Edge of Known Space
You wake up from long-term cryosleep in a starship on an alien planet at the edge of known space. The rest of your team are missing. What happened?
"Edge of Known Space" is a single-screen micro-metriodvania with a sci-fi narrative. Discover clues and tools to reveal more of the map and more of the story. Explore the full map to piece together what happened
- Game and narrative unfold on a single screen
- Metrodvania inspired mechanics presented in a classic roguelike game engine
- Progression unlocks both the story and the map
- Multiple unique terrains and item upgrades
On mobile, tap game screen when you see "press Enter," tap an item at the bottom to activate it, and use the virtual joystick (when it appears) to move.
Tip if you get stuck: use your tools. Each tool can make new areas of the map accessible, or add new features to areas you've already explored. Don't forget to keep checking your terminal to find hidden logs.
This game was made with the following wonderful assets and tools:
- Built on the rot.js engine
- Sci-fi music from alkakrab
- ASCII map designed on ASCII-mapper
- Title ASCII font is computer.flf by Mike Rosulek
- Built with typescript and vite
Development log
- Full game now available!55 days ago
- Jam end postmortemDec 20, 2024
- Project status as end of jam approachesNov 30, 2024
- Starting to feel like a game!Nov 23, 2024
- Tech stack exploration (with rot.js)Nov 10, 2024
- InceptionNov 06, 2024
Comments
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I'm worried I made a mistake here... [deleted]
Nope, just needed to pay more attention, and I'm glad I came back to find what I'd missed. Really fun!
Thanks for playing! Glad you found a way forward :)
This is a really, really impressive game. I love the concept of using ASCII art for a metroidvania, and your use of color and light intensity, the feeling of refraction when in among the crystals, etc., really breathed life into the idea. The way the narrative and new areas cascaded was very well designed, and I thought the difficulty level was perfect -- frustrating/puzzling at times, but I always wanted to keep prodding and pushing to figure it out (I played to the end). I haven't played ASCII games much (or at all?) so I'm not sure what's drawn from the classics, but the way the terrain had its own set of rules that you made learnable to the user was very creative and fun. It's also very difficult to
make games where the player truly looks forward to reading the narrative texts, but you accomplished that for me here. My experience in submitting to a recent SuperMVM was that it doesn't generate too many comments, which was a reason I came here to try out some entries -- so glad I did, and I hope this game caught some people's attention. Awesome work! I'll watch out for your future games!
Hi Hinman, thank you for such nice feedback! I'm so happy to hear that all the elements I tried to put into the game came through for you. Making games is fun but hard work, and hearing player's experiences like yours is what makes it all worthwhile! Thank you.
By the way, I checked out all of your games and I think they are great. You really have a nice pixel art style, but what stood out to me the most was your strong sense of composition on the screen and dramatic/comedic timing in your narrative elements.
Thanks so much for playing my games and for the kind words -- I appreciate it! It is a lot of work to build even short games (I'm trying to keep myself on task on building a new game now) and it's always great to hear what people liked (or didn't). Thanks again!
i played the jam version a while back during i think mvm26. this turned out really good! i love the power slowly dwindling and then you get an infinite even more powerful version of all the tools. figuring out what you needed to do at the end was very natural. very cool! would love to see more of this since it's pretty unique in terms of the genre.
Hi, thank you for the kind words! I'm happy to hear that you came back to play the final version, and that you enjoyed it. Thanks for the feedback on the ending too, it's sometimes hard to tell if puzzles are too easy or too hard.
I agree that the mix of game engine and genre is unique and interesting, and I want to do more with it. I started experimenting with another game that uses the same engine but for a different kind of game - it's a Jurassic themed ASCII roguelike open world survival procedurally generated game thing... I've posted the early prototype at https://enegames.itch.io/thunder-lizard-eat-or-be-eaten if you want to follow along :)
had a lot of fun w this! took me a bit 2 figure out riding in the EV tho lol...
wallahi
I managed to go out of the map and I am not sure if it was intentional. I could re-pickup the crystals but the upgraded equipment was then downgraded. Before that I could not find a way to navigate the EV out of the bottom left corner - It would either be blocked by the crystals because I could not use the light, or go out of range in the upper right.
Thanks for letting me know. At least one other player discovered this too -- it is not intentional, it is a bug. Sorry about that! I have made a fix and re-uploaded the game, so if you play again you should be able to get to the same spot you were and finish the game in the correct way. You are almost at the end. With the new version you should have a bigger range to be able to figure out the final puzzle. Thanks for letting me know, and sorry again that you ran into the bug. Thanks for playing :)
And finished! Great stuff! The going out of the map could potentially be something to consider in a different project.
Engaging story and just very impressed with how classic rogue graphics and a metroidvania could be pulled off so well.
Awesome. Thank you so much for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed it :)
Does this end in the crystal forest after finding Balthar? I agree with your assessment on metroidvania and classic rogue graphics, it makes for an interesting and enjoyable combination.
Yes, it ends there for now, but more is coming soon. Check back or follow for updates on the full release. Thanks for playing!
I wanted to let you know that the full game is now released if you want to play the full version.
Awesome! I will give it a go :)