john-harper 2021-04-26 13:09
I liked the mood of it. The spooky wind / ambient sound was a nice touch. The narrator/speech voice sound as also a little creepy which was good. The grapple mechanic felt good. Good work!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Tension
By justinmullin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 324 | 3.61 | 33 | |
| Fun | 235 | 3.67 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 256 | 3.58 | 33 | |
| Theme | 123 | 4.08 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 665 | 3.04 | 33 | |
| Audio | 378 | 3.27 | 33 | |
| Humor | 510 | 2.27 | 26 | |
| Mood | 47 | 4.12 | 33 |
I liked the mood of it. The spooky wind / ambient sound was a nice touch. The narrator/speech voice sound as also a little creepy which was good. The grapple mechanic felt good. Good work!
I always appreciate games with physics as a core mechanic, well done! I like the atmosphere a lot - color palette, sounds, music.
Moody and atmospheric. I felt that the controls were a little bit unresponsive and gummy, but the core game was interesting and puzzle-like.
The controls felt a tad confusing and slow to execute, I would prefer for the grappling hook to always extend to max length, or a least be quicker to extend. But maybe that's me. Nice mood and audio.
The grappling hook mechanic took about a minute to get used to, then I was flying around the level, too fast a lot of the time. The mood was great, it got the spooky cave feeling down well. Thanks for the game!
A very moody walk down a cave. Sound design was good, rope physics was nice and playable. I like what you did regarding health, adds a lot of challenges, forces you to be gentle and think about your route. The only lacking part is art, maybe add a background image and some props to dress up the cave. Also, the first tutorial UI appeared under the HP hearts. The ending had a nice twist ! This was fun !
It's interesting. rope physics are hard to do well, but you've done them well enough to depend on them as a core mechanic which is cool. I like the speed of the game: if it were slower it would have more of a puzzle feel and if it were faster it would have more of a drunk-Spiderman feel. This is a nice balance for a game about repelling into a cave. The only critique I have are the flashing lights when the narrator speaks are very distracting, which may be by design.
This was a really cool game. The impact damage seemed a little unpredictable and toward the end some of the checkpoints were frustratingly far apart but overall I really loved it. I especially liked the atmosphere created by the background music and the sound design of the "narrator." Great work.
First off, the mood is awesome. Really atmospheric sounds plus the ominous undertones of the narrator. The grapling hook mechanic was a little confusing at first, but once I got it it seemed to be pretty engaging and fun. I think the wind-up is too long though. You could easily add in a grapple-swing-release-grapple mechanic that would be very fun, but it's not possible with the current wind-up time.
Overall, really well done ! Keep up the good work :)
This game has a lot of potential. The atmosphere is amazing. Although the ending screen was too colorful and didn't match with the atmosphere of the rest of the game.
I enjoyed playing the game. Nice idea. Nice atmosphere.
Woah, the grappling is really fun! I had a lot of fun just swinging around - the way the rope wraps around corners and edges is really cool to play with. The SFX for the narrator is also great, perfectly ominous. If I had one suggestion, it'd be to ease the penalty for death a bit. Really well done though, I enjoyed it a lot!
Very interesting grapple mechanic! I did get frustrated with some of the later sections, but I didn't expect to see such a cinematic and practically hypnotic ending sequence. Well done!
Very pleasant nice grapling hook mechanic. Nice ambient sound that with the color pallete sets up the atmosphere.
I've always wanted to try to implement a grappling hook myself but I just dread the physics lol. Anyway, great work here! There were some times where I couldn't quite see what would come next, and the hook doesn't reel in quickly enough to do like a spiderman move lol. I did get a lucky bug where I fell to my death on the health recharges, which happen to also be savepoints. So I died but came right back on the spot where I died :-)
Daaaaaaamn. I actually had a chill run down my spine when I hit the ending. I was all wound up in the atmosphere of the place, the careful climbing punctuated with unavoidable moments of risky momentum, and the slightly disturbing mysterious narrator.
First few moments with the game I experimented with the grapple, and I thought I was going to be learning to swing around on it. I've always had grapple game on my bucket list, and when I imagine it the player is grapple-swinging to karate kick guys in the face and it's all about releasing the grapple to chain into the next grapple midair.
I tried some nonsense remotely in that direction AND was smacked hard with a large chunk of life loss... and I was like YUP this is a Mullin game, I'm going to be expected to be thoughtful and have a light touch.
