FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD44 → Escape from Hell

Escape from Hell

By becher

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2203.39279
Fun3462.96279
Innovation3122.90278
Theme2423.31275
Graphics434.12286
Humor3602.1328
Mood1333.46278

Comments

dinosire 2019-04-29 04:42

This is a really cool concept, and the art is insane! I love the mood, so cool. But why do I have to walk back from the start? Makes it a bit tedious. Overall tho, great job!

jole 2019-04-29 07:33

Liked the art. Movement was floaty. Couldn't respawn after dying. Also says its a 'Development Build'.

becher 2019-04-29 07:36

Thanks @dinosire :). I'm really happy that you enjoyed it! About always starting over at the beginning, I think it's a bad habit on my part ... I can understand that it becomes quickly tedious. I'll try to solve that next time. Thanks for your return ;). *Sorry for my english...*

becher 2019-04-29 07:46

Hi @jole. You need soul to revive. The knight at the top right of the platform gives you if you talk to him. **When you die, press [space] to respawn.** *I forgot to add this info on the panel ... Sorry :S, [B] is the input to the joystick*

noobexception 2019-04-29 07:56

I really like the idea. The art and design is fantastic.

Although the player was pretty slow as I had to walk everywhere from start. Maybe you could speed him up a little bit.

This game is really nice job and I believe you could use it's core to build something even more interesting :wink:

strugglesingamedevelopment 2019-04-29 08:11

Every pixel is working overtime here, they all communicate so much, I just freaking love the art and besides the need for fine tuning some values the flow wasn't too bad either.

zachster 2019-04-29 08:15

Absolutely great graphics but the gameplay was fundamentally unenjoyable

week-of-the-agents 2019-04-29 10:06

2nd @zachster

liauj 2019-04-29 10:07

Like others mentioned, very tedious. Amazing artstyle.

nnnikki 2019-04-29 10:33

Just like someone else said, the walking is a bit tedious. I also didn't understand why there were blue jumping slimes in hell? I couldn't attack them? Some of them had half-filled health bars? WHO ARE THEY???

The idea is cool tho, I'll give ya that.

xsupah 2019-04-29 11:44

I played through the entire game. First of all I loved the artwork, it's amazing. I'm getting a Dark Souls vibe especcialy with the death screen and the big knights. The combat is really basic and slow reducing the pause after attacking might help? Also upgrading your lives and attack power is a bit unintuitive, I collected alot of souls and found myself walking left and right for a couple of minutes to spend al my souls on upgrades. A game with this art style but a more indepth combat system and character progression would make for an amazing game!

becher 2019-04-29 12:03

Did you see a Dark Souls inspiration @xsupah? I reeeeeaaaally don't know what you're talking about ;) I'll tried to add a dash control to complete the combat system and work on the upgrade system too.

becher 2019-04-29 12:08

@nnnikki the blue jumping slimes could be souls like you who have lost their mind... Honestly, i just create them because it's the foe who take the least time to do (programming & graphics).

sebastien-bourgeois 2019-04-29 13:21

I really enjoyed the graphics and the dark mood in the game, congrats! But gameplay was quite slow and tedious, I don't know why I keep returning to start, and not really sure what i was supposed to do. Anyway, good job !

becher 2019-04-29 14:32

@sebastien-bourgeois, your goal is to leave hell and kill the knight. To reach it, you have to revive and use your body to complet bridges. Like that, you will find a portal and upgrade system. Thus, you will be able to face and defeat the knight :)

becher 2019-04-29 16:51

@liauj @zachster @week-of-the-agents I made a small update to speed up the game a little... Hope it fix the problem a bit

deathbysnail 2019-04-29 18:11

Neat Dark Souls aesthetic. I thought there would be more after defeating the big knight.

lone-wolf 2019-04-29 19:44

Awesome game! Loved the graphics and the idea. I had a ton of fun. +1

mrschlag2 2019-04-29 19:46

Very nice graphics/animations and nice approach of the theme ! The game is very short unfortunately, only one level and the upgrade are very easy to get. Some sounds and a music would have been nice ! Thanks for this game :thumbsup:

fat-cat 2019-04-29 20:11

Really nice game! I liked the art/animations and the soul drop effect, it looked very cool!

fibonacci1321 2019-04-29 20:31

Impressive graphics! This game is going places keep it up!

jjjjason 2019-04-30 02:31

Nice! Everyone's said it plenty, but I'll repeat how pretty and fluid the graphics are. I like the idea of building upon prior deaths--it would be great if there were more mechanics that took advantage of this.

pseudobytes 2019-04-30 09:08

The art and animations are amazing! The player was a bit slow, but I guess that allowed me to appreciate your amazing art :)

azargaz 2019-04-30 09:17

Nice idea and great art style but game is a bit annoying to play. I think increased movement speed would help or maybe some kind of checkpoints before places where you have to die a lot to progress.

