FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD39 → Potential Energy

Potential Energy

By carsen-d

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2523.6146
Fun4123.1645
Innovation5152.9046
Theme4023.5145
Graphics6422.9046
Audio693.9545
Mood154.3745

Comments

rb2750 2017-08-01 03:02

Laggy and couldn't get it to properly work -sorrryy

2017-08-01 03:41

Cool story, the green guy blocked me in and I couldn't finish the game.

justine-griffin 2017-08-01 03:45

Cool concept. I liked the music and the lighting effects! Kind of has an eerie feeling. It was pretty hard to stay on the blocks though.

cnoble 2017-08-01 03:46

I think you really nailed the mood with this one. I'd be down to playing this style of a game for a couple hours! Keep it up :)

barret907k 2017-08-01 04:22

Very good atmosphere. Didn't realize I had to press E a bunch to get the whole story. Was fun.

carsen-d 2017-08-01 04:29

@aurynsky-games Thanks for pointing that out. It's been fixed!

@barret907k I'll update the description to let others know, thanks!

herniewise 2017-08-01 18:22

The real hero was the green fat guy! Pretty good atmosphere, liked it!

tolmera 2017-08-01 18:24

Wooooowwwww!!! Dude I've never been in such suspense when looking at blocks! The story was great! The guy at the start who's scared of the flickering light! the child talking to it's daddy. So many little victories as well, from the first climb to flip the switch for the elevator! To that gut drop feeling when the floor falls away from you! wooooww :)

High points for graphics as well, you tied it all together so well, the change in tempo when you reach the reactor door, everything! it's brilliant.

I thought when I reached the end of the shaft and heard the conversation, "oh well I must be able to drop in behind the reactor door, just a different way in" Ended up having to do the climb again :) But it was so worth it.

schizoid2k 2017-08-01 19:03

I loved it... great mood in this game. I wanted to play this all the way to the end. Congrats.

connor-hagan 2017-08-01 22:02

You managed to convey a really powerful experience using extremely simple art assets, very very good job. The music definitely adds a ton to the game, and it's absolutely beautiful. You did really well with the lighting too. Really good job!

I also wanted to add, most other games built gameplay mechanics about running out of power, but I really loved how you took the theme and made a story about it!

maskinmask 2017-08-02 06:20

So fucking great man.

matt-fabius 2017-08-02 06:29

Love the game! It's got a great atmosphere, and I enjoyed the dialogue. You did a great job making minimal art look good. My only complaint is that it always feels awkward in platforming when you bump your head on things and there was a good bit of that. Overall, great game for a game jam!

ultrarat 2017-08-02 06:37

The music and the lighting works well together, very much accomplishes your moody goal. Kind of wish first jumping bits weren't such a long fall as I kept hitting the roofs of other platforms and it took awhile to reset so I forgot the first story lines.

timothy-hoffman 2017-08-02 06:46

Easily the best mood I've seen yet in this competition. Bravo. I think the only thing I would change would be to change the default Unity text.

carsen-d 2017-08-02 07:18

@matt-fabius @ultrarat Yeah hitting your head on platforms is a bit of a problem. I've fixed them all at this point, but I'm not sure if it's in the spirit of the jam to update it right now, as they aren't necessarily game-breaking. Thanks for soldiering through it though!

chaoseed 2017-08-02 08:19

Pretty well done. The squares were, you know, just squares, but the lighting effects were quite nice. The platforming was...sort of okay; there were a couple places where I kind of got stuck for a moment, and it kind of broke the flow of the game. (I must have jumped, missed and landed on the green guy about ten times!) The minimal story worked pretty well...although, I don't know, I wasn't quite sure what the point of it was, in the end. Seems like there's only one ending, and it's a "bad" ending? It just seems like "You try to do something but ultimately you can't do anything" is an unsatisfying sort of premise for a game. Maybe that's just my personal preferences, though!

