lillybyte 2018-08-14 19:22
I love the aesthetics of this game, but more so, I love the screen sizing effects; really suiting to the theme and not something I've seen implemented before!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Rude Bear Resolution
By alexrose, atmospherium and bitsandcrafts
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 29 | 4.15 | 53 | |
| Fun | 83 | 3.87 | 53 | |
| Innovation | 31 | 4.07 | 53 | |
| Theme | 2 | 4.54 | 54 | |
| Graphics | 65 | 4.39 | 55 | |
| Audio | 40 | 4.07 | 51 | |
| Humor | 121 | 3.63 | 48 | |
| Mood | 80 | 3.94 | 53 |
I love the aesthetics of this game, but more so, I love the screen sizing effects; really suiting to the theme and not something I've seen implemented before!
Really liked it! Great job!
:bear: :bear: :bear: :bear: :bear:
I love the screen sizing effects too! Very well made!
pppsh screen resizing, so unoriginal. Though this resizing is super nice and smooth compared to the browser window resizing I did. The literal screenshake is very satisfying, especially when reviving from a small screen. Did you need to freeze the game when shrinking though? It sometimes interrupted the gameplay and didn't feel too good. But the freeze when reviving was great. The level design is cool and has a good layout with the powerups making you feel pretty powerful by the end. But the physics felt pretty weird, particularly the double jump gravity and any time you touched a platform (the final boss was really weird because of this). Art style and music is great, etc. Although there is a frame in the idle animation that has this one pixel that kept flashing...
@foolmoron lol yeah, The pixel was in 3 different frames so I initially just went "eh that might be a design choice lolz" and didn't question, I did make a mental note to maybe erase it later but I forgot.
I like heavy physics, floaty is boring and doesn't give me enough control at high level play, it's more about velocity prediction pre-jump and less about reaction time, but I know this is an extremely polarising topic, had the same thing with SRBR.
I decided early on to do the pause to combat lag and bad game feel. The literal screenshake is alright on the boss when everything is crazy but imo it doesn't lend itself too well to general platforming.
The top game I played from ludum today haha. Really nice idea!
ahhh pixel? where? noooooo!! Really need to sort out game assets painting workflow and some other stuff like using a color palette :D Kinda new at digital painting.
This was fucking awsome. The bossmechanic could have been explained in the level before that tho ^^
I really liked the idea, the artstyle and the music but I got frustrated not knowing where to go and what to do. It felt like the screen was shrinking a bit fast which lets very little time to explore as when the screen shrinks to about half its original size it's really hard to see what's around you. Also the fact that the game freezes when the screen's size is reduced and the fact that there is no invulnerability frame when hit makes the game really hard. Nice job overall.
@sadsmile I don't like to explain things with text, I think it gets too wordy, I prefer to explain them through design, obvs it's hard to do that without mass player testing though, and as I had no testers here I had to just go with gut and probably overshot.
The way I attempted to show the boss mechanic, was by first of all making it so immediately after you get the dash mechanic, there are 4 eyes in your way that you can't dodge, and the only way to get through them without taking damage is to dash at them, so I tried to make it clear that dash kills eyes in that way.
Then in the next corridor, there are blue eyes and red eyes, and while the blue eyes die, the red eyes hurt you. I also thought that red = bad would probably be possible to work out. Since all you can do is dash, duck and jump, and ducking/jumping obviously wouldn't hurt the boss, I thought probably players would work out that dashing at the blue eyes kills the boss.
Did you work it out eventually or did you stop playing? Would be useful to know for the future! Cheers!
This was an incredibly well-rounded game entry! It was a good choice for the player to be sent back to the last fire they hit, cause it allows for you to fumble around an increasingly intense environment whilst you're trying to find the first upgrade. Once you start getting powers you really feel that you can start to work with the world presented in the game. The art style and sounds are on point, really well done! Only thing that I wasn't sure was intentional is that the eyes on the last boss didn't reset, so it just became a war of attrition! Take out an eye, lose, go back and take out another. Really, an incredible entry! Keep making games!
@mrsylar59 sorry! yeah, the freezing was a limitation of the platform, if I didn't freeze then the screen would be going haywire and it would feel awful, the freezing is imperfect but it was the only way I could pull off the mechanic.
You do get 0.3 ingame seconds of invulnerability after getting hit, excluding the time shift. (aka if it freezes right while you're getting hit, you still get the full 0.3 seconds of invulnerability, it's measured in ingame time and not realtime).
