FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → Pajuu - Always With You

Pajuu - Always With You

By samurai-spark, Reinhold Strodel and Gerhard Strodel

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1273.9163
Fun5573.3362
Innovation8322.8765
Theme9502.8765
Graphics274.6265
Mood34.5565

Comments

qszhu 2017-12-06 16:35

amazing art and audio, really love it!

tad 2017-12-06 16:41

I love what you did here. The music, the artwork, and the controls are all fantastic!

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to finish as I kept failing at a jump later on, and there aren't any checkpoints, so I was forced to start from the beginning again.

I think you've done a fantastic job otherwise, though!

themarioga 2017-12-06 16:47

Wow, the art is amazing, and so emotive, i love it, 5 starts.

PD: I missed a little tutorial that explain the objetive and the controls of the game.

amigopadilha 2017-12-06 16:49

Amazing art and story, really enjoyed to play! Great job

nokusu 2017-12-06 16:58

Really good presentation and mood for this entry, the plaforming mechanics were fun and overall handled well,

the only issue i'd say was the warmup mecanic that's a bit unclear at first, maybe add a few notes about the controls on your game's page to help understand them better.

other than that it's really well made, so good job guys :)

angelonias 2017-12-06 17:01

*cough* Checkpoints please. xD Amazing job, for 72 hours? Damn.. one thing though, I felt like the fox wasn't reacting fast enough when I pressed space to jump. Of course that led to the need of checkpoints. Overall, absolutely beautiful game!

donut-daria 2017-12-06 17:19

I'm surprised this game is recieving so little attention. It's sweet, beautiful and simple. It has wonderful atmosphere. Reading the comments I found out there's a tuttorial, that I have unfortunately missed? But overall a very enjoyable experience, would be nice to have some checkpoints here and there, but still a very solid game in my opinion!

rankaquion 2017-12-06 17:52

that was so beautiful

gruhh 2017-12-06 21:17

Beautiful art.

Linda arte.

samurai-spark 2017-12-07 02:56

Thank you all for your feedback! We are very happy that you enjoyed our entry.

@Tad, @Angelonias, @donut_daria We to took your advice and made the game now beatable at all. During the jam we focused too much on the visual side of the game that we didn't had time to make play tests. To be fair to all other participants, the original version can still be found on our itch.io page.

neoxiang 2017-12-07 15:03

Wow! Very Nice graphic! I like the environment and the story itself even though i didnt see any theme related but wow nice game hope to see more for the updates

pepri 2017-12-07 15:21

It's awesome! The art, the audio and the story are contributing to a really nice atmosphere. I was actually sad when it ended. How does it relate to the theme though?

samurai-spark 2017-12-07 18:32

Hey @neoxing and @pepri,

Thank you for your feedback! At first we had alot of struggle to come up with a unique idea to the theme. After a lot of thinking we decided to go for something like "the more the player uses his mechanic, the worse his situation gets".

The mechanic being the warm mechanic and the situation in this case is the snow storm and your danger to freeze to death.So the more you use your scarf, the more it fades away, increasing your exposure to the cold.But we think that this might not come through as well as we had it planned out in our minds.

bitsandcrafts 2017-12-07 21:33

amazing! simple, great art and audio. nice storytelling. keep the good job.

dawik9000 2017-12-07 21:40

Damn these ninjas chopping onions :´(. Beautiful game, music is really well chosen. Only downside is that it doesnt really go with the theme, but everything else is great. Congratz!

elfcirynn 2017-12-07 22:39

I loved the art (foxes and scarves and winter weather!), the music worked super well with the mood, it was a very well polished package. <3

stefenism 2017-12-07 22:53

This was a beautiful game. I cried.

itab2 2017-12-08 00:02

Why are you doing this to me (>ToT)>

Mechanically it's a very minimalistic but polished sidescroller, and without your post I would've indeed struggled to make the connection to this LD's theme, but the art and mood are really great. I guess it's reached its emotional climax already, but I'd love to see this continued.

Don't let it go under just because of your smart balance!

oldpeculier 2017-12-08 02:07

Gosh this game wants to be a really great one, but you needed a little more time to really polish it. The jumping gameplay is like a thousand other games. What's up with the scarf and warming? A frame rate problem occurs periodically, chugging the game and making it difficult to time jumps correctly. Beautiful art though, great music, cute scarf, neat scarf concept. It's a good start!

brainoid 2017-12-08 10:40

I can't say it was the most fun jam game I've ever played but it was the one that has the best mood. It was okay with the theme, thank you for making us experience the amazing art!

samurai-spark 2017-12-08 12:49

Hey guys,

thank you guys for the nice input! We are very happy that you enjoyed the game and the experience.

@OldPeculier Yeah because of the cutscenes and visuals we didn't had the time to polish the gameplay completely. And to answer the "What’s up with the scarf and warming?" part:

**!!!Spoiler alert!!!**

*The scarf represents the mother. Her will and love guides her child trough the relentless cold and warms him on his path to the better place where she wanted him to bring. *

**!!!Spoiler alert!!!**

arvejeitor 2017-12-09 00:30

Lovely idea! The visuals are beautiful I really liked what you did with the scarf

lexi 2017-12-09 00:33

Great graphics and mood. The controls felt nice as well, which led to me playing the whole game. I really think if you added some more mechanics this could be made into a fully fledged game.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the relation to the theme before reading how the mechanics affect the storm.

