FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD41 → Peculiar Adventures of Dorothy Hops

Peculiar Adventures of Dorothy Hops

By detectivelosos, Annie Owl and morel-8

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1603.9173
Fun2123.7673
Innovation1703.8473
Theme1694.1274
Graphics764.4275
Audio1513.8073
Humor2493.5270
Mood1603.8471

Comments

arden 2018-04-24 02:22

Fun entry! I the visual aesthetic was especially nice. A "distance traveled" and "furthest distance traveled" would have been a nice edition to the end screen.

ninjapenguindan 2018-04-24 05:02

I like the general concept and gameplay, but I'd have liked to see the controls spread across the keyboard a little more. Maybe arrow keys for decision-making instead of Z/C? It just felt a little cramped on my keyboard. Also, very good work on the art design. It sets a nice, gloomy ambiance, I think.

dethe 2018-04-24 05:56

Very cool graphics and a fun concept.

frostbyte4k 2018-04-24 06:03

Very challenging over all great game I loved every part of it. Usually I would have paragraph of things you could improve on. However the only thing I would change is the lack of an exit button. The music; great, art; great, gameplay; amazing. I just want to say make sure you review lots of games so the website will show your game to lots more people. I would hate for you game to get swept under the rug. Speaking of which i'd love it if you could check out my game. If you're feeling up to it here's the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/yum-some

jcmonkey 2018-04-24 06:22

nice game i love the graphics.

annie-owl 2018-04-24 07:23

@frostbyte4k We haven't added exit button, because we were expecting to build this game for web only. But during the submission hour we found out that web build of our game is broken for some reason, so we have to make a desktop build quick.

frostbyte4k 2018-04-24 07:29

ah that makes your game look even better. I think it's within the rules to fix bugs but i'm not sure.

ivana-malina 2018-04-24 09:26

the art looks cool!!, pls check out our first entry :smile: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/cant-get-along

marcial 2018-04-24 09:57

Your game is interesting, can you evaluate mine?

lemonbalmgames 2018-04-24 11:19

What can I say? "Peculiar Adventures of Dorothy Hops" is awesome. Top marks in all categories. The game is innovative, challenging, replayable, atmospheric and drop-dead gorgeous. Sound design is on point and there's some humor sprinkled in. This is the kind of game I hope I'll be making once I get more experienced. Hats off to the team. You did a great job.

svdvorak 2018-04-24 12:41

Hilarious genre-combo that for sure kept you occupied during dialogue. Maybe a bit much even, hard to look forward on the level while reading from left to right, I mostly skimmed the text sadly. I think voice-over would help. I've got to say that it was very nice that you made the platforming pretty generous, that kept it from getting frustrating when you would barely miss a jump. And absolutely loved the art style! Great work everyone on the team!

Oh, and I never thought I'd actually run to catch up to a robber to get mugged, usually is the other way around :D

detectivelosos 2018-04-24 12:49

@LemonBalmGames You are too kind :) As I see it the game is actually lacking in terms of gameplay. There is very little variety and you can pretty much see all the content in couple of runs.

@svdvorak Thank you for playing, glad you liked our game. Surprisingly nobody on our team even thought of that you are actually catching up with a robber to get robbed. We are sitting and laughing about it right now :D

achebit 2018-04-24 14:12

Great pixel art. The reflection is lovely.

zeriver 2018-04-24 15:00

Hah, that is really an interesting idea and great executions! I mean the premise alone is pretty hilarious but you managed to make it also a pretty fun experience. Graphics are very pretty and general art style is really in my taste. Sound effects are pretty good and music also matches the atmosphere of the game. Very well done game guys, good job!

jon-nova 2018-04-24 15:37

I loved the mix of genres !!! music and art are amazing.

jsmars 2018-04-24 20:34

Really nice graphics and polish! It was a bit difficult to read the lines and play the game but I guess that was intentional.

caleblewis 2018-04-24 20:36

Great game. Would be nice to have the controls feel a bit more comfortable and if there was a minimum jump height (so you don't tap jump too quickly and fall), but other than that I have no complaints.

david-boeger 2018-04-24 23:41

HAHAHA I love this interesting take on infinite runners. The game feels pretty darn difficult. I think I'd prefer if things didn't take so much dang health so I could last a bit longer. But it's a fantastic game.

thelucky 2018-04-25 00:35

This is pretty well made. Although, i will complain about the short hop. So since you are using unity, I'm guessing you are setting the y velocity to negative when you let go of space, instead you are supposed to turn up gravity until the player hits the ground. Other than that great game which I spent too much time on.

rodrigo-denubila 2018-04-25 03:39

Really good art style. The game seems very polished and is really fun to play. Also is an excellent take on the theme. Good job!

