pvp 2021-10-04 00:50
Challenging (too much? :p) but well made platforming. nice job :).
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → The Vortex
By liam
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 412 | 3.15 | 21 | |
| Fun | 377 | 3.07 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 531 | 2.34 | 21 | |
| Theme | 524 | 2.44 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 411 | 3.05 | 21 | |
| Audio | 174 | 3.44 | 21 | |
| Humor | 160 | 3.13 | 20 | |
| Mood | 290 | 3.18 | 21 |
Challenging (too much? :p) but well made platforming. nice job :).
I beat the game. I like the design of the ghosts. Pretty creepy. I think implementing coyote time would help the game a lot. I had no problems with any of the levels until the last one because I kept slipping off the platforms with the high acceleration. I also think the ghost's hitboxes are a little too big. There were several times when I would visibly jump over a ghost only to die by an invisible hitbox. Still, its not bad! I like the theming of closing up an unstable portal with ghosts flying out.
First probably a heads up for others if you also run into this problem. If your character moves incredibly fast, it's because you're playing on a higher hertz monitor. It ran incredibly fast for me on 144hZ but normal on 60hZ.
The thing I like the most about this game is totally the sound effects, they definitely made me chuckle a couple times. Platforming felt fairly smooth, apart from maybe missing Coyote Timer when jumping of platforms. Great job on making this game!
this was a really good platformer, loved the whole feel of the movement. My only gripes were that I don't like using just the arrow keys (I end up using arrows to move left and right and W to jump). A dedicated jump button would be good. Also the hit boxes on the spikes and ghosts were a bit too big, even barely clipping them kills you; reducing the sizes would make it feel a bit fairer.
Nice voice acting :D
It is very hard, mainly I think because the acceleration is so fast and its easy to overshoot what your aiming for. Apart from the speed, I think the platforming is actually quite good.
Last level was too hard for me! 5/5 voice acting tho! :D
Fun and pretty hard platformer! The voice acting cracked me up :smile: I wish the difficulty curve was a bit smoother
I enjoyed playing the game. It was quite challenging but well voice acted and with a good level progression. :thumbsup:
One thing with platformers like these - I would probably try and build in a little more tolerance for the controls and make it 'biased' towards the player. By bias I mean keep the hit boxes slightly smaller than the visuals - I don't mean make it easier! You can make the visuals bigger to compensate 👿! It just gives a nicer feel to the player.
By control tolerance I mean things like allowing the "jump" to happen shortly _after_ you've left the ground. Sometimes a player's fat fingers can't press the A and W keys at identical moments and so giving a little tolerance again makes the game controls feel tighter.
Congrats on your entry :thumbsup:
I figured out you could climb walls by just holding the move buttons a while into the game and it made it much easier. Loved the dramatic sound effects :) Was fun, well done!
First of all I would just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who played my janky little platformer, really was a struggle this Compo and once again the community around LD makes submitting the game worthwhile even if I was v unhappy with it at the end!
@pvp Maybe too challenging for sure. I redid the tileset in the final hours and had issues rebuilding all my tilemaps, remade them too quickly and made jumps too tricky.
@joerenglish Glad you like the ghost design but... yup I see when debugging I knackered up the hitbox when adjusting things. It's flipping huge and offset. Good to learn what a Coyote Timer is, this is the first platformer I've made so I read a few tutorials and "how to create good feeling platormer" articles beforehand. I tried to implement some of that kind of thing pretty naively but thanks for the pointer to learn more.
@goldenevolution Aha, this uses the Matter JS physics library and I've found this open issue: [https://github.com/liabru/matter-js/issues/971](https://github.com/liabru/matter-js/issues/971) about 144hZ so thanks for the heads up and I'll make sure to consider in the future. Glad you enjoyed the SFX, probably my fave bit of the game and the part I spent least time on when compared to everything else!
@amkingtrp One of my aims whenever I do these game jams is to have re-mappable keys, I never get round to doing it. I think I just need to make a little lib pre-jam, it would make things so much better for everyone. Yeah, I really should have paid more attention to the hit boxes, 100% agree.
@magnusfurcifer Glad you liked the acting, wish I had time to do more ghost speech for the final level, would have been fun and the voice SFX was my fave part.
@jsloth Apologies, I struggled with getting a sense of how hard it was and I re-did the level in a rush, definitely needed finessing/playtesting! 5/5 is high praise and gratefully received :laughing:
Lots of comments already, if I want to say something _completely_ new, that leaves me with ... Well you _do_ have a nice color scheme, I think.