gronther 2019-04-30 09:22

Absolutely amazing art, very well done. Decent implementation of the theme too. This game could have done with some sound, but the quietness is it's own atmosphere. Having to respawn near death everytime got a bit tedious and the game was actually really easy after only a minute of gathering souls, but very well done nonetheless.

becher 2019-04-30 09:33

@gronther @azargaz @pseudobytes thanks for your return. I hoped that increasing the speed of the player would be enough ... Tonight, i'll change a rule to respawn at your actual position when you jump, it should be enough, i hope.

jin9310 2019-04-30 09:34

This was a very nice experience thank you for that. Would be great to have some sounds to build up the atmosphere even more! Beautiful Art! Great Job!

quagga 2019-04-30 09:40

Amazing! True LD game ))

lexi 2019-04-30 10:10

Really cool art, I played the game all the way through, although I was confused by the "death world", because I didn't get the respawning part at first.

Some feedback: - Adding music would have really helped, even if it was just the first "fantasy music royalty free" clip that popped up on a google search, it's a small time investment in comparison to the return - The diagonal movement was faster than the horizontal/vertical movement, if both x and y movement is active instead of having x = x + speed and y = y + speed you could do x = x + sqrt(2) * speed and y = y + sqrt(2) * speed (Ignore this, if the movement was intentionally built like this)

Overall just a good compo entry, I'm definitely gonna take more time to look at your art and animations to try and learn from them :)

becher 2019-04-30 10:17

@lexi yes i know for the diagonal axes, but with my moving system, my solution to adapt the axis speed don't work... so i keep the speed like that... I understood that in a compo you have to do all by yourself, so i don't add music because i had absolutely not experience in that domain...

drskort 2019-04-30 10:18

Your game was very short but it was pretty fun to play. At the beginning I was dumb to realize that I had to talk with the people in hell and because of that restarted the game a few times. At the beginning the knight was really overwhelming because I was not sure how to dodge his attacks and I managed to do some damage without upgrading but died because it took so long and it was very easy to do a mistake. The art was really great and fitting. The animation was very slow but also nice done. There was a lack of audio in the game which could have made the experience even better. Escecially with some attack-sounds. The slimes were maybe a bit too easy to kill and it was also very easy to make yourself overpowered. At the end the knight from the beginning was no problem at all and even if he was I could have just grinded some more slimes. The controls were a bit slow but there were pretty good. All in all it is a good game and could really be expanded.

becher 2019-04-30 10:22

Thanks @drskort :) I was thinking about it, add life to slime and lower the number of souls that they loot. Maybe i'll do this on next update.

pranjalbisht 2019-04-30 10:24

Well, that was a nice experience. Very nice art in the first area. The game gets a bit grindy as you simply have to die and collect souls...and there's not much penalty for death. But still, rather interesting.

nandon 2019-04-30 11:27

Definitely didn't like to have to keep dying just to cross a bridge. Has nice art and some potential though

draedrus 2019-04-30 11:29

Beautiful graphics, too much grinding, payment for life and strength should be done with a slidebar or a continuous input because pressing e 100+ times get a bit boring ^^ The portal in the dead hall should be animated, but still it's beautiful.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game, cool arts and no bugs thank you :)

grllle 2019-04-30 12:40

This looks gorgeous. Respawning by pressing space didn't work for me though.

raffe 2019-04-30 13:33

BRah the art especially in the first scene are so siiiiiiiiiick!! Did'nt hear any sounds but i don't know if thats a problem on my end or something. The game is really satisfying, maybe a bit too much "grind" for me, but that's just my personal opinion. And as the guy above me said, respawning with space didn't work for me or then I'm just dumb. But besides that I think you made a really sicc game!!

becher 2019-04-30 13:37

@grille @raffe don't forget to speak with NPC ;) maybe you miss something...

raffe 2019-04-30 13:53

@becher ooooooooh! I'll go and play it again now XD (IM A BIT DUMB)

elq 2019-04-30 14:26

Very simple and "gamefeel" vise pretty stiff. Story was nice and I liked the art as well.

khaoz-fang 2019-04-30 14:31

The art of the first scene is beautiful.But I didn't figure out what happened after dead, It's look like I jump into the chasms and filled them?

becher 2019-04-30 14:43

it's exactly that. the will of your mind complete the bridge... This concept's based on Berserk, at this moment : griffith.png

enver-arco 2019-04-30 16:00

Beautiful Graphics

antti-haavikko 2019-04-30 16:15

Umm...

efh.png

So what did I miss, what was the whole point of that you die and go farm souls etc? The boss fight didn't get any easier and it wasn't really hard to begin with. Just tedious. Go forward, swipe (however many times you feel brave enough for) and walk back. Rinse and repeat for about ten straight minutes.

The outside scene looked gorgeous. Can't really say the same about the inside bit, it looked a bit rushed in comparison. The slime enemies also seemed very very buggy. They liked to completely disappear at times and sometimes just died on their own. That or the sword hitbox was extremely funky.

