pcmxms 2017-12-05 10:00
Beautiful game and interesting mechanics, though the level design sometimes locks you up if you do something wrong. The music work is also very nice.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Ghosth - Annoying Ghosts
By crowno
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 65 | 4.05 | 42 | |
| Fun | 260 | 3.65 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 307 | 3.48 | 42 | |
| Theme | 625 | 3.37 | 42 | |
| Graphics | 15 | 4.68 | 42 | |
| Audio | 44 | 4.09 | 42 | |
| Humor | 306 | 3.44 | 40 | |
| Mood | 31 | 4.20 | 39 |
Beautiful game and interesting mechanics, though the level design sometimes locks you up if you do something wrong. The music work is also very nice.
Very nice! It looked and sounded fantastic. The sprite work and animations were top notch. Would have wanted some more sound/animation feedback on ghost activation and stomp. I sometimes was left unsure about if I managed to activate a ghost or not and doing to ghost jumps didn't feel satisfying enough.
Stairs were annoying in so many ways. It was very easy to do a weird jump on those and accidentally lose a ghost making you do some boring backtracking. And speaking of backtracking, the following were two of my least favourite spots because of all that backtracking that was required after a failed attempt.
Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 11.37.19.png
This wasn't hard really but obviously I threw the ghost to the wrong direction at first and then had to go all the way back again to gather some ghosts. It even forced you to death respawn because there weren't any ghosts to try again with. And even after that, you need to do the same trek so many times, even after opening the door.
Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 11.48.35.png
The first hard part really. The pacing didn't work at all and the swinging ball hitboxes were really unfair. Couple that with the wonky stairs and the long way to get to try again, and it was getting annoying. The jump wasn't even that hard but you had to either guess right or die a couple of times to plot the correct course. This was the spot where I think I spent the majority of my play time. There is even that spike maze puzzle with very similar idea but even though the jumps are harder (and again some unfair spike hitboxes, these probably weren't bigger than the sprite itself but still felt unfair because you die in 100% of the so called "close calls") that works so much better because you can try again straight away.
Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 11.40.55.png
This spot was kinda hard to notice.
Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 11.56.15.png
Took me quite a while to actually figure out how these things worked. But I kinda liked that you weren't so hand-holdy all the time and let me figure it out by myself.
Only managed to "find" one of the secrets. I did see at least three but didn't really know I was supposed to be gunning for those (even though it was kinda obvious). Then the game *suddenly* ended and I couldn't go for em anymore. Is there something extra if you find all of them?
The graphics are to die for. The whole premise is very promising. I got stuck at the first obstacle though, the rotating glowing orange thing near the sign about "stomping them."
@oldpeculier Then explore left side first to find *them*.
@antti-haavikko Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, I appreciate it!
One of the things I experimented with during this jam was to focus on core mechanics and level design before doing the art. I've learned that designing the assets and mechanics apart from each other can be very detrimental without enough time to properly fit them together. The biggest problem might be the hitboxes as you mentioned, that I completely overlooked after implementing the sprites. The player hitbox in particular ended up being slightly larger than the actual player sprite, giving the unfair disadvantage during the obsticle sections.
Aside from that, the lack of visual feedback on the double jumps is one of the things that bothers me the most. It was not my priority because I considered it to be mere visual flair, but as you can see that visual feedback would be much needed to get a good grasp at that mechanic.
I'm still working on the game and planning to upload a better version once this Ludum Dare ends. Some things like the terrible platform staircases have been replaced already, and your feedback will certainly help me to keep improving it. Again, thanks a lot for taking your time.
Ah, the secret collectibles are in there just for the joy of having secrets. You don't get anything for finding all of them (yet!).
Cool! Can't wait to try it again once you do an even better version. Maybe that is why I didn't get the secret cubes, to have more incentive to play again! :sunglasses:
Great game! I really liked the main mechanic! Great design and very beautiful art, congratulations!
Ótimo jogo! Gostei muito da mecânica principal! Ótimo design e arte muito bonita, parabéns!
Beautiful and fun! Very polished! great game ✩✩✩✩✩
Very nice graphics. I went to the right first and didn't understand what I had to do, wasted a lot of time there, until I want to the left and fond the other creature. Very cool game.
very neat mechanic, and the graphics are really nice! i kept accidentally double-jumping and losing my ghost friends, sadly. great game though :^)
wonderful game with charismatic characters and excellent graphics, I also really enjoyed the soundtrack.
Incredible work on the graphics, I adore the main character design.
This game is insane, for real the concept is good, the gameplay is fun, but the art and the music, are really really good, for real you did an AMAZING job on the art, the colors you used, the "fire animation" everything just perfect, and the music is so good, calm and gives the perfect mood, just what the game needed, for real this game is amazing, great job.
Caramba esse jogo ta mt legal, parabens, os Br sempre mandam bem haha, vc fez isso sozinho ? Se sim, cara é mais inacreditavel ainda, surreal, mt bom msm, parabens !
Art 10/10 Concept 11/10
Nice work!
WOOOOOOW! This game is amazing, give me gamepad support and add it to steam. More levels! More secrets! I liked this a lot! Great music, great sound effects, cool screen transition. Seriously, this is a VERY GOOD GAME! If you are some person wondering if you should play this game, yes, you should!
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Fantastic work, the pixel art & sound is brilliant.
Incredible graphics and sound, really cool. Speaking of gameplay, I loved the puzzles, very clever level design. The only "but" is that the character felt a little bit slow sometimes, backtracing and feeling slow is a bad thing. But this is an excepcional work, congratulations.
I want this on my Game Boy Advance.
