Starstruck Vagabond

Although I enjoyed the game GREATLY—the primary gameplay loop is amazing, like you were focusing on—there are a few bugs and minor issues that have been bugging me.

1. It can be difficult to see ruptures you need to repair with your welder while the ship's in emergency lighting, which is a problem since usually your survival is contingent on finding these ruptures and fixing them.

2. During the pre-cryofreezing tutorial, if you're already at your console when you reach the mundanium planet, you're locked out of the controls and the game just... keeps going until your ship completely falls apart. 

3. Constantly having to switch to the bare hand tool, especially when the cleaner is the most commonly used tool and it's "opposite" of the hands on the cycle, is annoying and breaks flow.

4. Extremely minor quibble, but if you enter the cryostasis chamber BEFORE you complete your first mission, the text for telling you you're not authorized to use it yet isn't properly aligned.

5. Whenever you touch down on an uninhabited planet, it's generated all over again and effectively completely reset. This has a few problems. One, in the tutorial planet, you can get basically every upgrade unit you'll need for the entire game by fetching  the one that's there, bringing it back, going to your ship, letting your oxygen refill, and touching down again to repeat the cycle. Two, if you accidentally leave behind something you need for later, it'll get completely erased and the mission will be dropped. Three, the venture capitalism gadget is also lost when this happens (as an aside, it not beeping when you carry it and having to constantly set it down is extremely irritating), and since you're likely to run out of oxygen before you can find the optimal placement point you're alm ost guaranteed to waste a whole 300 credits.

6. I found an odd bug where, after I just cleaned it, the ram scoop more than doubled my normal max speed while it was completely misaligned. Don't know what's up with that.

7. If you leave behind cargo outside the loading zone on accident while going up to get more, it disappears and your mission is dropped.

Beyond those minor quibbles, my biggest complaints—and the most irritating ones—are that a. I can't find a way to refill my coolant when the tank is cracked by an impact and loses most of its content, which is irritating since without a high amount of coolant the tank is nearly constantly on the edge of being in the red, and the manual was no help in figuring out how to refill coolant either, and b. I can't find a way to save, at all.

I also encountered a few bugs that completely crashed the game.

I got this error code when I loaded a save that was in the middle of the very first post-cryosleep delivery mission aboard my ship. When I got to the destination, the game crashed and gave me this code. I think it has something to do with a variable not actually being saved? Whatever the case, this completely bricked that save and I had to start over.

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object con_tutorial:

global variable name 'nextobjectiveplanet' index (103274) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0 (line -1)

And I got this one in the middle of a mundane delivery mission. As far as I can tell, this just completely broke the game and it won't even open anymore.

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object pkp_waste:

Variable Index [0] out of range [0]
at gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0 (line -1)

First off I just wanted to curse your name Yahtzee cause I just spent my entire evening playing this game without realizing. It was that absorbing!  I think you've got the loop down pat and I'm really looking forward to when it's full released. I only had two issues so far:

- The first issue is a glitch I had at the very start. While realigning the warp coils I was knocked into one of the air purifiers I had next to me which meant I couldn't move at all. 

- The second issue I had is that walking around ports was painfully slow. It's a perfect speed when you're plodding around the ship and uninhabited planets but it took ages to move from building to building. I don't know how but maybe have a sprint function in these areas or just increase movement speed. 

Neither of these were deal breakers though. I can easily see myself sinking dozens of hours into the final product. Keep up the good work!

Got this visual glitch whilst playing,  had 90%+ in residue, and after cleaning it, it stayed like this. I am really enjoying the game.

First impressions:

I was unable to use the mouse to select either "confirm" or "go back" on the file select screen using the mouse, and had to switch to controller.

As a personal preference, the font with the off-color border around it is really difficult for my eyes to focus on when the background isn't the right contrast. Maybe implement some font settings?

The writing is top-notch.

I don't remember if this was warned, but I just picked up a job to deliver 6 crates. So I picked them up and placed them on the cargo lift, then the 6th was next to the lift for a quick up-down-up, but the 6th had disappeared when I came back down. 

Presumably the game "forgot" about the crates that were not left out of the loading bay, but this obviously scuppered the quest. 

Also, the 2 crates of Mundane crystals from the first job just didn't get picked up when I dropped them off. Presumably the conversation with the alien about the freight office overwrote the quest?

