FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss

By oeschmid

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2083.7560
Fun1633.7960
Innovation2303.6260
Theme6293.2759
Graphics4733.4060
Audio4673.0957
Humor5302.2249
Mood4393.2657

Comments

hotpaw 2021-04-25 20:48

cool. old school, loved the hook mechanic, some levels where pretty hard but fun

liammasters 2021-04-25 21:08

Surprisingly addictive for such a simple game. The color palette has a nice aesthetic.

firebelley 2021-04-25 23:42

Really nice puzzler with great mechanics. Nice work!

hestrateja 2021-04-25 23:55

@oeschmid in level4 I pushed the rock into the wall and could cross it after, is this a bug or a feature? into-the-abyss.PNG

pfeyffer 2021-04-25 23:55

Nice puzzle mechanics. Simple but addictive.

cavedens 2021-04-25 23:56

Nice job. To much for my dim brain ;) but well built

hestrateja 2021-04-26 00:23

@oeschmid level 9 is genius, amazing mechanics. Got me thinking for like 10 minutes

parsafari 2021-04-26 00:34

Very nice art style! I loved it. The level design was also very good!

oeschmid 2021-04-26 00:46

@hestrateja heyo, good catch. That's a bug that I was going to turn into a feature, but never got around to developing a level around it. I thought I got rid of all instances that that could happen.

smoothi3 2021-04-26 00:51

Great game! Mechanics were easy to understand and the puzzles were challenging!

hestrateja 2021-04-26 01:05

@oeschmid just say it was a feature and that you are a design god I would believe you :laughing:

pixelportalz 2021-04-26 01:28

great mechanic. at the beginning picking up the anchor each time after use seemed a chore, but then it all made sense

prof-suarez 2021-04-26 01:45

This game is solid. I'm stuck hereScreenshot 2021-04-25 at 9.44.30 PM.png

ariorick 2021-04-26 01:53

Awesome integration with itch theme! But it got me confused at the start though haha

stuartc 2021-04-26 01:58

Love the old school vide, and how tiny the game is. Don't see that a lot. Really clean core mechanic, and very well implemented

smt 2021-04-26 02:03

really like the art style here and how clean this all is, super fun

noel-widmer 2021-04-26 02:08

Really well done! It took me a while to understand what each icon does. But I guess it is not that easy to create self-explanatory sprites with such a small canvas :) I sometimes found it really hard to tell what happend because I couln't understand which pixels belonged to wich object. That is my only critique.

eboatwright 2021-04-26 02:08

Interesting game! The character reminds me of the astronaut from Among Us. I've never heard of Puzzlescript. Is it like Bitsy?

spydercrawler 2021-04-26 02:14

This was pretty cool. The puzzles were well thought out, but really hard. I got stuck on level 7. Truly, awesome work!

oeschmid 2021-04-26 02:15

@noel-widmer very valid critique - puzzlescript limits you to 5x5 pixels, and my artistic decision to further limit myself to a 8 color palette didn't help. In the future I'll probably spend more time thinking about clarity of game objects.

oeschmid 2021-04-26 02:18

@eboatwright it is kind of like bitsy! In the same way bitsy is designed mostly for small topdown narrative games, puzzlescript is designed for sokoban-style puzzle games. I highly recommend it!

theseusinabottle 2021-04-26 02:18

Very sleek art style. I found myself stuck inside a wall (one of the switch activated ones) after my ancor passed over a switch turning it off then back on while pulling me along. Outside of that glitch it was fun. Your audio was really good as well.

eboatwright 2021-04-26 02:26

@oeschmid Huh. Interesting!

rewdas 2021-04-26 02:39

Couldn't stop til I'd beat it. Excellent use of the theme, interesting puzzle mechanics, and just the right difficulty after a brain-melting 48 hours.

pixelhurricane 2021-04-26 02:43

I love how complex the puzzles are for such a simple ruleset! I felt like the levels taught me how to use the mechanics in very interesting to figure out ways! beautiful game, great puzzles 9/10

nisovin 2021-04-26 02:53

There are some nice puzzle mechanics here, and some well-designed puzzles as well!

xenon27 2021-04-26 03:09

The anchor is a really cool mechanic, like a grappling hook you can leave behind and pick back up. Lots of great puzzles, and the tiny pixel art aesthetic is neat. Great game!

sesemcc 2021-04-26 03:18

i love puzzle games like this! super clever and fun! great job :)

tomeks 2021-04-26 03:18

This is a nice mechanic and solid complete implementation with a coherent style throughout.

zephi-sero 2021-04-26 03:34

Fun game, got stuck at level 7 but I'm not very good at puzzle games anyways lol.

greg-the-egg 2021-04-26 03:44

Very nice!

The art style is very pretty, but I will say that sometimes I had a hard time figuring out what was going on in a level because it's so small

It must be tough coming up with interesting puzzle designs in such a short period of time. Well done!

lb01 2021-04-26 03:50

It's not an easy feat to make a fully featured puzzle game with challenging and interesting puzzles in 2 days. I really enjoyed playing this. There were a couple of tiles that I had trouble distinguishing between because they were visually fairly similar, but other than that this is a really solid game.

brielley 2021-04-26 05:45

Nice game! I really enjoyed the puzzles (though stucked many times

lakshyaisagod 2021-04-26 06:47

TODO: review game

rouge-dragon 2021-04-26 08:25

Good puzzle mechanics! Very good game!

