Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → Hungry Harry's Climb
By pbg
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 49 | 3.94 | 59 | |
| Fun | 61 | 3.80 | 59 | |
| Innovation | 285 | 3.20 | 57 | |
| Theme | 364 | 3.45 | 59 | |
| Graphics | 83 | 3.96 | 59 | |
| Audio | 156 | 3.35 | 59 | |
| Humor | 205 | 2.77 | 46 | |
| Mood | 121 | 3.48 | 54 |
Fun game! I dont know what this PICO thing is but really nice retro feel to the sounds and graphics. The generated levels felt balanced enough though some were quite a bit of randomness to how difficult they were, pretty sure one I got was unwinnable. The game felt really detailed and polished only thing I was missing was some enemies like you said. Overall great submission.
It's so hard for me :P Also,what's the purpose for digging?
Thanks for playing guys!
@khorm pico8 is a very minimalist development environment utilizing Lua (same language as the LOVE engine). In my opinion it is the fastest way to put a game together, although it has some harsh limits (128*128 resolution, 32kb storage). It's worth checking out https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
@rngsilvercraft Yea, I agree it is maybe too difficult right now. My original vision involved you gaining more powers as you eat mushrooms, so the harder levels would be better balanced. Also, there was originally going to be buried treasure, hence the dig command. Digging is still a bit useful for getting to areas you couldn't otherwise, but I agree it is not super useful
Super fun to control Hungry Harry and jump and climb and BURP. I'm not very good at it, but I had a blast playing. Your sounds are awesome, I actually turned my speakers up.
Fun retro style, nice effects, too. I'm not very good at platformers so I couldn't finish it though, there were places where I couldn't see any way out. I liked the sense of urgency that the mushroom meter brings but maybe it would be more fun with some other obstacles, not just a race against the clock. Great job though!
Thanks for playing! @h.attila I agree that the game needs more than just the clock. The big things i missed due to time constraints were 1) some music, 2) more powerups to make it easier, and 3) enemies. Admittedly, i think the game throws an impossible level at you rarely, but i did not have time to test enemies to make sure they didn't ruin things.
Solid game -- I really enjoyed grabbing walls and the color pallete.
By the way, when I press jump twice, I get the jump sound twice, even though this game does not have double jump -- you might want to look into that.
I don't think that the game need enemies, but a clock for speedrunning would be cool.
Thanks for the great game!
Very fun and challenging, didnt reach the end. Controls could be worked on as I had issues with some elements in the level although I assume that is what you was going for. Great game overall, really enjoyed playing it.
Amazing game :)! Art was very clean and clear, solid sfx, fluid movement, and overall lots of fun. Also the game is very easy to pickup learn. My only issue is the controls(z to jump), but that's just my bias.
I really liked this game as a toy, the climbing mechanics felt pretty good when I was trying to go up as fast as I could. I did not get the rest of the point of the game, and just tried to go as high as I could. With some better level design and some interesting platform mechanics, this could become a very good hard platforming game =)
Simple and interesting gameplay. It can certainly be expanded latter. Good work!
I was not able to finish it. Most of the time I ended at the start of the climb 3. On my first run I was unable to detect what was the exit, I was thinking the game was unfinished, and found it only by chance before I gave up. Some blinking up arrow would have help there. Apart of this I think this game generator is VERY good, I tried it 4x plays and each levels was unique and interesting, must have been a lot of hard work ou put into this. The control also feels good. Congrats !
Very good entry! I really liked the old-school 8-bit aesthetic both graphically and in the sound effects. It reminded me of Ice Climbers on the NES for whatever reason. I found the controls very responsive and the climbing satisfying. The random level generation is a (n)ice touch as well :D I do think more indication should be given to where exactly the exit is as I reached the top but wasn't able to find it before accidentally falling back down. I also think the energy mechanic was a little surface level as well, but it's a good game regardless. Great work!
