Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Keep it Fire
By mykola
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 636 | 3.32 | 47 | |
| Fun | 661 | 3.12 | 47 | |
| Innovation | 682 | 3.10 | 47 | |
| Theme | 269 | 3.94 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 420 | 3.58 | 47 | |
| Audio | 299 | 3.39 | 48 | |
| Humor | 797 | 2.07 | 40 | |
| Mood | 504 | 3.22 | 46 |
I enjoyed the game. I found that the respawn was a little quick on the logs, and could run back and forth on main ramp and win. The give/take keys didn't see accurate in the help.
I really liked the music, and the concept it quite well executed.
Thanks for the good game!
Simple and lovely!
Like the graphic! Nice game
I really liked the concept(I tried something similar in my game and you implemented much better) and the art pairs nicely with the gameplay. I thought the movement was really natural, but I found a couple tiles that the player could through. If I'm correct, a continuous rather than discrete collision detection could fix this. Great Job!
Great idea, love it. Animation on bonfire is also great. Nice music. You have little error in the "pause" menu with instruction "500" to win.
Nice and simple platformer! The music was really nice and the movement feels pretty good as well.
One thing I would mention is changing "Sprint" to "Dash" in the instructions to make it a bit more clear
Well Done!
Awesome idea! It feels nice and really makes you think about your next move. Maybe a problem I have with it is that the controls are a bit complex, or that the way in which they are presentated is a bit confusing for me. Great game overall! Congrats!
This game deserves more ratings! I really liked the mood and music. Very nice touch with the animations as well! My only suggestion would be to consider rewarding the player even further for venturing far away from the fire :) Great work!
Nice job! I liked the art and especially the music. I was a bit confused at first though.
@unclechris thank you for playing and for your feedback!
Yeah, I was thinking that it might be a problem but forgot to adjust the balance before submission. Good point, I'll fix it in the next version. Also will highlight the controls better.
Thank you for the kind words!
@fathy-basha thank you for playing!
@kdgame thank you for the kind words and for playing!
@nicolasmaclean thank you for playing and for the feedback!
Thank you for the kind words, will definitely check your game.
Yeah, I saw this problem but unfortunately didn't have time to fix before the submission. Thank you for the hint, I will check discrete/continuous collisions out. It was the first time I used tilemaps in Unity so wasn't so confident in the collisions part. I'll try to fix it in the next version though.
Nice idea! The game is pretty fun and the art is nice. Only one point to note: dashing allowed me to go through walls.
I like the art-style. But everything was a little glitchy. I could dash through things and it was weird. If you wanted to fix this you could change the collision detection on the rigidbody to continuous. Also something else that might fix it is adding a composite collider to the tilemap.
Pretty good, I noticed that if you stay in one place the logs just re appear after some time, so you can stay there for ever, there are some time really hard logs to get D: I also though some of them were kind of unfair because ou have to step on snow to get them :/
The music is great I loved it.
Enjoy the experience
@aguahervida thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback!
You're right, I need to decrease the respawn time so that it barely makes up for the normal fire decay, then the player would be forced to take more risk. Yeah, I tried to make it rather challenging but still achievable, also giving more points if logs are hard to get. High risk high reward kind of thing.
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
Fantastic game! The information screen at the start of the game is a fantastic way to provide players with all of the information they need in a single screen, but to play devil's advocate I will say that although it was an efficient way of doing it, it was a lot to take in. The theme is fantastic. Fire is always a great theme when talking about life that I don't think many people jump to. Overall a fun little platformer with enough challenges to keep you entertained and engaged! - Just so you aware, I did spawn in the middle of all of the stones and it took me a few jumps to then appear above ground where I think you're meant to spawn. Anyway, good job!
Really cute game, the music and graphics are great. I found a pretty big bug here, i don't really know how ive managed to do it but here is a printscreen hmmm.PNG
One of the only game in LD that i've actually beat, thats a good thing. Its nice to play a game that is possible to beat on your first try for a change. Good submission apart from the things some of the other people already mentioned, clipping and collision, etc.