Ultimately I think you did a great job of coming up with an idea that was coherent, playable, expressed emotion...and was constrained enough to implement in a weekend!

javier-diez 2017-08-02 08:57

Oh man this game reminds me so much to Thomas was alone. It has been a fantastic experience. Thanks for this.

otiv 2017-08-02 09:08

As everyone else is saying great mood. For some reason, that platform jumps reminded me a lot of jumping in FPS games 5+ years ago on jumping servers. Great mood, fun play as well. The theme fits well but I was expecting a bit more to it.

remzo 2017-08-02 09:12

This was awesome! I really like the double use of the theme. The lighting was minimal but effective, the platforming was challenging but not frustrating and the story was short but sweet. I really enjoyed this game, nice work!

relinke 2017-08-02 10:00

Awesome! I love the music! But some scene is too dark when red light is too bright, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

neweichgames 2017-08-02 19:36

Great music and loved the elevator lights but some of the lights were a little to bright which made me couldn't see some of the text. Great story line.

bombjack 2017-08-02 19:59

Thomas wasn't alone anymore ? I like the mood of your game. The music and the lighting plays an essential role in this atmosphere. The last jump of the first room is so difficult for me that I abandonned it.

improx-games 2017-08-02 20:01

Beautiful music, horribly loud sound effects. I loved the atmosphere but the gameplay just didn't match. The jumping puzzles were unnecessarily frustrating.

P.S. I think you're using the Text component currently? Consider using Text Mesh Pro which was recently acquired by Unity and is free on the Asset Store. It makes your text appear so much sharper and just better-looking.

kapricorn-media 2017-08-02 22:16

Interesting! The fact that you talk to boxes under spotlights adds to the dreamy, broken reality atmosphere.

kubenexion 2017-08-03 11:40

It's a good game, I like the lights effects and the music.

The end seems a little bit brutal, but you have a good mood.

markwolf 2017-08-03 12:06

Like the others I was impressed by the mood, subtile use of lights, the story and the fabulous sound track. But I had a hard time to control the player. I feel there is some collision problem as my character stick to often on the ground and refuse to move after a jump. I feel that the emotional part of your game, which is quite impressive, would be even more powerful if you could replace abstract characters by human (designed) ones.

chris-coe 2017-08-03 17:59

Whoaaaa, that is emotionally dark!

The jump right after the Green Fellow was REALLY hard, and I had to do it over and over. I was grateful that a checkpoint was offered a bit later, but I didn't have to use it.

Up in the duct at the end, it seemed there was an option to Listen to the people below, but it was only accessible by jumping, which would then cause the message to immediately disappear. :(

Great job on the lighting. It really helped set the mood. The music was a great choice.

Thanks for making this and sharing it with us! Pretty neat.

teddydd 2017-08-15 09:54

You told great story using really simple art and gameplay. Great job!

yetman 2017-08-15 23:54

Talking rectangles... reminds of Thomas was alone. The lighting was nice but needed some shadows IMO. the story was intriguing too. Overall. it was fun.

josehzz 2017-08-16 02:58

The story was well done and music amazing, I think a little more polish on the lighting would do wonders. Overall great entry the mood was perfect.

ace17 2017-08-17 20:00

Cool how you get to make rectangles have feelings :-) Nice music, fits the "colony rebellion" mood perfectly! However, I found the platformer parts - and especially the use of a physics engine - didn't really fit with the rest of the game, which is more story-oriented. Also, it's not clear if there's only one ending or many, however the game is long, and going through the whole of it just to try not-to-jump into the safe is tedious.

galaxstudios 2017-08-19 07:56

Cool story and good concept. Keep it up!

somnium 2017-08-19 08:41

Fantastic atmosphere! The story, music and lighting effects works very well together. The game was a bit too dark at some points, at least on my monitor and daylight conditions, but the resulting mood was excellent!

It was nice to play a more story-focused and less action-heavy platformer, and the story was enjoyable. Nice work!

>Rebels in the dark, >threatening our colony. >I must do something!

yuigoto 2017-08-19 18:37

Great mood and really nice take on the theme! It kinda reminded me a bit about Thomas was Alone, but with a more darker and "human" nature. :) It was really nice and enjoyable to play, nice work on the history, though the visuals looked too dark sometimes (might be my brightness here), but I really liked it! :)

Good job there! :D

vulpem 2017-08-20 10:25

Interesting take on the topic. Even if it's a pretty simple platformer, it's got the atmosphere and the story which make it shine. It really reminded of "Thomas was alone", probably because of the lighting, or the cube-story base. Overall, pretty interesting.

manumeq 2017-08-20 16:27

The atmosfere was perfect and drove me through the entire game, the dialogues where simple but gave enough information to keep you guessing and wanting to find out more. Won't say anything about graphics because clearly they were just made that simple. A little short too, if it were a couple of levels longer, it would be a super fantastic story driven game! Nice experiment for the Jam nonetheless!

2017-09-03 17:15

Intense story! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMCKWv94MN0