Yay fun! This is a pretty satisfying experience, with nice crunchy graphics, sounds, and solid gameplay, and I enjoyed reading the texts every time you get a mushroom! Nice job
First game I actually wanted to finish, solid retro-styled entry.
It's visible that you put a lot of care in this. It is a fun platformer with a nice twist with the climbing and digging mechanics. You did a great job, congratulations! Also, super cute :)
A bit hard to get up but otherwise a fun game. My heart has a softspot for PICO-8 games very nice work there
Very charming platformer! Hungry Harry seems like a swell guy, I had fun with this. I like that you managed to get procedural level generation going, although the level difficulty wasn't always balanced as a result. The sound effects you've designed fit the game well, they have a very satisfying "crunch" to them.
The art was pretty cute overall, reminded me of the old ZX Spectrum-era in its own way. Good work, keep it up!
Bonus points for pico8! :P
The game is awesome man, congrats!
Love the physics and how you can walk over walls :D
Hi fellow Pico-8 user! I'm glad you didn't have time for ennemies as the game is already a bit difficult to me. When it comes to nimble platformers, I got ten thumbs:grimacing:. I had fun anyway, it's a nice and polished game, with a cute intro!
Love the simple yet well-thought-out design, dude! After reading your profile I also got interested in Pico8, so special props from me for using it. Good intuitive controls and mechanics. It's among the games I liked the most this time around, especially among compo ones, well done!
The audio is delightfully retro, and the climbing is super smooth and satisfying, the game is certainly enjoyable, though i think it would be more so with some enemies as you mentioned on the games page. also, on one occasion i accidentally dug through the floor at which point i was stuck unable to do anything, and had to refresh the page, could use a kill box for if that happens, or make it impossible.
Love the audio and the animations, and those little Chomps Harry makes are very cute. It was kind of tricky to navigate for me at first, but after playing it a few times, I got the hang of it. I think you could have made that first stage a little easier to allow players easier entry. Also, one glitch I noticed was if you dig all the way to the bottom of the first stage, there's no way to get out and you spawn in the second stage automatically if you touch a certain point. Glitch aside, great work and solid execution!
First : the character is so cute ! Second : the game is so fun ! Well done !
The movement mechanics are amazing. It makes the game very fun to navigate around, and if you can get the movement of a game to be fun, it makes the finished product that much more impressive. Congratulations on a fantastic entry!
Just played the game. Simple, but I loved it! I really liked the throwback to old cartridge games before even the intro, and having that really helped sell the aesthetic and sound design of the end product.
Have to ask though, are the levels randomly generated? I ask because the first level took me maybe around 5-10 minutes to beat, but then the next two took maybe 2 minutes for both. Not sure if that's just me getting a hang of the game, or if I got lucky (the third level basically had two climbable walls that led me straight through the entire thing)?
Great game, nice work! :)
I was half way, and I made harry starved because I can't find another way... :( The game was cute, the graphics are totally consistent as retro style which is cool. The only bug (which doesn't matter because it's just a look) I encounter is the sprite displays the wrong direction when you climb in the other direction. To reproduce, stand near to a wall, facing the other direction then hold the up arrow (image below). Regardless of that, the game still stood up for me. Great work :)
bug.png
The first level, I couldn't even seem to get off the bottom of the pit. The second level, I made it about 1/3 of the way up, but then either I couldn't find a way, or I'd gone up the wrong way too far to figure out how to get out of a dead end, or something. Engaging mechanics and fun 8-bit style. There seemed to be no purpose to digging, unless there was somehow a way to cut yourself a shelf to the side, but maybe I'm missing something. Nice work, though - cool animations, a complete effort, well done.
That was pretty damn fun. Really cute visuals, and the blue colors really add to the mood and the idea of being cold. Great job on this.
I like this game it has a good retro vibe, but the controls feel strange and uncomfortable, it misses things like wall jumps. The graphics look good and sound fits the game well. Very good game especially for a compo game.