I had a lot more fun with it than I thought I would have. I don't always love platformers, but this was actually kind of fun. I liked the idea a lot (and may have glitched through the terrain at one point) and really did enjoy myself.
I liked the game. It works, it's got a good idea that you managed to realise, and it looks nice. I have two major concerns:
1) It's too easy. There's no incentive to venture far from the bonfire and risk danger, because you can wait near the bonfire for logs to respawn. And there's no reason to take fire from the bonfire when you can just wait for those two logs a mere jump away to respawn.
2) This is more an opinion about the whole idea: I think you did yourself a disservice making it a platformer. The ability to take and give fire makes it more innovative, but when I saw the title screen, I was expecting a Gods Will Be Watching sort of game. If you're inexperienced in making games, then that's okay, you've got to learn by making the easy genres. But in the future, don't be afraid to try making something out of your comfort zone. If this had been a cozy, warming, atmospheric experience, I would've given it 5 stars on Mood.
Good platformer, thank you. I liked the idea and the music. But the firewood comes too fast
After a couple of runs, i'd have to say that the game is still very rough around edges. The Platforming feels a little strange due to some physics and collision quirks. I had no idea how to get to some of the wood. Looks like you needed a double jump or other special powers to get to them, which I didn't find. Respawning was bugged sometimes and would spawn me right in the middle of the floor. Also, it wasn't really clear, what the goal of the game or the motivation of the player was. The art was alright but the music was great! Really loved the backrounds song. It added so much to the mood and was good on the ears.
all in all, a decent entry that still needs some touching up to be a really good! Hope you can work with the feedback (even if I'm sounding a bit harsh). I think honest feedback is worth a lot. Also, I immediately clicked on your game when I saw the Cover art :) We developed a fire/wood-related game as well. Gotta stick to the stuff you know and love!
Cheers
I only played on the first platform and the next one from the right and succeeded. Maybe decreasing the frequency of respawns would make a reason in this game to keep moving to other platforms.
Neat game, the visuals, music and sounds are all really nice!
Like others have already said, it was a bit too easy to just loop around the area near the bonfire and win.
That said, I found the other stuff too difficult and frustrating, which is why it's so "tempting" to cheese the game and win with the nearby respawning logs.
Perhaps some kind of ledge grab mechanic, or, improving the controls somehow, would make it more fun to explore the map and get new logs?
Thanks for making this! :D
This game was very well-crafted and pleasant to look at and listen to. I would have wished for some more precise jumping controls and maybe more dynamic challenges like moving rain clouds or something like that.
@unclechris @fathy-basha @kdgame @nicolasmaclean @sheetcode @hulien22 @camilo-quintero @milestone-games @matt2728 @rodpraet @beavergames @aguahervida @conor-galvin @carol03x @blue-pin-studio @yaakgold @finn-truman @jodi @duke @paynob @omaskery @gurkenlabs
Thanks a lot for playing and for all the feedback shared about the game, it's really invaluable! You motivated me to invest more time and effort in the game and improve it. I fixed the mentioned bugs and did some small improvements to the game difficulty. Archives with a post-jam version of the game are available on itch.io. The following things were changed:
- Fixed instructions in the Pause screen to be correct. - Fixed the issue of being able to run through tiles. - Fixed the issue of spawning inside the tilemap. - Log respawn rates were adjusted to avoid player collecting only logs near the bonfire. - The level design and game parameters were adjusted to make the game more interesting. - Chill difficulty mode was added for those who don’t like to die and just want to go through the experience in a calm way. - Challenging difficulty more was added for those who want to use their agility and ingenuity to complete the game while still not sweating too much. I recommend to start with this one. - Die a Lot mode was added for those who would like to test their platformer skills. It’s hard but it’s doable.
Thank you once again and I hope you will enjoy the updated version!