Controls didn't feel super great either. Sure, they did the job wouldn't really cut it if the game was more involved and the combat got even a bit harder. It should be more crispy and pixel perfect instead of floaty like this.

Anyways, good job! Even though short and very repetitive, it was an enjoyable ride!

becher 2019-04-30 16:29

yes, @antti-haavikko, boss aren't really difficult, but gg to kill him without upgrade ;). It's my first "Action" game so i understand that there were many problem on level design. Realy thank's to you're complete return, realy instructive!

taddl 2019-04-30 16:50

Fun short game. I like the art.

The hitboxes are a little weird sometimes, it feels like the sidewards hit range is a lot more than the top and especially the down range.

Overall good job.

neakiir 2019-04-30 16:52

Pixel art was really nice. The act of using your souls to build bridges was an interesting mechanic. The only thing is combat felt a bit off, it was hard to hit in the correct direction reliably. Really liked the sword swooshing animation though.

jeremy-ryan 2019-04-30 16:52

Nice submission!

Art was beautiful, especially the beginning area. The combat was a little bit clunky, but it worked. The idea of dying, then collecting souls to recover your body and get extra power is really neat.

Would have been amazing with some music and SFX, but hey, 48 hours is super short. Great entry.

norris-eldridge 2019-04-30 16:53

I pretty much agree with @antti-haavikko I think the graphics looked quite nice but I don't really get the game. I figured that collecting enough souls would make me stronger but I didn't manage to make that happen, unsure if that's what's supposed to happen. Outside of that though I'd say some music and sound effects could have really made this feel so much better. But overall, well done :)

baraa-marwan 2019-04-30 17:03

Amazing game.Had alot of fun playing it and has a nice concept but if the movement was not floaty it can be better. You can check my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/space-rabbit

fluffy-kaeloky 2019-04-30 17:05

Congratulations on your compo entry ! As said before, the movements are a bit floaty, but otherwise, the art looks good and the game works as expected. I only wish you could hit in diagonals and while moving. Good job !

becher 2019-04-30 17:06

thanks @baraa-marwan. You know what, i see your game at work and i disappointed because i couldn't test it... i could only try web version. So thanks! i'll try it soon :)

anstabo 2019-04-30 17:18

Amazing compo game, i didn't like the grind part but you made it fast so it didn't bother me that much. The boss fight is certainly the better aspect of this game, so are the visuals.

ekx 2019-04-30 18:54

Like the concept a ton. Great mood even without audio! If you improve the controls, add audio and more content I could envision this becoming a great full game.

sadzanenyama 2019-04-30 19:03

Would've liked some audio but still a good game. I especially liked the boss fight

memel06 2019-04-30 19:55

Nice

the respawn with space doesn't work in firefox - linux

nice dark soulish style, and the characters were really verbose and rich in personality

i liked it!

becher 2019-04-30 19:58

Did you speek to the npc in hell @memel06 ? Someone give you souls to respawn ;). Even if you speak about respawn with death UI.

memel06 2019-04-30 20:00

@becher I'm talking about the death that occurs when the blue slime kills you and you become a ghost and can't interact with anything

gludo 2019-04-30 20:12

Cool game ! Enjoyed it. I hope you continue working on it :D !

becher 2019-04-30 20:17

@memel06, if you don't have soul, you can't respawn, the only thing you could do is wait that slime kill themself :)

becher 2019-04-30 20:18

@Gludo, i don't want first, but the more i think about it, the more i want to do it

takayamushi 2019-04-30 20:26

Hello, this was interesting, but space wouldnt allow me to respawn?

becher 2019-04-30 20:28

Try to speak with npc on the room ;) @takayamushi

ariake81 2019-04-30 20:35

beautiful artwork!

lexi 2019-04-30 20:41

@becher You're right about the compo rules, I was thinking about the Jam rules. Music generators are allowed in the compo rules though, so maybe you could have a look at something like wolfram tones or something like that :)

team-on 2019-04-30 21:07

Ez. I like uroboros theme 2.png

mahou 2019-04-30 21:19

A really nice game, there is only 2 things missing on it, sounds and more enemies. The early development of the story suprised me, besides, it has not intuitive to talk with the crusader, even so I enjoyed it, die to build the bridge is a inovative interaction.

sergi-montaner 2019-04-30 22:48

The initial zone art is outstanding. The dunegon not so much. Couldn't kill the boss but had a great time playing.

veryeviltomato 2019-04-30 23:47

Loved the concept, sound was a big let off, really original idea, reminds me of that South Park episode where the boys farmed low level monsters to finally beat the big guy.

fadex 2019-05-01 00:03

So nicely polished.

chameleon 2019-05-01 01:15

Very neat submission, the forest zone art looks really good. My only gripe was that your character has a lot of inertia and is fairly hard to control.

