htmichael 2018-08-13 11:08
I liked this. Art was good and levels were challenging. Controls felt a little jerky though? But no other complaints!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Sinking
By bungalow
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 618 | 3.36 | 74 | |
| Fun | 734 | 3.09 | 73 | |
| Innovation | 1078 | 2.60 | 73 | |
| Theme | 632 | 3.45 | 72 | |
| Graphics | 424 | 3.68 | 75 | |
| Mood | 323 | 3.42 | 71 |
I liked this. Art was good and levels were challenging. Controls felt a little jerky though? But no other complaints!
The controls/movement could have used a little bit more work, it felt kind of clunky to move around. THe graphics were very nice!
Thanks for the amazingly quick review! In the next update I will try my best to fix the jerky controls. If you are referring to the fact that dash and double jump make you move quickly, That was my intention. If it isn't to your liking, then maybe I can change it!
Some interessting stuff, but control should be improove, keep it up !
Thanks!
Really cool art style ^^
Controls felt a bit weird.
But all in all awesome game :D
Thanks for the review but could you please describe what about the controls were weird? I'd like to fix them in my next update!
Nice game! This is much more difficult than I expected though. I love how much the character stands out from the background, well done on that part. At times the game is a little buggy such as not being able to double jump, but it is a challenging game nonetheless that I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Art was really Cool! I agree with other comments, controls are a Little weird.
In the overall, this is a pretty solid entry and very theme fitting.
Thanks for your work and have a nice day!
Thanks so much and we also saw that problem and couldn't exactly perfect everything
Yeah, the controls being weird weren't bugs, it was just my bad design! I should probably clarify that Double Jump can be used again once you touch ground, and Dash can be used again once you touch ground OR wait 1 second.
Thanks for all the reviews! Didn't expect this many!
First off, the graphics in the menu doesn't do justice to the graphics in game, i kinda like it in way. The controls are too complicated, there is too much variations of metrics in the jumps, for instance the second jump is so much different than the first one, which makes the game harder than it needs to be. Also is wall jump a bug or intended ? The game has a clear visual indentity, so well done !
Thank you for the critical review, This is why we join game jams! The menu was a sort of last minute thing, and when I built it, there were weird blue lines because of Unity. The second jump being different from the first is intended to make it more hard. The wall jump thing was a bug. Sorry!
Couldn't get past the first part, I tried and tried and tried...
Art is great, loving the style.
Gameplay is alright.
Overall, if it had more time, it could've been better, I had no idea what I was doing at first glance and couldn't make it out of the start area even after a good ammount of attempts :<
@bigjigglyproductions Try opening the tutorial! Sorry I should have made it more clear that you HAD to play the tutorial first. My bad!
The controls could improve, but I like the art style.
Good job! :)
@bungalow no problem, I'll give it another go :D
Thanks! :D
Graphically sound, from a visual and gameplay perspective.
As other have mentioned, controls seem erratic. Major problem apparent when trying to jump off the very edge of a platform: game appears to interpret this as a wall jump rather than a regular jump (unsure if intended?). Easy enough to factor in once known but unintuitive at first. Would also recommend rebinding the dash from C to something like W.
Good challenge once I'd got used to it. Managed to make it to the fourth(?) checkpoint but just couldn't make that ascent before the darkness caught up to me!
@melmo That's awesome that you made it that far! There were three checkpoints altogether and I did my best to make the last one as hard yet still possible as I could. There will be an update soon, in which I have taken ALL of your comments into account.
@melmo @rillep @michno @memel06 @randdir @anstabo @htmichael @bigjigglyproductions I have made an update in which I have taken all of your comments into account (except @anstabo , sorry! I didn't have enough time to work on a new menu!). Wall Jump actually works, Double Jump does the same jump as a normal jump, the controls should be more responsive and more keys perform Dash!
@bungalow yup it's better now, you've improved it quite a bit. nice job dude ! the infinite wall jump is still there so i guess it's a feature now ;)
pretty nice, but the double jump is kinda wonky abit, sometimes it wont activate
Nice update it's seems have better control for me (or maybe i just didn't know there was a tutorial xD). Anyway good job ! (even if i'm still not good with that kind of game it's really addictive).