Please, take a look at my game too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/confessional

randomhuman 2018-04-25 14:51

Mmmm, dat parallax... What a great concept! Truly incompatible, yet really enjoyable when you get the hang of it :smile: It was a good idea to include a tutorial, good work squeezing that in. If there is a way to avoid the rogues without having sweet bread I couldn't find it, so my main causes of death were falling in puddles and getting stabbed by rogues.

reizo 2018-04-26 03:36

What a fantastic little experience! The production quality is really something, it hardly feels like a jam game at all. The music, the fantastic art and the simple but slick controls work exceptionally well together. I couldn't really figure out if there was a way to simply avoid the robbers, so I ended up always buying sweet rolls and not giving them any! Are you planning on continuing with this?

detectivelosos 2018-04-26 03:57

First of all, thank you all very much for your feedback! Such a wonderful community really makes it worth overcoming all the hardships of participating in a jam.

@CalebLewis Thats a really good idea to make the jump at least certain height. We will surely test it and see how it feels.

@randomhuman Yeah, I'm really proud of that tutorial. I think without it the game would appear a lot more confusing than it already is.

@Reizo Yes, there are just three ways of getting through an encounter with a Rogue: not having a sweet roll, giving it to him and eating it right in front of him. And he very often stabs you unless you give him that roll. And yes, we are actually planning on developing it at least a little further during the jam. Marking it of course as a postjam version. We are planning on fixing some minor UX stuff, making a web build and then PROBABLY adding a somewhat real story and progression to the quests.

kkrac 2018-04-26 04:00

nice graphics and cool mechanics!

reizo 2018-04-26 04:03

Story and progression, I hear? I suppose that means I should bookmark and check for updates! Thanks for making this gem, your team deserves due credit! :D

magicera 2018-04-26 07:38

I like the idea that when you run and collect coins there is someone come out and compete with you. To some extent, their appearance could influence my control.

sempiternal 2018-04-26 13:39

How did approach creating those water reflections? Is it a custom screenspace reflection shader? Looks very nice and immediately caught my attention making me die at least 5 times just looking at the water ;p Great game overall though, amazing graphics, interesting gameplay and it also feels very polished!

zyuxis 2018-04-26 21:41

Very beautiful 2d graphics. I felt this idea was unique, I have played a handful of infinite runners now but none with this approach. I kept getting the sweet roll NPC really early and would just lose health for not having anything yet, but that's just life I guess. Thanks for the fun.

bradalli 2018-04-26 21:44

Cool idea! I had fun!

auxc 2018-04-26 21:49

Interesting concept made into a fun, good looking game. Hilarious writing too, epilogues at the game over screen made me chuckle. 😄

drzanuff 2018-04-26 22:06

Interesting idea. The Z and X controls didn't work for me. But the platformer part it is very good. A Infinity Runner RPG could be very addictive if it had upgrades and stuff.

weekend-panda 2018-04-26 22:13

Wow, nice job! Really cool concept, though it was suuuuuuper difficult to read and run/jump at the same time, ha ha. Guess that's why they're incompatible! Overall wonderful work. Also the art and animation was superb.

advd 2018-04-26 22:34

Great visuals and nice concept. It's quite hard to balance the attention between the dialog and the platforms, but I guess it becomes easier once you learn what they are going to say. The water reflection looks astounding!

mza 2018-04-26 22:41

Nice character animations. Jumping is very smooth too. I cannnot multitask so I was speed-reading more than anything. But its a challenge and with more game time i feel they'll get better. Perhaps try short and sweet sentances first to get the player into the groove and work upto the complex sentances.