limbo 2019-05-01 10:01

Definitely fun to play. But to be honest beginning was bit confusing, and I had trouble to grasp what to do (I thought big armored guy was just a statue - maybe some speech bubble icon would help), but in the end it turned out to be satisfacting.

becher 2019-05-01 10:04

@limbo I work on it ;) but in the goal to finish this game concept, so you won't see it here for a while

skoggy 2019-05-01 11:18

Really good, could have used some audio though. And it was a bit easy when you can just grind the enemies. Good job!

oivin-f 2019-05-01 13:24

The art is beautiful as stated by many others, and the gameplay tedious as also stated by many others. Slow movement, you get sent back all the time, grinding for souls, floaty controls etc. makes the gameplay a bit on the not so enjoyable side unfortunately. The mood is amazing however and the concept is definitely sound. Great work!

jofersgames 2019-05-01 13:28

Bruh, the art is next level. Hats off to you, great job :)

linnet5 2019-05-01 17:38

Super cool concept and simple but fun gameplay mechanics. Great jam entry! I just wished there were audio :).

m2e 2019-05-01 17:55

Me going on an adventure. Hit Space to attack? No problem. The big guy over there? Im smarter than him - I feel that. I don't even talk to him and just attack once to check how re reacts. He hits me back - instant kill. Wait? Is this Dark Souls? Gathering souls of lost men that makes me stronger. Up to 22 to be precise. Now i'm ready! Hey big guy over there. Huh? - Yes, talking to you. Know me? Doesn't looks like but I don't care either. Hitting him 5 times dodging all of his attacks even without doing barrel rolls. Game over! This game is mirroring me the lessons of my life - I grind all the time to defeat my enemies who are blocking my way. Thanks so much - and I want to see more of this game in the future!

becher 2019-05-01 17:59

Thanks @m2e, really interesting subjective analysis, i'll work deeply on it ;)

enjoy-the-tale 2019-05-01 18:05

As an artist I must say, the details, color and concept was on point! Nice job! The game it's fun and challenging! 5/5!

flamus 2019-05-01 18:09

That is my new favorite for now! So amazing feel of souls like games. I really enjoyed going through the game and learning new things. Great job, congrats!

wojciech 2019-05-01 18:33

Looks quite nice though not all of the art fits together. I really like the idea of you gathering souls, though I'd rather fight some real beings with souls than blobs. I got stuck quite a bit of times and finally once I got into it getting some strength and life after farming souls i got bounced out of the play zone and was stuck once more. This is hard to overlook since I don't understand the whole bouncing mechanic. Other than that it could be a nice little game. I dunno if there was much content behind the portal cause I couldn't get into it because I got stuck a bunch of times during gathering the souls.

jamesolivermusic 2019-05-01 19:10

Awesome little game. Nice graphics. Add more content, moves, weapons, skills, other perks like agility/luck etc and this will be epic. Don't forget the music! ;)

palsina 2019-05-01 19:42

The otherworld could use some detail and the combat a bit more feedback, but it's really awesome! It made me interested in this games world and the characters adventure in a very short time, that's not easy.

jofersgames 2019-05-01 20:21

whats your twitter account if we wanted to follow and see what you do in the future? :)

becher 2019-05-01 20:26

@jofersgames i don't post anything on twitter, but i have an instagram account ;) [https://www.instagram.com/mathieu_becher/](https://www.instagram.com/mathieu_becher/)

jofersgames 2019-05-01 20:37

@becher Oh i dont have instagram :( Thanks anyway :)

lazertrax 2019-05-01 22:54

I totally love the art style of this game, super clean and polished! I believe the experience could have been greatly improved if some music and sound effects were added but it was enjoyable and kept me playing for a while. I like the credits screen right after defeating the boss. Quite clever! :smiley:

lugo42 2019-05-02 02:29

Really cool concept and gorgeus art, congrats!

almost 2019-05-02 07:53

The art is nice. When I first died I kept pressing space because thats what the on-screen text told me to do, but I was actually supposed to talk to the guy first.

machinescreen 2019-05-02 12:09

Good concept that fits the theme well and some beautiful pixel art, though the hell area is a bit spartan in comparison to outside. With some further development I think you could definitely find more of the 'fun' in this idea.

rancoud 2019-05-02 14:24

What you can improve: * more rooms, more interactions * add audio

carpin 2019-05-02 14:27

I liked the idea but I wanted to play more! D: Nice demo by the way! Nice pixel art!!

becher 2019-05-02 14:29

@Rancoud, yes my first goal is to add more content ;), no more rooms, i hope i create a real "world" in place. For audio, it's not my work at all, so i would ask to someone else... maybe

2019-05-02 14:36

great concept good art and animation, however, I think the addition of sound and a fast paced gameplaywould make your game a winner in all categories! (Adding more levels would also be good)

ivan-garcia-filho 2019-05-02 14:57

Yeah, the lack of sound realy removes the charm of the wholle art and mechanics ... i would also add that you could improve the UX by putting the sword on the kinight's hand in front of him to enhance the user notion of the kinight's current direction it's facing when upwards and downwards, and also addd an animation of him falling up, because the bridge going up to the portal playss an incoherent animation of him falling back instead of falling into the hole...

max-torn 2019-05-02 15:13

A lot of grind. But overall ok

justcamh 2019-05-02 15:14

The game looks amazing! The pixel art is mind blowingly pretty, if only there was enough time to flesh out the mechanics. The respawn mechanic is actually rather interesting, and I think it does a great job at breaking up the game into different parts. It would be cool if there were a bunch of different respawn areas, to give extra variety, but I completely understand this not being possible for a compo game.

