corc0 2017-12-04 21:26
This sounds great. Is it possible to play this without Unity?
EDIT: It totally is.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → ESCAPE KEY
By rankaquion, Diego Santos Leao, Guilherme Coutinho and empyrean
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 183 | 3.83 | 61 | |
| Fun | 183 | 3.75 | 62 | |
| Innovation | 14 | 4.21 | 60 | |
| Theme | 928 | 2.90 | 62 | |
| Graphics | 517 | 3.59 | 63 | |
| Audio | 335 | 3.41 | 57 | |
| Mood | 445 | 3.45 | 57 |
This sounds great. Is it possible to play this without Unity?
EDIT: It totally is.
@corc0 Yes, we're just tidying up everything for the actual release. Check back soon, the link is going to let you download it straight away.
@emptyrean Looking forward to it! Thanks for the reply.
@corc0 The release is online! Thanks for playing :)
Okay: I knew this was going to be good! Easily one of the more innovative premises so far. It's a real challenge on a standard keyboard. I don't know how many times I've played level seven, but I'll be playing until I win. And there's none of that bit-off-more-than-we-can chew quality that a lot of us definitely run into: the level design here really does give players a chance to warm up before showing them what a game like this can do. You thought of the player experience and it shows. Really, really cool.
Amazing song! hehehe
@corc0 Thanks for the feedack! You have no idea how happy we are to hear this.
the game mechanics are impressive. The way you guys used the keyboard to move arround is truly unique. Congrats.
Nice entry. Quite interesting and hard to control the character using the keyboard, but you still managed to put in some interesting obstacles and puzzles.
Extremely cool idea and execution. It took me a couple tries before I "got" it, but it was quite cool (and still difficult) once I did. Really like how you managed to mix in traditional Sokoban-style puzzles as well, worked well with the grid system. As Corc0 said, the progression is pretty well tuned, I was satisfied to the end. One of my favorite games this LD!
oh congratulation! Nice art! Can I follow it also on indiexpo? Do you have also a page there? This looks great! I looked for the games that used the #LDJAM but I don't find yours. So good luck!! I will hope to make a video about it!
Nice art!
@roy87 Thanks for playing our game! We didn't know about Indiexpo, I'll make a page there ASAP! We are going to add more levels today, are you going to make the video today?
Great! It's difficult to play on a AZERTY keyboard (even with the good layout) Otherwise it's fun, and the idea is cool!
Well done :D
*PS: a little bug when you push a crate on a Skeleton the Skeleton hits you*
Interesting concept, I really enjoyed learning the unique movement mechanic. Good art style and SFX too. For some of the levels with crates it would be nice to have a "restart level" option.
That was really rough on an Azerty keyboard, even when swapping it there's some differences between what I see and what I should type :(. I still managed to get to lvl 10 this way.
It was really fun tho ! The concept is great, I loved how you managed to get a turn based feel working in real time. Graphics are great too ! Music is okay, a bit repetitive at the end.
Congratulations on the entry, it is a lot of fun and really innovative.
This game is 64bits only? I would love a 32bit ver. or a Web ver.
@rakart @togimaro Yeah, we are looking into supporting other keyboards! The idea is that every key is near each other, so you can move even by dragging your finger (even though you would probably hit the mummy enemies if you did that all the time). I'm glad to hear it was fun even on Azerty ^^ We will definitely support it, thanks for the feedback.
--- @victor-sette It should be working on both 32bit and 64bit systems! o.O'' We're going to release a web version soon, though!
--- (@renato-felix-martins Thanks :D
---
@drauthius Thanks! We're working on more! Hope you like it ;D
Beautiful like a banana tree. Congratulations! :D
A new version is here everybody! Mostly bug fixes in this one though.
This is really great! it gets tricky fast, but fun gameplay! hurts my head thinking about the keyboard that way :D
Excellent game! I love all the visuals, from letters to tiles to mummies. Audio effects and music are spot on. And the puzzles, although short, are great. Short and sweet :) The gameplay is very refreshing and innovative. Once you get used to the movement scheme, it's so goood! :D With a little bit of polish (some ending scene, death animation...) and more levels, this game could be really really good! Amazing entry! :D
Very nice!
Nice graphics and audio. The idea is unique as well and I quite like it, but maybe it would be more interesting if there was also a penalization for pressing the wrong keys. Good joob
Really interesting concept!
Really nice idea and execution.
As another Azerty player, I second the need to offer the player a choice between keyboard layouts. Yet, it was still playable and enjoyable enough to finish the game, so well done overall.
So cool! Really good game. Once you get the hang of it, it's really intuitive and the levels were fun to read and plan around. The only thing - Why are there lives if you can just continue from the same level?