Everything else is crips and sharp. :thumbsup:

wesxdz 2018-04-26 23:13

I really liked the vibe from this game, it was easy to understand and get into gameplay quickly :)

broken-matrix 2018-04-26 23:21

Very good game!

shockeye 2018-04-27 00:11

Nice concept, well presented. Difficulty a bit high for someone slow like me, like MZA, I too cannot multitask. I would have preferred to quest prompts at the top of the screen, I think, 'coz look down and to the left didn't help my ability to follow the action part of the game.

gamebuilder 2018-04-27 01:50

Great job with the sound and graphics. Running and reading is super challenging.

annie-owl 2018-04-27 08:37

@sempiternal my colleague is going to post a small tutorial about that, because we get a lot of questions about reflection. I will send you a link when it's done.

annie-owl 2018-04-27 08:55

@zyuxis Yeah, we should have made that the rogues would appear only when you encountered some merchants. Will fix that in postjam version.

@auxc Glad you liked it, i was trying my best with those texts (to the extent of a person not knowing English very well can do that).

@drzanuff We were actually trying to make stats and stuff, that would affect the results of some encounters, but we ran out of time.

@weekend-panda Thanks. We are thinking about adding slow motion when you encounter NPC's.

@advd We are actually going to make small tutorial about reflections (i don't know anything about shaders and postprocessign, but my colleague @detectiveLosos says it's an easy trick), so stay tuned if you want to know the trick 😉

@mza Nice suggestion, thanks for the feedback.

@shockeye Yeah, we were actually thinking about moving the text prompts somewhere else, but it was too late already to do that kind of stuff.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. We would gladly check out your projects, when we get back from work 😩

erebus 2018-04-27 19:23

I really enjoyed the idea of this one! There was something off about the hold to jump longer and about the coin placements but small issues. Thanks @detectiveLosos for coming by the stream and showing off your game! Great job!

jesper-fyhr-knudsen 2018-04-27 21:20

This is a very fun and gorgeous looking game, very well done. The reflection in the water is really nice.

detectivelosos 2018-04-27 21:42

I wrote a small tutorial on how to make this water reflection effect.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/peculiar-adventures-of-dorothy-hops/tutorial-on-how-we-made-this-really-simple-water-reflection-effect

@Sempiternal It really is for beginners and I think you can make one on your own for sure, but you asked, so here it is.

estacaomarte 2018-04-27 22:10

Very beautiful game :) Really nice work guys, keep it going! This game is a good opportunity for something bigger, keep creating more content, and who knows, all the assets and mechanics you're building might become something more in the future <3

johnnysix 2018-04-28 00:29

Can't multitask so failed miserably at talking to people while runnning/jumping. Great animations and effects! :)

mintarcade 2018-04-28 12:25

Nice game, very atmospheric. Visuals are stunning and adding to the overall experience. Nothing to criticize - just perfect!

christian-koch 2018-04-28 13:52

I always liked endless-runners for some reason. They have something peacefull. But not this one. I died several times, because I tried reading the text. Is that a bad thing? No. I loved it. It was so much fun trying to read text and jump. I survived quite a timespan at the end. The only thing I did not like was the fact, that when I died near to an edge I respawned at the edge and couldnt jump until my character ran into the water and died again. That was really frustrating. And why is it that a lot of encounters just cost me some health? I had no sweet role and nearly died because of it. But in the end I had fun. And thats all that counts. Nice entry

jonathan-lorenz 2018-04-28 15:00

You really respected the theme and managed to do something with those two incompatible genres. The game was fun. The graphics were really good, nice reflection effect. Good work!

automatonvx 2018-04-29 09:53

Really nicely polished experience, great pixel art, nice music, liked the setting. Interesting combination, reading and running is a bit awkward but i guess thats the challenge, which is pretty novel. From a gameplay point of view maybe some more variation of the types of obstacle would be nice, but for the time i can't really complain. great work

annie-owl 2018-04-29 15:51

@christian-koch yeah, we need to balance\rework the encounters, and fix this ledge-spawn thing. We actually working on it right now, so if you are interested - stay tuned, and maybe you would like newer version more than the jam-version.

honey 2018-04-29 22:31

Actually suprised I didn't notice any Kingdom reference throughout the comments, the water striked me with it, even though it could use a bit of a displacement map :) Still like the game very much, very dense atmosphere, great art style, well chosen palette, super sweet gameplay with tight controls (I mean - you surely know your stuff with that jump allowance <3 ) and the game over screens made me smile when it insulted me with drowning in a puddle :) Glad I found this game and I'll be definitely looking forward to more of it!

cristiano-m-garcia 2018-04-29 22:53

Good job! Cool game!

