Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Grim Adventures
By ursagames
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 200 | 3.79 | 74 | |
| Fun | 200 | 3.68 | 75 | |
| Innovation | 334 | 3.36 | 73 | |
| Theme | 410 | 3.53 | 75 | |
| Graphics | 517 | 3.58 | 76 | |
| Audio | 259 | 3.58 | 73 | |
| Humor | 487 | 2.92 | 68 | |
| Mood | 452 | 3.41 | 74 |
Gave was developed very well i liked the art and the cloth effect. the only problem which i faced was while moving the character with the camera. This is similar problem with my game but yes it is a solid entry. All the best.
Thanks @nexusviper! What is the problem you faced? I tried to design the levels so that the camera placement shouldn't be too bad for clipping etc unless you go to extremes or are using an ultra-widescreen monitor.
I really enjoyed this, but the camera was a bit annoying in small buildings. I would have loved to be able to turn it to face where the player was facing. The character also felt a little heavy to me, but I have a preference for faster and more agile characters in platformers, so that's a preference rather than I problem I think. Great job!
awesome game, i saw a bit of the development on screen, character moved really fluid with controller, nice continuous gameplay, great music/athmosphere and even and endboss. there was a little bug in the otherworld where the cloth got a bit messed up, but didnt interfere with playing the game. enjoyed it!
So you have levels in which platform are placed irrespective of the camera viewing angle so it is very difficult to jump on different platform with a fixed camera angle... I tried my best to explain hope you get it...
Cool! I highly appreciate the rock-ish music style, it's a welcome change from most other games.
Very nice game, and the mechanics are great. Unfortunately the controls and the camera makes the whole thing really-really difficult and kinda frustrating, since judging a jump is kinda hard. I really liked the whole Firelink Shrine level design and the fact that the doors are the bosses. I really liked what the doors had inside them, it's certainly a great fit for the theme! Sadly, I just could get passed a narrow area, I kept falling down.
@sefrz Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I wasn't very happy with the indoor camera, but I had already started with a fixed camera and getting it close was the only thing I could think of to make it work indoors without investing too much time in making camera controls. I probably should have prioritized camera controls though judging by comments.
@Robber Thank you! I actually forgot to test it all with a controller, so I'm glad it plays well with one! The cloth was a big struggle, it does fix itself if you stand still a moment. It can get bugged in either world when the character controller moves up quickly - just more common on the stairs.
@nexusviper Ah right! Issues with the depth perception for the jumps, that's understandable. I was considering switching to a straight overhead light source to help that but it felt okay for me while testing the level. Really I should have done a player controlled camera.
@mickxe Thanks! TinyViking did an amazing job with the music in such a short time! All the music was made in one day.
@szabe Sorry the camera was frustrating for you. The jumping felt easy for me, but that's always an issue for level design without iterating through testers. The Firelink Shrine reference makes me happy though, that's what I was going for, but I didn't have time to add in shortcuts. By the way, you don't have to get through the narrow area to complete the game- but I could understand getting stuck at the checkpoint in it.
I always look forward to see what you make when ludum dare comes around and this is probably my favourite one. I take it that other peoples names are players names (that or you made it look like it), which i thought was really cool. I was also surprised by how satisfying the combat ended up feeling. I didn't struggle too much to do the platforming with a controller, but a fake shadow directly under the player would always help out in that regard and I wish there was a shortcut back once you got to the end of a branch. I think entering the house was a little tedious at the end when it was like 10 doors, but the juxtaposition between the spirit world and the real world was really cool.
Finally I found my favorite game among others. I finished your game in less than 30 minutes and I was really impressed by shaders material - especially cloth and enemies. The main gameplay is clever and fits perfectly with the theme. The music is freaky creating an oppresive mood. Well done. I had fun playing. Thank you for this amazing entry. I wish you the best ++
Also sincerelly I would like to thank you because you played and rated my game STR!PES - in fact you tried - without succes, but you tried :) Today a hacker had destroyed my leaderboard online and I thought to myself that all previous scores had been lost. Imagine my joy when I saw you in your video displaying the leaderboard with all scores just a few minutes before hacking. I saved all scores - you made my day. Thank you ++
This was a really nice 3D platformer, with some good challenges and a great concept that fits with the theme very well. While I would have liked a clearer shadow so I know where I'll land as well as a bit more variety with enemies in combat but the variety in platforming segments, as well as the somewhat randomized soul collecting segments, make up for it. Great work!