@anstabo Yeah, it's a feature, thank you SOO much for replaying my game!
@anstabo Yeah, it's a feature, thank you SOO much for replaying my game!
@alexander-tan When does it not activate? I'd like to fix it! But thank you for playing my game!
@alexander-tan When does it not activate? I'd like to fix it! But thank you for playing my game!
@randdir Thank you for replaying, and yeah a couple people didn't realise there was a tutorial! Should have made it more obvious!
Great art, fun gameplay. Some problems I faced are that the controls feel unresponsive at times, like double jump not working when it should and tight gaps with not enough checkpoints between them which makes it pretty annoying after some time (that might be just me being bad at the game tho XD). Overall it's a good game, good job!
@lsd thank you for playing my game! The double jump should renew after you touch solid ground and I only made 3 checkpoints to make it harder. Could please take less than a minute out of your day to rate our game? That would be greatly appreciated!
Loved this game! Great job!
Good job on the game! The art style is really cool. I did face issues learning the controls in the tutorial because the double jump doesn't work sometimes so I couldn't get past the black hill. Good effort!
Should have been labeled as 'Dark Souls'. Thank you, Dark Souls. The hardest game for me so far, but the gameplay and graphics feels good.
There are some problems with controls - for the 1/4 of cases the leap just doesn't work, even if I landed on ground or just performed a jump.
I love the artwork and ambiance! The game is very challenging, the difficulty could increase over time. Controls are a bit stiff so it makes it even harder. As small UX improvement, you could map both WASD keys and arrows on keyboard (cause WASD is not suitable for non qwerty keyboard). A small music with accelerating rhythm could help to make the game more stressful and immersive. You could use a less generic font to make it more integrated in the game. Cool entry & great job, congratz!
@nidup I'm so sorry! I forgot to take that into account! I gotta go to sleep now, so I can't fix your problem but thank you so much for checking my game out! Also I have no experience in sound design/music, so I doubt I could have done the rhythm thing. (Even when that is such a a good idea!)
I like the level design, but the air jump and dash are very inconsistent. It seems almost random when you press the button whether you will get your jump or not.
@znw Haha, yeah I did my best to make it really hard. I couldn't find any bugs like that when I played it, so sorry, I can't really fix the bug if I don't know how to find it! Thank you for playing our game though! "Thank you, Dark Souls."
@rob-white That's weird, I never found that... Thanks for playing my game though!
@zicboy Thank you!!
The game is very well designed gameplay wise, challenging but in a way that pushes you forward. I really enjoyed this entry.
The graphics looks great, but the controls where a bit of a surprice it took me a while to get used to. But i like it!, even tough it not the type of game i would normaly play, the screenshots lured me in hehe. Nice work on the game!
@fullmontis Thank you so much! It's people like you that get devs motivated!
@imtehq Haha, well that's what the screenshots were supposed to do! I did my best to make the controls really flexible. Thanks for the input! Also I agree on the I wouldn't normally play thing, but it's hard to make a fun game! :)
Really great game. I think the level design is very hard, but fair. Everytime I died I tried to figure out how to do this passage better and it worked until I came to one tricky location which I couldn't pass. I don't know why but at the location where you have to climb on this "mountain" and than make a few tricky jumps to make it to the next checkpoint I always don't land on the platform. But still I really enjoyed this game despite it's sometimes clumsy controls. I liked the difficulty and the game itself. Good Job guys ;)
@drskort Thank you for the feedback! Yeah, that part was hard, but the next checkpoint is even harder! As you know it's too late to update our game, but thanks for playing!
Thank you all for playing my game! I'll be sure to play and rate them all tomorrow!
The concept is simple but effective and addictive, I really liked this prototype!
@odin Thanks!! That's awesome to hear!
Love the art style and effects. On point. But as many have stated the controls are a bit clunky and I feel the speed of the darkness chasing you was a bit quick to start off with. Would also like to have seen more usage of the wall ride. Keep up the good work though. I hope to see more development on this in future :D
@dark-prince-zen Thanks for playing my game! As I was building the game, I was also thinking to myself that the wall jump wasn't used enough! :) Also I'd love to keep working on it!
