist responds:

That cursed ruby might be the most cursed pickup I've ever made! haha

Thanks so much for playing, TharosTheDragon! :)

Oh, man, this is a rough one for me! I actually do quite like the challenge that this game brings and found myself getting a bit addicted to mastering the controls. But lord have mercy, the first impression was absolutely brutal, and 9 times out of 10 I probably would've noped out of this pronto! It's probably a testament to how good and polished the general presentation and feel of the game is that somehow compelled me to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep trying until I grew attached.

As said, the controls of this game are so hard to acclimate to: not only are they highly unorthodox, everything is just so fast and unwieldly, requiring such precise and light tippity-taps of the keys, culminating in a hopeless unrecoverable feeling if you stray even slightly. It cramps up my hands with how bloody delicate you need to be! Would love if everything was just slowed/powered down a bit overall to make controlling and adjustments easier.

In a way, while the game is quite challenging, it is forgiving, but I feel it does so in an awkward unsatisfying way. Typically a game like this would require you to clear the board of coins all in a single trip, with any crashes resetting the board. However, this game instead makes it so that only rubies are reset upon death, meaning that you could, as long as its within the time limit, make a bunch of separate suicidal runs to collect all the coins and then exit.

It's generous in a way, but death and frustration are much more so in this game with the method it chose, I think. I dunno about others, but I would prefer a game where I need to collect everything in a single run but the controls are much slower and smoother, than this game with unwieldly controls but you have as many runs as you want in a time limit. I know it's silly since the two methods kind of equal out, but it just feels better one way!

In terms of some quality of life, I wish there was a way to restart the level if you're in a 'dead man walking' state, aka you can see that you don't have enough time left to collect everything and make it to the exit. Also, would like a way to immediately retry/go back to a level you just beat: sometimes when I was trying to finish collecting everything I brushed past the exit and ended prematurely.

This one is definitely for the hardcore masochists!

platformalist responds:

Hi FutureCopLGF! Thanks so much for the thoughtful review <3

I agree that this game has appealed more to people on the hardcore side of things, and I'd be lying if I said that your response didn't mirror a few of my playtesters. Once I'd realized how tough the game was for folks unaccustomed to the controls, the game design was done and it didn't make a ton of sense to revisit and make the core of it easier (which would have required a full rework of ... well ... everything!). So it was like - polish this thing for the masochists to enjoy, get it out the door and make my next game easier!

Again, really appreciate your detailed, thoughtful review. :)

Credits & Info

Views
7,847
Faves:
35
Votes
140
Score
3.58 / 5.00

Uploaded
Jan 16, 2024
10:38 AM EST