There are three types of signposts, the ones with eyes show there's a new ability there, the ones with arrows inwards show that you have to come back later, and the ones with skulls show there's nothing there. Once you've done one loop of the world back to the first room, you've passed right by all of the eye signs, and there's pretty much nowhere else you can go in the first loop, you just ride the moving platforms to their endpoint, it's a straight anticlockwise loop.
Maybe it would've been better if I added more torches? Although, it takes 16 shrink cycles to kill you, shrink cycles happen every 3 seconds, so you get about 48 seconds of exploration before you die as long as you don't get hit. If I added more torches I feel like there wouldn't be any point in having the shrink mechanic at all, because you would basically never die. Dunno how to reconcile that.
@steve-sparkes Yeah, it was intentional, even I find it difficult to beat the boss in one attempt, especially when he can do things like switch the platforms while you're on the bottom platform, so bottom becomes top and you can get dragged right into a red eye. Really hard to react in time to something like that. I never give bosses their HP back because I don't believe as a design principle in forcing a player to do something they've already done before, it's like wasting the player's time as a punishment. Like, you punish the player by making them play your game, but playing your game should be fun in its own right. I understand the dark souls mentality but I'm not about that life.
Awesome game, I love games that explore these weird things we can do with our computers. It's a solid game even without the gimmick though, and I had a lot of fun for the time I spent playing, and the map is not large enough so I could get lost and frustrated.
Congrats!
@alexrose Yeah, i beat the game (i love the boss's visual design to death btw.) I ran through the eyes because i wanted to dodge them (they where moving so i thought i could walk under them :O)
It's amazing! I'm happy I found this game! The changing size of the window is a brilliant solution.
Awesomeee game! Really enjoyed it !! really! :)
The Metroidvania touch is perfect and well made! Great visuals, great audio, great gameplay, nice balance! Nothing else to say more than : A Big Congrats guys !
Keep it :up:
An extremely well-polished game, the stress from the shrinking screen led to some very clutch moments. The use of light as a mechanic to increase screen size was very good because it is easy to sense when you're getting close to safety when the screen is very small. The boss was bananas awesome! 10/10 GOTY would Bear again!
Great detail in characters and parallax background! Also unlocking basic controls as the game continues is a great nod to metroidvania games.
It feels very satisfying when you get to a bonfire and the screen grows popingly back.
Maybe the screen shrinks to much, it's a little hard to navigate with a tiny screen.
Nice back and forth level design with upgrades (first time I unlocked crouch in a game) but a little to many "stay on the moving platform".
Nice art and sound, a very expressive feel to it!
Great job guys! All round very polished and fun game in all aspects. I loved the bears animations, all those expressions of pure fear. He's seen some shit :smile: Only crits would be that I got caught on/under some of the platforms, which was never game ending and amusing in its own right. And when the screen resized it tended to make the movement feel a bit jaggered - something that wasnt present with the boss fight (which was all round super smooth)
Just left a rating thanks for submitting this to our stream!
I like when readme's make me laugh :) Very cool graphics, especially the background tiles! The idea was executed really well, although sometimes rapidly changing screen size made me a bit dizzy - I think this mechanic works well with games in which you drag and resize the window yourself, but when it does it all the time in pretty short intervals, it can cause quite of a headache. Fixed screen size with black or drawn frame around it could do better in this case :) Really cool idea with expanding the universe during every LD - I will look for another Rude Bear entry next time!
I let the game rage quit for me at the end of the game, other than that well made and good job. Graphics had a theme of there own, not my cup of tea when it comes to the graphics though, same with the game as it is a platformer but I can see potential in this game for people who are a fan of the genre. The idea of the whole window closing is was new and refreshing. The BIGGEST problem, with the game, was actually the window changing. Not because of headaches or lack of concentration, but due to the window refresh lag caused by the window swapping sizes. I don't know how you would fix that, but good job anyway!
Very well done!
The only two problems I experienced were the slight lag when the window resized and that I had no idea what to do to the boss (had to come search on here while Mr Bear stood quietly in the corner of the boss level).
Nicely done, good job !
Aw maaan this game is great! Cool idea and great executed! Very well done!
The game concept is very interesting and very well exploited.
i really enjoyed the game, but the little pauses when the screen shrink are way too much frustrating :( Solid entry tho 👍
Probably one of the most interesting games I've played in this Jam, great mechanics and the sizeable window is a great concept for the theme, just amazing xD Loved the art and the music Really awesome!
God damn, that's some crazy and original way to approach the theme of the jam. It caused some extreme lag during the boss fight, but besides that, it was really fun to play through. And how can you stop playing when you have such great BGM and visuals? All props to you for that.
Got stuck under the elevator! :( Apart from that - great one - very good idea, very good execution, felt very good to play! Thanks for that!