@rodpraet thanks a lot for playing and for kind words! The issue with going through walls is fixed now :)
@beavergames thank you for playing and for the feedback! Tried to fix the issue as you suggested but unfortunately continuous rigid body detection and composite collider didn't resolve it completely. After hours of research and experimentation I just mannually put box colliders around the level. A brute force approach but it did the job so now it's more playable.
@conor-galvin thank you so much for playing and for your feedback! I know putting all the tutorial to one screen is a lazy way to do it but given the time constraints it was the best I could do rather than skipping it at all. I agree that ideally it should be more user-friendly and will work on that on my next jam. And thank you for pointing out the spawning issue. I initially forgot to reset player's the velocity on respawn. But now it's fixed and the game is more pleasant to play! I really appreciate your kind words and feedback. You're welcome to try out the post-jam version of the game. :)
@carol03x thank you for playing and for pointing the bug out! It was quite severe indeed and took some time for me to figure out, but now it's been resolved. So you're welcome to play an updated version of the game :)
@blue-pin-studio thank you for playing and for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@yaakgold thank you so much for playing and for the kind words! If you ever feel like playing an improved version of the game you're welcome to do so!
@finn-truman thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback! You're totally right that the balance was off in the original version of the game. I've now uploaded a post-jam version where you can try out three difficulty levels.
I fully agree that it would be a lot more fun to try something new. But it was my first Compo jam and I didn't want to take too much but rather make sure that I end up with a complete game. Now that this milestone has been successfully completed, I will definitely experiment more in my next jam!
Thank you so much for sharing!
@jodi thank you for playing and for the feedback! The respawn issue has been resolved now and you're welcome to try the post-jam version of the game. :)
@duke I really appreciate you time and your feedback! It definitely helped me to invest more time in the game and resolve the mentioned issues. You're welcome to play a post-jam version of the game now. :)
Regarding some of your comments: "collision quirks" has been resolved. "Looks like you needed a double jump or other special powers" - actually, Jump and Sprint are all you need to get to all the logs around the level. "Respawning was bugged sometimes" - but not anymore - fixed! "it wasn’t really clear, what the goal of the game or the motivation of the player was" - really sorry for that. I tried to describe the backstory and the goals in the game description. You can also find the winning condition in the tutorial screen. But I agree that this information doesn't come naturally. I really like how you approached it in your game though. I had a lot to learn from it in terms of story-telling and pretty much all of the game aspects.
And for sure, harsh is the kind of feedback I really value. That's how I learn. So thanks a lot for all those points, they really motivated me to improve!
@paynob thanks a lot for the feedback! It was taken into account and resolved in the post-jam version of the game that you're more than welcome to try out! :)
@omaskery thank you so much for playing and for sharing the feedback! Glad to let you know that the log respawn issue has been resolved and you can't trick the game that easily now. As for the challenging and frustrating part, I've added several difficulty modes suitable for different play styles. I agree that controls can be worked on a bit more. But at least from my own experience all the logs can be reached using Jump and Sprint actions.
@gurkenlabs thank you for playing and sharing your impression! I'm really glad that you liked it. There is now a post-jam version available where some of the mentioned issues were fixed. More precise jumping controls and more dynamic challenges - I completely agree with you and I actually had these features on my list when working on the game. Had to drop them due to lack of time unfortunately. But in case I get back to improving the game again, these would be the first ones to take!
Just came back to play another round with new version :) The sprint does help, didn't use it the first time around. Gonna keep the game open now because that song really is a great piece of music and I'm gonna listen the hell out of it until I'm fed up
i really like that you have to decide whether to venture forth or return to the fire, reminded me of dark souls the jumping can be a bit wonky at times but overall i had a pretty good time
@duke thank you for playing once again! I need to work on the tutorial part a bit more to better clarify the controls.
