It’s a small world… but it wants to get bigger.

MOVE your small world by clicking the mouse. ACQUIRE MASS by sucking space debris, spacecraft and intergalactic organisms into your gravitational pull. AVOID larger objects until you have acquired enough MASS to absorb them into orbit.

Made with GameMaker 2 for the 34th GM48 (our first game jam). Sprites and sound made with Piskel, BeepBox and as3sfxr.

© 2020 Spirited Software

Nuts and bolts: Nick

Sound and vision: Dave

Known bugs:
  • Best time (high score) counter doesn't function correctly - it actually records your worst time 😂
  • It's sometimes possible to get stuck when colliding with other objects (press ESC to quit to the title screen if you can't get unstuck)
  • When the game is restarted without exiting, the title music may play instead of the main theme
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  • Nyveon
    Patron

    Beat in 201. It was nice to have a relaxing game for a change.

    My main feedback is that the collision stuck bug is pretty annoying. I got stuck in about 4 playthroughs before I got thep laythroguh where I beat the game. But the art is really nice, the references in the art as well.And overall the game has a very satisfying and chill feel to it.

    Enjoyed it a lot, well done!

  • havik
    Patron

    Sweet game! Simple idea, well executed! I wish there was an ending though - like a dark twist where the sun comes over and eats the planet so all our hard work to get bigger was for nothing ... 'we got too big'! Definitely a moral of the story there haha.

    The controls were quite floaty but then again - we are moving a planet so... can't expect them to be too precise. Good job!

  • Veralos
    Lv. 38

    Cool game. There's isn't much challenge to it but it's still fun collecting stuff. I like the amount of detail in having so many different objects to collect. The mini-map in the corner was also a nice touch. The music is good and the sound effects work well. It can cometimes be unclear what you can absorb and what you can't, but that's a pretty minor complaint.

  • Tero Hannula
    Patron

    Aah, I would have loved to get bigger and bigger until I would have sun orbiting me :) I am the captain now

    It was relaxing game, and there were lot of small details, space whales, giant baby from Space Odyssey, Ufo and green men, and so on. I liked the details ^^ The controls were bit awkward though, planet suddenly stopping when touches mouse.

  • Steve Rynders
    Lv. 1

    I loved it! I loved all the space stuff to go around and collect, especially the space whale!

    Music was nice, I would have lked a little bit of gravity to suck in smaller objects the larger I got - and it would have been nice to lose a little mass if I hit something too big, but I can see how that would be tricky if you didn't want the person to accidentally lose all changes of winning.

    I loved the twinkling effect on the stars and the objects on the minimap. That was really nicely done.

  • CZoo
    Lv. 1

    I loved this game!!! It's so cute and the music is so relaxing. I love all the little objects. I would also like the world to make cute little noises too. Otherwise it's awesome!!!

  • Hyper Freeze Games
    Lv. 17

    Very cool game, I had a lot of fun playing it! I think what really makes it shine are the little hidden things like the deathstar, the enterprise, or the hint that the space shuttle collided with the aliens (or maybe I interpreted to much into it haha). I had hoped you would be able to absorb everything, but then the game ended, but I already read that you wanted to implement that :D

    Really reminded me of Osmos, which is a game I really like!

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    Really fun and simple game, and really well polished. I'm just a little disappointed that I didn't get to eat the sun at the end.

    Shrinkoban
    Submitted

    Shrinkoban

    • Nick
      Lv. 4
      Nick Coder of Orbit Absorb It

      3yrs ago

      Thanks for the positive feedback. Up until a few hours before submission there were other planets in the game with their own orbits and gravity, the idea being that you would swallow them and later the sun, but we ran out of time to make it work properly so took them out.

  • Deathbreth
    Lv. 11

    Na-nanananana-nana Space Katamari Damacy........Awesome game!

  • Chris
    Patron

    I found the Death Star! Fun game but for me it ended when I phased into an asteroid and the sound effect was stuck on loop and I was stuck in the asteroid. Other than that it was awesome

    • Nick
      Lv. 4
      Nick Coder of Orbit Absorb It

      3yrs ago

      Glad you liked it. :) Sorry to hear you encountered the getting stuck issue! I'd like to say it was a 'feature' ('phasing' into an asteroid sounds very sci-fi!), but it's just poor programming on my part! It's our first game jam and first gamemaker game.

  • serialkamikaze
    Lv. 5

    I loved to play the game!

    Nice art and different items, few items I had to look again to check if I see correctly! I managed to get all the rings filled up and my best time was 402.43.

    Musics fits very well to the game and those sound effects was a good choice to increase the "space vibes"

    P.S I had the "Unable to find game!!" -error when I tried to play the game just after I downloaded and unzipped it. But I managed to get it working after I moved it to the following folder (it seems that it created this folder when it tried to start the game): /Users/username/Library/Application Support/software.spirited

    Tested with macOS Catalina 10.15.4

    • Nick
      Lv. 4
      Nick Coder of Orbit Absorb It

      3yrs ago

      Thanks for the positive feedback. Glad you liked the game :)

      I got the same issue on macOS 10.15.4. The folder you mentioned is created to store the high scores. I think moving the game to any folder outside of the one you downloaded it to should work-around the problem. I'm not sure if it's something wrong with the game or a GameMaker bug?

  • illdie
    Lv. 12

    Straightforward and nice. I guess this is the logical conclusion of Katamari. Also the tagline "It's a small world, but it wants to get bigger" is the cutest thing I've ever heard haha

    Edit: I forgot to mention but I got stuck on an object I couldn't pick up, it kept playing the collision sound every frame for a couple of seconds until I got dislodged.

    • Nick
      Lv. 4
      Nick Coder of Orbit Absorb It

      3yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback. Dave came up with the cute tagline. :)

      Fixing the getting stuck issue is the number one thing I would improve. It's our first game jam and first gamemaker game (outside of following tutorials) so we have a lot to learn! I'll start brushing up on collisions and physics etc!

  • The Great Gatsby
    Lv. 9

    fun! a little hard to move around, but I enjoyed it

  • Yosi
    Lv. 46

    This is a super fun game! It's very satisfying to watch all of the things orbiting around the planet at the end :D