Cool game. First of all level design is very good, it was easy and intuitive to navigate even though seeing it for the first time. Controls are pretty tight too, especially dash, very satisfying to use. :smile: Nice music and fitting sounds.
One thing I find a bit confusing is inability to crouch until you unlock it. I get that it's part of a progression, but it wasn't obvious at the very start. I mean, crouching seems like a basic thing that shouldn't require an 'ability'. :smile:
Very cool overall, good job everyone.
@lawrence haha, fair. Yeah it was kinda a reference to Samus's morphball ability in metroid
I really liked all the parts of this game except just a couple. I didn't like how the game was freezing every screen shrink. For me it made the platforming part quite janky. The second thing is that those moving thin platforms were no oneway platforms and it was hard to use them because of that (especially on a boss fight). And the final thing is that you ripped me of a full proper bossfight! Every Dark Souls player would tell you that it's a true joy to finally beat a hard multistage almost impossible boss. But here it just saves all the damage I've done to him. It's just a nitpick and I understand that this decision made the game beatable by pretty much every player, but c'mon! I need my true boss fight!
Really good game, audio-visuals were stunning. The way it ends was very cute. And btw whats with the 7142? I tried pressing those numbers on a keyboard, then on a numpad, then I looked through the whole map (although screen shrink does not really encourage exploration), but I found nothing. If it's just an easter egg than what does it mean? Google gives me that it's a model of a X-Wing fighter, Xerox and Ray-Ban mens glasses. So none of that seems fitting.
@detectivelosos The number is part of a larger ARG.
I would give you the boss fight normally, but this is LD and most people here are bad at playing games so I gave up on making things difficult years ago, instead I make them hard and forgiving so most people can still beat them. I saw someone actually ragequit the boss in its current form already after only knocking 4 eyes off (across several lives).
Yeah, the jank was a design decision I had to make within the first couple hours or basically abandon the mechanic altogether, but it fit the theme so well that I couldn't bring myself to do so.
That was awesome! Great concept with perfect use of the theme, and the graphics and music are great too. I like the metroidvania feel combined with the screen mechanic, though it was pretty tense and a bit frustrating at times - games getting explicitly harder as you do worse (ie screen getting smaller when you get hit) is a bit of a weird feeling. Starting back at the last fire made "dying" feel reasonable though. Gamefeel was generally good, like the dash felt great, though getting a little stuck whenever you hit a wall made the platforming feel a bit clunky. I really enjoyed the boss mechanics, especially with saving progress since you died in one hit. I wonder if being able to take multiple hits & not saving progress may have been a bit better though. Great ending too. Can't wait to see where the RBCU goes next. Great work!
@adhesion lol is the rbcu the rude bear cinematic universe? thanks a lot!
Hey Alex, I came to see the result of your efforts but it is only for Windows. No HTML or Mac ports? If you don't plan on doing release for Mac, then I may dig my old dell out or something. Either way, thanks for streaming and chatting about SOAD! it really helped me stay focused on the Jam, and I was happy with the result.
@chadrbanks yeah, it's windows only because I don't have a mac to test on and HTML wouldn't make sense with the core mechanic.
Cheers man!
@alexrose That makes sense. If you just need it to be tested then I would be more than willing to test it on one of my Macs and send you the results. Especially if I can get some feedback on my submission in return, that would be BA. I can even include screen caps or whatev, you would just have to be willing to export a Mac.app file from Unity and send it to me.
@chadrbanks sorry dude but I would have to change all the window resizing code to mac code, and then it takes me hours to upload. I have no interest in working on a jam game after the jam's over unforch.
You guys continue to make some of the best feeling games in Ludum Dare, the attention to detail and game feel really makes these entries stand out, and honestly, this is probably the best Rude Bear entry so far.
Art was excellent, consistent, and well scoped for the game. Everything made sense, was comprehensible. Good use of visual design.
Mechanics were good, the main mechanic of the window resizing was a great idea and has a lot of space for play. I had a bit of trouble with faster moving platform puzzles when combined with the shrinking window, it meant a lot more blind leaps of faith than I'm usually used to, but overall it worked very well. Like I said, the attention to game feel really benefited the entire game.
Music was Fantastic, didn't feel repetitive even after a longer play session, and had me grooving while I played. Always rate high when music has me moving to it.
Great job all around! Hope this entry does as well as it deserves!
Great! Congratulations, you deserve one of the first positions!
The window resizing is a super original mechanic and a technical marvel at that. Jump was a bit droppy for me, could maybe be a bit clearer on the critical path, but overall solid work. Here's a video of my play and feedback: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/303342353