Wow, I'm really surprised and flattered regarding the music! To be honest, I didn't spend as much time on it as I would want to. But I'm really glad that you liked it. You motivated me to upload it to https://soundcloud.com/mykola-herasymovych/keepitfire-soundtrack in case you want to add it to your playlist or check my other tracks. As before, harsh feedback is highly appreciated :)
@ididgame thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback! I'm really glad that you liked it.
Really enjoyable game all around! The visuals, the music and sounds, it's all pretty damn good! The gameplay, while a little hard at first (the tutorial graphic looks a bit overwhelming, there are just so many buttons ^^), is actually really fun when using the sprint feature a lot. It took me a few tries but I managed to finish the game and enjoyed it quite a bit, good job!
Very nice music and consistent logic! Cold = die, wood = live, very realistic for a fire! :)
You made the music by yourself during the weekend? Wow, nice!
It is really hard to get grasp of the controls. The insta-death holes are unforgiving.
The graphics are very nice!
For the namings - I would choose something different than "Fire" for the character. Maybe add it some eyes and call it "Fire imp" or something.
Also the instructions screen is very dense :) Some tutorial with checkpoints would be nice.
I liked the option to choose lower difficulty! I guess I am getting old because I find all the games very hard :D
Thanks for uploading!
Really great game, lovely music and visuals, still listening to the music in another tab while rating, the only very minor flaw is that the flame can stick to the walls sometimes
A great game, a great music enjoyed it :thumbsup:
@erkberg thanks a lot for playing the game and sharing the feedback! I totally agree about tutorial, I used the most lazy and quick way to put instructions but it would be a lot more user-friendly to do some kind of step-by-step introduction to gameplay. I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed it and managed to finish it! And thank you so much for your kind words about the graphics, sound and music, I did put my soul into them. :)
@khud0 thank you so much for playing the game and for your kind words!
@stanov I'm actually surprised that everyone likes the music. I've spent just about two hours to put it together and I don't like it that much knowing that I could do better if I had more time to polish it. Nevertheless, I really appreciate your kind words in that regard!
Thanks a lot for the feedback. I would definitely consider the controls and tutorial more critically next time. Regarding "Fire", I agree, it would definitely give the game more persona. I did want to make the character more cute with eyes and everything, but after spending about an hour for the sole fire animation I had to prioritize to finish the game in time.
Thank you so much for playing and sharing your thoughts!
@likirus thank you so much for playing and I'm really glad you liked the music! I actually had the initial plan to add the wall-sticking / wall-running / wall-jumping feature. Later it turned out that Unity collision system decided to add wall-sticking itself and I thought that it might be a good feature. But apparently not! =D
@flash22 thank you so much for playing!
Neat game with a nice concept and aesthetic. The graphics were pretty good, though it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine that the pixel art foreground and the background were at different resolutions and that objects would sometimes be at sub-pixel positions relative to each other.
While the jumping felt fine in terms of gravity and speed and whatnot, I had some gripes with the movement and physics in other areas. Some of the collision seemed glitchy and inconsistent - sometimes I'd get stuck partway on the edge of a platform; sometimes if I pressed against a wall when falling, but other times I'd slide off.
The dash/sprint move was confusing to me at first. I initially thought it was a sort of air-dash move, but then I realized it was more of a sprint/speed boost with a cost the longer you hold it for. I think I was probably confused because of how fast it is and how it's mostly useful when used mid-air, which is kinda contrary to the idea of a "sprint".
Nice game overall, keep it up.
Very nice entry ! Graphics are very cool, the music too ! The concept is nice, you get a good idea. The only thing is about collisions : When we move on a wall direction while we are aside it, we clip into it.
Very nice !
