Spaghettify
✨ New in v0.5.0: bosses are too big to catch and fight back. They wander, charge at you along a red line, and each one has its own trick. Plus golden mini-bosses, a new look for planets and stars, and a touch mode setting. What's new
You are a tiny black hole. You start as a speck in the dust. You end as the reason there is no universe left.
Everything that falls in gets stretched into spaghetti. Runs are short: grow, eat as much as you can before you evaporate, then spend your mass on upgrades. Eat the boss of a stage to zoom out to the next scale.
1 · Dust. Grains, pebbles and ice. Your first boss is a boulder.
2 · Asteroids. Space junk, comets and showers of metal meteors. The dwarf planet dashes away and charges at you.
3 · Planets. Moons circle their planets and get flung away. The gas giant brings four of them.
4 · Stars. Pulsar beams sweep you aside, blue giants swell up and go supernova.
5 · Galaxies. Rival black holes grow, hunt you and run from you. They are worth eating.
6 · Universe. Filaments and superclusters. Then the stars close in, and you eat the universe itself.
- 68 upgrades in a glowing tree: accretion disk, relativistic jets, companion holes, supernovas and more
- A boss and a twist for every stage, no stage plays like the one before
- 18 optional challenges, a bronze, silver or gold medal for every stage and 27 achievements
- Short runs, steady progress: about 1.5–2 hours to the end, more if you chase every medal
- Mouse, keyboard, gamepad or touch: play in the browser, on Windows or Linux, or on your phone, and move your save between them with a save code
- English and German
This game changes with your comments. A few things that came from them:
- Bosses you cannot just catch and wait out anymore: they wander, charge and each has its own trick, after Zakkeh and others found them too easy (v0.5.0)
- The pulse now pulls in everything it hits while you move, a slower start and a visible accretion disk, thanks to Zakkeh (v0.4.2). A Linux build came from HotAppleMaligaros asking for one
- A bigger playfield with a following camera, and a fullscreen switch that fixes the blurry browser picture, thanks to Fuzzzy420 and HotAppleMaligaros (v0.4.1)
- Every stage got its own twist after Hexx_Vixtar found the later stages too similar (v0.3.0)
- P to pause, and exotic grains that twinkle and stay worth catching, thanks to neutrophil257 (v0.4.0)
- A softer supernova sound for PhoenixInDaBox, who got 100 % in one sitting (v0.2.3)
Tell me where it got boring, what was unclear and how far you got. Leave a comment below!
Made with Godot. Developed with AI assistance (code and text). The graphics are shaders and all sound is synthesized from code, so no AI-generated images or music.
Download
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Development log
- v0.5.0: Bosses that fight back, golden mini-bosses and a new look7 hours ago
- v0.4.2: The pulse never misses, a calmer start, and a Linux build19 hours ago
- v0.4.1: A bigger playfield, a camera that follows you, and a fix for the blurry...1 day ago
- v0.4.0: A new upgrade tree, a real Big Crunch and lots of settings2 days ago
- v0.3.0: Every stage plays differently2 days ago
- v0.2.3: Play on your phone, a calmer supernova, and a fixed check mark3 days ago
Comments
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Thanks for the Linux build!
Feature request: Add P to pause. Esc leaves fullscreen before pausing.
Also, in stage 6, it is hard to tell exotic grains and filaments apart.
Thanks, both are great points! P to pause is coming in the next update (v0.4.0). Esc keeps working too, and the browser version will also pause when you switch tabs. Exotic grains will twinkle with a small cross, so you can tell them apart from filaments in stage 6.
Thanks. My point about exotic grains was due to stability being capped by a variable named "max_stability" which is the reason the first few exotic grains reset the stability meter but also cause the later ones to be worthless – I found a variable named "stability_gain_falloff" and set to .85 by default, so the 1st EG adds 2 s, the 2nd adds 1.7 s, etc., but e. g. the 50th adds 2*.85^49 s, which is less than 1 ms. I guess the reason for this "falloff" variable is to prevent absurdly long runs, and the only difference between EGs and filaments is (or if one sees this after 0.4.0 comes out, was) that EGs are abruptly bright, and filaments have more gradual brightness increase.
You're right, thanks for digging into this! I measured it: in stage 6 only about 1 in 8 grains per run still did anything, and grains eaten at full stability were wasted but still made the next ones weaker. In v0.4.0, grains you eat at full stability no longer count toward the falloff, so about 3x as many stay useful in stage 6. The twinkle also fades as the next grain gets less valuable, so you can see what it is worth. The falloff itself stays, it keeps runs from going on forever.
The game was fun at first, but the longer it goes on, the less entertaining it is. Once you were done with the 1st area and expand to the next, the gameplay just boils down to go right, click, go left, click, go right, click, etc, etc. I took until the 4th area where it introduce new pulsar mechanic that periodically push your black hold away, but the effect is so minimal that it basically changes nothing gameplay wise. only once it reach the 5th area where it introduce rival black holes that make you want to play differently, but even then they're not really that worth it to consume. The gameplay was fun and satisfying at first, but it doesn't really change much as you progress.
I want to complete the game, but it gets too tedious and boring that I don't think I'm willing to continue past the 5th area. If possible, please introduce new mechanic that alters your gameplay so that each level is interesting without stretching it out too much by making the upgrades significantly harder to buy.
Thanks a lot, this is exactly the feedback I needed. You're right: after the first stage the runs feel too similar, and the pulsars and rivals barely change how you play.
The next update is all about that. Every stage gets a mechanic that changes how you move: rotating pulsar beams to dodge, rivals that grow, hunt you and are actually worth eating, stars that blow up into supernovas, meteor showers and orbiting moons. Bosses will behave differently too. And I won't stretch the game by making upgrades more expensive.
I'll post a devlog when it's out. Would be great if you gave it another try then!
The update is out! Every stage now has its own twist: meteor showers, orbiting moons, pulsar beams to dodge, exploding blue giants, and rivals that grow and run from you. Bosses behave differently too, and the late stages are shorter instead of longer. Details here: v0.3.0: Every stage plays differently. Would love to hear if it feels better now!
On Firefox, the characters left to the achievements' name shows up as a box with "2713". I found that this is the check mark, which should look like this: ✓
Thanks for the feedback, I'm on it. Any other problems?
Fixed in v0.2.3! The check mark is now drawn by the game itself, so it shows up in every browser. Thanks again for reporting it and for figuring out it was the ✓ character.
100%ed your game in a single try!
Here’s my little feedback: the only thing I didn’t like was the reaction chain/supernova sound, it just rubs me the wrong way (especially in late game where you chain these sounds)
Thanks for playing and completing my game, im reworking the sound. Any other problems or feedback for balancing etc.?
not much :P
The new supernova sound is live in v0.2.3: lower, softer, quieter, and it can't stack up as fast in the late game anymore. Let me know if it sits better now! Also, 100% in 1:20 h is faster than I planned, so that's really useful for balancing.