Oh wow, this is cool. What a creative mechanic! Makes moving around itself a fun challenge, while also exposing how little I know my keyboard. I like the music -- nice, chunky square waves -- though I really wish it didn't start over every time I changed level! But that's a minor point. I enjoyed playing this quite a bit!
@mar3k I agree, we did make a "hole" mechanic (that instead of blocking, would insta kill), but we needed to focus on explaining the core mechanic first, and our level editor broke, so there was just no time. It would work well with a strict timer, so you would have to play fast and make no mistakes! Next version, for sure :)
--- @ratbird @swen Thank you! We will released a bigger, free, version in the future ;)
--- @ExNihilo We didn't know there was so many of you haha Is it a country thing? We're very curious XD
--- @toboggan That was a last minute change, we thought that it would be better to let you see all the levels than to punish people and risk losing them before the end. The counter visually going down was the only punishment, as no one likes to die hehe
--- @fluidvolt A big thanks from the team! The music restart was fixed in the "Improved version" - it just pauses now ;) !
--- PS: If anyone is interested in improved versions with more levels, please follow us on http://facebook.com/escapekeys
I like it. Far more challenging than I was expecting it would be to move around.
This is the most original and most fun idea I have seen so far! Incredible graphics and gameplay :)
I really enjoyed it! Even tho it was my first time playing anything like this, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be (I'm not as gracefully coordinated as I should be, haha) Fun game :)
Great idea and very well executed. Great to see you're continuing with it post-jam :)
@diego-santos-leao AZERTY keyboards are used in some French-speaking countries, mostly France and Belgium. A quick search about the subject revealed there are more variants of the QWERTY layout than I knew of, in particular the QWERTZ layout should be quite common as well.
All in all, it may be a bit of a hassle to take into account all the local specificities, but considering the very premise of your game, being as faithful as possible to the user's actual keyboard should be worth the effort.
Its an interesting control scheme. I feel like I should be able to type a non-adjacent tile and walk to it over time.
The sounds for death and victory are the same, which can be confusing.
Neat game, nice art. Interesting main mechanic, but kind of frustrating to play? Good puzzles though, and unique! Good rating from me.
Really cool game. I liked the concept, and it felt really great to get the hang of the game and to stop having to look at the keyboard.
The sound and graphics were spot on as well.
Such a clever little concept! Great tutorial too. Might be nice to see this game layout with less timing puzzles b/c I got to frustrated by the end trying to time it exactly right.
We won and only got a little bit frustrated close to the end. Very original idea and well executed. Just the right length for a game jam entry, thanks!
Good job. I enjoy the innovation here. I saw one other game that used the keyboard like this - Kiwi is the Key, in case you were curious to check that out. I did not find this to be too difficult at all. In fact, my hardest time was on level 1, because I wasn't sure what button was supposed to be the exit key. Once I figured that out, it was fairly smooth sailing. Nicely done.
Really intriguing entry, this game was one of the good suprises in this ludum dare, really polished and well done in all aspects of the game, beautiful art, great gameplay and a fantastic concept, this definetely has potential to be a full game in the future, really good work, I am impressed, congratulations !
Caramba um dos jogos br mais interessantes que vi nessa jam, mandaram realmente mt bem, impressionante, parabens pessoal, o estudio de vcs tem algum twitter ou algo do tipo ?
Nice game! I enjoyed playing it. I once wanted to make a game with similar keyboard mechanics for a previous LD, I am glad to see that someone tried it! It was fun to play. The game ended quite suddenly after the level with all the keys. I wasn't sure if that was supposed to happen, so I played it again, but this time trying to hardly look at my keyboard, that was fun. :) Congrats!
@almost We did have sounds for different occasions, but it didn't make it in! On a future version we will included them! They are very egyptian! ^^
@ahintoflime We tried to be smooth on level design, but I'm glad you had fun anyway :D
@lexi Thanks, we put a lot of work on those too! Up to last minute we were polishing (volume levels, ammount of compression on the game over voice, song velocity, character shadow, wall joints). The little things for that extra shine ^^. Even in such a simple game, it takes a lot of time.
@michael-silverman @disperse We will try to take that into consideration for new levels!
@cubeeo We did check it out now that you mentioned! haha thanks for the tip. A lot of people reported that, we will add a tip in the first levels. That is definitely a problem.
@svr-audio Thanks for noticing, in such a simple game people sometimes think everything was done in a few minutes, when it took hours and hours up to the last minute to polish it all hehe Only a few sound effects were bought, everything else was done at the Jam, including the music, "Compo style".
@papaver That is cool! To see an idea come to life, even if not by your hands, I had that happen to me too :D We are honored that you played it again, and sorry for not having a "last screen".. we were in submission hour, so we had to run! The improved version shows a "Thanks for playing" screen, with team names and all.