The game is very interesting because of its difficulty. Also, I really liked the graphics and the game atmosphere.
@n1ckq Thank you!!
A good looking game, controls are fine and handle well, really could use some sound. But great job!
@bredera Thank you so much!! I wanted to add sound, but I'm no sound designer. :(
Neat little game, I really like it! We had similar ideas I think :grin: it's not too difficult but there is definitely some challenge there, and I love the fx and mechanics for the wall jump - great job! Art style is nice, too. More bits of the level that used the wall jump would have been excellent. In my opinion, movement was far too slow. Other than that, though, great job! :slight_smile: oh and you really should add sound. You say you're no sound designer, but just use randomly generated audio! It works a treat, and adds so much to the experience.
Pretty good mood, the dash could have been bind in a different key, like "shift" or "F" i think.
Comme check our entry ;)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/shblow
@dom-harris That’s really cool! My game was pretty much a terrible version of Hollow Knight’s Path of Pain, which is where I got the inspiration from. Also if you think this movement is slow, you should have seen it 5 Mins before I posted! It was literally x3 slower! Btw that audio thing is genius!
@eryph thanks for the feedback, although shift does perform dash, along with W and C. I’ll be sure to check out your game tomorrow, after I get some sleep! Thanks for coming along!
@bungalow ahh I haven't played hollow knight yet! Mine was heavily based on the Ginso Tree escape in Ori and the Blind Forest, but then I realised it was almost exactly the same and switched my slow time/dash in any direction for the simpler left/right dash I've got now :sweat_smile:
@dom-harris And I haven't played Ori yet! Even though I've wanted to for ages. Also the thought of a directional dash sounds awesome! Who cares if you copy it, game jams are meant for having fun and growing as devs! I had a quick glance at the thumbnail, and as a compo, your game already looks x10 better than mine! I can't wait to check it out tomorrow!
@bungalow ahhhh I'd highly recommend it, it's beautiful! Celeste is awesome, too. My game is essentially a cross between the two. Haha yes exactly! But I did want to be a little bit creative :wink: Really, you think my game looks better than yours?! I loved the art style you went with!
@dom-harris I know it's beautiful! While watching the trailer, I couldn't stop thinking "This is actually too good to exist"! Ori and Celeste have been sitting in my steam wishlist for a while, and they are ridiculously cheap for their content, so I'll be sure to buy them soon! Your game 100% looks better than mine, mine was just a bunch of photoshop tricks to make my art seem good. :)
Very beautiful graphics! Great game, good job! :)
@batlordz Thank you! :)
A good game idea, the music should be improved. The graphics are good. Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)
@awix Thanks for checking out my game! The game idea wasn't completely original though, the abilities were pretty much copies of Hollow Knight's abilities! I'll be sure to check your game out!
By the way, if the double jump doesn't seem to work at first, just wait like 10 seconds and the double jump should work great. Reminder: The double jump renews after you touch ground!
Very cool start menu and visual atmosphere. I played the tutorial first and had a bit of a cuphead moment with the dash ability. Almost gave up then but convinced myself to give the actual game a decent try :). I would love to see the incoming darkness (from top of screen) as something as graphically impressive as the environment. Also not sure if this is a bug but someone else in the comments mentioned music, I had no audio if there was meant to be any. Cheers for the game!
This game gave me a lot of fun but I was missing a few checkpoints in harder part of the game :P
I love the art style, it would synergize with a dark, eerie music so well. The mechanics could have been a bit better fetting, like the double jump is bit ill-fitting in my opinion. Also don't really know whether I was bad or not, but sometimes I felt like the controls were a bit off.
But overall I really like this game, and as soon as I thought: "this game should have a checkpoint system", I reached the first one :smile:
Keep it up !
@rawrasaur Thank you so much for giving my game a decent try! Not many people will do that, especially because of the difficulty of the game. The music wasn't a bug, there wasn't any music or sound. :( I also decided that the darkness should look like space coming in, because it was, even though it doesn't look like that at all.
