Mastodawn

lumpyluggage Mar 18

Looks great! I’ll check it out

tomiant Mar 18

I friggin LOVE these types of games, I’m gonna give it a go!

tomiant Mar 18

1) love the music, it’s the perfect soundtrack for this type of game. Maybe a longer track so it doesn’t get repetitive? The sounds are nice but unbalanced, FX is much louder than the music.

2) I can’t see all the text in the right hand column “Events & Directives”, it cuts off and I can’t seem to scroll down. I run on linux, windowed.

3) In the mission log it says 3 deaths recorded, but the cryo bay tab shows 0 deceased.

4) Right from the beginning the Factions tab shows “Social tensions critical: crew is polarizing”. Also, as far as I understand it the majority of the crew is in cryo sleep. How can their ideologies be shifting?

5) I clicked on the emergency interventions to see what they were, and now I can’t unselect them.

6) Again I get text cutoff in events and directives and can’t scroll down to see what it says.

7) On year 6 we encounter Jupiter, when we’ve been traveling at a fraction of C? Hmm…

8) Feels odd to only have two options for encounters. For this one, a comet, I seem to only have the option to intercept and harvest, or partial harvest. Surely there should be an option to ignore it and keep going? Unless that option is also cut off and not visible… But no, because I could select options with numbers and 3 didn’t work, while 2 did.

9) The text is clearly written by AI. I can assume the game was as well?

10) Not a big fan of tutorial text being part of the notmal game cycle. I don’t want to be rereading the same instructions each time I do a run of the game.

11) The text cutting off really lowers the quality of immersion and makes choices more difficult.

12) I’ll keep playing for a while, I’ll post more if something else comes up.

Garan Lorn Mar 18

Man! You are the perfect player. I’ve been in the weeds so much that it’s things like this I’ve been missing. Thank you. I’m going to incorporate all your feedback, or at the very least do a spike into what you describe. I was a little burnt out by finding the Signal 11 crash bug but I’ll get on it ASAP. Thank you so much for playing.

tomiant Mar 19

Very cool! I’ll give it another run then!

Garan Lorn Mar 18

For Number 9, there were some placeholders done by AI. For the code, it’s about 40/60. Most of the logic is done by me, but for the display I used AI.

Writing is all placeholder for now, unfortunately. I had about 20 events I wrote but they have since been expanded on for flavour. I’m in the process right now of looking for a writer & pixel artist because I firmly believe that a game that uses AI for either should be free, as it steals from creators. I wish I could write this but with a full-time job I don’t have the time, so this is all hobby work.

Tutorial will be shortened or killed.

tomiant Mar 19

I’m a writer. I’d love to help!

I mean I don’t judge, I’ve used AI too for mockups. I don’t know man. I do know the writing needs some help, good stuff that can be used as springboards in there, but whatever.

I finished my first run on a planet with 45% habitability, good ending. I felt like overall the game loop is more or less “click next”, and “choose x or y”. It would be cool to have some more micromanagement of the crew.

You know how you have a crew tab with people who are in cryo? They all have different abilities and allegiances, could be an idea to explore to be able to take them in and out of cryo sleep so you can have an impact on the ship status.

Right now it feels like as a player you’re mostly left to drift, there were some options for researching tech and emergency protocols, I’d say that this game has a lot of potential but probably needs to focus more on fleshing out the gameplay and player interaction/options.

It’s a good skeleton to build something cool on, like a Oxygen Not Included, Faster Than Light type crossover.

Garan Lorn Mar 19

Awesome. DM me and send me some samples. I’m happy to discuss this further! Honestly the writing is the story, and I agree on building it out from x or y. The main challenge is making sure the logic works for the basics, and then adding to the schema after it works (Hence the placeholder writing).

But I love your ideas of skilled workers. It’s nice to balance the personal and systemic.

Anyways, let me know! At the very least I can promise to give you whatever payment I receive if you’re down. Would love to enrich the tone through actual, thoughtful writing. Cheers!

the_mighty_kracken Mar 20

I’m currently studying graphic design. I would love to help out with some images.

