FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD49 → Above the Void

Above the Void

By miltonnh25, Xander Ton and Choco

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4473.7321
Fun3523.7621
Innovation4263.6021
Theme8573.4221
Graphics10283.2821
Audio6923.2220
Humor10552.4120
Mood6143.5220

Comments

mowdow 2021-10-06 01:30

really awesome game!

jeinzi 2021-10-06 02:05

Great game, it fits the theme perfectly and I really enjoyed it! The levels are well designed, but the last four were quite hard and I had to think them through for a while. Also: Maybe a puzzle game like this could be a good idea for a mobile game?

Apart from praise, these are my thoughts while playing: - I really want to put the window in fullscreen mode! - I thought the start button was broken because I couldn't click on it. I almost gave up before trying random keys and hitting space. - For a lot of the time I just stood still, looked at the level and planned my path. After playing for a while, I didn't want to just try out different routes, because even if you know exactly how do a part of a level, actually walking through it takes some time. I think it would be a good idea to accelerate the movement, but **especially** the grappling hook, so it doesn't take quite as long to redo parts. - I also think I found a bug: In the "four corners" level, I grappled onto a wall with no tile directly in front of it. By panically smashing W and S, I managed to get from the void to a neighboring tile and not die. - I'm unsure what the intended solution for the prison level is, but I just want to let you know that I didn't need to collect both keys. Instead I collected only the upper one and then used the jumping stick to get across the second lock. - I think saving progress so you can quit the game and continue later and also redo individual levels would probably be the most urgent improvement. Also, after quitting the game, the remixes weren't available anymore, which is a bummer :/

miltonnh25 2021-10-07 03:50

@jeinzi I am glad you enjoyed and thanks for the feedback. I realize I forgot to include you can toggle full-screen with F in the description so that has been included. Being able to move directly after grappling was a bug and has been fixed along with the suggested grapple speed increase and saving progress when you exit. Also ya that solution was a bit of an oversight on my part and you were intended to grab both keys but it was cool you were able to solve it without them.

jaker 2021-10-07 08:53

This is a good concept for a puzzle game. I tried about 15 times on the level "Smile" before giving up. It was pretty adventurous to expose the player to two new mechanics in one level, but fortunately the mechanics are intuitive. Some of levels were extremely daunting at first glance, but were surprisingly doable and felt rewarding to complete.

The main change I would make would be to ramp up the difficulty more slowly, but it's fair to have a steep ramp given the limited time to design levels.

Oh, and I also loved the void/space theme.

binary-coder 2021-10-07 10:14

I think getting through Back and Forth on my first try is going to be one of my proudest achievements for a bit lol. Great puzzles! Difficulty definitely ramps up a bit towards the end, but you did a good job on the progressive introduction of mechanics.

2ccs 2021-10-07 10:28

This game gets pretty hard, but I like the concept and the gameplay! The jump in difficulty is a bit steep like @jaker said; it felt like a huge leap in each of the first few levels. Maybe checkpoints could work?

mordrick 2021-10-07 11:03

Very nice! Made me think hard but eventually I solved it. It has good variety and I really like the levels.

There is very few I could complain about, if any.

improvements :)

The art style of the main char, buttons and the background differ from the style of the fields/ doors/ and the items a bit in that the char and friends are more 3 dimensional while the fields are flat. So if anything, then I would say: try making the fields, key holes and keys a a bit more 3d to have a coherent art style. But that really are high level critics here!

The game is great and I hope I will see more o this :)

Good Job!

mattwoelk 2021-10-10 00:31

A nice set of puzzle mechanics. An undo button would be very helpful for the longer levels.

sikowny 2021-10-10 01:44

This was great! I got a lot of enjoyment out of this. Took me about 40 minutes to get through all of the base game levels, and that to me is a great amount of entertainment out of a game jam game.

The difficulty curve was definitely surprising, but I was able to understand the new mechanics quick enough.

Overall, very fun game -- made my head work hard for the victory. Concept and execution was very well done. You have a great puzzle game here :)

youk 2021-10-10 01:58

Very nice puzzle game and very interesting to play. It's hard but this difficulty can translates into satisfaction. But sometimes The punishment for failure seems too heavy, especially when the level is long.

jpgfg 2021-10-10 04:42

This was a cool puzzler, it seems all the levels were handcrafted and they fit together nicely. Some of the longer ones get a little painful when you make a mistake as it is a long level.

echo-gameworks 2021-10-10 17:45

Really enjoyed playing through it. The level 'smile' was my favorite - had me stumped for a bit. Mechanics were great and the music fit the theme. If I had one complaint it was that an incidental mistake on my part meant redoing a whole section again (perfectly). A rewind mechanic would been amazing but understandable left out for a jam. Great work!

gryhyphen 2021-10-14 03:33

Four corners had me for a while, but I persisted and finally figured it out. phew! As did the final level "floating islands" (Had to realize I had to go clockwise).

Will bump the idea of a rewind mechanic, like baba is you. I would think that would require an event replay which is something that is pretty complex if it doesn't already gel with the architecture of your game.

And OMG, lets talk about the mechanics! You implemented so many! And they all worked really tightly together! The puzzle design is amazing!

All in all, very fun! Wish there was a browser release so more people would play this game!

zimny11 2021-10-16 10:31

Good job with the puzzles, they are not easy! The both graphics and music is nicely done. I would love to have an undo button, since you need to restart the whole level after you make one mistake or if you missclick. Besides that, great job with the game.