- Never heard a voice acted fire before - that's really neat - Interestingly, fire only drains when you first press run - if you keep holding, fire doesn't drain any faster than normal! This, of course, makes the fire really fast and hard to control. It's still fun to zip around, though! - My typical strategy was to get the player up to 100, dump about 90 into the bonfire, then collect the three nearest the fire and win - I sure did Die A Lot! Ended up making a route for that difficulty, which goes like this: rush over to the bottom left, picking up a triple and a single along the way and ending up with 40. Get the two triples down there, make the impossible corner jump, exiting with about 70, then rush along the top for the floating platform triple, for about 90. Get the top right triple, and then rush back to the fire, dumping in 90 and picking up the nearest three logs for the final 10! - Did I mention the impossible corner jump? It sure was impossible! - Never noticed that the single logs respawn - it isn't in the tutorial menu! My route never required respawning logs. - Completion time: 35:08 (I took 9:15 to beat Challenging, and the rest of the time to beat Die A Lot)
Whoops, accidentally posted the same comment thrice!
Interesting that there isn't a delete button on these.
The simple style looks great and although I felt a bit overwhelmed when I first read the Infoscreen (Pausemenu) the gameplay and controls are very easy to understand. To be honest I only beat the game on the easiest difficulty - damn is this hard :sweat_smile:
Great game! A well executed platformer. The controls are smooth, the graphics are nice, the music fits the game well.
The only issue I have with it is that it lacks any tutorial to slowly teach you everything. Instead, it just throws the instruction screen at you with a ton of text to read and remember. It's not a big issue, since the mechanics are not that difficult to learn on your own in a few short minutes, but I feel like a slower introduction of everything would make it better.
Also, the instruction screenshot here in the LD game description is wrong - the "take from bonfire" and "give to bonfire" buttons are switched.
All in all, it's a really good game. I had fun playing it. ;)
good idea. the music is calm and unobtrusive. the graphics are simple and pleasant
Very fun concept ! The art of the trees and flames are very nice. I also like the music.
The screen that explains the controls is too complicated, it confuse the player, but after all, the game is easy to learn.
I really enjoyed playing it. Good job !
What a cute entry! Congratz, very good outcome for a gamejam :) I really liked the idea that you have to keep yourself and something else alive and have to share the same HP, so to say :) The graphics were very cute, however I wouldn't mix different styles so much if I were you, either make everything in a pixel art style or cartooney (the trees) either way, keep the same pixel density, or if you wan't it to do it on purpose then go extreme, like in the Amazing World of gumball ^^ the controls worked very smooth, didn't realize any bugs, however, this is one of the games were controller support would make the whole expirience even better :) (I comment that under so much games lol, but it's the truth!!! ^^) I really really really liked that you made a pause menu and put an explanation of all the controls here, I wish more gamejam entries would do this. There's nothing worse than a LD game hat has hundreds of controls to memorize and you having to minimize the game to read about them which ofc makes you die in return.. gaaahh.. that really makes games feel like a chore, instead of.. you know, a game ^^ Gameplay and "story" wise I thought it's sad that you're gonna die no matter what, felt kind of hopeless :P also, I sometimes felt that some logs simply weren't worth it (to go there, I'm going to lose more health than what the log will give me because of time+jump penality+ice, so maybe balance that a bit more :)
All in all a good job, congratz on finishing your game :))
What a cute entry! Congratz, very good outcome for a gamejam :) I really liked the idea that you have to keep yourself and something else alive and have to share the same HP, so to say :) The graphics were very cute, however I wouldn't mix different styles so much if I were you, either make everything in a pixel art style or cartooney (the trees) either way, keep the same pixel density, or if you wan't it to do it on purpose then go extreme, like in the Amazing World of gumball ^^ the controls worked very smooth, didn't realize any bugs, however, this is one of the games were controller support would make the whole expirience even better :) (I comment that under so much games lol, but it's the truth!!! ^^) I really really really liked that you made a pause menu and put an explanation of all the controls here, I wish more gamejam entries would do this. There's nothing worse than a LD game hat has hundreds of controls to memorize and you having to minimize the game and read about them, that really makes games feel like a chore. Gameplay and "story" wise I thought it's sad that you're gonna die no matter what, felt kind of hopeless :P also, I sometimes felt that some logs simply weren't worth it (to go there, I'm going to lose more health than what the log will give me because of time+jump penality+ice, so maybe balance that a bit more :)
All in all a good job, congratz on finishing your game :))
@empty-set thank you so much playing and sharing your feedback!
