FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → The Pit

The Pit

By jelbre

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5593.0241
Fun5302.8941
Innovation3813.1541
Theme1693.9241
Graphics6372.4641
Audio5062.3939
Humor3392.4332
Mood5282.5238

Comments

adonisdevs 2018-08-13 00:05

THE CHARACTER MOVEMENT FELT SO NICE. Sorry, but I really liked it! Anyways, this was a really simple game with a lot of potential. Solid game :)

jelbre 2018-08-13 00:08

@adonisdevs Thanks, the movement was originally just planned to be done with the ingame physics engine but due to buggyness like getting stuck in walls, I made my own using a ton of raycast checks. It took quite a while to do but it seems like the customizeability I built in and used really paid off :D

conorod 2018-08-13 00:09

I love the concept of this - it's like a puzzle platformer but you have to think pretty fast! Cool idea, well executed!

laytanl 2018-08-13 00:14

Pretty cool game, did like the movement like someone else said, very smooth and there is like wind up or something? I did not really get how i was supposed to move the boxes though. And it is unfortunate that there is no audio. Keep it up man!

listonos 2018-08-13 00:17

Kick animation and little bit more polish on the controls would go a long way. Interesting concept though.

jelbre 2018-08-13 00:27

@conorod Thanks :D

@laytanl Kicking a box looks at the box the way you are facing at your feet, and hitting at your head. You need to be close enough and the boxes need to be moveable (moving conditions are baldy explained at the start). If the 1st box that drops is any box other than a silver one, you should be able to kick it (with "L") once it lands. Sometimes, the very first kick/hit doesn't register so try again once the bar at the top is charged again. Other than the 1st hit, it should always respond if the boxes are moveable.

It might also be a big confusing due to there being no feedback if the boxes aren't pushable (too heavy), that was a planned feature that didn't make it into the game due to time.

@listonos I would have loved to implement a kick animation, as well as an actual run cycle instead of what I have now, but I only started the art at 23:00 because of bugs and other things that needed to be done, so I ran out of time. If I would continue to work on my game, those are some of the top priorities :D

thepelranthean 2018-08-13 01:55

It's always interesting seeing people combine tetris-like behavior with platforming. I'm not sure I figured out the difference between 'P' and 'L', but I was able to move boxes, so I figure that's what's important.

One thing I found a bit annoying was the hit box of the character. More than once, I was just a little too close to the crate falling in the next tile over... many an unfortunate death has occurred from a nearby falling crate. Oh well; that's probably just my incompetent platforming skills at work.

Some of the polish you mention above would have been cool to see, but what you have is an effective game. I haven't worked out the perfect strategies, but it was fun to make more progress in subsequent runs as I figured out what was important to allow me to keep moving upward.

Thanks for sharing your game.

erendelous 2018-08-13 06:56

Really nice game! I'm not sure about movement and fun(in my opinion), but everything else works great!

cannonperson 2018-08-13 14:07

Pretty fascinating game. i like the way you've enhanced the "falling boxes" kind of games with the push mechanic and the different kind of boxes. very intuitive!

jackou 2018-08-13 14:19

I think that's an entry with quite some potential. Overall the movement felt fine, but I think an animation for kick / hit would've been great to feel more responsive. I also do think the hitbox of the character is a little to big.

Oh and sometime in the game the music just stopped playing :(

Cool concept overall, nice entry.

dsthedragon 2018-08-13 14:22

it was a really fun game and nice use of the theme

jelbre 2018-08-13 14:25

@jackou I wish I would have made the hitbox a bit more visible. at first, when I was just using a square sprite, it made alot more sence when you got hit and when you didn't, but when quickly drawing the character, it was hard to get him to look decent while also completely visualising the hitbox. Thanks for the feedback :D

jelbre 2018-08-13 14:25

@dsthedragon thanks :D

gamebuilder 2018-08-13 15:29

It took me a while to figure out the difference between hitting and kicking, but with some help from the comments here I figured it out. I felt an overwhelming urge to be able to _jump_ on top of the boxes as they landed on either side of me. Either that or a way to destroy some of the boxes. In any case you nailed the theme with this game and it sure is challenging.