All in all a good and polished entry. Congrats!

umsingelopugmanco 2017-12-09 00:33

Amazing graphics and very fitting soundtrack. Great work you guys, congratulations.

blizary 2017-12-09 00:36

Amazing art guys the games is totes worth playing for it =)

skippuku 2017-12-09 00:38

Hey, that was pretty neat. Absolutely love the look, feel, atmosphere, and such. I was thrown off by the controls, which felt a bit loose, especially since flipping was centered on the face of the character. Use of theme was pretty subtle, and I wouldn't have understood how it was incorporated if I didn't read the description. I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining. These were minor things that didn't bother me that much. The art and feel more than make up for the controls. Fantastic job!

ittai-manero 2017-12-09 00:40

This game is super beautiful and emotive, well done!

aviland 2017-12-09 00:47

Consider having the fox's flipping point be at the body's midpoint instead of at the head. While I'm complaining, some leeway with the jumping would be nice. I've got 4 pairs of legs yet I fall to my death if the front two are close to a ledge (and/or glitch out). !Which makes sense for low velocity scenarios, but not while I'm running.

Other than that, **cute** and **impressive** in many ways.

*TLDR: I'm picky about platformers having played so many...*

zachary-shah 2017-12-09 00:48

I loved this game. Fun but so so sad. Kind of happy. The mother always wanted to be in a nicer place, and she got her final wish. Great game play but the jump is kind of delayed. INCREDIBLE! Please leave me feedback on my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/rush-hour

powerspark 2017-12-09 00:54

Great work on polishing this, it looks incredible. I can't recall a more clean entry.

Now I should mention that at first, I didn't realize the scarf was shrinking, so it surprised me when it disappeared. I also noticed at one of the last few precise platform jumps, the camera would shift back towards the right, almost in mid-air, making the jump a bit easy to miss and fall. I suggest to re-arrange that moment... but other than those minor troubles, it was super high quality, good job!

professor 2017-12-09 01:16

The mood of this game is top-notch, and the soundtrack was great as well. I really enjoyed the visual style. Thanks for sharing.

billeclipse 2017-12-09 01:23

I loved the art style! I can say its the best atmospheric game i have seen in this jam :D Great work! Keep it up :D

adsilcott 2017-12-09 01:55

Veeery beautiful game! I love the art style and the overall focus on polish and simplicity. I feel like our games are similar in some ways, both telling a wordless story with an emphasis on atmosphere. I'm looking forward to seeing future games from you!

faloon 2017-12-09 01:59

Great atmosphere and mood. Wonderful. I suggest a respawn point just after jumping down those platforms, when you enter the plains before mama fox.

mike-cullingham 2017-12-09 03:34

Absolutely beautiful art and music (although i noticed you opted out of sound scores?). Not much there in terms of gameplay, but really engaged me emotionally. Well done.

iferit 2017-12-09 04:50

This is an amazing story telling game, and i LOVE IT! I love the animation! the intro! its all so good.

The one problem i had with it is that the main mechanic, to warm up, was a little confusing too use and i still don't understand what its for... sometimes it works, sometimes not, and all in all in the end i just ignored it.

louis-denizet 2017-12-09 10:28

Mood is excellent, this is beautiful, well done! :D

naca 2017-12-09 18:24

Beautiful experience. Not gonna lie, I'm a bit tired of raw platformer mechanics, but this one has a special mood that makes it stand out among others.

I'd like to contribute from a user testing perspective. Platforms are much more difficult than freeze mechanic. In fact, I've never failed because of using scarf too much (if it wasn't in the description I wouldn't notice), but I've failed lots of times on platforms. Also, a pretty annoying bug that I think should be fixed is what @aviland points out:

pajuu_capture.gif

The fox's flipping point at the head causes that behaviour when I hit A. But hey, it's only a tiny bug, the overall experience is fantastic!!

samurai-spark 2017-12-09 18:43

At first thank you all for your kind feedback :) @Aviland and @Naca yeah you're right the flipping point is the center of his head not the body. That's because of the scarf. The problem was when we moved his local position it began to totally freak out and stretcht about the whole world. During the short time of the jam we needed a quick solution, so that's why he flips at his head. Hope we could bring more clarity. We definitely fix this in the future!

jaimuepe 2017-12-09 20:45

Very beautiful game. I'm not really sure how the "warm up" mechanic worked, as i didn't feel like i was doing anything when holding the key. The art and music are great, and it's a very impressive entry. Good job guys.

honest-dan 2017-12-09 21:57

Beaitiful mood and ambience you've got with this game. Was a lovely game to play on stream in between the random hoard of pixel art games we'd played! Props to you for conveying some emotion in a short project.

jjjjason 2017-12-10 08:31

Aww man it's 12:30am and I'm way too emotionally manipulatable. Absolutely stunning graphics for a game jam, and great musical choice. As many have said already, the platforming mechanics are a bit shaky in places, but those sorts of things can definitely be tuned. There's been a rise of narrative platformers as of late, I can definitely see the fox's journey being further explored.

patrick-woodcock 2017-12-12 00:44

Amazing, a really beautiful game. Great animations and I love the scarf's flapping effect.

timestop 2017-12-13 02:03

I'm sad now.

11/10 game, seriously. Good shit, guys! Thanks for the experience.

dvdfu 2017-12-13 18:21

Amazing presentation and storytelling! I found out how the theme worked in after reading about it. The amount of polish that went into this is really amazing for a jam. Great work!

doodlebut 2017-12-16 01:42

Absolutely beautiful game. The music and the art were spot on, and in addition to that the extra care to add cut scenes into the game, albeit even though it probably drained your time like nothing else, really added to the whole experience and made this one super memorable. Great work on it all

m-1 2017-12-28 18:04

Beautiful graphics and animations with great storytelling and fitting music.

I have just experienced occasional frame-drops, which caused me to fall down a few times. Also changing direction while standing on the edge of the platform is deadly (probably wrong pivot point). Overall the game is well polished and enjoyable.

Please do more cutscenes in the next game jam :sweat_smile:

2018-02-23 13:59

Lovely graphics! I included it in my Ludum Dare 40 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJp29JpDY1Y