jolett 2019-10-07 12:58
Nice game, the art is really good and fits the theme well. Your sound effects are also a nice touch, great job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Slinger
By bungalow
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 134 | 3.94 | 66 | |
| Fun | 120 | 3.88 | 66 | |
| Innovation | 291 | 3.56 | 64 | |
| Theme | 324 | 3.66 | 64 | |
| Graphics | 328 | 3.86 | 66 | |
| Audio | 215 | 3.64 | 66 | |
| Humor | 495 | 2.85 | 58 | |
| Mood | 343 | 3.60 | 63 |
Nice game, the art is really good and fits the theme well. Your sound effects are also a nice touch, great job!
Very nice! slinging is a bit too hard tho. Especially the final boss stage. Maybe there should be more delay so that you don't sling back where you came from.
Great athmosphere, cool abilities and effects. Found the slinging a bit difficult too, but overall had a fun time.
This is cool. Love the little character.
I found the controls a little dificult initially. Maybe you could use the same key for jump and sling? Unless you plan a double jump then this would help a lot I think.
Also, the `K` key didn't work for me in the boss fight :cry: I was using WASD + Space + K as my control scheme but had to use Tab in the boss fight. I thought I was doing something wrong!
The Music and SFX are spot on. Overall, very good! :thumbsup:
Some very innovative platforming mechanics! I don't think I saw wall running (not jumping) and "slinging" in other platformers yet. I love the starlike visual effect on the spikes. I wish it was longer though :).
i love this game! the wall jump is a bit hard tho
First impression, game looks great and sounds great. After playing for a bit I realised that jumping is sometimes a bit clunky. An example of this is when I am running towards a ledge and jump, the jump doesn't register and I fall to my death. So the jumping is sometimes a bit unresponsive.
The flinging mechanic is really cool, but it's unfortunately really hard to use properly, which can be frustrating. The mechanic reminded me a bit of the mechanic in Ori and the Blind Forest, but the way they did it, is when you want to fling, it slows down time so you have time to aim.
Overall, it's still a fun game that makes good use of the theme.
Looks nice. Graphics and sound are awesome.
Game very well done. It's hard, but kind of nice to play. I particularly don't like this automatic jump on the ground. The wall jump is hard to fit. I don't know if it has support, but it would be interesting to have joysticks support to make the game easier. The character closely resembles Rayman. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot! Congratulations!
@gabrielgamedev Thanks for the feedback! It actually does have joystick support, and Rayman was definitely an inspiration haha. But could you elaborate on what you mean by automatic jump? It sounds like a bug and I'd need to fix that asap!
Platforming feelt really nice and smooth. Graphics and music are really good. The sling mechanic took some time to get used to tho. Are you planning on making post LD version? Cause I definitely want to see more of this!
@bungalow If you jump and hold the jump button, when the player touches the ground, he jumps again. I don't know if this was intentional or a bug
this was probably my favorite game i've played so far from ld45 although i didn't complete it. I found it became quite mechanically challenging but I didn't feel that much excitement to practice the more difficult sections repeatedly (I got to the 2nd section with the wall jump + sing) IIRC in ori you have a small pause / slow motion window when grabbing a grapple point thingy, i feel a mechanic like that might make the game a bit easier to control.
I really liked the sling mechanic, but I think that it's too hard to get used to. I agree with others, when they say that the sling and jump could be at same button, I think that would facilitate the gameplay.
Art and Fx are cool ...
Really liked this game. I think that you could keep working on it, and maybe turn it into a more complete game... =)
Nice game, but the sling mechanic is a little bit tricky to get into. Good Job!
Great game, nice features to find out how to use. Kind of reminds me of Super meat boy.
I like the style of the game in overall! The gameplay is good but controls are hard : inputs seem to be hard be cause when you're on a wall and you press ub, you go right or left(because you jump of the wall). So I failed many times because I just wanted to go up. Maybe black portals need also to clarify your direction with an arrow be cause the line don't help so much (it's help at the beginning but when you need to make it multiple times in hard locations , it's not your problem anymore. Nice experience which can be improve! you made good platformer, thanks !
Not bad enough, but the black holes seriously unnerved me, the place before the boss fight is much more complicated than the boss fight itself
Reminds me a lot of Rayman origins. Nice physics and graphics.
It's very difficult! I couldn't "win" the game :<
The music was good but repetitive and I like the art style.
really enjoyed this one. nice amount of feedback and pretty solid game feel/controls/whatever you wanna call it. i think there's more you can do here, you pushed a mechanic pretty far and id like to see it expanded on
It does have that Rayman feel; and that's not a bad thing! Well done!