It's a lovely art style and looks very Grimm and 'alone'. The dash looks very fluid and powerfully but I have an azerty keyboard so its difficult with the qwerty layout
Cool game dude! Realy like it! It's dam hard and I coult not get away fast enough!
@tudvari Thank you for the feedback! I wanted to add a track, and even had a great one in the project, but I didn't really like the idea of using other people's stuff even though the jam rules allowed it. The controls are a bit iffy for the first few seconds, but then it should go back to normal. Also I almost didn't add a checkpoint system, but did because I didn't want to be THAT cruel. By the way I love the profile pic. :)
@mazzletov Yeah, another person pointed the keyboard thing out and I should have realised it!! Thanks for playing the game though! :)
@thedouche Thanks!! The game was meant to be really hard, but still playable! :)
@krystekku Yeah, I wanted to make it harder, and harder, and harder. Thanks for playing my game though!
Visually, it's really great, love the particles effects ! But the game need a little bit of balancing for the beginning, otherwise the gameplay is great and dynamic. Well done !
Enjoyed cool concept, challenging gameplay and the great ending scene ^^ Double jump is actually working but it doesnt feel right because of the response time. Too bad there is no music to complete the atmosphere with those great viusals. Overall that was fun to play. Great job!
@simonaura Thank you!! I agree that the beginning is hard, but I think that adds to the experience! Of course it's all up to taste, and because most people give up at the beginning, next time I'll make the difficulty curve a bit fairer. Thank you for playing my game though!
@mustiman Oh my god... You actually completed the game!! That's awesome! I'm not sure anyone (other than me) has actually done it! The double jump thing is probably because of the lag. I optimized it pretty well (I think), but the idiot that I am forgot to delete the death particle after a certain amount of time. Thanks for the feedback!
It's a very cool entry your have here ! The character's controls are very neat, the graphics and mood are just amazing, it was lacking a bit of music to make it close to perfection :)
Your tutorial is fantastic, however the level are maybe to difficult too soon. I thinks it lack of safe places, we have to handle killing walls / floors AND the black fog at the same time. I'm also not very good :)
Looking for more of this kind of game, congratulation !
I loved this game sooo much. Fun to play, the art style is awesome and it is perfectly challenging for my taste. Awesome job! :)
The character movement feels a bit slow for me though. But maybe that's just me, wonderful game anyways mate! :)
Woah, pretty good game! Love the art, the controls are good. Except sometimes when the we can't double jump (when we are lower than where we started the first jump, I think). Overall I think it's a little difficult, but i'm quite bad at playing this kind of game. Really great! With more levels, a progressive difficulty and audio, it could make a very cool little game!
Sorry, good ... but i'm not an octopus !
For WebGL, please support QWERTY and AZERTY keyboard layout, especially in the case of a "platformer" game ; it's really simple with four direction motions...
Keys relative motion : * Q to move left * A to move left * D to move right * W to move up * Z to move up * S to move down * SPACE to jump
Eventually, support also arrow keys.
Other avalaible nearest keys : * E to special action 1 * C to special action 2 * X to special action 3
Most other keys around "this block of nine keys" can be used with both of keyboard layouts.
Thanks for the whole player community.
Nicely done ! the controls works pretty well, and it is challenging enough ! I just think it is a little bit hard to really know where the trigger of the dangerous black zone starts, with all the floating black stuff around :/ But still, great game !
nothing much to add vs other review haha ; the art style was simple but clean, feels polished, but controls are weird for me
nice entry !
@kelda Yeah, I wanted it to be a surprise whenever the player sees space moving in, but scared when they don't know when it's coming. Thanks for playing!!
@narudgi As in the keybindings or controlling the player? Either way, thanks for playing!
Hard and beauty game! well done!
@artem-sinica Thank you!
Graphics worked really well and the world design was fantastic. A bit of sound/music would of been really nice but otherwise was a neat game.
very nice game.... Minimal graphics but it goes well with the overall theme. Gameplay is a bit challenging.