drom1x 2021-04-26 09:36

Cool cool game. Minimal but functional graphics, nice sounds

sir-syko 2021-04-26 11:11

Wow pretty neat game and very complete! :smile: I got stuck a couple of times because some interactions were not obvious to me (level 9 specially lol). The sounds and art were great! Although I think the obstacles are a bit hard to tell what they are. Cheers and great job! :smile:

onnofal 2021-04-26 18:04

Your anchor is close to my harpoon, but way much better in the meaning of implementing it into puzzle mechanics. Actually you have real puzzles! (that I do not :)

secret-magic-404 2021-04-26 18:37

Wow, perfectly balanced for my taste! This is a puzzle game just the way I like it... not too short and not too long. The mechanic is simple, yet can go surprisingly deep... very fitting for the theme! Some puzzle games can be completed without much effort, but this isn't the case for this one. As you progress through the levels, the game forces you to really understand its mechanics. It can seem a bit daunting at first, but the difficulty level is perfect in my opinion. It makes it so much more satisfying when you make it to the end. I would love to see you make a 3D version of this game, I would be your first player! Well done! :smiley:

mdotedot 2021-04-26 20:21

Love them puzzlers. Good one. Well executed.

pseudohausen 2021-04-26 21:19

That was a really solid and simple puzzle game! You should be really proud of that. Everything was cohesive and well put together.

bridgeonastick 2021-04-26 21:41

Very cool puzzle game! It's simple, yet very effective in what it does. Really well put together puzzles that have their own 'aha!' moment, taking the hook mechanic to an unexpected level. Well done!

thatmanrobin 2021-04-26 22:53

Was pretty cool, good puzzles, got stuck on level 6. Tried for a while but simply couldn't figure it out.

pookipoot 2021-04-26 22:57

It's really cool seeing all the different approaches people take when creating a game. This game reminded me of a polished arcade game you would find inside another game like Stardew Valley or Shenmue or something. A simple idea, with simple mechanics but executed well. Great job on this! I gotta check out PuzzleScript now.

oeschmid 2021-04-26 23:15

@secret-magic-404 Your comment really made me happy, thank you! Seeing the feedback in the comments gave me some ideas on how to refine and add to the game, so maybe there will be a more fleshed out Into the Abyss 2! :)

oeschmid 2021-04-26 23:17

Also, to anyone who left or leaves a comment that I don't respond to, thanks so much for the feedback! I've read every comment, and it's all been both so very encouraging and so very helpful! Thank you again :)

rein 2021-04-27 00:35

Love the feel of it. A couple levels took me some real hard thinking but eventually I got through the whole thing. Fantastic execution.

abigailcorfman 2021-04-27 04:37

I enjoyed the cleverness of this. The anchor mechanic, and the requirement that you have it with you, was neat.

The first boulder puzzle was my favorite. Figuring out I could block the walls with the boulder was a lightbulb moment.

wisedawn 2021-04-27 04:42

Incredibly cool, challenging and interesting project; great job!

felixmreeve 2021-04-27 10:36

Nice job! Was nice going through 10 levels, level 9 is very clever. Would be cool if the mechanics were explored a bit more in spaces where you have some breathing room, the pace is quite fast and so I didn't quite have a full grasp of the mechanics by level 9. Still, enjoyed it very much and would love to see the mechanics explored some more.

lamamour 2021-04-27 10:44

Cute and neat, really good and difficult puzzle game! The mecanics makes me think of Baba is you

oeschmid 2021-04-27 12:36

@felixmreeve Good point on the pacing. Given more time, and if it wasn't Compo, I would have maybe gotten some playtesters in to test my puzzles. These puzzles were constantly in the back of my mind for about for 48 hrs, so I didn't realize how hard they may be! It seems like Level 9 in particular is kind of a spike in difficulty for a lot of people, which surprised me. Thanks for the feedback! Very insightful.

oeschmid 2021-04-27 12:37

@lamamour That's a very generous comparison! Thank you :)

joelchrono12 2021-04-27 13:29

Alright, this is simply amazing, its literally a single file of source code? Kinda cool. And I really enjoyed the puzzle, it can be a little bit broken sometimes, but if you play by the rules, the enjoyments is pretty nice. A few bugs here and there, but nothing serious, and the difficulty curve is excellent.

nyxkn 2021-04-27 20:42

I actually couldn't get past the first boulder level :( The flavor text was really cool, and the sounds really fitting!

minotalen 2021-04-28 01:48

Hey, I did all the levels except for #6 which completely eludes me oO The mechanic itself was sweet, especially enjoyed minimalist levels like #9, where you just explore isolated quirks of the mechanics. In terms of level design, level 6 and 7 were a bit too claustrophobic in my opinion. It feels to me like you created a space that still has some nooks and crannies left to be explored, would love to play a post-jam version of this. Your graphics are cute (player char quite sus though) and you did well with the 5x5 limitation. One resource that personally helped me a lot with PS is the thinky-puzzle-games discord, they possess lots of 'unwritten knowledge' about the language and are generally quite helpful folks!

Thanks a bunch for the sweet comment you left under our game, it took 2 years and many projects for someone to finally call something I made art and I suppose the feels were worth it :')

yulotomorrow 2021-04-28 02:16

Good puzzle and level design with an impressive art style! :D

oeschmid 2021-04-28 12:05

@minotalen Thanks for your feedback! You're probably right about the claustrophobia. I actually remember, for Level 6 especially, I was really trying to cut down the size of the level and number of walkable tiles to the bare minimum - a little breathing room might have been nice. I've also joined the discord, thanks so much!

And you should be proud of your project! I really meant what I said :)

mrawde 2021-05-01 00:14

Fun little puzzle game!

Never seen puzzlescript -- looks cool!

felo07 2021-05-10 21:02

Nice puzzle game! Great graphics and sound effect, maybe to add a music! Congrats=)

xiyou 2021-05-13 12:51

Super fun, super hard game. Took a long time to finally get through im3.png