Great job Ursa! It was a lot of fun playing through, and you got a lot of gameplay into the game. It was fun unlocking the various powers and the mechanics all felt really good. It was also finding myself to reap :D The music was really cool too, it really set the going on vacation vibe :D Well done!
I liked the "other dimensions" (or how do you call it), I think I know where were you trying to get with that, although it didn't work that well. The game is still quite cool, and I'll probably play it later. I want to finish it. I enjoyed it. Thanx.
I felt like I was in heck, 5 stars for mood
Ooohhhhhh the platforming was tight! The music and the flat surface lighting on the environment gave it a strangely gloomy serene mood!
The ethereal manifestation surprised me, I had only bought the dash, double jump and anti-soul drain, but I managed (barely).
I was unsure if I would have liked being able to move my camera, since I felt like you designed the platforming well enough to not need it.
Great entry Ursa! (Also I was totally checking your stream while playing your game haha.)
Really enjoyed playing the jam! Some really nice timing and platforming elements. It's a shame that you dont see him on holiday! I was hoping for some palm tree action :wink:
Glad to see that kind of humor here, even if it's for platforming game !
A really nice game. I enjoyed every second of it!
I struggled a bit since it was a bit hard to see if I the character was over the platform or not. One thing that's common in 3d platformers is a shadow projected straight down from the character onto the ground. This makes it much easier to judge the distance and makes platforming easier.
blob_shadow.png
I think something like this would have made the platforming bits feel much better.
It took me a long time and I lost thousands of souls before I finally figured out that there were more rooms upstairs in the house. I think it could be made a little bit more clear that there is an upstairs corridor you can walk down.
The controls are tight. I like the character, the movement is very smooth and satisfying.
I absolutely loved the boss fight!
Good job!
I love the music and game play loop is pretty good. Well done!
hitting should be a button as it is really hard to play the game on a notebook! Still a very good game! Well done!
@mr-field Wow, thank you so much! The names were all people who were in my twitch chat while the game was being made. I was thinking of adding a projection shadow, but I feel for the good ol design issue of it feeling fine for me without one so I put off adding it. If I do a post jam version there will be one for sure! I wanted to have things wrap around with short cuts, but ran out of time on level design- Thinking back, I could have easily added in a teleporter object to bring you back to the shop. Lessons for next time!
@geckoo1337 Thank you! I had a lot of fun learning shader graph during this jam! Definitely going to play with it more before next jam. I love the music, especially considering how quickly TinyViking put the tracks together while dealing with bad allergies. Also, I'm glad you enjoyed the video and got a record of the leaderboard before it was hacked! Always surprises me that people would bother hacking jam game leaderboards.
@gamepopper I'm glad that you think my concept ended up fitting with the theme! I was a bit worried as my original ideas didn't feel very good, but I ended up happy with the end result. I really wanted to add in more enemy varieties as well, but I decided to spend more time on level design and a final boss.
@gamesplusjames Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was a lot of fun to develop and have you stop by during the streams! I'm pretty happy with the game feel this time around, which is rare for my game jams.
@kuro Sorry the multi-verse concept didn't jive with you! Unless you mean the way it was designed, in which case I agree it was a bit of a hollow hide and seek mini-game. I do wish I had more time to make that bit more interesting too. It definitely gets repetitive fast
@cheesepencil Thanks! There was so much I still wanted to do for mood stuff that I ran out of time on, but I'm glad what I did do worked out okay!
@youbestrong Good job defeating the boss with half damage! I'm glad you like the movement, I tried to give it a mario style jump curve with the way gravity is applied depending on the jump being held and different gravity magnitudes for upward and downward movements. I did try and take in consideration the camera, but there are a few areas that can be a bit rough for depth perception that I would have done differently- mostly the moving platforms on the right.