I agree about pixel resolution inconsistency. It's my first pixel art, so I wanted to try it out so badly that I didn't plan that the background image had to be in pixel art with the same resolution. Just didn't have to make it pixel-perfect. And yeah, I guess I need more polishing of Unity tilemap collisions.
Thanks a lot for your comments, I will definitely consider them for my next game!
@akadream thank you for playing and for the kind words! I will work on collisions more.
@winterbeak thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback!
Actually, the fire should drain about two times faster when sprinting. I'll double-check!
Thank you for documenting your walk through in detail. It's really great to know that all that game balancing didn't go in vain and someone could finish the game apart from me!
Die a Lot - yes, that's almost exactly how I planned it! Took me some time to get it working and finish myself. And you totally have my respect for figuring out the impossible corner jump! That was one thing I was afraid noone would be able to complete. You also need to be of a smaller size to do it, that's why I usually started with that one. I got to a point where I managed to do the jump from about third try, so I understand how frustrating it was =D
I agree, respawn might be redundant for experienced players but I left it in case you can't complete the fire from the first round and so that you can repeat without dying.
Thank you so for putting your time and effort into playing the game! I hope you enjoyed it and I definitely got very good feedback to work with.
@fatpenguin thank you so much for playing and sharing your feedback!
I totally agree that the tutorial is a bit overwhelming and have put it to my to-do list for the next game jam to make it more interactive and step by step.
Thank you for mentioning the art style issue, I will definitely keep it in mind next time. I haven't heard of the Amazing World of Gumball before but now that I checked some gameplay videos I understand what you mean. And I actually really like the idea of extreme mixing of different styles but I would need to be really careful with that so that it doesn't become just a mess.
Yes, I had an idea to add a gamepad support but it went to background when I had to prioritize the game critical features. I agree that it would feel a lot more natural to play a platformer using a controller.
Good point about the story! I haven't thought that calling a difficulty level "Die a Lot" would make a player hopeless. Should've considered that.
And regarding logs, most of them are required to pass the hardest difficulty. But you're right that they are not needed when playing on a simpler level when you're not trained to get them yet. So definitely more work needed on the game and level design.
Thank you so much for the kind words and for all the relevant points. I'll definitely consider them and improve!
@lcstark thank you for the kind words and for the feedback!
You're totally right about the tutorial overwhelming, it's on my to do list to improve it. Thank you pointing out the mistake in the screenshot, will fix!
@omickron thank you playing and for your kind words!
@duck-reaction thank you for playing and for the feedback! I'm really glad you enjoyed it and will work to improve what you mentioned.
Interesting entry, I liked the sound effects a lot, and I found the graphics charming :slight_smile: I think it's hard to win in the post jam version, I had a lot of difficulties to reach few platforms ^^
@number6406 thank you for playing and for your feedback!
If you find it hard to reach some platforms, try using jump and sprint at the same time. It will let you jump further.
Nice work! I like how the fire grows as you collect more wood, it's a nice touch.
Хорошая игра. Графика для compo весьма приличного качества,музыка тоже приятная, не напрягает. Единственно, скролинг мира идёт со странными лагами и через пару минут прыжков по горам начинает голова кружиться от этого. Плюс управление не очень отзывчивое. вроде нажимаешь прыгать, а огонёк притормаживает и улетает то в снег то в лёд. Но в целом, весьма неплохо для compo. Поставил 5/5. Так держать!
@blobo thank you for playing and for the kind words!
@sublustris Спасибо!
Скролинг мира - не замечал такого эффекта. Возможно что-то не так с CameraFollow логикой. Спасибо за фидбэк!