I feel like you should be able to do 'hands' actions with whatever tool you have, unless that tool has a different interaction with that object. Just a simple flow thing.
Also, in the tutorial the little waypoint arrows always point downward, no matter where the thing they are pointing to are, which can be confusing.

Having played this for two hours now, there are some things I'd like to say about it. General praise will be below, but I'll start with stuff that I would think are "easy" changes. Of course, it's game dev, so nothing is "easy", but here goes: 

- The flight mini game is great, but I think the screen of that mini game should be rotated so that the ship points up and not to the right. Your physical ship points up, when you hit the scrap in the mini game the trash comes from above and the commands to move the ship are bank "right"/"left", not "up"/"down". It might seem like a minor thing, but it helps immersion on what is one of the most interactive parts of the game.

- The dialogue text is hard to read to me, especially in full screen. This is because of the border on the letters which is very prominent but has too little contrast, making it weirdly bleed. I don't think it needs the border at all as most of the text in the game doesn't have it and is easy to read, though it might need a black or other high-contrast colour instead of the current one. A lot of text has display issues, making letters having seemingly random 1 or 2 pixel thickness, no matter if it's on base width or full screen.

- Some of the menu options are inconsistent in their interaction. Some menus (like the selling menu) need you to hold the interaction button, while most other menus go for a more streamlined button press. The buying/selling menu also has the problem of not exiting when using the esc key, instead bringing up your pause menu.

These are mostly inconsistency problems, so they might be easier to fix as the code to solve those might already exist.

There is other stuff that might pose a problem, but most of those are alpha problems that are deep rooted and might not be easy to fix. I won't get too much into them, as they might or might not just need more evolution of the project.

It is important to say, that the game flows quite well at the moment. There is almost always something engaging to do, be it tetris-ing your cargo and ship space, flying from planet to planet / playing the travel mini game and fixing your ship.

In essence, this is a good prove of concept with problems that were to expect as this is a really early alpha version.

Aside from that, here is the one unreasonable request: I would've liked to be able to mod graphic files, as I think it's good practise to polish existent pixel art. If you are looking for someone who can help with that part of the dev process, I can drop you some of my pixel work or rework your stuff if you want to see if I can match your intended style.

I don't know if this is where you want bugs, Yahtz, but here goes.

So I just reached Zagu Prime and it's frozen-ish. I was in looking at the system map as I reached it and it looks like it's closed the map down to a blue vertical bar, but now it's stuck. I say ish, because as I typed this my engine just exploded and the alarm is now sounding in my ear.

I'll restart and see if I can recreate it.

EDIT: Confirmed, did it a second time. Looking at the system map as you reach the planet soft locks.

PS. Not to gush, but I'm a big fan of your work, and I think I'm going to love this game. And if bug hunting helps, then I'm gonna bug hunt the shit outa this.

So, I noticed while playing. The mouse only seems to work whenever it feels like. In addition, my character's sprite moved really slowly when I got onto a planet. It was like walking in molasses. 

I think you should put more consideration into the level of pixelation in your visuals. The character creation currently makes the character always look bad due to the size on screen, which is only made worse by the background looking so crisp. Also, the dialogue text looks like it's half as crisp as the text for who's talking, except when highlighted.

When first looking at the quest menu during the tutorial, I was momentarily confused, because it wasn't clear that I was looking at a menu. I think it was because I hadn't received any mention of how to leave a menu, so I wasn't in the right mindset. I suggest putting in a small bit of text mentioning that escape goes back, partially for that reason but also because some game quit in response to pressing escape. It's good to make it clear that your game doesn't.

When the warp rings were misaligned, I had trouble finding them, because I didn't realize there was a doorway downward from the fuel room. I think an indication on top of the walls of what sort of wall they are would help with that.

When I reached the first planet, I had the diagnostics menu up due to just exploring what was there. I'm not sure if that's why, but the menu disappeared without actually leaving the menu, resulting in the game not being responsive.

I wish GMS2 would pause while not focused. I think I made the initial warp attempt harder because of trying to type up feedback while time was still passing.

FYI, works awesome on Linux with Wine.

(The compatibility layer. But probably drinking is also OK.)

I can barely contain my excitement!

Y'all don't understand I've been counting down the days until this comes out ever since the last video. So excited!

read " Starstruck Vagabound" in my emails  and got excited

Oooooh this can fill my time until cyberpunk releases never

Something to truly get excited about. Looking forward to the finished game.

can’t wait to play this, I have been missing something like this since Objects in Space got abandoned

Been looking forward to this.