One way to improve your game is to have a score at the top of the screen that indicates the number of boxes that landed. The highest I got is 20 (including the box that landed on my head), as shown in the screenshot. I am curious if anyone got further, and if so how.

boxes.png

jelbre 2018-08-13 17:21

@gamebuilder This is awkward... you CAN actually jump, I just now because of your comment realised that I forgot to put that on the main screen along with the other controls... anyways, if you would like to try again, the jump button is the space bar :p

gamebuilder 2018-08-13 17:52

I see ― that changes the whole ball game. I was able to survive indefinitely by jumping on a box in a certain section of the pit. I thought at first it was just sheer luck, or a bug, but now I see that this fits the theme perfectly.

taner 2018-08-13 19:10

Cool idea for theme. It had kinda weird control because sometimes hit and kick didn't do anything.

neuralcoder 2018-08-13 19:34

Nice game an humor. I like the simple look.

noxalus 2018-08-13 19:36

Good idea! :thumbsup: It was clever to allow the player to move crate, because the random god was not with me in my tests :stuck_out_tongue:

bloodyaugust 2018-08-13 20:26

Some clearer instructions would go a long way, I think. The movement and actions also felt a bit sluggish. :shrug: But hey, very nice idea! Also, pleeeease don't make us use an installer for an LD game. Just package the built game in a zip file. :smile:

luis-giron 2018-08-14 01:22

I like the idea, it has potential, I personally felt a bit addictive, intuitive and fun, however I can not distinguish between kick and hit, but hey, great entry! :smile:

hunter-towe 2018-08-15 09:23

I like the graphics. I think the sprite for the player could've been a little smoother and less jagged, but other than that everything is nice-- especially the crisp UI and text!

I find the music rather catchy, so much that I'm a little disappointed it doesn't loop. Seriously, though, I liked it!

The gameplay is fun and different from a lot of things I've seen. I do think that maybe you should increase the player's speed. Other than that, everything is good in my opinion.

I didn't necessarily feel like I was running out of space, because it seemed like I could keep going upwards (however, I didn't make it very far, so let me know if I'm incorrect). With all that said, it still fits the theme pretty well!

Overall, this is a fun little game!

On a side note, congrats on completing your first Ludum Dare project-- it's definitely something to be proud of! :)

jelbre 2018-08-15 13:23

@hunter-towe I wish I could have spent more time on the character, like actual run and jump cycles and a hit and kick animation, but due to my lack of experience and time left I decided to focus on other parts first.

I don't know why the music stopped looping, because it worked fine in the editor :/ Perhaps the loop checkbox got disabled somewhere... Oh well. Player speed should also be a thing that can be changed right in the editor, but I ran out of time to really balance it the way I wanted.

I would have liked to be able to implement a tetris like line destroy feature if an entire row got filled up, and limiting the height of the pit, but, once again, ran out of time :p

Thanks for the helpful feedback :D

suchista 2018-08-16 11:03

I don't feel the controls. The music is nice :)

wolfrug 2018-08-16 19:45

So does it have an end? :D Can you get out of the pit? If so - awesome! But even without that, still awesome. I got to a 9 as my highest, but no more - it does feel a little arbitrary at some points, i.e. whether or not you'll be able to continue is just based on luck, rather than anything else, but that might just be my feeling. Also, no boxes ever fall on the line furthest to the right (and in that vein: there's no quit/restart if you just get stuck at the bottom with everything else filled with boxes :D). But it had a really nice mood! Well done!

jelbre 2018-08-16 22:01

@wolfrug The kick and push are meant as a tool to help you out of bad RNG situations, but there is still RNG involved, so sometimes you can just get unlucky with no way out.

About the crates not falling on the right, I didn't even notice until now, guess I must have messed up while resizing the pit and forgetting to update the grid size :/ It's an easy fix in the editor but I guess it's a bit late for that now :P

Thanks for the feedback :D

dimesto52 2018-08-18 15:16

Is it really a coincidence how the blocks fall? or I just have no luck?

wabble 2018-08-21 20:07

jumping is a bit wonky haha.

Concept is cool tho. this quite understood the thing of pairs of 3

ely-shaffir 2018-08-25 13:57

Not half bad!