Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Soul Exchange
By kirill-nepomnyaschiy, dennis-jeong and TylerGonelli
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 104 | 3.95 | 53 | |
| Fun | 63 | 3.99 | 53 | |
| Innovation | 32 | 4.02 | 53 | |
| Theme | 947 | 2.83 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 262 | 4.02 | 54 | |
| Audio | 135 | 3.80 | 51 | |
| Humor | 678 | 2.62 | 43 | |
| Mood | 353 | 3.55 | 51 |
I love the spider mechanic. The Art is good, up until the rabbit (you ran out of time, understandable), However when I tried to access my abilities they did not work no matter how many times I pressed p. It's a shame I could not play more of it.
The idea behind the game is great! But I encountered a problem, i wasn't able to transform from bunny to spider, so I wasn't able to continue further. Otherwise, great game !
What we could play of it was super cool - the spider gameplay is super unique and fun! The colour palette was really nice! We also ran into the bug in the third level.
really good work here -- really enjoyed being a spider -- i could not use the P key to swap -- is it broken? thanks for making this
hi all, we super last minute fixed the bug for not being able to swap, so if you're interested, check it out again!
Overall good game!!
I wanted to jump but I couldn't like a real spyder! 🕷🕷🕷 I liked the artstyle!
Goodjob!
Nice sprites, but it appears that a lot were stretched / misaligned. Gameplay has been the most fun I've had in an LD game so far though, so nice job. Unfortunately I crashed sometime after the third level.
Super cool concept. I liked the art (where it was), the music was great, an the concept itself was super interesting. I found the controls for switching between forms slightly difficult, especially on the thing where you had to switch from Spider to Bunny on a wall, and the friend collection sound is way loud compared to everything else. Very good though
Uploaded a bug fix! Fixed: Crashes in the ending Crashes when loading a level Crashes when playing audio Wrong music playing on certain levels
@woofdog99 @lshiro @team-kelly @paulhocker just letting you know that the switch button actually works now!
Super cool concept, really enjoyed being the spider. The bunny felt like every other plat former, but the combination of the two is really great. I would seriously consider changing your form change button to something OTHER THAN P.
The art style is really cool! Very nice pixel art. This game feels great to play. The game crashed on me but it is still a cool concept. And it's a game made in a weekend so no points off for that. The character swap was a nice touch. Good job!
Like this game! Fascinating mechanics with switch between different creatures. Excellent art and mood :) Great work!
Really fun game. Love the consept and the bunny is really satisfying to handle. The spider movement was abit weird at first but I got used to it. Looks like a real fun speedrunning game.
So far the most enjoyable game I game across in this ldjam. Good job!
Really enjoyed the game, great idea and satisfaying gameplay. Well done !
AMAZING! The artwork is great, the mechanics were really fun to play, and the music was great! This game and idea would be worth expanding on!
Very interesting concept here. The level design is amazing. The spider movement is confusing at first and counterintuitive sometimes, but the mechanic overall works great.
Congrats, well done.
Great concept, really felt like a spider. The exchange of characters was very good. The level design was well built.
Please, rate my game and leave some feedback too =]
https://kaish.itch.io/jukebox
I really liked the game! The rabbit's animated ear was really nice) The mechanics is very interesting too
Great entry! Fun game, good work on the game design! I was excited to see what I would get at the second soul exchange and a bit disappointed when it was already over. What was the next animal you had planned?
Thanks you so much for the feedback!
@youbestrong , we had two different animals we had planned:
An armadillo that could roll through fire A gorilla that could pick up and throw blocks
Ultimately, a lot of our time went into making sure the spider worked just right! If I had known it would take this much work, I would maybe have reconsidered making a spider :p
Something that we're still not sure if it was the correct decision or not was the decision to make the spider keep moving in a circle if you held the same direction. I think this is what @douglima and @kritas meant when they said the spider movement was "weird/counterintuitive", am I right? ``` ____________ | | | | | | | | | | ____X______ ```
For example, let's say the spider is on the floor (X in the above diagram), and you hold right. Currently, when you hit the wall (position Y in the below diagram), and continue to hold right, we'll translate that input into going up. And then, when you hit the ceiling (position Z in the below diagram), we attach you to the ceiling and then translate your rightward input into a leftward movement, allowing you to use one key to travel clockwise around the entire loop. While this is nice, when you let go, now pressing right will send you right, which can be disorienting. ``` ________Z__ | | | | | | | Y | | ____X_->____ ``` In other words, when the spider is at position Y in the above diagram, what keys should you be able to press to go up / down?
I think because our level design relied so much on the movable platforms, which are small rectangles that you can go around, the input smoothing system helped people navigate those platforms? But I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the tradeoffs we made!
Really fun game. Quite challenging at certain points. The art that is present is very nice.
Had a few messups on the edges where the controls for moving up or down would stop working but other than that it was a very pretty game. I like that the whole "soul deposit" thing isn't brought up till later, it was a bit surprising to me! I like the way things were referred to as "friends" and such only to see the reaper take em all lmao
Nice game! Going *double-jump*, *transform into spider*, *grab onto wall* was really satisfying. I was comparing the movement mechanics favorably to the NES Ninja Gaiden series while playing. The art and music were both lovely, and it felt nice to be playing.
