FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD39 → Unlit

Unlit

By xdegtyarev

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1823.7362
Fun1763.5862
Innovation4503.0162
Theme5143.3662
Graphics2583.9562
Audio1083.7862
Humor3952.4555
Mood1513.7461

Comments

badosz 2017-08-01 09:15

Love Graphics!

johnnyc1423 2017-08-01 09:24

Looks really polished! Great job!

oursbleu 2017-08-01 09:25

The graphics and sounds made the overall mood very pleasing, but the lack of checkpoints made the game very frustrating.

dankar 2017-08-01 09:26

Cool game! Nice graphics and I really like the sound of the footsteps.

vlad-chechyotkin 2017-08-01 09:27

Great atmosphere and very good reenactment of classic gameplay. Although, I could use some checkpoints or something to save progress

vipbasil 2017-08-01 09:28

Actually is 5/5, but i think the control is a few strange WASD generally means w is moving in font of the character, i stuck with the old habit. But anyway it's an exceptional aesthetic.

tusadi 2017-08-01 09:30

Nice Game,Loved the sound effects.And i fall in love with anything that has neon effects...

jemsmith 2017-08-01 09:34

Hiya - I really liked this entry, good job! I really enjoyed the minimal graphics and moody audio, so despite the simplistic graphics, you created quite a tense and ominous feeling.

I had two main issues with the game:

1) It's pretty unforgiving, which provides a nice level of challenge, but as an impatient gamer I would've liked some checkpoints (ideally at the light orbs). That could just be me though. For jam games, I favor being able to play the whole game over being overly challenged.

2) The light mechanic fits really well with the theme, but I wasn't watching the bar at the top. Instead, I was expecting the scene to get darker and darker, until a point that it was obvious that I'd lose. Having the player suddenly lose without being able to see that in the world feels a little jarring. Also, having the light diminish to a small ring around the player as they run out of time could provide some interesting challenge (ie. having to memorize the last few steps to get to a light orb).

Overall, really good job!

boxfort 2017-08-01 10:36

Very nice graphics and responsive controls, i would've liked to have seen some more variety in obstacles. I also encountered a glitch where I clipped through a wall and fell out of the map. Apart from that good game!

rapter 2017-08-01 10:54

Great atmosphere , Nice game!

nek 2017-08-01 11:38

The graphics and the audio fit perfectly,i didnt like the movement much but the animations were fine,great job overall.

ohmaigawd 2017-08-01 12:00

I like the graphics, sound and the controls but it's quite a rage game. I didn't finish it, I couldn't do the part after the second light.

chakramgl 2017-08-01 13:07

Cool game. Great game design. Quickly get into the game stream. GJ

pixelproductions 2017-08-01 21:43

Nice graphics ! The difficulty is the best of the game.

xdegtyarev 2017-08-02 10:29

@chakramgl @ohmaigawd @nek @rapter @boxfort @jemsmith @tusadi @vipbasil @vlad-chechyotkin @dankar @oursbleu @johnnyc1423 @badosz Hey, everyone. Thank you guys for your feedback. Actually we fixed a bug with checkpoints, so now all Light Spheres saves your progress as planned. Hope you enjoy it! Game is still pretty challenging but now more fair :)

mufinmcflufin 2017-08-02 21:46

Given these comments, I feel like the only one who didn't really care for this entry. Being a platformer, there was a lot of jumping around, timing movement and jumping with obstacles (spikes), and finding checkpoints, but that seems to have been all of the gameplay there was to this game. There aren't any decisions to make, no creativity on behalf of the player (other than perhaps finding new routes, but there aren't many opportunities for that), few mechanics to work with, only timing your movement to run from safe-spot to safe-spot before spikes kill you in-between.

I ran into several glitches while playing the game that definitely hampered the experience with unnecessary deaths: the spikes that come from floating ceiling pieces can still kill the player if they walk against the side of a wall that contains the spikes (example after checkpoint 5) (check player hitbox and make sure it's not overlapping into the wall when moving against the wall), the player can clip through some wall corners while falling (example after checkpoint 7, when falling down to the first challenge area after checkpoint 5) (not sure what to recommend to do to remedy this one), and lastly the checkpoints themselves can be very glitchy at times, sometimes spawning you about 5 blocks or so above their location, and they apparently have a hitbox you can jump through and stand on top of (make sure they only act as a collider, unless this is intended).

The checkpoints that are in areas that will kill you are just plain frustrating because you cannot control when you respawn, so you may sit there and wait until you die 2 extra times before you have a chance to move. This would be much less of an issue if the game waited until spikes/blocks were not literally directly in your hitbox when you spawn, and would still retain the challenge of some of the checkpoints will kill you if you wait there too long.

The camera can take a long time to pan back to the player if the player dies a far way away from their last checkpoint, which is frustrating when you know your next checkpoint is a ways away and you need all the time you can get to make it to the next checkpoint. It'd be nice if the camera would either snap back to the player, or move faster back to the player if it knows it has to move further. I can't tell if you already have a system like this in place, but if so, then reducing the time it takes for this snap-back to complete would be helpful.

Movement felt clunky to me, like the players movement was inconsistent and was jittering a lot, but after checking the game again, it seems that this is an issue with the camera snapping to the player at about 10-20Hz. It appears this camera snapping is handled via FixedUpdate, and would look a lot more smooth if it were instead on Update.

Lastly, I just didn't feel that the light/power/time between checkpoints ever gave the impression of being power, and this never gave me the feeling that I was Running Out Of Power. Besides death and slightly dimming the screen, power didn't appear to do much anything, so rather than feeling I was running out of power, it felt more like I had an obscured timer ticking down that displayed a (presumably empty) battery upon death. Perhaps if the light from the player was a bit more noticeable (it appears to be much more significant in your screenshots than in the actual game) and having that be reduced closer to death, or perhaps making the screen dim much more significant would better convey to players like myself who never got that intended feeling.

