prof-suarez 2021-04-26 02:00
This is great. I love the art style. Great Lighting effect. Wonder if the levels are playable in reverse. I was actually expecting that when you gave the option to back, that you could repeat the levels backwards.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Deeper and Deeper
By minibobbo
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 99 | 3.96 | 92 | |
| Fun | 224 | 3.69 | 92 | |
| Innovation | 287 | 3.51 | 91 | |
| Theme | 377 | 3.70 | 92 | |
| Graphics | 44 | 4.27 | 92 | |
| Audio | 77 | 3.92 | 89 | |
| Mood | 35 | 4.17 | 92 |
This is great. I love the art style. Great Lighting effect. Wonder if the levels are playable in reverse. I was actually expecting that when you gave the option to back, that you could repeat the levels backwards.
This is the most beautiful game I have seen so far. the controller is very responsive and the atmosphere is matching nicely. Solid entry <3
really like the pixel art And like the style of the game Great job and animations are great
Wow. Very polished. Really like the atmosphere. With the soundtrack, it has this ominous feeling. I never saw a mechanic like that, based only on throwing an item that changes the camera. Amazing graphics. One small nitpick, you could lerp the camera quickly when the character summons the torch, so it doesnt have a jagged effect. Awesome job!!
What a great looking game! And very fitting background music/sounds.
Wonderfully atmospheric, lots of fun, just wish there was more. The Phaser lighting looked great, nice concept!
I love the attention to detail (lighting engine, transitions, ...). The atmosphere works great.
I really like this, controls are smooth, lighting is pretty and a core mechanic. Well done.
Brilliantly polished - especially loved the lighting effects and the music
Great grpahics. The game is polished really well. The controls felt responsive and the level desing was good. Great job.
A very polished game with a clear aesthetic, neat visuals and audio. I experienced some tearing when moving around, but it was not a real issue. I would love to play a further developed version of this game with more levels and challenges. Well done!
Fantastic! Looks stunning, the audio complements perfectly and the mechanics are unique and pretty tight. Great stuff :grin:
The core of this is absolutely solid and looks and feels as good as a fully released game. Love the atmosphere of the sounds, the lighting effects. The mechanics feel solid and responsive. Here are some things you can improve if you want to keep making it better:
* The keys are different from the instruction text I think? I had to use K for the torch instead of Z. * It would be fun if the torch had a game mechanic, like you have to grab them from the walls. * The ghosts are pretty hard to see, and I definitely died to one hiding behind a waterfall once. Maybe remove their alpha when in radius of the torch. * The chasers need a game mechanic to deal with otherwise they can just trap you and get you. Maybe they run from the torch in their face? * I had a lot of trouble getting torches to go where I wanted them to. Maybe a throw arc that you can control by holding throw and tapping move keys?
Really like all the audio visual polish. The lighting effects and the animation on the fire are top notch. The game feel on the player movement was also great. I love the idea of having a projectile which lets you look ahead at parts of the level. However, I do feel like this mechanic is somewhat sidelined by obstacles like ghosts and traps which don't really interact much with the torch. It was also a bit annoying to have to manually select the retry option every time I died. Overall, an incredibly polished entry which shows a lot of potential. Amazing work!
Very nice! Fun to play and definitely room to expand upon the concept if you so choose. Keep up the great work!
Really nice aesthetic, and the music was haunting and mysterious! I love the mechanic of the camera following your torch wherever you throw it. Sublevel 7 was a little annoying to me due to the random movement of the ghosts, but it's not too much of an issue. Great entry overall!
Thanks for the comments everyone!
@prof-suarez Every level should be playable in reverse. Some would be trivial :smile:
@tomeks :blush:
@pixelportalz That is a great suggestion. I actually have that exact feature partially implemented in the code but it wasn't playing nicely with some of the other features so I shelved it. Maybe in the post-jam version.