@toadietechnika Yea, the animations are all a little janky - the wall-climb animation flips your sprite depending on what direction you were traveling prior to grabbing the wall, so its possible to fall backwards near a wall and trigger the wrong climbing animation. Likewise, there is only 1 frame for climbing the background, and this just gets flipped back and forth to animate it - this means if you climb a ceiling or wall ON TOP of a climbable background, your sprite flipflops.
@loadsofmana you broke it! The map memory of pico8 is wider than it is tall, so the play space in the game actaully loops around to give the illusion of being tall. Additionally, numbers in pico-8 are 16 bit, and once they hit a positicve or negative limit, they just loop around. If you dig out of the level, you will eventually fall so far that your y variable loops to the top of the level, triggering the win condition. I knew I should have made the level border indestructible :)
Thanks to everyone who has played! I am pretty happy with the base of this game, and I intend to take some time and finish it up into a fell-featured rogue-lite-platformer
The graphics are adorable, but the game itself is hard as nails (which isn't a bad thing), my only real complaint is that it is a bit too hard at points, I could only really get about half way up. All in all, great job!
Really cool concept but it was very frustrating having up be climb since im so programmed to jump with up and it caused me to mess up jumps a lot.
I recognized the icon in your name, and was like what game was that... then I saw your link to doba chaser and remember coming across it before, it was that stomp-and-kick platformer about knocking guys off the level!
Anyway, Hungry Harry's Climb is really nice. It has a cool atmosphere and a very nice control scheme. With so many controls and variations of terrain they can encounter, you could have messed that up so many ways, I feel... but this was well done. Most of the time the character did what I expected, but of course there were those times where I made one small mistake and slipped and fell way down. I took many falls early trying to experiment to learn the rules, which of course meant I was destined to starve until I could mentally plan correctly by knowing the rules.
I'm afraid I'm not very good at this game though, I never even beat level 1. I would climb and eventually not find a way up, and then I'd have an accident and fall trying to search. So even though the game is really good it created a disheartening feeling of no accomplishment when I kept failing.
But a very cool entry here - complex control scheme well-handled, great graphics and sound creating a nice atmosphere, and some interesting procgen terrain, all tied up with the theme nicely. Well done!
Nice little graphics! Having 5 speed mooshroom power-ups in Harry's veins feels so good!
What a game! I was so invested in Harry's survival that I played until the end. I really loved how the mushrooms affect the "running out of energy" mechanic (and theme) while they are also the basis of the progression system.
A very solid entry.
BTW, it seems that the game is infinite, right?
@pkenney thanks for the details on how you were having trouble. The most prominent feedback I've gotten is that the game is "too hard," but I want to know how to fix it. It sounds like your specific issue was falling in a big, open area. If I revisit this game, I plan on making the first level much more of a fixed path to follow.
When testing this game, I personally found that the fun part, for me, was trying to find a viable path up, and then executing on it by using several of harry's moves in combination, such as hanging from the ceiling and then jumping to a climbable background. However, I think this is too much to ask of a new player on level 1 - the first level should just focus on exploring harry's moveset.
@risingoat Yes! even though there is a "You won!" screen, the game actually continues to generate playable levels forever. Practically, I don't think I've made it past level 6 - your rate of hunger loss increases by 30% every time you advance a level, and at a certain point it is extremely hard to eat enough mushrooms to compensate.
@pablodap thanks for the awesome visual. I never got around to playing with this, but I imagined Harry growing more extremities as he climbs and gains powers (maybe horns to break ceilings, a tongue to grab things far away), as well as getting more 'vascular' as he gets faster and faster. Cute, but gross is what i want.
Awesome man ! This retro style game is really great, no need ennemies, it's hard enough :)
Great work !
WoW, awersome game! Thats great! So bad there is no music!!!
Really great! Very good job!