I would be totally down! Send me a DM and any samples! The bar to help is low, so if you want to be involved I’d be happy to involve you!

elephantium Mar 19

Interesting game. My first run failed in year 21 due to agricultural collapse. That feels super early; when it takes multiple years just to get out of the solar system, I’d expect food to be covered for longer. That kinda takes me out of the setting. OTOH, I DID spend food on research at the beginning…sort of my own fault…

I forgot about the emergency interventions. I’ll try those in my next run.

I also had the text cutoff problem that tomiant pointed out. It depends on which tab I have selected in the left hand pane.

I’m not sure about balance. This is one of those agonizing-decisions games, so it fits. But-still. Food ran out!

Garan Lorn Mar 19

Awesome stuff. Have incorporated feedback here:

Bug Reports & Feedback — 3.19.2026 DR-01 | Bug | High {character} placeholder text is still rendering in the latest build. Template variables aren’t being substituted before display. DR-02 | Bug | Medium When arriving at a new system with two planets, you can only probe one — and once you do, the other is locked out permanently. You either land on the probed planet or skip the system entirely. The second planet is effectively invisible to the player with no explanation given. DR-03 | Bug | High The “merge with second ship” event outcome isn’t reflected on the landing screen. If the player chose to colonize together, the arrival stats should account for the combined population and resources — currently they don’t. DR-04 | UX | Low Event log entries like “22 deaths — critical, must be investigated” imply the player can take action, but there’s nothing to interact with. If these are flavor/log entries, the wording should make that clear so players don’t feel stuck.

Community Feedback (elephantium via Lemmy) Agricultural collapse at year 21 felt too early given the multi-year journey out of the solar system — food security feels like it should hold longer at the start. Player noted they did spend food on early research, so it may be partly self-inflicted. Also confirmed the text cutoff bug reported by tomiant (tab-dependent in the left pane).

elephantium Mar 19

I’m also seeing a text cutoff in the top bar – where it says SHIPNAME | YEAR: # etc. The top of each letter is masked.

Another text bug:

{character} has been keeping a catalogue

I’ve seen the placeholder a few times now.

A third one - for the first choice of planets on my second run, there was no scrollbar. I was forced to launch a probe to check the first choice because that was the only thing I could click. I’ll take a screengrab if I see it again.

My second run ended with “DESPERATE LANDING” on an ice planet in Year 51. Pop 634. Power was low, so I didn’t think I had headroom to try for the next planet encounter.

Third run was even better: PARTIAL SUCCESS on an arid planet in Year 24. Pop 978. No research but still plenty of headroom on resources.

Garan Lorn Mar 19

Ugh I thought I got the character one.

Thank you for the feedback! Was it fun, though? Stressful? Any thoughts on gameplay?

The bar at the top I will take care of ASAP

Fun and stressful both! I love the tropes informing the setting. Playing through to try to get a colony going is cool.

But the limited resources and hard decisions are stressful, too. I want my colonists to succeed! It’s hard to make that work.

I do really want more in the gameplay. More things to do, more tweaks I can make. Some of the decisions might be nice as like policies you could tweak anytime, not just as events?

I’m still a little unclear on the research. I’m not sure if there needs to be more help text in-game or if I just need a few more playthroughs.

Oh, I should add - I’m playing on an older monitor, 4:3 resolution. I really appreciate when games either support that aspect ratio or have UI scaling so I’m not missing controls off the edge of the screen (yes, I know I should really replace that monitor - but it still works, and I’m loathe to just pitch it. We have too much e-waste in my country!)

Awesome stuff. Agree on the e-waste. Game should work on all screens.

I agree on the gameplay. I’m also frustrated with the placeholder writing now. I did have two writers reach ojt, so I’m hoping at the very least I can give them some cards and start working on expanding logic.

Unit tests went in today too, so hopefully no more surprises! Let me know if you had any ideas on what you’d like to see! I agree it needs a bit more to make it a good game. I’ll keep brainstorming.

Thanks again for all your feedback! As this gets stale it might get lost but follow on itch and make sure to send me a message if your username is different.

Oh, I just noticed one more thing. I just got a CRYO POD FAILURE event that ends with

The pod has been decomcallinged. The manifest has been updated.