For everyone interested in new levels (escaping a burning spaceship maybe?) please follow us @gameblox and/or http://facebook.com/escapekeys
Very nice! I don't know if this changed in the post-jam version, but as there's many different keyboard layouts, the letter displayed should be dynamic... for example with an italian keyboard I wasn't able to get past level 9 because the last key to press wasn't the one shown and I couldn't find it :(
Awesome! The cool thing is that it's actually true: it's really harder to play with all the keys! At first, I thought that it was going to be somehow easier, but it seems that my brain has mapped the concept of "pushing a key to move to a certain direction" too deeply!
Of course, there's the challenge of dealing with all the possible keyboards the player may have, but this is a bold entry!
Good job!
Second typing game I have played this LD, both blew me away. Great music, makes typing fun. Really good job! GIF EscapeKey.gif
If someone else wants to try another typing game (I am not affiliated at all, just apparently this jam I have been impressed by typing games) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/type-them-down
Wow! This was the first "5" I've given in the entire game jam (I gave a "5" for innovation). I've never seen a game like this before, and it is beyond cool. Thanks for sharing.
Really innovative game, I love the feeling of "walking" around on your keyboard to solve puzzles. One of my favourites so far. Could have done with a tad bit less repetitive music, but luckily the game is fun enough that you block out the music entirely after a while.
(Played and rated v1.0)
Very cool concept! Definitely has a lot of potential for sure. The limited light radius was a pretty good design decision I think, too.
Funny that you had no problems rendering your sprite graphics for the main game, but your UI doesn't seem to handle the pixeled sprites correctly, which looks a bit messy.
Great concept and art. :)
Wicked. Makes your mind work, which is nice. However soon it gets very confusing, since this game becomes more of a challenge than fun. Which is actually the theme. Thanks for interesting idea and experience!
That was excellent.
@crdmrn Yeah, we researched fixing this, but we didn't have time to do it yet! Anyway, the game has 10 levels, you missed only a few ;)
@racso Thanks! We tried a lot to have both good level progression and fit the theme - more keys, more problems!
@jfraser314 We found 3 other games this year that used keyboard creatively in one way or another, "Kiwi is the Key" is the most similar to ours, but please prefer our implementation of the concept haha ^^ I used your gif in our recent post, thanks for it, hope you don't mind :D
@professor Thanks professor, your are a scholar and a gentleman!!
@banan The "steps" sound and the quick response to input really help the typing feels good, I think those things were key! About the music, our music designer was originally on other team, so he had to rush, but managed to help us a lot! Even though it is short, it surelly feels egyptian-y haha :D
@ddrkirbyisq Thanks! The limited light radius was a last day change, and as you said, the difference was "night and day". We changed the level design to better fit the new radius too. That shows the power of iterating over your ideas, a lot of things improved like that, in the last day.
@gustavo-christino Thanks!! We're also super happy with it :D
@ardorugus It really does, doesn't it! The experience is what makes it special, and we tried to fit the theme in some design decisions, meaning, little changes here and there could make it more "fun", but distance it from the theme. Overall though, some people reported it being easy, and others difficult, so I'm interested in undertanding the source of this perception, as a game designer ^^ Thanks for the feedback!
This game takes everything video games have taught me an about input and turns it on its head. Really a great idea and well executed puzzles.
My only gripe here is that I cant get more than a few levels in dew to my Swedish keyboard.
Skärmavbild 2017-12-28 kl. 19.52.26.png
What am I supposed to type here? Apparently it's not '-'.
Whoa. This is an AMAZING idea for a maze game! The pacing was spot on as well, introducing mechanics very organically, and everything flowed nicely! The graphics are great, and the sound is preeetty sweet, too! The only problem I see is that the connection to the theme is kinda shaky... but heck, that doesn't matter much, since you've made a stellar game regardless. Great job!
The "original version" is 64-bit only, but is the "improved version" rateable?
Edit: Actually, all the letters show up as magenta boxes, the game is still playable but I'm not sure I should rate it. Anyway, it's a fun game with an interesting idea, and the graphics and sound are good.
@jordgubben Sorry ^^ The expected key there is ";"
@justinooncx haha think about it this way: "The more keys you have to press, the worse it is to Escape" (since you have to "wrap your brain" around a bigger area of your keyboard).
@jonathan50 Hi Jonathan, this is the first time we are hearing this :P Sorry that you had problems, were you playing the web build? The improved version (available for download and as a web build) is rateable up until the last level. The last level was added after the jam, so you shouldn't consider it. The rest just have bug fixes (so it is within the boundaries of what the Jam allows to be rated) ;)
I was using the Windows build. I tried the web build just now and was just about to rate it but it won't let me anymore for some reason...
@jonathan50 Sorry you couldn't make it in time! We're happy we are 14th in Innovation, and overall we fell very satisfied with the results of our second Ludum Dare (first for some of our team)! Thank you, and everyone, for your feedback and support! See you all next time!!