The "input smoothing" for the spider worked fine for me once I figured it out, but still didn't feel like entirely natural, especially when I needed to go from one floating block to the next; it took a few tries to figure out I needed to stop holding right, then press it again to execute that maneuver. I think having the wall-to-wall maneuver triggered by a different button (maybe space? e.g. let go to grab on) would have helped there, because otherwise the input smoothing did feel useful.
One other minor point is that the hit boxes on the thorns felt just a *tad* large to me. There were several times, particularly on the last stage, where I thought I was landing a jump safely but went splat. For "thorny" sprites with a lot of transparent pixels around the edges, I think it is helpful to shave down the hit box a bit to account for the visual perception that the entity is "smaller" than the actual top-left-most/bottom-right-most pixels might suggest. (The piranha plants in SMB1 are kind of an extreme case of this.)
The game design overall was super clever, and it was clear that this mechanic could be taken far. This was a really impressive game jam entry and I'd be very interested to see it expanded into something bigger, with more souls!
very cool game bro! nice control scheme and fun mechanics! congrats for completing a full game
I'm a bit blown away by how cohesive and fun your entry is! Everything works together very well, from the audio and graphics to the core gameplay mechanics. I also liked how you built off the theme but didn't let it distract from the game itself.
I only have two minor pieces of feedback I could think of from playing it through. The first is the exact issue @dennis-jeong described in his response. I'm afraid I don't have a great solution to it, but it did feel a little wonky sometimes when transitioning from one side to another and then trying to go back. The second was that while the arrows guiding you were a great idea to serve as a tutorial in a bite-sized jam entry, as you continue to develop it I think the level design itself should nudge the players in the right direction without explicitly telling them. Might add a bit more of a fun puzzle element to it, especially with some of the other character ideas you mentioned.
Again, super minor details that didn't detract from the overall experience and how fun it felt to land a perfect double-jump-to-transform-to-stick maneuver. Great work!
Great entry! Really liked the spider-rabbit mechanics was well done, the art and the music did a great job in setting up the mood. Solid entry.
That was very fun and pretty!
The level design is solid as well, with checkpoints well placed, congrats. Maybe having arrows everywhere to tell you where to go is a bit overkill, but for a short game that works.
One more thing : I could play half of the game with a pad (thanks to Unity's default input mapping), but the switch on P didn't have a gamepad mapping, so I had to switch to keyboard! No big deal, but that's a detail that can be cool to think about on your next jam! Congrats again!
Nice work! The art is beautiful. What do I get next, duck? Fishy??
Just finished the game a minute ago - really fun! The spider movement is really well done and I love being able to swap to your old abilities even when you gain access to new ones. Really digging the platforming challenges, too!
Awesome! The spider mechanics felt great! Bunny was also good, but the spider was great! I spent some time, but I managed to complete the game. Great length of the game, great looking game (aside from the incomplete assets) and overall a very good entry. I definitely think you could keep working on this. Add more levels and animals and turn it into a full game.
Cooool pixels! Was a fun surprise to see the two animal abilities work together, very satisfying.
WOW THE MUSIC IS GORGEOUS and so is the art wtf
omfg I didn't expect my spooder frens to be destroyed by Mr Reaper himself that got me in the feels
Nitpicks: - Loading screen is incongruent with pixel aesthetic - Sometimes controls would be confusing - I'd expect to move forward with D but I could only move forward with W, etc
I cannot wait to see if you'll continue this game/input art for the placeholder sprites. I had a lot of fun playing as different animals, with each animal having its unique mechanic; really compelling concept that I haven't seen before!
Great entry, I like such gameplay that requires combination of multiple "heroes". Graphics are really pretty and the music is great ! Very well done !
The main mechanic is very cool! It's reminiscent of Wonder Boy games, but swapping to complete aerial tricks feels good and with a bit more polish on controls and player movement it could be a great basis for a game. As it stands there's something a bit frustrating with the movement and key combinations, though I can't really pinpoint what it is... As others said, as the spider the "move forward" key depends on whether you're on continuous movement or you stopped vertically and try to move again. Of course there's no easy solution to this, since you expect to be able to keep moving by leaving the same key down (e.g. D), but then if you stop on a wall the L and D keys are used to target a parallel platform to jump on.
Since the spider mechanics are similar to the mouse in The Dragon's Trap, I'd suggest examining how the recent remake handles them - I remember it feeling more natural to me. Regardless, great job on implementing all of this during the jam! The game looks great (kudos for the art and music that feel very polished) and is only a couple of enhancements away from feeling great.
Kudos for the spider mechanics - it's unusual, but work surpraisingly well!
Thorns were unexpected twist - usually you expect all the grass to be safe to step on... And here it is not )))) But the level design is very well done. Onboarding is smooth and you learn all little tricks to pass obstacles along the way. Great job!
Awesome entry with interisting game mechanics, the spider is a bit tricky to handle when you switch sides (from vertical to horizontal and vice versa) i think that you could make the spider just stop on the edge and let the user chose according to the direction (if the spider is currently on the vertical, to move the spider you should press up and down and once you reach an edge you should presss left or right to use the next horizontal surface connected to that edge, if the spider is on horizontal, to move you should press left or right and once you reach an edge you should press up or down to use the next vertical surface connected to this edge), however, i know that if a platform passes close to the edge you would have to also check as a valid interaction (switch surfaces).
fun little game, interesting concept, the controls were very frustrating to use. Please not, some players are left handed so make sure to map *both* shift keys to sprint, and use a better key than P for such a critical mechanic.