Is this a typo in the text file or a side effect of AI being at 84% in this run?

I will have to check. The AI ones were some of the first cards I wrote so I might’ve made a typo, but the UI is supposed to degrade as the game goes on. Reported and on it.

Oh, I should add that everything I’ve said so far is in 1.13. I downloaded 1.26 this morning!

Well 1.26 is iterating live. Might be unstable today, but I think it’s back to working order. Busy over the weekend but next Monday I’m going to hit the ground running. People have asked for it to be on steam because of steam deck (hadn’t thought of that), so I applied today. Once there, DM me your Discord name and I’ll send you a license key.

From playing through again today (this time on 1.26):

Text is still cut off at the tops, and the ship condition view hides the “Advance Year”, etc. buttons along the bottom of the screen. The other tabs still look OK. The colonist status screen is hilariously unreadable now, partway through this journey. The ship is in pretty bad shape, highlighted by the display corruption!

I do have text size set to 12 px in system settings, down from 14. I haven’t noticed any difference either way.

I can’t figure out what the SHOW ALL button does on the ending screen.

I just saw the text placeholder again

“{they} did not make it back…”

I’d really like a way to speed up the text rendering.

First ship-born adult event comes suspiciously late. Year 43 in my current run.

Garan Lorn Mar 21

Awesome notes. The show all should’ve been a text speed up, but Godot panels have been…difficult with me (as you can see with bugs coming back and going).

Going to be at it again sometime tomorrow on this. Probably early evening, but going to file on itch.io as well!

PonytaMuk Mar 20

This got a bit narrative/logging what happens part way through, but hopefully it’s still useful to you ;-) Really that’s just a mark of me enjoying my experience with the game, so thanks for sharing it!

v. 0.1.264

The options menu feels cramped and overly narrow; visually it looks like the middle third of the previous middle‑third main menu.

I appreciate the instant tool‑tips for “Initiate Launch”, “Watch”, and “Fast”.

The pre‑launch phase reminds me of Oregon Trail—in a positive way.

The label “Research” under Ship Condition is confusing. It functions more like character traits or options during “character creation”. When I see “Research” in a game I normally expect long‑term goals that are pursued by spending resources.

When selecting research before departure, it would be very helpful to be able to “unselect” or toggle the chosen options so I can experiment with different builds and see total resource usage before committing.

Under Ship Condition → Systems, the order of the three entries should match the summary above. The summary lists “Food / Power / Hull”, but the Systems section lists them as “Hull / Power / Food”.

I liked the hidden‑room ship event that offered choices to force entry, hide it, or disclose it. I chose to disclose to everyone, but I was hoping for follow‑up events that branch from this decision rather than a single, isolated occurrence.

Bug: Year 35, Sensors offline, arrived at original destination. After surveying two of three worlds (ice world and volcanic; I skipped the gas giant), the UI kept showing the three survey options while text was still being audibly typed in the background. Selecting “Reject all and keep looking” then presented a separate reject‑menu for each world, forcing me to reject each one individually before I could proceed. A better approach would be a greyed‑out option at the bottom that says something like “You may only move on after rejecting each option individually” - and a choice of order to reject them in or something.

Bonus bug: After picking a new destination, the log reported the habitability of the “Gas Giant Moon” as 43 % even though I never probed it, so I should not have learned that value.

Confusion: In year 36, immediately after plotting a course to a new system, I received a “33‑deaths, Crisis‑level attrition – all life‑support systems reviewed” message with no directive or event. The status read Food 28 %, Power 35 %, Hull 42 % and all drifts ≤ 20 % except AI 46 %. Advancing another year gave another 32 deaths, still crisis‑level and still no event. Switching the ship to Cryo priority and advancing again resulted in 24 deaths. Hull decreased by 0.1 %/yr, Power by 0.6 %/yr, Food by 0.3 %/yr; population was 876 with an actuarial projection of a 2.5 % annual loss, which would be about 22 people per year, yet I was only losing 1 person per year. This inconsistency suggests a possible bug in the loss calculation. Earlier, the pre‑launch projection estimated about 600 survivors, which does not match the actual outcome.