Another issue I had was the grinding. You *could* go back and forth from the boss battle to the respawn world, but what is the more obvious path is to just grind souls then fight the boss. What I found was that I grinded for five minutes, then had all the souls I needed to wreck the boss, no difficulty experienced. It would probably be better if the enemies *didn't* respawn naturally and only respawned when you died. This would keep you retrying the boss at a regular interval. That would do a better job of giving 'survived by the skin of my teeth' moments, since the player won't have the chance to grind ridiculous levels of power. It would also that the game is frequently split up, from high stakes boss battle one minute, to laid back simple enemies the next. Currently, the way I played the game was instant death from boss, five minutes of grinding, easy win. This probably isn't a very good difficulty curve, and I think there's a lot to be gained from limiting the amount of power a player can obtain.

Otherwise though, the graphics were all round amazing, good job. I would have liked to see what this game would have become as a jam game, with a full extra 24 hours of work added. I think it would be a truly awesome game, and what you've got now is testament to that! :thumbsup:

becher 2019-05-02 15:27

@justcamh realy good idea ! i think it will be interesting in this version, but not sure that it would be interesting in the more complete version i try to do. but i didn't think to this idea and it's a great idea!

codekoto 2019-05-02 15:30

Overall i liked the concept of the game and enjoyed playing except for some parts, those would be the combat and repeatedly dying without a reason.

I understand the sacrifice part of it but then it just felt... tedious to fight, not really that much fun. I understand this is compo, but maybe you should have put more time into player controller and fighting mechanics. Maybe you should have done a Jam to add that stuff.

Otherwise a good job overall! Maybe you just needed more time that's all.

a-coltzz 2019-05-02 17:55

Great game, Good job on making this within 48 hours :v:

trevor-shoe 2019-05-02 17:55

Very nice artwork, clearly inspired by Sword & Sworcery. Would be nice to get it 'pixel' perfect, seems like there's some anti-aliasing going on, esp with the font, that's blurring it out a bit.

The interior 'hell' felt a bit disappointing after the exterior was so beautiful.

Fighting slimes (which apparently are soul-vessels, like in The Little Mermaid?) is pretty boring, and since it's unlimited, about 4 minutes of grinding here made the upper boss go down without much challenge. From a game design perspective, this needs work. But bonus points for making something so visually polished.

Also! I liked the in-world button prompts and credits at the end. That's really fun.

allas 2019-05-02 18:11

Beautiful art and the gameplay could be improved by adding some sound and making the combat little bit more satisfying. Good work over the weekend!

becher 2019-05-02 19:22

@trevor-shoe gg you see it. your the first who notice it :)

bakenshake 2019-05-02 22:21

Pretty awesome for the time you had! I love the included concept art. That looks like something out of Dark Souls. Honestly, the premise kind of reminded me of DS. Anyway, nice.

aim 2019-05-03 06:21

I had a bit of trouble determining where to go and having the game bug out while clicking space before talking to everyone. I really like the art style and concept of respawning though. I would want to see a longer into boss battle though, instead of just one hit.

amerigo-gazaway 2019-05-03 07:13

Wow love the art style/concept art, reminds me of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. Would have loved to have heard some music/SFX, if you still looking for that type of thing don't hesitate to get in touch! Cheers

becher 2019-05-03 07:33

Oh thanks for the offer @amerigo-gazaway :). Why not, but before i need to create a complete prototype of my game... Anyway, i'll have a look at your work when I go home.

fahim-faysal 2019-05-03 07:40

Very beautiful art. the background reminds me of sworcery and the boss's armor reminds me of dark souls. The attack animations are also nice.

The gameplay is a bit clunky. I found that the movement was a bit slow. The idea for an underground tunnel is interesting but the slimes are a bit boring.The boss is also very easy to cheese by hit and run tactics once you have enough health. But I like how show the credits at the end.