Gorgeous jam game! I loved the entire aesthetic. I love challenging platformers! If I had more time I would have enjoyed playing more of it! I think the checkpoints might have been a bit far for most people playing, but it was a very tight feeling platformer! Based on the queue, it looks like you missed when I played your game. Here's the link to the vod https://www.twitch.tv/videos/297052820?t=10h08m37s it should be about 10 hours and 8 mins in.
Controls doesn't work
@rob-parker I completely agree, but I can't make sounds, or anything to do with audio really. Thanks for the feedback!
@ursagames Sorry for the late reply, I have been busy for a while. Thanks so much for playing my game! You did a lot better than I expected! I did my best to make it get reaaally hard by the end, but that seems to drive many people away. Also sorry for missing that part of the stream, it was 3:00am here in Australia while you were playing then. Thank you so much for the feedback though!
@timbelion Do you mean that they don't work at all, or that they don't work sometimes? Either way, thanks for trying at least!
@zblah Thank-you! Lucky for you, I have been working on an update in which there will be multiple levels, more art and more polished controls. With the multiple levels, thank you for the tip about there being too many hazards to deal with at once. Now that I am dealing with multiple levels, I can slowly introduce more hazards. Thank you for playing my game!
@guladam Thank you for the feedback! I'll be sure to make the player move faster in the next update!
@chocolat-endive Thank you for playing! I am making an update in which I have addressed all of your concerns: Audio, multiple levels with a good difficulty curve and I have fixed that weird double jump bug.
@bismark In my next update I think the easiest option is to just make them arrow keys along with the existing controls, with controller support. Thanks for the help and playing it!
Nice platformer. I loved the fact that there was an in-game tutorial, it helped a lot for the (really tough) beginning of the game.
Pros : - Various interactions aside from jumping, well-explained by an in-game tutorial - Nice graphics and visual effects - Great take on the theme
Cons : - Difficulty curve a little to steep
All in all, good job !
Lovely little platformer. Needs some clear instructions -- took me a while to understand how the controls worked and where it was safe to land. Very nice, stylish graphics. Could have used some sound to help set the mood, but otherwise very well done!
@jlv Thank you, but that critique is too kind! There were many other flaws, such as lack of audio and sometimes controls being unresponsive. But I'm genuinely curious, if I were to add an update with multiple levels (so more room for a smoother difficulty curve), perfect controls and audio, would you care to play it? I'd like an honest answer though, please. Either way, thanks so much for trying it out and I hope you have a great day!
@digital-bacon What do you mean by where it was safe to land? If you mean the colour contrast between danger and safety, I completely agree. Thanks for playing my game! :)
If it can reassure you, I was not trying to be compromising or anything :) During my playthroughs, the controls did not strike me as broken. As for the audio...well, I probably intended to write it in the cons, so that's a mistake on my part. Regarding your upgrade plans, I will try to play your game as soon as I can, to give you a detailed insight on possible improvements ;)
@bungalow yes, took me a while to figure out that the lighter areas were safe to land on: kept trying to do slow landings on the dark areas 😁. Good idea using different shades (rather than different colours) to differentiate as I don’t believe there are visual impairments that would make the game difficult to play.
Visually very interesting! The top coming down was the only part that didn't do the rest justice I would say.
I second what @digital-bacon mentioned about where it's safe to land. The tutorial was my favorite part of this game because it gave me a real sense of what the game would be like. I wish the opening play scene had been a gentler ramp-up to a challenge; I have poor platform skills and need more time to figure out the quirks of the motion as well as getting used to the command keys. I assumed you were not working with a QWERTY layout because [w], [c], and [shift] are not very intuitive to my habits. (I spend a lot more keyboard time at asdf and jkl; than the gamer default wasd.) For a one-person production, you did a lot more than I could do, but I encourage you to look for free sounds. Whether you use sound as feedback or just a little background loop, it makes the experience more engaging. (If you tried to implement sound and couldn't get the code to work, then we're in the same club. We should make t-shirts.)
@s-ol Thank you for the feedback and playing my game! The top part coming down was supposed to be space closing in on the Earth, but I've recently realised that the lore is pretty bad, so in the next update I'll be sure to make the darkness more visually appealing!