@liam I was very torn. 8 hours before the jam ended I had the game 'complete' but only 5 levels. I had to make a call if I wanted to polish everything I could or if I wanted to create content. I decided on the polish instead of the content... I've added some more levels already and cleaned up some of the previous ones, so there will be a post jam version. :smile:
@appelnonsurtaxay I'm particularly happy with the transitions this time around. That kind of stuff is why there are few levels :smile:
@peter-jonsson I saw some tearing also. My normal solution is to extrude all my tiles an extra 1px in each direction which will hide it well, but now I'm using normal maps and the extruded pixels screw with the normals. I'll have to come up with a solution, but didn't have time during the jam :frowning2:
@kraemahz Thanks for the detailed feedback. - Yes, the key label is wrong in the first level. I noticed that today and fixed it for the post jam version. I blame lack of sleep and end jam crunch... - I have the unlit torches that you can light with the flame coded, but not implemented in any levels. - I really like the idea of the light removing the alpha from the ghosts! - My original idea was that the chasers run away from the light. There were going to be other enemies that are attracted to the light, which gives you this risk/reward system for keeping it vs throwing it. The other enemy types got cut, so now the light does nothing to the chasers. - I'll have to think through this and do some experimenting. I want the throws to be simple and intuitive, but later on I have some ideas where throwing will be more important, so this is good feedback.
@superpokeunicorn Thanks! There was actually a lot on my "if I get time" list around objects interacting with the flames. Enemies that are attracted to light, burnable objects, stealth, but they all got cut in the spirit of making what I had as polished as I could. Maybe in the post jam version!
@lectvs Level 7 is the only hard level, but it is hard for frustrating reasons :smile: The ghosts need to be reworked.
Controls feels smooth, sounds is great, levels introduces the mechanics well. I would totally play more of that game.
Wow, this game was really great! Beautiful pixel art & scenery, great mechanics, overall a perfect jam game :D It was also really smart to allow to skip a level for Jam reviewers with low skills ;)
Great Game! The movement and mechanics felt really good. The pixel art and lighting was was also well done!
Wow you did an amazing job on this game!! The graphics, audio, and atmosphere are awesome!!
I really like the idea of using the torch to see ahead, in fact I've seen many platformers so far with the theme "Deeper and deeper" they have the player jumping down and I really don't like the "Leap of faith". So tying the touch to the camera to allow the player to scout it out is perfect.
I noticed you use Phaser for your game (I did too). I will need to dig into your source to see how you did all this :smile:
I had a lot of fun with this. The cute pixel art and lighting create an interesting and surprisingly moody atmosphere. The eerie music fits perfectly and made me feel immersed.
I really like the idea of using light as your primary tool. It was nice being able to get your torch back any time you needed. I imagine you could play around with limiting it to some extent to create more challenge.
I wanted to keep playing. I wish there were more levels! Great work, I really enjoyed it.
Весьма мрачно и атмосферно. Хороший пиксель арт, хорошо проработанная механика. Возможно, можно было бы добавить какие-то еще вещи, чтобы было интереснее!
@xpoho Спасибо за добрые комментарии. Я надеюсь, что Google Translate не скажет ничего грубого!
cool game! I like the way you are using the pixel light! Just a hint: The game controls really awkwardly on a german keyboard because Z and Y are swapped on our keyboards.
@tescoone I learned a couple jams ago that it is always better to just let people skip levels and get to what they want to. If someone is just playing casually and they die once they might retry the level, but if they die twice and have to retry again they are likely to quit. (I'm including myself in this... :blush: )
@cary-stanley Thanks! Let me know if you have any specific questions about my Phaser structure. Having one helps a ton and mine has evolved over time to something I'm happy with. The only problem with reading my source code is the later in the jam it went the less of the structure I applied!
@arancutter Yeah, I had a lot of ideas for the light that I knew I wouldn't get to. Lighting things on fire. Repelling ghosts. Attracting other monsters. Stealth mechanics. Maybe someday.
@sadsmile Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't aware of that. I allowed for both the ZX keys to be used for flame/jump or the LK keys. Either should work. I generally use LK when playing with WASD for movement and ZX when playing with the arrow keys, but there is nothing stopping you from using LK with the arrow keys.
Amazing graphics. Top notch pixel art.
Congrats.
One of the best games so far. Smooth controls, very nice pixelart graphics. In one of the levels with the (non-hunting) ghosts I had to wait at a spot for while because the ghosts blocked the way, I couldn't really do anything. But that's like one grey spot in a big field of beautiful flowers.
The lighting here is awesome, the game looks really good in general. I would love to see more levels, this has potential to really mess around with it some more!
nice game, im used to jump on up arrow, or w when you use those controls, using L to jump was kind of wierd. but thats just a nitpicky thing, the game is pretty good, had a nice mood, the music was fitting for the game. nice job!
I love the art style and animation!
Plays very well and looks nice. I really like the mechanic of throwing the torch to look further. Only downside was that it somehow did not work in Firefox. Stuck on *Loading asset: MA2 atlas.p*. But with Chrome everything worked so no problem :)
Nice game, thank you for that experience.