Overall, I think this a solid entry and you should expand upon it in the future.

cakemonitor 2019-05-03 10:20

This was fun to play althouth I wish movement speed was a bit faster and that the attack animation didn't stop movement - I wanted to run and swipe at the same time! It would also be good if there was more of a progression system, say more variety in the 'blob' creatures such as a different size or colour tint, and with increasing toughness & damage ability as well as amount of souls they drop. Then the upgrades could cost more each time (say, +1 point costs 30% of current value rounded up). That would make the player feel like they are becoming more bad-ass rather than just repeating the same thing. Still - just a thought. Overall good job :)

pixelsplash 2019-05-03 17:35

Nice entry man!!!! Loved the art!!!! Keep it up!

reality-blind 2019-05-03 19:58

Interesting mechanic, and indeed awesome pixel art, especially for the overworld! Would love to see a complete game out of your entry 🙂

becher 2019-05-03 20:24

@reality-blind thanks, i work on it actually :) i try to complete the fight system with dash and more weapon

rongo-matane 2019-05-03 20:45

Maybe i'm stupid, but i can't leave the area where i died after i got one-hit. I assume the instant death is intentional, as the game goes on. I floatet everyhwere and pressed space, but nothing happened. What should i do?

becher 2019-05-03 20:53

don't forget that you can speak with NPC @rongo-matane ;)

nyri0 2019-05-03 20:57

The game is absolutely beautiful! I didn't find the gameplay so enjoyable though, it's very repetitive.

becher 2019-05-03 20:59

@nyri0 yes you're right, it's repetitive, but i focus my work on the art and mood (without music i know :| ) i wanted to see if the concept are interesting to made it complete later. and i work on it actualy

nyri0 2019-05-03 21:13

The art and the mood is absolutely great, good work for that! Yes I know it's hard in such a short time to achieve a better gameplay (you need to create more enemies etc)

chrisdugne 2019-05-03 21:26

love this 2 worlds concept! the mood is really, really good

I missed the "shift key" to run I captured like 30 souls before to see the bridge down the map and then I bought like 15 each and got back to fight the boss: the pattern was quite easy to go up and down and kill him with no difficulty :)

becher 2019-05-03 21:27

@chrisdugne leftshift is actualy used to dash in the complete version ;)

chrisdugne 2019-05-03 21:30

ok great :D

ithildin 2019-05-03 22:55

You left the bar so high in the graphics area that everything else seems to suffer in comparison ;D

Jokes aside, while gameplay can become repetitive if you have to grind a lot, and more variation could have certainly been appreciated, I did have a good time playing :)

I liked the concept of fighting your way back to the real word, and the soul-gathering mechanic made for a quite direct but effective take on the theme. And, needless to say, the visuals were just impressive.

Combat could use some improvements. For example, while fighting the slime-like creatures I had problems sometimes determining what was the actual area of effect. As for the boss fight, once you've levelled up your strength and life enough the challenge is gone, you just hack him until he falls and if HP is high you don't even need to try to avoid his attacks. Maybe some more variation on his attack patterns + anticipation could help on this regard.

I also missed sound and music, but it's understandable for the compo and a game relatively ambitious such as yours.

This entry has a lot of potential, congrats! :smiley:

the-blue-hatted 2019-05-03 23:05

I kinda liked the game!, the art is so good!, but I found the boss battle really easy (i don't know if it's my bad for leveling up to 100 my health and strenght). I think it also lacked animation.

shunaky 2019-05-03 23:21

The game looks good (I tried to kill that guy at the begining for almost 5 minutees but his life didn't came down, so I died.

I Found some issues on the game: - The shop at the south of the slimes didn't work for me - The dying mechanic is a little clunky

but overall, its a good game, you just need to polish it

neithernathan 2019-05-03 23:45

So, the game is aestethically fine (not considering the music and SFX), but is kinda confusing. i died the first time (what was a surprise because i didn't know the enemy was actually hitting me) and i was STUCK in hell, no being possible to escape from it because i spent all my souls making a bridge out of myself. The game looks nice but still kinda confusing

soujd 2019-05-04 01:48

I'm speechless! The whole game is just great, even though i had some problems with the respawn mechanics, the gameplay was quite enjoyable! I believe that, with some more time to work on it, the game has a lot of potential!

masterproject 2019-05-04 02:03

Great graphics, though the grinding did get tedious after a while, especially considering the lack of music. Still, this shows a lot of promise, and with some work I can see this becoming an actual game.

lyrcaxis 2019-05-04 02:31

Took a while until I got the grasp of combat and found the exit, THEN the shop, but it went pretty smooth!

You could have improved the level design bit by placing the "exit" right next to the start, so the player would only have the "store" left to explore. Other than that great job! Impressive for a compo post!