I actually lost 36 people that year, not 22. After launching a probe, Power fell to 24 % and the actuarial projection changed to a 4 % loss per year, which aligns with the observed loss. This appears to be a direct result of the probe rather than a projection.

I lost 34 people during a “Voluntary Skills Census” event; there was no clear reason to avoid the full reallocation, so the outcome felt arbitrary.

Deaths have settled to roughly 18 people per year. Power is now 26 % and an event called “Power Rationing Debate” appears. I must choose between increasing AI (currently 47 %) or accepting a power reduction. I opted for the equal‑ration path (communist‑style), which had no negative side effects and reduced Power to 22 %.

Again I am confused: I lost 27 people, but Hull suddenly started regenerating at +2.9 %/yr and Power at +7.4 %/yr, while Food continued to decline at ‑0.3 %/yr. This coincided with an event titled “Shared Dream Phenomenon → Investigation”, which yielded no benefits except a reduction in AI. The following year Hull and Power returned to their prior slow decline rates.

Before departure, the initial habitability estimate was ≈27 % for the second system, but upon arrival, yet the system contained only three barren rocks with ≤ 3 % habitability. We moved on to the next system, (15 years with an estimated 20‑something % habitability) as obviously we cannot survive on a rock, so we must continue the journey.

Year 048: 27 deaths and a “Suspected Cause: Food Shortage” (Food at 23 %). I triggered the emergency intervention “Ration Proto”, but deaths remain around 20 people per year.

Year 051: 24 deaths, now the “Suspected Cause” is listed as “Life‑Support Stress”. Cryo remains active, Life‑Support system is nominal at 83 % Power, but Power is low at 13 % (mostly due to Cryo). The decline rate is ‑0.6 %/yr with an estimated 22 ‑year remaining.

Ship Condition reads “Critical; Cryo: Compromised” with no clear explanation. I formally recognized a spiritual practice, raising Ideology to 56 % for no reason except to see what happens.

Bug: “Notable Congregation Member Deceased – Very Quintero was a Scientist (Founder) who served on this vessel for 59 years. She was present at 0 recorded incidents during the voyage. She once said she just wanted to make sure the congregation survived the hard years. She was only there for 0.” Funny bug, but not reasonable numbers.

Arriving at the second system, the Ice World showed 18 % habitability. With Food 27 %, Power 6 %, Hull 46 % and a loss rate of ≈ 20 people per year (population ≈ 320), I landed. Surface conditions: Atmosphere 40 %, Water 40 %, Temperature 12 °, Resources 17, Biohazard 12. No accessible surface resources led to a construction crisis and extreme cold, prompting the Founding Directive “Shelter”. I also selected “Open Assembly”. The result is “Desperate Landing” with Pop 320, Diversity 95.1 %, Regression 8, Class Drift 0, Hull 42 %, Planets rejected 6. Key decisions (not mentioned above): Landing Protocol – AI‑Managed; Vessel Contact – Arrange Formal Meeting. (The next year we arrived at the final system and the other ship vanished from events, so I’m unsure how consequential that decision was.)

Description issue: the game claimed that ship‑born people outnumbered the original launch crew, which is false. The mission record shows 1,000 departed, 320 arrived, 21 ship‑born recorded, and 219 named deaths.

Just the suggestions from above, for your convenience:

Expand the options menu width to avoid the cramped “middle‑third” appearance.
Rename “Research” under Ship Condition to a term that means selected technologies, not long‑term progress.
Allow toggling/un‑selecting research choices before departure so players can experiment with builds and see total resource costs.
Align the order of entries in Ship Condition → Systems with the summary order (Food → Power → Hull).
Expand more on branching follow‑up events after major decisions (e.g., the hidden‑room ship event). Only have one‑off outcomes for simple closed-ended scenarios.
Fix the survey/reject UI so worlds can be rejected individually without repeated menus.
Prevent undisclosed information (e.g., habitability of un‑probed worlds when sensors offline) from appearing in the log.
Offer clearer feedback on attrition events: show why deaths occur, or always provide options to intervene. OR if those death rates are typical, fix the bug of attrition being too low at mission start.
Clarify and correct event descriptions that contain nonsensical data (e.g., “Notable Congregation Member Deceased” stats).