There was a bug or feature, after death I was able to go to the next level. It was difficult to read tutorial, I missed how to use torch.
I really love the feeling of character control, was very smooth, good input.
Great job. Loved the art and sound, very cohesive feeling.
I kept hitting O on accident since two hands on the keyboard controls are very awkward feeling (my opinion), and that was killing me for some reason.
It prompting you to go to the next level when you die was kind of confusing.
Nice work.
Very cool. Great mechanics around the light management especially with the water. Good job on the camera work too! Kinda weird controls for level selection and that UI is confusing after you die easily leading you to go to the next level.
@jonathan-turner and @blob In the jam games I don't want people to get stuck and stop playing because I designed a level poorly or something, so everyone gets to go on if they want to in the jam! That option will come out if I make a post-compo version.
Thanks for the comments on the controls.
Fantastic! I really enjoyed the overall idea. Makes me really want a side scrolling action adventure game like this. I think it has a lot of potential and I want to see it again in the future.
Great game! Really impressive! Love the character a lot, also interesting mechanic =)
Dang I really love this entry. It could have benefited from a quick restart option I think. Music was spot and gameplay was fantastic. Congrats on a really well designed game!
what an amazingly polished entry, such an awesome job on the graphics / gameplay / level design! I wish there were more levels! awesome level of details, and I love the torch mechanic. The only thing I would advise you to do (other than a full version of the game) is to make the death loop faster -- if the player dies, just bring him fast at the beginning of the level to keep going. Awesome job altogether, I had a blast going through all 8 levels
Pretty cool! Nice mechanics, really nice pixel art, and cool light/water/fire effects. I agree with your blog post that more levels would have been nice - it was getting pretty good. I thought it was cool that the camera followed the torch so I could check things from a distance.
Some minor feedback: - I was stuck on loading at 100% in chrome but tried a different browser and it worked. - I accidentally replayed a couple times by clicking right
You can update the jam version after the deadline for bugfixes (to correct the Z vs K thing in room 2) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules "if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline. You are asked to highlight the changes you make in your submission (a short change log)."
@almost You mean you *subconsciously* replayed a couple times by clicking right. lol. Good feedback on Chrome. Not sure why since that's what I do my development testing on. I've fixed that keyboard error on the screen for the post compo :smile:
@ghost-in-the-toast and @karlipoppins Two requests in a row for a fast restart? Guess I better do it... Thanks for the feedback!
Very polished and neat concept! I loved the atmosphere and mood, the sound effects of the pattering feet, that lo-fi chill and kind of spooky ambient song really sold the entire thing.
Control wise, absolutely spot on. Super responsive and buttery smooth. The torch mechanic is great and the way you handled the shading with the pixel art is nice and reserved. I've seen some lighting systems matched with pixel art and the results are strikingly off/typically just way way way too much bloom making it a visual strain but you really matched the lighting system to the art style!
Level design wise I would have preferred it if the ghosts had a more understandable and defined movement type (the ones that don't chase you). A lot of the time avoiding them just meant waiting slowly for them to move over. I think perhaps a neat thing (and I might be preaching to the choir/you've probably already thought about it) but if the ghosts followed you when you had a torch that could be a good risk reward thing for seeing more but then being a target.
Springboarding off that, unsure if you had the idea but the concept of picking up torches from the background to then use, and throw, and not having one permanently on you/being able to teleport the torch back to you is a possible design change. Not better of course, just a different take.
Overall though one of the most polished games I've played in this jam and one of the most atmospheric! Great job.
The throwing mechanic is nice - but I would change the behaviour of the ghosts. Overall a very nice game, also skipping levels is a nice thing to add to a jam game.
I saw some of you devlog screenshots, turned out nicely ^^
Fantastic game! Nice, tight scope. Clean graphics. Great mood and audio.
I had trouble interpreting the key controls, but I found out pretty quickly that Z and X were the ones I needed. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a little bit of camera smoothing when the torch returns to your hand. The instant snapping felt a bit jarring.
Throwing the torch was really fun, and the movement controls felt nice. I feel like I play too many LD games where the controls are way too sensitive or jumps are hard to pull off. This game felt like a lot of care was put into the movement speed relative to the level size.
Great work!
Really liked how you used the flame and its light as a total representation of vision with how the camera pans to see what it shows. That makes total sense and makes for great natural mapping of how to use it. Well done :)
Excellent atmosphere, Would love to be able to respawn faster, because in level with waterfalls I died to white ghosts milion times.