@lagman9000 I really wish I had the time to add in the vacation scene too! It was really last minute to even get the ending screen in at all with my time going into making the boss during the last couple of hours. I'm glad you enjoyed it anyways though!
@dev-for-pizza Glad you appreciated the humor! I like to try to put more in, but I ended focusing more on the platforming mechanics that I had initially thought I would.
@jaoel I do wish I would have put in a projection shadow or at least turned the directional light to be straight down in retrospect. I had considered it during the development but I fell into the trap of thinking it felt pretty easy to me so it should be okay- and I liked how the shadows looked with the current lighting. I agree, some better level design and hinting for upstairs definitely would have helped, even just some rugs or something. Time limitations had me getting the bare bones of the house in place and then I ended up focusing on just the platforming areas afterwards.
@artyom-volkov Thank you very much! I love the music too, TinyViking did an amazing job making music to fit the concept!
@drvernichter Ah, it's also mapped to the Ctrl key, as well as dash also being mapped to right click, but I didn't actually mention that anywhere. Didn't think about notebooks! I'll update the description with that. Thank you!
@ursagames unfortunately ctrl is not the smartest choice since youre gonna be triggering shortcuts all the time..
Really cool game, I felt that for the amount of content it was really polished. I only felt that the checkpoints were a little bit too far away at times. But the music, the graphics were awesome and I had a lot of fun. Well done :)
@drvernichter Yeah, I agree. It's the default Fire1 binding in Unity that I didn't bother mapping since I made the mistake of thinking everyone would be using a mouse or controller like I was.
@drunk-wizard Thanks! There are a few places that definitely could have used a couple more check points, especially near the lavapit after the double jump (which I should have made the timing on those more forgiving too) - things I will definitely consider next time around! I'm glad you had fun though!
Cool game, i really liked the "twist" of going into the door and reaping kind of my own soul. The mechanics were very clearly introduced, and i immediately understood everything. The attacks and checkpoints were clearly telegraphed, so it this was very clear to play, no question marks. It was a bit disheartening to see that i need 1000s of souls, while i only had 20 or so from my 2 enemies. I then moved to the upper right section, where i move across narrow ledges. This was fun, but at a lot of the challenge came out of the fixed camera. I quit when i finished the 2 doors at the end, and didn't really want to walk all the way back. I felt like "i solved this challenge and now got my reward" - it'd have been awesome if could've teleported back to the center to spend the souls.
And, thank you so much for playing Fluffensnuff! You are one of the few players to finish it completely. It's always fun to watch you play and you did actually uncover a bug with the highscore: at one point you restarted the level when it was already solved. This offset the level counter for the highscore by one, which you already figured out in the stream. The level design was pretty fast actually, maybe 5 hours in total. You were right, we started with the mouse only, having the basic mechanic running after 4 hours, and the first 7 levels done on day one. This was also a great learning, it just helps sooo much if you can play the game on day one and iterate on content, expanding from there.
Nice job, some really slick gameplay here
@rongo-matane Thank you! I agree a fast travel back to the upgrade stations would have definitely helped out- and some balancing to reduce the number of souls you need to reap. The enemies really aren't meant to be a way to get currency, as only your life is a good source of currency- just enough to give you some time in the initial doors to reap. I probably should have made that narrow ledge area locked off until later as it seems to have given a lot of people problems. There's actually plenty of doors around that you don't need to do that area. Again, a way to get back to the base easily would have helped it too as getting back can be tedious.
I enjoyed Fluffensnuff a lot! The puzzle mechanics were well thought out and well designed levels! I think one thing that would have really helped the flow would be a level that forces you to do the pushing mechanic (maybe by tunneling you in-between rocks) before the level where you need to push the bird.
@ursagames the number of souls would have been fine (i think) after the two doors in the narrow ledge section, since i had 2.000. I finished the narrow ledge section without falling and it was fun, i just didn't want to do something again that i already "solved", without the chance to get something for it. So as you say, fast travel would be ideal from there.