While I largely agree with the above (voiced SFX is nice, controls/'feel' could stand to be improved, etc.), I actually do have more to say as well.
First, I want to add a small detail to the control-discussion: I'm not sure if it's the key-rollover on the cheap keyboard I use, or the game (or maybe I just miss the coyote time described above) but the avi wouldn't always jump and I think it mostly happened when I was already pressing a direction.
Then, yes, the level design is nice but ... Playing these jam games I'm always interested in what they add to the table design/'innovation' ways. I'm not seeing a lot of that here. Probably you knew that though. (I also wonder why you introduce the 'seal the vortex' mechanic so 'late' in the game?)
Lastly, though, let's not end on a low note: About the difficulty level ... if _I_ can finish a game on a Monday after doing the compo (although TBF, I almost gave up on level 4), then I think you might be able to say that it's not _too_ difficult :slight_smile:
Loved the creepy whispers of the ghosts.
The pacing of introducing new mechanics is great but, the difficulty spikes on level 4 and 6 are big! And I'm not just saying that because I kept jumping into spikes to dodge the ghosts.
Personally I enjoy difficult platformers such as this one. I agree with the above comments about needing coyote time, the last level is very hard without it.
Thank you all for giving this game a go and leaving great comments. It's not the best so I appreciate any criticism but the positives are gratefully received.
@caudatecoder Glad you enjoyed my daft voice :laughing: If I'd had a bit more time I would have added more levels to smooth it out but I was determined to have my "final" level in there to make the game feel a bit more complete
@kazatan I'm going to spend some time learning about Coyote timing and practicing platformer controls, I enjoyed making this one and would like to make more in the future. Definitely need to pay more attention to the hit boxes.
@appoxgames It's a feature not a bug :wink:
@remco thanks for a well thought out comment, glad you like the palette, really wanted to add a lot more to the graphics but had to triage hard at the end ofc. I totally agree that it hasn't added much in terms of originality, my main goal this jam was to build a platformer tbh, I did want to do more with the ghosts and vortexes (lean into them being unstable, explosions with debris and destroying ghosts etc). With hindsight I would liked to have had a few more levels like the final one, with a difficulty curve ofc, that formed the bulk of the game and those early levels were just to introduce the controls. Thanks again.
@rogual haha, I should have made more!
@jammygunns Yup, the difficulty jump there is just too much. I knew it and wish I could have added a couple of more levels to smooth it out, thanks for playing!
I like how the wall jump is flexible enough to make me feel powerful, but doesn't ruin the challenge. You struck a good balance with the way you set up the levels. I wish you had introduced the vortex concept earlier, I think it's the most interesting part!
@tetrapteryx thank you, the wall jump isn't perfect but I was happy that it gave the game some fun. Yup, definitely should have focused on the vortex earlier :100:
those sounds are so funny
like the sounds, novel mechanism of jump, wonderful games!
Woot! Fun game! Reminded me of the "N" ninja video game. Gosh, I wish the hitboxes made more sense (I died from spikes and ghosts that seemed far away), and I wish that every time I hit the jump key it would actually jump. Something about the ledges isn't implemented correctly. The last level took me 10x the time the other levels took. Real big challenge curve bump there. But overall the game was great, I had a lot of fun mastering the parkour technique. The sound effects were hilarious. Thank you for the game.
I really like the game, the ghost theme is a good spice that made this game far more engaging and dynamic. And the death sounds are just awesome. My only complaint is that it's not very comfortable to use "Up" as you jump button, especially in the game where you need to do precise wall jumping.
Solid platformer. Didn't seem too hard at first, I easily made it to that one level with one huge vortex in the middle constantly spawning ghosts. I retried that level about 20 times and failed every time. But at least the death sounds are entertaining :D
Thanks for playing everyone, really appreciated and I'll have a go at yours now.
@wang-tianliang :laughing: Glad you liked them!
@arken Thank you, very kind.
@ubershmekel The hit boxes are really my biggest failure with this one, for the amount of time it would have taken to correct them and how much better it would have made the game. Lesson learned! Loved 'N' back in the day, so thanks for the praise.
@lesinvisible I will make sure I remember to have multiple keys for jumping or re-mapping in the future :smile:
@barrier glad the sounds kept you amused, that difficulty jump was way too harsh I agree, needed some more playtesting on the final level and some levels inbetween.