Whoa! I loved this game. My favorite game of the jam.
Gameplay feels very good! I also really like the simple art style and audio.
A really well polished, atmospheric game! Nice job!
I liked it! Lovely sfx and very nice music. The controls were a bit unfamiliar and I'd prefer a faster respawn, but overall - very nice!
This game looks amazing, great job on the art/lighting - really sets it apart from others. The gameplay is super polished. Moving about the levels feels good and the scene transitions really elevate the experience - I probably would have preferred a slightly quicker respawn time though. I liked how each level introduced a new problem to solve too. My main critique would be with the torchi throwing mechanic. Although it was fun to use, I found that I could get through most of the game without using it - maybe more spike traps? ;) Awesome submission
I laughed at the "I said MOST ignore the living" on level 6. Then again when I touched the water. And then the ghost circled back and got me right at the door! I thought that was pretty clever. I'm impressed with the amount of traps and obstacles you were able to put into a compo game! I just wish there was a level that combined all of the obstacles in one for a really great challenge.
Great work, nice graphics, music, and level of polish!
The pixel art and atmosphere was amazing, great job! All the base elements are there (torch, water, ghost, arrows, etc.) and very well made, I only wish there were more levels.
I wasn't a fan of the level design on 7. Sometimes ghosts would spawn in a way that was near impossible to complete the level, and took me awhile to beat. I also didn't really like the key navigation at the end of the levels, I kept pressing the wrong keys when I wanted to restart, or go to next level. Perhaps it would be better not to tie it to movements keys.
The game doesn't load for me in a Chrome incognito window(`Uncaught DOMException: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document.`), FF private window works fine.
@2bitcrook @leorid @jusw85 Thanks for all the comments! I completely agree with you on the ghosts. I made them quickly had them move randomly and it was a dumb decision. I blame lack of time :smile: Now ghosts slowly chase the flame (except the angry ones that *quickly* chase the flame), so you can throw it to position them or put it out to have them just float in place like a moron. It plays much better.
@andrewkennedy @corbeng I've reworked the camera and fixed some of the problems. It transitions nicely back to the player when you cancel the flame and if you throw it really far it doesn't split the difference and have both the flame *and* the player off the screen. It should be nicer when I release the post-compo version.
@jusw85 @haztro @exewin I've changed the respawn mechanic so you automatically restart the level without the transition screen. I'm still torn on the best way to choose to go to the menu, next level or restart. I don't want you to have to take your hands off the keys to go to the mouse between levels, so I'll have to think of something.
@jusw85 I use the localstorage to store the times that you completed each level in (from back when the game was a speedrun) so the silly thing is that I don't even use the data that I capture anymore. Thanks for reporting the problem in Chrome incognito mode. I'll have to come up with a workaround.
Cool that you made a LDTK loader for Phaser :grinning:
@cary-stanley Feel free to grab it if you are interested. I didn't do a great job of making it generic and the typedefs aren't complete because I generated them from my map, so any of the features I didn't use aren't in there. Hopefully it is self explanatory, but let me know if you have any questions :smile:
Fantastic art, love how camera movements handled and sound design!
Awessome and atmospheric game. Like it!
Nice game, i really loved the art and the atmosphere. Levels becames hard really fast. I liked the torch mecanic and it blowed my mind when I saw that water extinguish it (didn't saw it on the page). That'a amazing that you created everything by yourself. It almost seems a finished game! Great job :-)
Very well done! The game feels very smooth and polished. It looks beautiful, not only because of the dynamic lighting, but also because I just really like the pixel art. I thought it was very interesting that you could move the camera by throwing your torch. This is a nice way to deal with the 'jump of faith' problem in vertical platformers. It was a shame you did not do more with this mechanic. One idea would be to distract ghosts by throwing your light maybe? The main point of feedback I have is that respawning after you die takes quite a lot of time. First the menu has to appear, and then you have to press replay. It would have felt better if the respawns were instant, so that you could try again immediately (in my opinion at least). I did really like that you could skip levels if you wanted to! For a gamejam this is a very nice feature :D However, I did accidentally skip some levels without beating the previous one accidentally. (I had to go back to them via the main menu.)
I thought it was a great little game! It took only a few minutes to beat it, but it was a lot of fun to play. Thanks for making it ^_^
Mood was great! I really felt like I was in a dungeon. You had some interesting mechanics and the game looked and felt very polished. Well done.