PS: I found the theme interpetation a bit weak, but nothing stopped you from making a good game, and I respect that!

logicon211 2019-05-04 03:34

I became so powerful that I managed to tank the boss. I would have loved more enemy variety to test out my new muscles

strega 2019-05-04 05:46

Very nice graphics and aesthetics. The controls were really confusing initially because they weren't working for me at first. I had to restart the game several times before pressing space swung the sword properly.

becher 2019-05-04 06:31

@Ithildin for the area of effect, it will be explicit with a shadow on the ground, and the hitbox of the shots will be circular and not rectangular as it is currently the case :)

it's curious @Strega, i didn't have this problem before.

flukeshot 2019-05-04 06:41

Ey, a bitta the 'ole dark souls inspiration. Great work for compo! More audio would be great to really set that mood.

drauthius 2019-05-04 06:42

The aesthetics are great in this game. I got slapped around so hard when I got hit (by the boss and when walking on a slime) that I went through the world box, and couldn't get back in.

weine 2019-05-04 10:24

Cool game for a compo. I'm impressed in how much details you were able to finish in the short time.

yaen 2019-05-04 12:59

Appealing art style, especially in the woods. The souls-system was pretty nice except that it was possible to get locked in, unable to progress due to having 0 souls early on. That way, I had to reload the page several times before I understood why this was even happening. The combat did feel a tad clunky because it always stops you when hitting, breaking the flow of movement a bit.

cocapasteque 2019-05-04 17:19

The game looks really fun, I couldn't play it tho. I didn't know when I was able to use the sword or not and sometimes the game was really buggy and couldn't hit anything at all, had to restard the game 3 times to finally kill a few blobs and stop the game because I respawned in the air. Sorry about that.. The game looks really good anyways, the graphics are top. This game would benefits a lot from a original soundtrack ! Good job !

zubspace 2019-05-04 20:27

Hehe nice. Feels so good to finally finish the game. I love the very consistent pixel art. Only missing thing is sound and music.

pcoridan 2019-05-04 21:55

Oh I can grind up my strength and health you say? 161 strength and a 100 health? Yeah that should be good for the boss. Two hits later and I save the land!!! This was amazing. Art looked great, throw in some audio ( and the rest of the game :P ) and this is a game I would buy. Keep up the amazing work!

gurkan96 2019-05-04 22:20

Great little game would have needed some moer tutorials but otherwise greats!

lexyvil 2019-05-05 04:33

Really felt the Dark Souls vibe.

shawn-moore 2019-05-05 04:50

I found it difficult to understand what I was supposed to do after I died. It wasn't clear that I was supposed to do something at the gap to fill it in. I also wasn't sure how many souls I was supposed to collect, and even though I got 20 I couldn't seem to respawn. I liked both the idea and your implementation of farming souls to get resurrected though! Supporting d-pad on gamepads would be helpful :)

becher 2019-05-05 07:29

it support gamepads @shawn-moore ;), normally ...

gunnbju 2019-05-05 11:33

Love the art style! Like the slime grind, reminds me of a room in runescape of sorts.

Feel like the mood was missing with there not being any music though

maggardjosh 2019-05-05 21:59

The style of this game was fantastic, and I liked the concept. I would definitely play a fleshed out version of this! Good work!

saucygames 2019-05-05 22:20

OH NO NOT ONION BRO AS AN ENEMY D:

becher 2019-05-06 08:19

@saucygames XD. The next one is solar... I'm joking, i'll never do that. Praise the sun!

giezi 2019-05-06 08:57

very impressive graphics. I had a hard time getting out of the room when you die, had to come here to understand what to do, because I was not pressing the dialog button enough times in front of the knight. I would suggest not resetting the dialogues each time you confront somebody.

Good job, quite impressive :)

dock-frankenstein 2019-05-06 17:44

Really fun! Keep going.

garys 2019-05-06 23:05

Took me a while to figure out what was going on here - I think it doesn't work properly in Firefox, as I was unable to respawn (and since the only feedback on death is the colour change, I didn't realise I was dead... only that my weapon no longer worked!) Once I played in Chrome it all made sense and I got to the end. Would have liked some visual feedback that the upgrades were working, as I didn't immediately notice the stats changing. Looks pretty though and was kinda fun to play through.

vlandemart 2019-05-07 09:17

It's nice. A bit short and few things are missing (like sounds). It's obvious that you did not have enough time but still, the result is quite impressive.

Good luck!

daniel-alhadeff 2019-05-07 22:35

I had some stability issues. I was in Firefox if that helps.

barret 2019-05-08 04:35

very lovely pixel art. I basically just grinded to get super powerful so I easily killed the big knight. But that was actually satisfying. I was expecting maybe something more but this is a gamejam game so this was just right. Had fun playing

becher 2019-05-08 07:15

@daniel-alhadeff hi, what kind of issue did you see?

aurel 2019-05-08 19:51

The art style was nice but I struggled for the first fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to do in the underworld with the slimes. It wasn't clear that there was a separate ghost form where pressing space sometimes killed you, and sometimes made you a fighter. I couldn't really make sense of that until after going through the game.

michael-feldman 2019-05-08 21:55

A+ for controller support. Nice concept with the super hard boss that you see at the beginning but build up to over time.

jlv 2019-05-09 21:36

Beautiful game ; and what an intro ! While I loved how disoriented I was upon the arrival to hell, I wish the mechanics were a little clearer. Otherwise, awesome game and concept, with a nice wink to the Souls Formula.

hugonun 2019-05-10 10:10

It's a good concept with nice art, here is what I dislike:

- The movement, it's something that I often see on Unity games that I really dislike, especially on this sort of game. The character is human, not an attack helicopter.