Good stuff! Often I feel like people use pixelated graphics as a cop-out, but you clearly put real time into them, and it felt like a genuine artistic choice instead of laziness. The puzzles were fun and interesting, and the ghost slingshot mechanic was original but still straightforward enough to get the hang of quickly. As others mentioned, the main issues with the game seem to be the large amounts of backtracking, and the ease with which you can accidentally use ghosts. I also would have liked to have seen some sort of animation when using a ghost for a double jump to indicate that's what it was being used for, since it took me a couple times of doing it to realize what was actually going on. Overall, I loved the game and I hope to see more! Great job!
2017-12-07 03H51M46.png
That was an amazing and really polished experience! I firstly saw this game over on the _Danger_ category, and when I opened to see the screenshots of the game I was flabbergasted how an experience like this hadn't gotten enough votes to pass by judging yet! (Gladly, that has changed since).
First off, and I believe this is going to be everyone who play's the game first highpoint, but the whole art and sprite work is fantastic! Everything was just so poppy and balanced in terms of colours, together with the backdrop with all the touches and details here and there really made it shine in that department. Everything that needed to stand out did so, and everything was readable at first.
However, where the game really shined in was in it's platforming twists and variation on the platformer mechanics through the ghosts buddies. When I grabbed my first ghost and realized I could use them both as a way to gain an additional jump as well as throw them to turn on switches, I knew I was in for something different and great, and it was definitely great alright. The room layouts themselves also served as great small tutorials, which, reading from the comments above, was one of your priorities to get right when designing the game.
However, as @antti-haavikko mentioned, there were definitely some problems with the pacing and layouts. The part where I re-spawned the most was the chained balls stairs and the ghost platforming segment. For me, I wouldn't say it was because of the hitboxes of the balls themselves, but just because of how close everything was to each other, which lead to situations where I'd just be trying to climb down the stairs and would get hit by one of them accidently. Same thing happened in the climbing segment. The first time I got there, I just tried to ghost-jump my way up, only to be hit by another chained ball and having to repeat the whole process again.
By the time I got to the top and saw one of the secret crystals (which I got a total of three out of five as shown in the screenshot above) I personally though about giving up on it and just carrying in, but alas, my completionist self eventually came back and was able to do whole process once more.
Other than those level layout issues, I don't see anywhere else where the game falls short. It was pretty, polished, and totally fun during my playthrough of it. The personally of the ghosts paired together with them sometimes crippling in front your view definitely gave them a lot of character and personality! :ghost:
The music was also great and the distortion that happens to it when you get just too many ghosts was also a neat touch!
Obrigado pela a ótima experiência! I'd definitely come back and try to see if I can get all of the extra crystals. On behalf of my team over at [Whales And Games](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), we definitely look forward to seeing more work from you and I'll definitely be waiting to play that post-jam updated version! :whale:
Really creative mechanics, insanely nice art and so much polish on everything. The cheeky ghosts are the best! I'd echo the other commenters that some level design polish would bring it home, but it's SOOO hard to do that in a gamejam, and you did an insane amount as it is. AWESOME! :ghost: :ghost: :ghost:
I love the art-style and music. Very interesting mechanic. Great game!
Great graphics and sound, interesting mechanic, but needs some work on teaching how things work. I tried shooting the ghost in several directions (once I figured out the order of releasing buttons), but couldn't figure out where I needed to shoot it to advance.
This is my favorite entry I've rated so far! It looks amazing and the mechanics are really fun. And I love the ghosts appearing on the side of your screen.
I see it has already been mentioned but I also had some issues losing ghosts on the stairs and the collisions of the chained balls that seemed slightly bigger than I expected.
Beautiful pixel work, fantastic audio as well - level design felt a tad unfair at times. Great entry, tho! :)
Looks amazing, if the controls didn't register double jumps as eagerly it would be very pleasant to play.
É um jogo excepcional para um JAM, você ta de parabéns cara
A ideia é legal, a arte é muito boa, os personagens são carismáticos, a musica combina e a mecânica funciona.
Foi o jogo que joguei por mais tempo dessa JAM, passaram uns 20 minutos e eu nem vi, hehe
Só parei de jogar por que fiquei puto com aquelas plataforma que mudam de cor, pelo que eu entendi quando você usa o fantasma ela deixa de ser solida, mas não é algo consistente, as vezes deixa de ser solida imediatamente, as vezes demora um pouco, as vezes fica solida por um bom tempo, enfim, não me senti no controle da situação, parecia que era pura questão de sorte eu passar ou não. Depois de um tempo me senti frustrado com isso e acabei parando de jogar.
Outra coisa que estranhei foi não ter som de morte ou qualquer coisa do genero
Mas isso é pouco diante da qualidade do jogo. Eu falaria que ele é simplesmente perfeito se não fosse isso xD
Parabéns cara, virei seu fã ;)
That's a pretty cool game with a very interesting and unique concept. You definitely haven't taken an obvious route with the theme implementation and that's great! Visually, it's fantastic! And gameplay-wise, it's fun and has a ton of potential. Hoping you keep working on this one and turn it into a larger game! Nice work :)
Damn, that's some quality content for work in just a weekend. Color me impressed. The graphics were extremely good looking and the polish was undeniable. Good job.
I only have 2 complaints:
* the fact that there was no death sound really irked me for some reason
* I could not figure out how to get past the mirror blocks. I gave up after about 10 minutes of fiddling around.
Overall the pros very heavily squash the cons though. Great entry!
This was really clever and fun, loved the whole ghost mechanic and how you had to use them to get around to new areas. Thoought that was well implemented. Have to admit that at first I did miss the areas that you could drop down into and it took a few goes walking back and forward before I noticed them. One of the most polished games I've played so far this Ludum Dare with great music and graphics. Was fun to play.