FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD45 → The Only Way is Down

The Only Way is Down

By roka-josh and Thomu

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4433.5656
Fun5373.2956
Innovation7512.9356
Theme7143.1355
Graphics5563.5157
Audio4143.2757
Humor4682.9050
Mood3583.5955

Comments

retrobarbare 2019-10-08 20:55

A cool little game i liked it

roka-josh 2019-10-09 08:51

@retrobarbare thank you for playing our game!

alxertion 2019-10-10 18:14

Fun little game; liked the sound effects & the dynamite destroying the map :v: best of luck!

koge 2019-10-10 18:29

Nice mechanic with the dynamite but tutorials didn't appear in the right order so i had to try all my buttons until i find the right ones. There's also an invisuble collider in the first platform.

roka-josh 2019-10-10 18:37

@alxertion Thank you for playing our game and we are glad you enjoyed it!

roka-josh 2019-10-10 18:40

@koge Hi thanks for playing, we will try to fix these bugs. There is a collider at the start of the tutorial which is used to progress the tutorial messages and that sometimes doesn't trigger so the player just hits off it if that is what you are talking about?

balance686 2019-10-11 20:59

Nice job on this! I dig the pixel work and the audio really sets the mood. I especially like the color choice in the subterra levels. It fits in well with the theme, is fun to play, and the cutscenes are a nice touch! I ran into that collider issue in the tutorial as well. Maybe just set it to being a trigger rather than a collider so you always penetrate it (triggering the message) and not holding the player back? Also I think in the spirit of start with nothing you should probably start with 0 dynamite as well. Great work! Lots of content for a short period!

roka-josh 2019-10-11 22:05

@balance686 Thanks for playing and for the kind words! The collider issue has been fixed but will be held back until the first post-jam version is released as we have already released an updated version post-jam. And the whole dynamite system is due a change post-jam as currently we believe their isn't a great enough motive to use it. Once again thank you!

fiwon123 2019-10-13 12:41

Nice work, I liked the concept. I make a imilar game, but not working too well haha. Congrats dude

gamefive 2019-10-13 13:15

It's a great game. The weapon is too small to see. I think it'd be nice to have the weapon a little bigger. Is there any way to get up there? There are times when you want to go down because you see an enemy or a path at the top.

roka-josh 2019-10-13 14:25

@fiwon123 Thanks for playing I'll check it out!

roka-josh 2019-10-13 14:28

@gamefive Thank you for playing and I agree that the gun is on the small side! There are a few areas in the game that are only accesible if you use certain items, for example having more than 1 jump or lessened gravity effect.

tort60091 2019-10-13 18:37

I really like the mood of this game. Great atmosphere! Good luck in further development!

roka-josh 2019-10-13 18:47

@tort60091 Thank you for playing!

ninjacatz 2019-10-13 19:03

Colors are very well chosen, and there are no "jagged" lines. But the font is a little hard to read (as if the word consists of letters of different registers: lower- and uppercases) But this does not interfere with playing!

ciaranw 2019-10-13 19:54

Nice atmosphere, was kinda creepy! I thought the controls could be a little awkward to use, sometimes the player acted a little strange - fun little platformer though! (Also, every level seemed to have a very similar layout, would have been good to have a little more variety!)

asfdfdfd 2019-10-13 19:56

Return my dynamite that you took from me between tutorial and first levels!

roka-josh 2019-10-13 20:03

@ninjacatz Thanks for playing and for the kind words! For the future versions of the games, font is without a doubt something we will be changing and I agree the fonts style of random capitalisation can be hard to read.

roka-josh 2019-10-13 20:05

@ciaranw I'm glad you thought it was creepy, you can thank @thomu with his amazing soundtrack for that. For next future version, a big player movement overhall is something we would like to do and due to time restraints there are only actually 12 different room possibilities, so that is something else we will be expanding on.

roka-josh 2019-10-13 20:08

@asfdfdfd It used to be the case but we decided it wasn't fair that you got more dynamite if you played the tutorial before a run, it also used to occur that if you got hit in the tutorial you would remain damaged in a run so silver linings! :smile:

andrewpatton 2019-10-14 15:21

Fun game, I also had the collider issue on first level but after that its fine. Marsquake cutscene was very cool.

Menu is very bright in contrast to game, and menu text is too big & does not contrast well itself. Ingame text was fine, though.

Not necessarily an issue maybe personal preference: Jump should be tied to space rather than W. Would be a lot of fun on a controller, too.

sprotex 2019-10-14 16:58

Really nice game :smiley:

I personally think that I would like to zoom in the camera a little, to appreciate the art (because I think it is too small now). But that would hinder the players view a lot, which I struggled at first.

The enemies started to follow me very soon and I felt that the game was being very punishing. But after a few attempts I managed to beat the game.

I enjoyed the AI scripting, they were a little smarter than the simplest "follow player" but not too complicated that you couldn't run away from them. I was very frightened when in the later stages I was surrounded by enemies, trying to escape.

I laughed at the end bit, nice touch. :laughing: Overall a very enjoyable game. :slight_smile:

roka-josh 2019-10-14 17:26

@andrewpatton I'm glad you liked it, as mentioned in a previous reply the font is something we will change and in the first full post-jam version, rebindable keys and controller support will be something we are looking into.

roka-josh 2019-10-14 17:26

@sprotex Thank you for playing and I'm glad you liked the ending!

philomory 2019-10-16 00:28

I played it, but I don't really feel competent to rate it because each time I played I died to like the second or third enemy I encountered, so I didn't really get to see any of the content. I'm not sure if there's something I don't understand about the gameplay, if I'm just bad, or if some sort of performance problem on my elderly Mac made it harder than it was intended to be (the controls felt kinda unresponsive, but I interpreted that as being due to the low gravity giving everything a floaty feel).