Really cute, interesting spin on a classic genre, with a really pretty environment. All the mechanics felt interesting and varied. Really well made!
wow, my skills in platformers became better during LD) didnt expect from me to win) Nice audio, interesting and challenging level design, and nice way to "damage" boss. Well done!
This was pretty sweet! The audio was subdued but nice, some of the graphics were good too, particularly the "thorns" effect and the trees (I know some people are bothered more by inconsistent quality than by blanket low quality, but I guess I'm not one of them). The level design was engaging, and the boss fight was likewise great.
If I had one complaint, it'd be about the sling controls. They worked, and I was able to complete the game, but they didn't really "feel" correct; in particular, while they always sent me in the direction the indicator showed, that often didn't feel like the direction they _should_ have been sending me. I think this may be because the reference point for the player's position used by the slings appears to be his head, but it feels more natural that it would be his body or feet. This was especially notable during this section: Slinger.png Here, I often felt like the sling didn't send me on the trajectory I expected, because it's opinion of my initial position was different from my own.
The other aspect of the sling that's slightly problematic is the window for activating it. Sometimes, particularly in the first section after you get the wall jump (which has very long jumps to make), you'll approach close enough to activate the sling, react by pressing the button, but by the time your button press is registered (most consisting of your own reaction time rather the actual input processing), you're out of range again. One option to _consider_ in cases like this is to have either a grace period or a grace zone; with a grace period, on leaving the sling's range you have a few frames where pressing the button still sets it off anyway; and a grace zone, if the sling doesn't activate until you're within (say) 30 pixels, it doesn't _deactivate_ once active until you're more than (say) 33 pixels away. This means the player still has to get to the sling, but as long as they're able to clip its active zone they still have a _chance_ of using it successfully.
Anyway, other than that, good job! The boss fight was especially well done, you don't see a lot of LD entries with both platforming and a real boss fight.
Really fun and exciting game. Music is great and works with the art. I can see a lot of effort put into it, along with sufficient polish. Great job!
This was really nice! Truth is that the movement could be bit more polished otherwise it is quite a challenge, but that also might be the intention. Other that that this was really great entry and I love the idea of the sling along with the beginning (without limbos - that really made me laugh :)) Great Job! REally nice work
This game is really cool! I love the mechanics. I found it challenging to get the sling to point in the direction I wanted within the short timeframe of the jump, but that was part of the fun. The sound design and art style were also really well done. I'm really impressed with this entry. Fantastic work :smile:
Excellent platformer with really nice graphics and among the best implementation of the LD theme (in this type of games)! The boss was a very nice touch especially for a jam game! The only thing that was confusing was, as many people already commented, the sling controls. You don't end where you expect to end causing you to spend to much time on otherwise trivial actions. In fact I almost gave up at the starting location where you have to "double jump" to climb the cliff which would have been a real shame :cry: .
Here's some of my thoughts:
---
- The game has nice graphics. The forest looks lush and pleasant, and the overall style is quite consistent. I would consider changing the color of the slings in the boss-fight though. Perhaps to white? They were a bit hard to see against the dark background.
---
- The audio was otherwise nice, but I found the forest-level's theme annoingly repetitive, mainly because it was just a short loop with not much structure. The boss-theme was more enjoyable to me.
---
- I think the controls and the whole platformer-experience works otherwise, but there's one problem: The sling-mechanic. I'm not saying it's completely flawed, but needs a major overhaul to work. As many have said here, it would be wise to change the sling to function with the same button you use to jump. @philomory here has made a great job explaining (one way) how you would go about improving the sling-controls. I had exactly the same experience about the trajectories and reference points in the same part of the game. Another example: The boss fight was a blast, up until it featured those pesky slings :D I was _very frustrated,_ but managed to complete the game.
---
I would conclude that if you find a way to improve the sling-mechanics to a degree that the controls feel "more correct" to the player, you'll have a very nice game in your hands!
It felt like I was playing Rayman~ This game offered more than I thought--I did not expect a boss at the end. The controls were very responsive, it was probably the best platformer I've played yet this jam. Good job!
To be honest, I couldn't finish this game, the controls are too tricky for me. It reminded me of Ori, I went through a lot, but I never finished. But hardcore isn't bad, just not for everyone :) I enjoyed the graphics and the sound! The player's character runs cool (animations)!
