FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → Scuttling Is Painless

Scuttling Is Painless

By hexyvexy and TeddyReid

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall12003.0640
Fun11972.8440
Innovation10442.9040
Theme11543.1639
Graphics11952.7441
Audio8872.6439
Humor7582.8240
Mood9663.2240

Comments

fromage 2022-04-05 01:49

I liked what I saw of it, but there seemed to be a delay in the controls so my jumps were off. I also didn't see that z,x, or c actually did anything, but maybe I wasn't to a point that they came into play.

t-c 2022-04-05 01:58

Nice entry! Definitely a bit rough with a keyboard and mouse! Also some sections seemed overly difficult or easy to get lost in. But I liked the setting and ideas!

teddyreid 2022-04-05 01:59

@Fromage The jumps are "chargeable", if you hold the jump button down and then release you will juump higher. The dash and sprint are "upgrades" that you find as you go through the level 😁

fromage 2022-04-05 02:02

ahhhhhh, ok!

ikilledkenny121 2022-04-05 02:05

Works pretty well. That alarm has to go though that was god awful

trebby 2022-04-05 02:07

nice concept, movement controls are very clunky and difficult tho

macabreartgames 2022-04-05 02:26

Well done! Controls are a bit tricky :sob: Even tougher when playing keyboard and mouse. I liked to mood, idea.

teddyreid 2022-04-05 02:38

@ikilledkenny121 It's turns off after the first terminal, and the music starts. I think we realised about 10 hours into development that we'd birthed a monster into the world 🤣

ikilledkenny121 2022-04-05 03:17

@teddyreid haha yes. I did get through to turn it off just to give a fair review, and it was great after that!

chaoseiro 2022-04-05 04:28

Took me a while to notice the jump bar, would suggest to move it meybe above or under the character's sprite. The game is really hard, at least I couldn't get to the end (kept dying in a laser sequence), but that is on me heh

Good job!

teddyreid 2022-04-05 09:07

@chaoseiro Cheers buddy! The laser sequences are absolute nails! The one in the yellow corridor is especially mean spirited 🤣

taran95 2022-04-05 16:16

Good job, but the controls were difficult on the keyboard tho.

rufus 2022-04-05 17:13

Controls are difficult even on the gamepad IMO. Also they're just weird a bit- I still don't know if snapping to platforms from the sides is a bug or a feature :D On the brighter side- I liked the graphics and sounds and the idea :D A bit buggy though, sound cues are misleading if you start charging the jump before falling off the ledge etc. and going through checkpoints resets your charge so it makes unnecessary deaths haha A nice entry though

teddyreid 2022-04-05 17:23

@rufus 100% a bug, collider causing the transforn parent to change too early 😫 need to find a smarter way to handle it for next LD.

Cheers for the good feedback, especially the charge reset, I've never noticed that one!

fragueur 2022-04-05 17:52

gg

kaljal 2022-04-05 18:59

With controller difficulty is hard but with keyboard is Dark Souls good job guys :)

copito 2022-04-05 19:18

is there some way to start this in a window? I'm running on an ultrawide monitor and couldn't read half the text. It also didn't look great blown up across my monitor. I did play quite a long way through while the charge jump is quite clever it felt clunky and I found jumping off moving platforms felt wrong compared to my subconscious expectations from other platformers.

teddyreid 2022-04-05 20:09

@copito We had a half implemented options menu with resolution and windowing options but it was buggy and we ran out of time.

Will make sure our next effort has it, and has ultrawide support.

Trying to be unique with the charge jumping was a bad idea in retrospect 🤣

Thanks for playing and for sticking with it ❤

fredrik-rosell 2022-04-05 20:57

Not an easy game but a great one. And when you say "play with controller" I say "pfft!". Well done!

teddyreid 2022-04-05 21:05

@fredrik-rosell thank you so much! <3

welliton 2022-04-06 00:50

ship.png

HAhahahaha it was really fun trying to save those souls, and a little desperate with the messages of people dying all the time! I really liked the jokes here, and the overall gameplay is balanced. It was a surprise having 3 powerups, that was an achievement! Congratulations team! A pretty nice solid game.

teddyreid 2022-04-06 03:24

@welliton Thanks so much!

barelyevengames 2022-04-06 03:31

Neat game! I managed to get to an area that had plants and then there were 2 enemies that were above and below each other in such a way that no matter what I tried I just couldn't get past them. It was so sad to see everyone dying though lol. Nice job!

teddyreid 2022-04-06 03:46

@barelyevengames a large gap should open up between those enemies, since one has a longer path than the other.