I'm glad you do still have people who enjoyed it, but I really didn't care for it in many ways.

tl;dr: Didn't enjoy the core gameplay and felt it didn't well fit the LD39 theme, but explained my several other gripes with the game and possible fixes for many issues and some bugs.

ganbaregameskyle 2017-08-02 23:16

Your game has great graphics, gameplay style, atmosphere. But it also has timed platforming with zero room for error that ruins the entire experience.

gamepopper 2017-08-03 20:54

Saw this on GamesPlusJames twitch stream. Really challenging and I like the use of monochrome colours and shading to distinctly show where to go and what to avoid. Shame there isn't a proper ending but this was a fun challenging platformer!

hav24 2017-08-03 20:57

Way to nice! :D I love the character and the level design. It is frustrating but in a good way! :D Maybe it would be better making a faster respawn? BTW great game! :)

grandtheftmarmot 2017-08-03 21:50

Wow wow wow. Joystick controls, web build, tribute to 1001 Spikes, amazing gameplay, amazing audio, amazing minimalist visuals. What a treat.

m-1 2017-08-05 16:24

Nice visuals, audio and game name. :grin:

The game could be easier to play by making the checkpoints more dense and making the spikes deadly only when standing/falling on them (not running into them when they are already out). But this way it is more challenging.

Jolly good game!

zyow 2017-08-05 18:57

I had few lags on the web player but the game is cool and has a good atmosphere. Good job!

player2point0 2017-08-06 22:58

A beautiful and well polished game. But very frustrating to play.

asofi 2017-08-07 08:08

Great audio and graphics! Also a little bug: I felt down and survived)

xdegtyarev 2017-08-07 08:38

@asofi @mufinmcflufin Thank you for feedback. Well, there are a lot of bugs still (colliders on walls and spikes, controls)and more major design issues like misplaced Checkpoints, no proper ending and so on, we've fixed most critical - Not working Checkpoints, and decided to not touch all gameplay, balance and new features involved parts, coz it's against the rules as we know them. Maybe in post compo version or, if we'll decide to keep working on this project, in full game :)

randomphantom 2017-08-07 14:22

Well this proves that precision platformer in a 3d format isn't really such a great idea, but at least you tried and really ambitious that you did a 3d platformer for ludum dare. Controls and camera is pretty smooth so thumbs up on that - really hard to get right for a 3d platformer. Very cool atmosphere and nice graphics, but the spikes could be more sensible, as it is right now just touching them on the non-spikey side will kill you, and even touching the block that drops down on the side kills you although its not a spiky surface which is not very reasonable. The really tight timing of the spikes is also another aspect that I find ludicrous although I guess you're aiming for a frustration platformer feel. The insta-death on respawn is hilarious but less so after the 5th time.

orcdraco 2017-08-07 15:31

Graphics, sounds and animation are beautifully done. Gameplay is fun and challenging too :)

willdata 2017-08-07 21:36

I'd have to agree with @mufinmcflufin on a lot of issues apparent in the entry, but I actually did enjoy it. With some more fine tuning I could see this being a fantastic game. I think a larger jump or double jump actually would have helped with a bit of my issues with the game mechanically. All in all, nice work!

shell-pirate 2017-08-08 10:08

A solid entry! I liked the graphics they were nice and ambient, and it's not as often that we see a 3D LD game. The sound design was okay as well - some very minimalistic but fitting music and a nice punch to the sounds. The gameplay wasn't anything special, to be honset, but it worked well for the most part. I encountered a few glitches you've already probably been alerted of such as spike hitbox issues, checkpoints positioned directly in the path of spike traps as well as the ability to sometimes jump in the air and stay afloat there if you hold down the jump button (particularly after respawning). The theme could have also been integrated better as I found I never had to keep in mind the power meter and thus it became rather arbitrary. In a game about waiting and timing your advances from safe zone to safe zone perhaps a timer isn't the best fitting feature anyway. All in all though, I can't knock your effort, plus this entry was fairly solid despite my critiques.

schu 2017-08-08 20:54

Personally, this doesn't seem to me to be a great entry for this theme. It seems moreso to be a platformer involving light used as checkpoints. And the platforming aspects weren't very innovative but overall I enjoyed the game.

thaaks 2017-08-11 19:24

Visuals and sound are nice. But I found the jumping and timing to be unforgiving. Managed to get the second light bulb but then I was stuck. Seems my little guy can't jump two blocks up. There were also some glitches where my figure was 1 block too high in the air and then suddenly fell down. Also I missed the theme - where is the power running down anywhere? Did I miss that? The mood of the game is good, so overall a good entry. Just needs some more polish.

elysiagriffin 2017-08-14 05:42

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/165203584?t=07h07m30s

Here’s my live playthrough of Unlit on https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin :)

prodigalson 2017-08-17 19:19

This was fun and challenging but in a rewarding way. The avatar is cute, the animations are perfect for the avatar, I like the death effect, and checkpoints save so much. I enjoyed it a lot, thank you

franklins-ghost 2017-08-19 15:07

The minimal colours and aesthetics worked really well in this. Liked the gameplay mechanic and how difficult it was to make your way past all the spikes. Fun challenge. The checkpoints was a nice saver cause even though it was difficult it never felt too punishing to the player in that as you made past hard parts you got that little head start each time.

carsen-d 2017-08-19 20:34

Really great mood and fun gameplay. The jumping and movement felt very tight, and also very satisfying just from the nice walking sound effect! i enjoyed it quite a bit!

webthingee 2017-08-24 01:05

Very entertaining, like the character movements a lot. The explosions were very rewarding.