A cool game ! A simple take on the theme, but well executed. I really like the shift mechanic even if it was a little bit hard to control.
Good job :slight_smile:
a simple but cool game with awesome graphic and style :)
I like the wall to wall jump section the best, but the slings are a bit awkward. It gets a bit hard pretty fast and could use some more relaxed pacing. The initial movement is actually kinda fun, so great job there. It wouldn't be bad to have a tiny bit more of that!
The level design is clever, the difficulty is fair (thank you for the checkpoints :p ). The sling is a cool mechanic, but it's hard to use. The graphics are very cool, I love the grass. Very good and fun game! Good job :)
Fantastic game. It has addicting gameplay, I found myself playing it for longer than other ldjam games
Good arts and nice lightning. Very challenging game, with a nicely unique mechanic. Also I liked the fact that you respawn immidatly. Nice entrance
I love it. It's like Super Meat Boy combined with Rayman, Just one thing. Please make the sling and jump on the same button becasue it's sooo iritating that they're different buttons :D
Great jumping (slinging) mechanics, though the difficulty is really huge. It requires plenty of practice in order to train the reflexes, and I find the key bindings a bit hard to get used to - why not let us use the jump key in order to slinge? :) Also I agree with multiple points stated in comments above me. Good job nevertheless!
Whoah what a game! My wrist hurts from the bosslevel, but I made it! :smile: The player character reminds me of Rayman ^^ The wall walking and the sling mechanic are cool, but the latter could use some polish. I wish there was an arrowhead connected to the black line to indicate the direction, and it would be nice if the reference of the black line was not the player's head but the body. The part before the boss was really hard, it could use a little bit more build up, to learn about the importance of timing & direction of the slings. I didn't understand why sometimes my player's character would suddenly walk very fast on the wall after a wall jump.
I liked that the boss level felt like almost a new game. Impressive.
I really like the backgrounds and the audio! The music of the platforming level was somehwat too repetitive for my taste, and didn't completely fit the hectic jumping around. I really enjoyed the music in the boss level.
At the beginning of the game, when the player is still without limbs, switching between going to left and right sometimes results in an unexpected behaviour of the rotation of the sprite. Furthermore, when standing on an edge and jumping would sometimes result in sliding off the edge after landing, while I expected to just come in a standing position again.
scrshotSlinger.png
Congrats on your fantastic game!
Like the look! Found it hard to be precise with the slinging but it was still fun.
Very cool game!! Really impressive platforming, I had to stop playing because my hands hurt. Making it through certain parts of the game gave me the same satisfaction that Celeste gives me when I beat a particularly hard part of the game. :)
Really well-polished, except for one problem: the wall jump controls don't work well at all with a keyboard. Trying to coordinate wall jumping while also slinging is an exercise in frustration.
A smooth and enjoyable platformer. I understood the sling mechanic, but it did feel a little too precise and unforgiving at times. Adding a bit of support so it doesn't directly throw you into spikes if you press when you're right on top of it (or as someone else, adding a grace zone) would be ways to make it a little more user-friendly.
The boss fight at the end was really great, if perhaps a sudden shift from the original tone. But again, based on my game I can't complain about that too much aha. The sling again though in that last section was a little hard.
But overall, love the direction and execution and hope you continue it further :slight_smile:
i got a black screen after the intro on the browser version. i'll download later and try the mac build.
Definitely one of the best games I've played this Ludum Dare. The platforming had a couple issues, but was overall enjoyable, and the level design was engaging.
One thing I have to give kudos for is the difficulty curve. At least for the non-boss screens, it works very well. I can't imagine how hard it is to get that right as I usually become so good at my Ludum Dare games that it would all seem too easy... In fact, after I beat the game, I played through up until the boss again and it was substantially easier. So just getting the difficulty curve right was very cool.
There are a couple small points of friction in the platforming: - Jumping off of edges can be difficult. I'm guessing you don't have 'grace frames' / 'coyote frames' implemented as those generally fix that problem. - Getting the sling to register was not always easy. In particular during the screen with all the slings in the boss fight, I repeatedly would miss the sling I wanted and then would accidentally shoot myself down. - There was some sort of glitch (?) where I would suddenly have a ton of speed when running up a wall (like 2x more than normal). This happened multiple times and killed me each time.
I think the camera controller worked pretty well, although the way it's implemented does mean you don't see as far in the direction of your movement.
As far as graphics goes, I think a lot of the graphics look good, but the parallax layers look a little strange with the low detail + blur.
Overall though great game.