- The AI of the slimes are bad, the boss has no AI at all, just an auto attack once we hit him.

- This game ends too quick, and the boss battle wasn't exciting.

- You had a chat mechanic, but it wasn't used much.

- There are some bugs, when I build bridges and then attack slimes, I "fall" again, as if I'm making another bridge.

- It's too easy, even without upgrades.

If you keep working on it, I'm sure it can become a great game! I would love to see a story on both worlds.

becher 2019-05-10 13:40

@hugonun for the movement, i'm really agree with you and the first thing i did when i remade it is to delete this effect of helicopter (XD I love this comparison). Just i wasn't use Unity before and in 48h you don't have enouth time to know how to change that... I don't develop any AI on this compo, but you're wrong for the big knight ;) he began to attack you when you enter in his reach (don't made it interesting at all, when i will finished the fight system on the new version, i'll remade this boss with more pattern and movement).

chawls-v 2019-05-10 17:37

Really enjoyed the mechanic of using souls for buff and a cool idea getting out of the underrealm and I had a lot of fun just slashing slimes. Great work!

eduardo-yukio 2019-05-11 00:06

Things I didn't like: - The hitbox of your attack is a bit weird, sometimes I saw that my sword hit the soul blobs but it didn't damage them. - I got confused with the mechanic that I had to use my soul as a bridge to the north pathway to be ressurected, because the NPC says that he will ressurect you, so I collected some souls and then talked to him again, waiting for him to ressurect me, but nothing changed. And the text on the screen was confusing too, because it says "press space to ressurect", so I pressed and nothing happened again haha. There are two ressurecting mechanics here, the one when you spend your soul and the one that brings you back to the living world. They got a bit mixed.

Things I liked: - Nice pixel art and animations! it's amazing that you did it together with the design and the programming. - The whole story that you had to beat one very strong boss is cool, I felt like playing Dark Souls haha. - Being able to talk to the npcs was a nice touch.

Overall a cool experience!

pl4typus 2019-05-11 17:08

Hey @becher ! :)

You got so much feedback I won't be long, your game is great and super creative. Obviously you nailed the programming too. However I must say I miss some soundtrack or sfx for your game.

The idea is actually very very awesome and would be perfect for a true game with storylines, soundtrack, exploration elements (maybe between limbo and real world, one affecting the other). There's **_definitely_** something to dig further here.

And hey, I really like what you're doing. **If you feel that you need someone to make music or sfx for your games don't hesitate to get in touch with me ... **I'll try my best to make something that would suit what world you wanna create.

Great job, anyway. You've got talent man :fist: see ya

ethan-kennerly 2019-05-12 01:11

When the boss killed me and I saw the grim underworld, I felt adventurous! If you continue to develop this gem, when I got killed by the boss the second time, and I didn't see visual progress, I felt discouraged.

aeveis 2019-05-13 07:48

I was able to beat it! Pretty straight forward, but looks like a nice start to something. Interesting idea with the adventure starting after you die, and then things perhaps resolving quickly when you get revived. Nice art, keep up the good work!

zondarg 2019-05-16 23:54

Pretty game, very nice visuals. Got stuck in the underworld though with too few souls. Could use some sound and sfx. Good work!

d-studios 2019-05-18 18:51

One Concept I Liked: I liked the isometric graphical style of the game, the fonts, and the animations.

One Concept I Disliked: The lack of audio in the game killed the mood, or atmosphere, of the game and it's story.

neontropics 2019-05-19 13:55

I do like the simple graphics, especially attack animation.

Some audio would do wonders for general feedback when attacking etc.

msiddeek 2019-05-20 01:30

Cool graphics and atmosphere in general!

I was doing something wrong probably though. When I die, I'm asked to press B or space to respawn, which does nothing.

ghostmaple 2019-05-20 01:54

Very nice. The tiny pixel work is great and I loved that the credits were a part of the game. Would love to see what this idea could turn into if it were part of a larger project.

vinegarlove 2019-05-20 17:30

Overall a very nice entry. Definitively nice and simple pixel art. I can see why there's no audio in the game, you had to implement a lot of stuff.

duke 2019-05-21 10:41

very well done! It's incredbile what you delivered in such a short amount of time. Of course, the content is itself is rather small but everything surrounding it is pretty polished. Especially the art is amazing.

Still, the fighting system itself is pretty basic and lacks some satisfaction. it feels more like button mashing than actual sword fighting (with strategy and skill). Also, at least in the web version, which I played, the pixels seemed to distort a lot when moving which degrades the pixel art.

all in all, awesome entry. Well done! With some polish on a technical and gameplay level, this could be really awesome!