@wrenpirate I actually do use the QWERTY layout, but C seemed natural for me. After my first post of this game to LD, people were saying how C was an odd place to put it, so I added more options. Next update I'm going to add an option for keybindings, so everyone is happy. Also I do know how to add sounds, but I wanted to make my own, which I couldn't do. We should make those T-shirts anyway though, but even better: We Can't Code Sounds official hats, or hoodies, or much better: snacks.
@jlv Thank you! Although the update may take a while. Since posting the game on LD, I have made the controls perfect, added audio and made multiple levels. I just want to know, do you think the game should ONLY be the dark setting that it is, or should I add multiple areas with more art and colours(For example a forest)? If you say that there should be multiple areas, should they be detailed or kept at the minimalistic style that it already is? I've been dwelling on this for a while but I still can't pick.
Better late than never, here is a more detailed (and totally subjective) breakdown of the strengths and weakness of your game.
**My platforming background**
I am a novice adept of die-and-retry platformers ; barely good enough to finish all the normal levels (B-Sides / Dark workd excluded) in Celeste and Super Meat Boy.
**Controls**
They are much tighter than when I first tried the game. To me, the controls scheme was intuitive enough (especially dash on Left Shift). My main concern is that both the wall jump and the dash should be taught at a different time, inside the game itself, and in parts of the game specifically designed to master them. Trying to master them both in the first minutes of your merciless levels is too discouraging.
**Level Design**
You are good at making the player suffer, and that's not a bad thing. But the difficulty curve needs to be a little less steep, at least in the beginning. Having the player dodge obstacles in free fall then dash is nice and a lot of fun to try again and again, but not as a first difficulty spike.
The checkpoints were adequately placed. If I am right, they also reset the "black curtain", which then starts from that defined point when you respawn. That's a nice way to avoid several issues, such as a player getting too much of a lead on the curtain (it's not gonna happen), or a player getting the checkpoint when almost crushed by the curtain (more likely) and unable to continue because the curtain respawns at the same time as him.
Another hard difficulty spike was the part in the beginning where you have to go up and climb several platforms while the curtain goes down. That's a little disheatening, since one mistake ruins your chances of dodging the curtain once above, even if the view is cleared when you make the mistake. Late punishment tends to hit harder. On the other hand, and as I previously said, you master the big design rules of a great die-and-retry, so keep it up !
**Visuals**
The first thing I would do is find a way to dissociate the black/grey particles that kill you and those that do not. Having a particle-based visual design is great, but it should not alter the readability of your game. Aside from that, I would keep the black and white visual design, while colouring important elements to make them strike the eye more (the player/a boss/a switch/a goal/???), but that's what you already do. In short, keep the dark aesthetic, but throw in small but memorable touches of color (one non-dark color by area ?).
I'm finishing this feedback in a hurry, so I might be forgetting things. Do not hesistate to contact me if you have more questions !
@jlv Thank-you so much! You put way too much effort into my crappy game!
I am also happy with the controls, but there were some occasions that a jump registered as a double jump, which I have fixed. I agree about trying to master different abilities separately would help because I had a couple of playtesters try it out and want to give up at the start of the level. As I said, I have made multiple levels, which gives me access to a better difficulty curve. With the particles, I was thinking that the ability particles would blend in with the environment, while the death one particle would be a bright white (Like the player, but different shape so that the player doesn't think they are still alive).
Also, I have made multiple possible combat systems. One melee combat system that, when in range, you teleport to the nearest enemy and kill them. I think that the melee system could also be a sort of a help in platforming, like like a grappling hook for when you are in range of something that can be grappled. I have also made a ranged combat system, which controls like a top-down shooter, and while that would be more fun to play, it requires use of mouse and people on a trackpad would suffer greatly. I wanted to know if you think that a combat system would be good, and if so, which system(or maybe both!).
I would go with the first one, and use the dash move to teleport to the ennemies. That way, you can add ennemies without adding complexity to your control scheme, and can think of the foes as "moving-platforms-that-can-kill-you-but-that-you-can-also-grab". I think that for a level design-based game such as yours, it is the leanest way to go and to experiment.
Nice work!