Good job with the game! pixel art and sound effects are great, I just missed a lit bit of content, but a great game for 48h =)
I love the art style and the fire particles, they're so polished for a compo game! The "oh yeah water kills you also" moment was great.
I somehow got stuck here on the first level - the camera lagged behind me, and so when I proceeded any further to the right, I walked offscreen:
Untitled.png
I restarted by refreshing the page and it didn't happen again. (edit: I realize after finishing that I accidentally threw my torch here without realizing. I was trying to to use X to jump on a keyboard, because it wasn't obvious that "X to jump" was meant for gamepads)
Honestly, the only concrete polish that I can think of to improve this game would be to animate pulling the fire back to you rather than snapping the camera instantly. And for content, I would've liked to see a level 9 that synthesizes the mechanics I've learned. Some of the levels, especially 5 and 8, felt a little underwhelming in that regard.
I really enjoyed playing through. Bravo! I'll be following you to see what you come up with next :)
Also yay Phaser! I see your IH abstraction, I've got a similar one I call [CommandManager]( https://github.com/sartak/jet-janitor/blob/master/src/scaffolding/CommandManager.js) :D
really really well done and polished game here. i want more levels please. i was just starting to get into the game and then "poof" it was over. i really enjoyed using the light to let you see ahead, that was pretty brilliant. the controls were spot on and tight. well done. thanks for making this game.
Thanks all! I'm sorry I'm falling behind on playing and rating everyone's games. I will try to get to everyone before the rating period is over!
@viperux @usenrame @coatline @felo07 Thanks for the kind words.
@wuppos You are not the first person to mention the restart time, or the auto snap back retrieving the torch as being jarring :smile: I've actually fixed both of those things in my development area, made some new levels and mechanics, and hope to have a post jam version by the end of the rating period.
@shawn-moore I meant to disable the creation and throwing of the torch to prevent this very occurrence of someone throwing the flame before learning what it did. But I didn't, and you had to refresh :sweat_smile: Glad you figured it out. The "Press X to Jump" actually isn't made for gamepads. It is me just writing the wrong button in the text. I blame lack of sleep and the last minute rush.
I agree with the levels needing one to pull it all together. Level 8 was finished within 15 minutes of the start of submission hour, so there just wasn't time. I've got more for the post compo that should be out around when the rating period is over.
I'll have to check out your Command Manager. IH (short for input helper) is actually a port of the same engine that I wrote for HaxeFlixel a number of years ago. I never finished it though and it is a little rough. Maybe I'll use yours next time :smile: Mine still needs controller support as well as a key remapping screen. One of these days I'll get to it. Maybe LD 49...
@paulhocker Glad you liked the camera movement with the light. It is very simple. Just make the camera look at the midpoint between the player and the flame. It has some problems though because if the player moves too far away then you can't see either the player or the light! (Fixed in post compo)
Fellow Phaser dude!! this is _fantastic!_ I love the lighting effects, the graphics are great and the mechanic is really nice... I feel like you could do a lot with this if you wanted to continue with it. I had a quick scan through your code too - I'm pretty sure I'm going to come back to it in future to take inspiration. I've yet to use an FSM but I think I've probably reached the point where I need to. I don't use TypeScript though, so it's a bit harder to get my head around.
You and @shawn-moore mentioned handling input and I wondered if you'd come across a plugin I wrote to normalise the handling of gamepads/keyboard/pointer? It's really handy for allowing the user to remap keys and handles a bunch of fringe cases for gamepad support. It makes multiplayer _really_ easy to set up too. It's not perfect - I end up updating it a little after every jam - but saves me a lot of time: https://github.com/GaryStanton/phaser3-merged-input
Anyway... really impressed with this, especially as a compo entry.
Nice art and movement :smile:
I really enjoyed this, the pixel art, music and torch lighting effects give it a great dungeon game atmosphere. Congrats on getting this much done within 48hrs. Great work!
Really cool game, love the different mechanics. Wish there were more puzzles that let you play and run around. Having a quick restart level button would be cool too. This game feels like it should have fall damage, but I am very glad that it didn't lol great work though!
:wave: Hi there! This game has been featured on the GitHub Blog: [Ludum Dare 48 staff picks](https://github.blog/2021-05-19-ludum-dare-48-staff-picks/#deeper-and-deeper) :slight_smile:
[Ludum-Dare-48_GH-staff-picks_Banner.gif](https://github.blog/2021-05-19-ludum-dare-48-staff-picks/#deeper-and-deeper)