And man, it really works. I started thinking far ahead, and rejecting risky plans in search of the safest way forward. I enjoyed the methodical climb and got very alert for the wild swings I had to take from time to time.
I have captured a handful of moments that created a cool thought process...
I stood here for a while, wondering, do I grapple the ceiling? Nah, I'll grapple the floor and carefully lower myself down: https://imgur.com/SVnHpcR
Here I'm being super careful, surrounded by lava and not knowing what lies ahead, how can I choose a spot that will keep my options open?? https://imgur.com/h9Fheii
This is a part of the game that even you probably didn't get to, when I bounced off lava into the mushrooms, where death seemed to have dimmed my light but mushrooms prevented me from dying: https://imgur.com/iHUbfGx
That screen shot probably looks stupid, but this was pretty intense. The voice had just said "the risk is imaginary" so I thought maybe I was *supposed* to have this post-death experience? Anyway, that climb down I could only see dimly for like a 1-inch radius around my character, and it jacked the mood (and yea, difficulty) up to a crazy degree. Vision went back to normal on respawn but wow. Try playing with a tiny ring of light some time, it's wild!
And last example: I thought it was pretty cool that you gave me this invitation to show off what I'd learned: https://imgur.com/sxhFLtR
If I could change one thing about the game it would be to enable fullscreen. It's so immersive, but I had the task bar and window title kind of intruding on my immersion. No big.
Really well done, great physics that forced a style of play that was in strong harmony with the mood. Everything came together to make such a nice experience.
I definitely disagree with comments that say you should speed things up and be able to swing around willy nilly. This game is actually a very nice change of pace from the other grappling hook games I've seen so far.
At first I was surprised and frustrated that there was a lot of impact damage. But after playing more, I understood this game had a different vision in mind. The game is more about careful exploration with a dash of fear, rather than empowerment and letting the character fly through the levels unharmed. This really heightened the experience for me and made it interesting trying to navigate the dangerous levels, especially once the lava kicked in and added a whole nother dimension to be afraid of.
I really liked how long the grapple was, something straight out of Made in Abyss. It was fun just rappelling down long areas and seeing what was to come. Overall, an interesting angle on the theme and very tense. Not sure why people were saying relaxing atmosphere when you could die around basically every corner lol.
@pkenney @peachtreeoath Thank you for the kind words and thorough feedback. =) I'm glad my intention showed through of trying to get away from the more frantic Spiderman style grappling hook mechanics. I love those games too, but I wanted to experiment with a more cautious and precise approach here, so I'm glad that came across as deliberate!
tension.PNG
Nice bug when you finish the game and want to respawn from the menu ^^ You have the ending screen but can continue to play :laughing:
Without that, I found the game too much longer. You could've shorten it a bit. For a compo, you made a great job. Well done!
This is a great game ! The garappling mechanic is perfect, same as the level design ! It was hard sometimes but never too much. I had a good time, and you did the game in 48 hours, i'm impressed ! Good job !
Wonderful work. I was a bit skeptical when I saw it for the first time, but the gameplay and level design are top notch. Nailed the theme.
Daaaaang, that was awesome! Really great mood, especially the ending! A few minor quibbles about the physics, but I liked the mechanic overall and how it was implemented and used. The sound, text, and overall sense of environment had me consistently compelled to keep playing until I beat it.
Cool little game. Took a few to get used to the controls but overall great entry
Really nice game. I liked the fact that it doesn't try to be fast paced and that using the hook requires some careful movements so you don't smack your head into some rocks or break your legs landing on them :smile:. The atmosphere in general feels great. But I'm too clumsy for these kind of games it seems. Got stuck on the second floor with lava and simply couldn't get past it. No matter, I like what you've done and hope to see more from you in the future. Cheers for Godot as well :slight_smile:. Keep up the good work!
Youre welcome, i`d like this type of games, if u add time and leaderboard, it make a good speedrun game! Безымянный.png
Very atmospheric game. I liked it although it was difficult. By the way, please rate my game if you want
Loved the rope mechanic it was very fun. I wish the art and sound were better. It was an interesting little overlay story. With the sound effect, I was imagining a robot that had been taken over by another robot that was making you play a game in your head while slowely hacking into your systems and destroying you.
The sound effects and the edgy looking text really contributed to the cool, unsettling feel of this game. The character looked a lil wonky, but the mechanic was cool and clever. I do think the game's a little too heavy on fall damage, it seemed like very small drops were just murdering me.