Regarding fluffensnuff, thank you again! What you mention is something i struggled and still struggle with a bit: How do you ensure that a person really *learned* something they did in a level? If i force this type of pushing through the level layout, anyone will solve it without needing to think about what he/she is doing. So whenever i added a new mechanic or spin on a new mechanic, i tried to add a level first that you cannot easily solve by accident and that forces you to apply a mechanic. Like even in the first level, the pushes the player does initially will lead to failure, so he stops and thinks and sees that the grass plays a role. So either the mouse goes into the grass, or the cat. After that, there is no question about it, every player knows how to use the grass. For pushing, this is more difficult to convey.
At that stage you used mice to push mice before, but not to push birds before, and also not really to solve the level - they just moved because they were close, not because it was necessary. I'll try to come up with something where the player can better learn this, so far nothing came to my mind. This whole topic is also why i added hints to the game, since i feared players might miss a mechanic i wanted to teach.
No camera rotation is annoying in the buildings, I didn't know if there is a wall or not behind the camera, until I touched every wall :) If not rotating cam, maybe seeing a semitransparent wall or carpets on the floor to show where you can move could help a lot.
You made a great work !I like the idea of the circle before an attack, but i will appreciate could turn the camera for jumping phase.
Great work on this game. Really enjoyed my play through. Only issue I had was that I could not use down+left or down+right and jump at the same time (could just be a limitation of the web version). Made it annoying trying to make some jumps. Other than that, it was well developed.
A really nice little platformer with cool graphics and a fun interpretation of the theme. I did find it hard to judge distances when jumping between platforms at certain times because of the camera angle, but that could be a problem with me not the game itself.
Nice game. I specially liked the cloth movement on the player. Good graphics. I was following your stream while I made my own game last weekend. Fun to play it now :)
Tons of fun, nice and clean control mechanics and graphics.
The movement was smooth and clean. However, the camera and movement was a little off putting at first but I got it eventually.
This has to be one of the best entries I've played! The game was a total blast that I couldn't stop playing until I got that vacation. The platforming feels great, although since the music was louder than some of the sound effects, it felt a little less solid, like it was less clear that my movement was making an impact. The level design works well and the various enemies are fun to fight, although I wish there was a little more direct feedback when you hit one (i.e. sound effect or hit animation). I also liked the fact that depending on how many upgrades you ended up buying, certain paths your optional so that you could choose your route, but the boss fight was mandatory no matter what. I loved the interpretation of the theme, where "you" refers to the player rather than the playable character, and also that the game is still possible without all of the perks. The graphics, while somewhat lacking, were still super polished, and I absolutely loved the enemy design. I also really enjoyed the music and sound effects, but as I mentioned before, the music-volume-to-sound-effect-volume-ratio leaves something to be desired. I also felt that there was humor in being able to name the character, and the general emptiness of everything definitely makes it feel like you're in heck. Overall, incredible work, and great job on being my second 5-star-rated-game!
Great game! I had a lot of fun playing this.
I agree with what others have already pointed out about the camera. Sometimes, I found it really difficult to jump in certain directions due to the fixed camera, using a controller was much better.
Apart from that, the game is really nice. The mechanics, enemy variety, audio - all work nicely. Great job!
Good game! When i opened left door i see myself chatting and other bunch of nicknmes. Are they the people who played your game?
If i must say something ı really enjoyed it but the camera angle was bit annoying. I can't see where am i. Good Game!
...Well it might not have been as tough as getting 6 batteries through our plasma field...but I did super enjoy the difficulties in your awesome world!! :D Great game man! If I had a Twitch stream...your game would have top spot!
Over all well done! you hit the theme dead on. I Do consider myself among the people that would have enjoyed been able to move the camera around. at some points during the platforming a better angle would have made things a bit more smoothly. also for performance reasons the ribbon effect could have been tone down a bit especially on the Manifestation boss really too laggy, for the very narrow timings require to beat it. I would have liked to see fast travel to main hub if you finished a section. I enjoyed the music it didn't get old while playing it. I enjoyed that content was locked out until you gained the right skills. the enemy attacks were very clear. the art was good. Well Done man!
I enjoyed this game soooooo much! The music is great and not annoying. The variety of enemies is great. I love the checkpoints and the explenations during the game. There are no questions open. The graphics are also clean and nice althouh I have to agree with the camera and the shadow problem. But these are the only issues I found. Great job!