Every game on PICO8 I play looks amazing and this is no exception. Great idea, but hunger refill at the start of every climb would be nice. Awesome game
I don't know what just happened. All I did was dig myself out of view, then go all the way to one side until the level was completed and after three levels it said "You escaped". So - yay. I guess?
The graphics and sound are OK but the gameplay is really unclear to me.
@gonutz being able to dig through the floor like that is a bug. The intention of the game is that you climb upwards. Due to numbers looping, if you fall far enough below the level you wrap up to the top and "win".
I've patched this out now, so it should be more playable.
I see :-)
Now that the gifs on the page have loaded I can also see what to do, this will make it clearer and I will give your game another try tomorrow, thanks :-)
Great game! The art and the mechanics are awesome!
I came back after you fixed the diffing-through-the-ground-to-win-bug but this time I starved in stage two and was set back to the intro. This is a no-go for a game. Since this is not an arcade machine, why not set the player back to the start of the level and restore the energy bars I had when I entered the level?
The sounds are cute as are the graphics, very likable little guy.
The controls feel a bit unpolished, I am not able to jump while on a ladder, that was strange as I expected it to work. The letter Z is not where you think it is on some European keyboards :-)
Good job, keep up the good work!
I Recently played your game during a live stream at your request. [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEKsM8vugRs) .
Man! You did all of that on the Pico8? Awesome job, really liked the climbing mechanism, graphics and sound were great. The only thing I noticed was that I was constantly holding the up key, not sure if there is a way around that maybe auto climb IDK not a big deal. I had fun climbing around eating shrooms.
if you haven't already please give my game a try [Zombie Power Station](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zombie-power-station) HTML5 Thanks
Game very well made with an awesome gameplay and challenge! And, after I complete the stage 3, the game continues to go harder! I can't believe that this great random stage generator was made on Compo. The graphics are very nice too! The sound effects are great and almost solve the lack of music!
One of bests of this Ludum Dare!
I discovered a bug:
Hungry Harry Climb bug.png
@fl wow, I can't believe you made that happen! It looks like you finished the level and died on the same frame, since both of these actions kill the main game loop but ONLY after a full loop has ended. Nuts.
You would have died immediately at the bgeinning of the next level anyway, since I do not restore any hunger back upon starting a level. Good notes for when I clean this up.
@gonutz My vision for this game is that it is a rogue-lite, meaning (to me) that there is perma-death and random level generation. I plan to keep the game short (can be beaten in 10 minutes-ish), but I also plan to keep the 1-kill game over condition. I DO think level 1 needs to be easier, which is my primary concern right now.
Wonderful game! I thought that the graphics were charming, the sound effects pleasing, and the gameplay experience cool (pun intended). I like the climbable surfaces and one-way platforms. I wish that the instructions explained the purposes of the blue and red meters. (Is one of them a hunger bar?)
Great job! I like the way you can dig and climb. I guess its just me, but I think using spacebar to jump is more intuitive ( maybe I play too many games jumping with this key ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ )
Haha, this was kind of cute! :) Loved the internal dialog of the main character, and the "DIG!", "MUNCH", ... sound effects! :P Cool that you even put in an intro! Getting close to the top of level 1 (when the arrow appeared) got me really excited. My first level was well-generated, even though there were fewer mushrooms than I would have liked. :P Felt well-balanced and fair. I starved in the beginning of level 2, though. Maybe I'll come back to this. The movement mechanics felt cool, and it was interesting to figure out how to climb!
All in all, this is a really well-executed and polished entry, congrats! :)
I very much liked this, particularly the attention to detail. For example, having Harry talk to tell the player what to do was a great idea. There's definitely replay value in this... my wife remarked that I kept going back to it. There are too many modern platformers whose controls are floaty, or not pixel perfect. This one was old school and brought a smile to my face.
Really fun game to play, but needs some polishing as said in the comments. Graphics and music are very nice and creates nice retro mood. Good Job!
Really great stuff, very impressive for a compo entry. Felt great to play, although some more variance would have been nice!