I think you've maybe found a bug 😁

roikku 2022-04-06 12:18

I don't know what Sardonic means. Stressful darkness happening behind the scenes. x) The coolest thing was the splashscreen logo. :D The flashy red colors accompanied with the alarm sounds isn't very good for my health. :(

erikengineengineer 2022-04-06 12:27

THIS GAME IS TOO EASY PLS MAKE HARDER ONLY CHILDREN CAN HAVE FUN HERE COOL SOUNDTRACK BTW

teddyreid 2022-04-06 12:37

@erikengineengineer I'M SORRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THAT ALARM SOUND.

teddyreid 2022-04-06 12:39

@Roikku When we put the updated version on Itch after the jam is over, I am definitely putting the terminal that turns the alarm and flashing lights off much nearer the start 😫

alexsolonnikovp4 2022-04-07 11:46

This game showed me the normal level of difficulty. I liked it: the music, and the atmosphere, and the game turned out great.

raptor851 2022-04-08 02:46

had a really hard time with the controls, keyboard controls seem to be on a delay, sometimes when you're holding a key it drops other inputs as well, couldn't complete it due to that.

I like the charge jumps, didn't realize how jumping worked at first so it took a few tries, didn't really work right charging and moving at the same time, didnt seem to carry the momentum?

ditam 2022-04-08 10:04

How cheerful indeed! I really enjoyed the aesthetic here. I might be reaching for meaning here, but all the shadows and the inverted colour schemes (where the level is just negative space in front of a colourful background) tied in well with the idea that something bigger than us is going on, while the player is just a minor character in the background, fighting the inevitable. Well done!

teddyreid 2022-04-08 17:41

@ditam Thank's, mate! Our artist (HexyVexy) probably was thinking evoking certain moods when he tweaked the lighting. He spent a bunch of time putting light sources in the right places and making the lighting as even as we could manage!

hexyvexy 2022-04-09 17:27

@ditam Thank you for the kind words! There was definitely an intent to get across the terrible dark vastness of space, and the places where it encroaches on the broken hull of the ship definitely go to provide some visual contrast as well as showing how you're *just a little guy*. I'm not very confident in my visuals but this was really nice to see!

Also thank you everyone else for your feedback. I have not gone a day without regretting that we didn't unmap all the keyboard controls :sob:

holyblackcat 2022-04-11 18:06

I'm a sucker for precision platformers and metroidvanias, but the controls were very unorthodox. Normally you make the character jump immediately, then control the jump height by adjusting gravity in midair.

Also the capsule (or sphere?) collider on the character threw me off a bit, it causes you to slide from platforms if you come too close to the edge.

hexyvexy 2022-04-11 20:13

@holyblackcat Thanks for the crit! Yeah, we tried something different with the jump and it didn't really work out in the end. We've since made a build with a traditional jump and it's, if nothing else, way easier! The collider was something I wasn't sure about, and which I'm going to do more reading on. The intent originally was to potentially have more non-flat surfaces but for what we ended up making a square (at least on the bottom) would have been better.

ryusui 2022-04-14 00:35

This is the second game I've played this Ludum Dare where you play as a robot with an unforgiving charge jump mechanic. To be fair, this one was a LOT more forgiving (that one punished you with death on any stray collision whatsoever), but I think I've officially had my fill of charge jump mechanics.

I couldn't finish; I couldn't figure out any timing that would let me scale the collapsing platforms in hydroponics. Either I jumped early and couldn't make enough height, or I jumped too late and the platform fell anyway.

And as noted by others, capsule collision on a platforming character is an abomination. It shouldn't be possible to land with both feet visibly firm on the edge of an object only to slide off anyway (or get stuck at a weird diagonal).

hexyvexy 2022-04-18 18:13

@ryusui All valid points! The hydroponics platforms, we figured out just before submission the falling platforms were reverting to the prefab defaults after falling for the first time and scrambled to make it possible. As it stands, it's actually pretty manageable if you clear the section on your first try, but after that it's significantly harder. A victim of the time limit unfortunately.