Regardless, it looks and sounds pretty nice, so I'm rating in those categories, but I don't really feel I have enough information to rate in any other category.

roka-josh 2019-10-16 09:48

@philomory Sorry for the problems on your end and thank you for rating the way you did. The game is rather hard, so that may be a factor however the Mac and Linux builds are untested as neither of us have the means to test them so there could be another issue. Once again thanks for your understanding!

kaeveris 2019-10-18 19:08

Very nice game! I like the sounds and I really like the graphics and artstyle! For some reason with restricted vision and enemies suddenly appearing I got scared a bit XD The mood somehow reminded me of an old game PP Hammer, where the enemies were chasing you XD (I also got scared then a lot)

roka-josh 2019-10-18 20:54

@kaeveris I'm glad you liked it!

itsdanidre 2019-10-20 04:20

The levels were repetitive but the difference in artwork made up for it. It's simple and nice, but with all due respect...I'm not about to go over the entire game to make it all the way back down there. It'd have been better if there was compensation as in checkpoints, or extra health gained over time.

It's really easy to get hit by them, and controls are difficult.

With your right hand on mouse, and left on wasd, there's no space to hold shift to run. Spacebar (free for the left hand's thumb) would have been easier to use for running. I like this game too much, that's why I'm mad at it's lackings! >:[

Maybe even a score would be nice when hitting enemies. But it's just a 3 strikes you're out, see how far you can go game. :sleepy:

It's really fun! But that death after all that progress left a bitter taste in my mouth. :confused:

roka-josh 2019-10-20 11:00

@itsdanidre Thank you for playing the game, I appreciate it may not be a genre for all but a key feature of the roguelike genre is permanent death so we believed it to be a must for the game. I agree about the repatativity as we ran out of time to add more levels to the world generation, so perhaps by increasing the difference between runs, the game would be better for those who do not like the permanent death side of it. Also in terms of the controls, it was the intention to use your left small finger to press shift as is common in a lot of games, although rebindable keys is something we are looking into for the first post-jam version. Our two main insperations were the binding of isaac and spelunky, which if you have played either are brutally difficult and reset player progress every run. Once again the roguelike genre is not for everyone and it is generally very hard, but we will take your criticisms into account to hopefully make a better and more user friendly version for the first post-jam release. Thank you very much.

jonno 2019-10-20 13:36

Just finished playing. I managed to reach the third cavern before meeting my ultimate demise, but definitely had fun along the way. There feels like a nod to HERO in this with the space man exploring the caverns and using dynamite to reach other areas - so a game like that as a roguelike will be great to see. I look forward to seeing if you take this any further.

mharring 2019-10-20 14:14

Neat game! Unfortunately I ran into a situation where I couldn't continue. I had used all my dynamite to get down there, and then I couldn't retrace my steps to get out. Perhaps a jetpack of some sort to move back up would have solved the issue, or having unlimited dynamite (which would have been really fun to just blast your way through the caves). It also would have helped to have some sound effects for the enemies - having sounds elsewhere and not for them made it really stand out that they were missing. That said though, this was a fun entry and I can see a lot of potential here. Well done!

roka-josh 2019-10-20 20:32

@jonno Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it!

roka-josh 2019-10-20 20:34

@mharring This never should have occurded and is an oversight on my part when desigining the levels, and you can get items which increase the amount of jumps but a jetpack sounds good as well! Also the enemies do have sound effects but you have to be close to them for long enough for them to play so this will be tweaked as well! Thanks for playing!

darkwing00duck 2019-10-20 21:14

I liked the graphics, everything is well designed! Great starting cut scene. Please add a "repeat" button after death so that the game starts without a tutorial

roka-josh 2019-10-21 08:50

@darkwing00duck Thanks for playing, we probably should have made it clear but you can turn off the tutorial and intro cut scene in the settings menu.

bungalow 2019-10-21 09:33

Nice little game with cute graphics and tight, intuitive controls. Awesome job!

roka-josh 2019-10-21 10:35

@bungalow Thanks for playing!

jkoftekian 2019-10-21 20:21

great game! i loved the cutscenes and the dynamite breaking walls. i have to admit, i repeatedly landed on enemies on big drops, and that often led to me dying pretty quickly. the most i was able to go was the subterranean level 2. hopefully if i have more time between classes i can try again and hopefully i will git gud lol.

roka-josh 2019-10-21 20:52

@jkoftekian I'm glad you liked it, and the game is pretty hard!

sorlok 2019-10-27 13:17

Lots of fun, and pretty cool to see a LD game with an intro cutscene. Combat was pretty difficult, given how many enemies there were.

roka-josh 2019-10-27 13:23

@sorlok Thanks for playing, and we probably spent way too much time trying to make that!

brokenmirrormedia 2019-10-28 05:42

This is a pretty fun game, and everything seems quite decently polished. One thing I wish is that on collision with enemies I wish there was some knockback in addition to iframes, since if they get stuck on top of or underneath you you can die quickly. The cutscenes were cool, and the atmosphere was pretty good, and would have been awesome with more ambient sound. Good work!

roka-josh 2019-10-28 07:34

@brokenmirrormedia Hi thanks for playing, there is actually a brief invulnerability after you get hit but the actual eye frame length is super short so that is something we will adjust for full release!