You kiddin' me, man?
Cloth physics? Metroidvania level design? Multiple game states? Multiple enemy AI? BOSS SEQUENCES? ALL EXECUTED WELL?
Really really REALLY nice job on this one! I think it's super creative how you handled the theme. Exploring the alternate dimensions was a neat idea, though I would have liked it if the camera was a bit more pulled back...
Also, are the names of those other souls pulled from other peoples' entries into the name field? I sincerely hope so, because I was particularly proud of mine...
drjangleberries.png
This looks really cool and I like how fluid and intuitive the controls work. The jumping passages work really well for example, even thought some better shadow indications would've been great. Or even better, a rotatable camera to make it easier to cope with the 3d platforming.
The soundtrack is also a plus and the art is basic but looks cool enough. The cloth physics are a nice detail.
The core gamplay was a bit mysterious at first. I didn't really understand, what everything did and I didn't even know that I can kill the spiked enemies. I hit my first one three times and he just seemed to response with his explosion attack. I thought, that that's how it's supposed to be and carried on. Later, I found a door ad got instantly teleported back, because I had zero souls. That was kinda annoying and almost got me to stop playing.
The dimension minigame was a nice change of pace but got old pretty quick. What I didn't like though, and that loops back to my initial complaint, is, that some passages are pretty annoying without beeing able to rotate the camera, specifically maneuvering arount the lava blocks.
Everything else was awesome! Good job
Thanks a lot everyone for all the feedback! Really blown away from all of the positive compliments! This was a great learning experience not just in the jam but from all the useful feedback here.
There's a huge consensus on the camera issues there. I will definitely make sure to invest more time into it next time! I've struggled getting 3D Camera movement that felt decent in the past. Part of me thought I would just leave it static to see if I could get away with that with level design like old games of the past did.
I did mean to do something about a drop shadow type of effect, but with my playtesting it felt alright, (I know, common issue for testing your own game) so I put it off to work on other aspects.
I do wish I would have had the time to make the other usernames pull from what other people entered, that would be really neat but totally out of my scope with everything else I worked on. The names are from a static list mostly from people who were in my twitch stream while I made the game.
The reaping section of the game definitely got the least amount of polish, I definitely should have added in some feedback for losing souls and getting kicked out that was easy to understand. To be honest this part feels pretty tedious but I didn't have an easy work around to balance the powerups / ending and number of doors easily.
That game turned out to be longer than I expected. The upgrade system is really interesting, and certainly gives a bit of a Metroidvania feel to it; though not by too much, as I quickly discovered. I had the most fun trying to beat certain levels without having certain power-ups available. That said, I did struggle with the boss, so I guess that was one thing I felt forced to have power-ups (edited-to-add: this isn't a bad thing; it was only an observation).
I'm glad I had a controller at hand, since the game had parts that were difficult with keyboard (narrow pathways in particular). Dashing across the low-ceiling, lava pits proved to be more difficult than I expected as well. I'm sure you already know about the depth-perception issues: I would have appreciated a free-form camera that would let one observe the gaps between platforms at any angles, thus making it easier to calculate my jumps. Controls felt a little loose, too: moving is slow, and the jumps felt very floaty (definitely increase Unity's gravity, or scale everything to be smaller). I also felt the attacks had no impact, partially due to the simple animations, but mostly due to lack of juice: hit-pauses, camera shakes, screen flashes, etc. Some of the moves could also use extra flourishes as well, including jump, land, double-jump, and dash.
Those were my thoughts.
^ Also, I made an educational game about juice, something I basically recommended as a way to improve the attack's impact:
https://omiyagames.itch.io/make-it-juicy
Congrats, the game is super smooth and the world is well designed. I know there is no time for much art, but changing the floor texture color to diferentiate the different areas would could have been cool. The jumping is a little bit floaty, but the air control works fine. The shadow is nice, but for a 3D platformer a simple dot shadow just below the character is more helpful in regards on where the character will land. Cool music. Also I liked a lot how the enemies perform their attacks. Its very easy to understand.