I found it really difficult and really incompatible with these genres. I think that in order to make this game marketable, I would have to find a way to read the dialogues more easily, but not taking all the difilculdade.

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape

paul-avallone 2018-04-30 17:12

This game's art and animation is so well done and fluid. I really like the idea of run with the quest giver. I wish there were some positive results for giving your money away like a power up because there seem to be no reason to give money except to not get stabbed.The physics are extremely polished. Great work!

darkphnx 2018-05-01 01:35

It's easy to see that an incredible amount of polish went into the art in this game. You even added great looking reflections, which was really cool! The jump mechanics felt snappy and responsive, but the game-play overall lacked due to limitations of the "choices" you make. I give up my sweet-roll, or I get stabbed. Not changed when making a decision one way or the other. Overall, this is a great looking game! Well done!

detectivelosos 2018-05-01 11:24

@EstacaoMarte Thanks for the feedback. We are trying to fix some current gameplay problems and get a vision of what this game might look like after a couple of months of work before putting any time to the content creating that might happen to be a waste after all. But we are very glad that you see the opportunity for this game to become something bigger.

@johnnysix Yeah, it's pretty hard right now because you have to pay attention to the entirely different parts of the screen. We are trying to find a better placing for the dialog boxes right now. Maybe even in the worldspace above characters heads.

@mintarcade Thanks for your kind words, but there are surely things to criticize about our game. Guess you are looking at it from the jam point of view keeping in mind all those restrictions. But when you are trying to see it as a fully developed project, there happen to be a ton of things to fix, rework and rebalance.

@jonathan-lorenz Thanks for your feedback. We are very glad you liked our approach to the theme. Right now we are cooking an update and it's so hard not to make an ordinary runner out of it. Action aspects are surely easier on the implementation and further development sides than dialogs and other rpg things.

@automatonvx Yeah, I agree that the foreground is kinda empty at the moment. But adding small obstacles like stones and bushes would make it an absolute impossible task to run, jump and read at the same time. So I guess we should add those as just the visual components without any gameplay value and look into bigger and more noticable obstacles for variety. Thank you very much for your feedback.

@honey Someone actually mentioned Kingdom, but they did it on their game page as an answer to our comment. Surprisingly neither of us played Kingdom and I didn't have it in mind while developing the artstyle. Speaking of that water reflection effect the real purpose why I added it was that those barebones silhouetted foreground platforms had too much of a space on the screen and it was the opposite of pretty. So I just put a reflection of a lot more detailed background to create an illusion of complexity and to keep players attention off those platforms. I guess that Kingdom water effect was at first added following the same logic. Thank you for the feedback.

@cristiano-m-garcia Thanks for your feedback. We see the problem of not appealing to a lot of people with that strict requirement for multitsking. So we are cooking an update for the game right now regarding the readability of the dialogues and reworking the quest system a bit. We are trying to make it more convinient to read while keeping part of your attention on the action. And in the future (if there will be one for this project) some learning curve starting from simple and short sentences and ramping up to a more complex ones is surely needed.

@paul-avallone Glad you liked the visuals and the feel of the game. I really tried my best to make it look as good as I can under those time restrictions. You are right that the quest system right now holds no rewards for the player. We are trying to rework it a little right now and publish an update.

@Darkphnx Thank you for the feedback. Reflections were a relly simple trick and took about five to ten minutes to put together. I made a tutorial with all the necessary code. There is a HUGE link somewhere in the comments so take a look if you like. We agree that quest system is a bit undeveloped and we are working on it right now. We are trying to add some actual quests (at least one at first) and give players at least some feeling of accomplishment upon the quest completion.

bitsandcrafts 2018-05-01 17:14

great art! cool game :) GJ

2018-05-02 17:22

Lovely concept! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrZuBymYcB4

phearbot 2018-05-05 21:01

This was absolutely awesome. I loved the art style and the new take on a runner. I didn't love how the coins would disappear when a dialogue would start. The parallaxing in the background was fantastic.

luckylars 2018-05-11 21:22

I like the way the game begins where you just have to click space to jump and get right into the action. I missed the tutorial option to talk to the people you meet while running on my first try but quickly picked it up on my second try. Unless I missed it maybe the game could pause once explaning the keys you should press to talk to people you meet.

hisfantor 2018-05-12 11:08

really love your graphics, the fog and the reflection in the water are great! I don't really like the big pixly font, that was kinda distracting