FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → Earworm Jam

Earworm Jam

By ursagames, spooderdooder and OtterFaeLure

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1643.9796
Fun3603.6896
Innovation2613.7396
Theme2274.0595
Graphics4133.9896
Audio284.3496
Humor244.3895
Mood2473.9291

Comments

lectvs 2022-04-05 01:19

This game cured my tinnitus.

beefsock 2022-04-05 01:50

Dropped by your twitch streams a few times throughout this jam. Love how it turned out with the ear instead of the original frog-man!

morganmoon 2022-04-05 04:02

This was really fun. Great cute/weird/funny graphics and I liked running to the beat of the song telling me I am going to die, which I did

bottini 2022-04-05 04:35

Great experience. It's really different from anything I've seen here, and as a musician, I loved the rhythmic thing. Worth noting it was well implemented as well. Very nice game overall, congrats!

chaoseiro 2022-04-05 04:53

Loved the rythim game and those lyrics are really sticky hahahahah we are gonna die like everyone else

tulio 2022-04-05 07:28

A masterpiece!

gamedevalexandr 2022-04-05 10:32

Ran nearly a mile before a toothed sausage ate my ear. The soundtrack is great and makes me smile. The run buttons could be duplicated on the left and right mouse buttons. Overall great job!

marin0104 2022-04-05 12:26

Very nice rythm game with good humor! Unfortunately i miss an important mechanic - i am getting eaten up by the very short after he appeared. I have done the tutorial and run to use some stamina, but didn't make it to the first powerup.

otterfaelure 2022-04-05 12:29

@marin0104 It is definitely a game designed to make you try a few times before you can get good results! It took me awhile before I could get very far at all.

baptiste-lnq 2022-04-05 14:02

I love the music !! It's a pretty dope anthem bro. Fun game overall nice concept.

spacecadet 2022-04-05 14:08

Wow that was interesting. The soundtrack was hilarious and the art was weird in a good way. Running faster didn't feel very intuitive after running to the rhythm but maybe that's just me.

fifut 2022-04-05 15:22

Very good and funny music! It's a music that stick in your head.

An ear as character! Why not :smile:

janku 2022-04-05 15:24

This is perfect and hilarious at the same time xD Very fun game, great work! That music is everything <3

jzucc12 2022-04-05 15:32

The song was absolutely amazing. 10/10. Would listen to again.

joedev 2022-04-05 16:01

Haha this was adorable, and I love that you made an actual earworm for the earworm game - its damn catchy! The song kinda reminded me of the Lava / volcanoes song that Pixar did a while ago. Super cute and nice!

Once I understood the mechanic was more than *just* getting perfect beats, I got much further. Got around 1600 on my best run, then the jump was too slow to avoid obstacles in a row haha. Really good submission, super impressed!

jamjamix 2022-04-05 17:36

What...the... I want Google to replace the "no internet" dinosaur running game with this! Really weird and well done!

bjornstahl 2022-04-05 17:44

Loved the sound design overall, the song made me snort when it first started. The look and feel of the game was great too but the sound was on point. Great job!

benjamm 2022-04-05 18:40

This is very fun and every time I lose, I blame the chaotic energy of the song

thorpalsson 2022-04-05 19:07

Best game of 2022 confirmed! Step aside Elden Ring

jonrei 2022-04-05 19:07

Ill probably be fired after singing this to my self for 8 hours straight at work tomorrow.

jonrei 2022-04-05 19:08

Easy 5 stars on audio btw :D Ive been sitting in the death screen just listening to this for minutes!

kuami6 2022-04-05 19:09

GOTY 2022 - 2023 and 2024 confirmed

anchry 2022-04-05 19:10

This is the best thing i've played all year, after stopping i can just feel an emptiness in my ears. When is this track dropping on spotify, i need it in my life

lvl99chicken 2022-04-05 19:26

LOL this game is hilarious. Love the graphics and the music. Very innovative making a rythm-based "endless" runner. Really enjoyed this game!

xparker 2022-04-05 19:38

Two words: the song

bhughes 2022-04-05 19:44

really funny! great game, wish the input of left right, matched the left right feet, rn it feels very unrelated to the actual characters movement. but thats my only note!

cad 2022-04-05 20:12

Super weird, super fun. Great job!

nardandas 2022-04-05 20:22

Do I win Capture.PNG

borchezz 2022-04-05 20:25

First I thought that the music theme will be annoying, but it's really good:D Nice lyrics as well! Gameplay idea is great, but little confusing. But overhaul - amazing experience, thank you!

anoma1y 2022-04-05 20:26

Very weird game, but the music is a masterpiece. P.S. often freezes for a while

otterfaelure 2022-04-05 21:51

@nardandas That is as close to winning as I've seen for sure! That being said, you may have lost cause that song is going to be stuck in your head for awhile if you're at all like the rest of us mortals!

gandelianna 2022-04-05 21:53

How did you come for this idea? Ahahahah Music is gorgeous Lyrics - thematical "Like an everyone eeeeelse You gonna diiiiiiie!" I know what I will sing tomorrow:D

otterfaelure 2022-04-05 22:04

@gandelianna Trying to think of what was inevitable, not depressing, and not something we would be upset about stopping. Ear worms, they're the worst without actually being *that* bad.

The rest was the genius of the others and I did not follow their majestic leaps to this piece of art so I cannot speak for them.

Thank you though! :D

joemid 2022-04-05 23:27

IMG_7805.jpg image0(6).jpeg

Found the juice slider! Love this- but I can't beat 41, even with the juice turned up. I'll try ooooone more time. Fabulous song. Thanks for the game!

huga 2022-04-06 01:43

I couldn't figure out the last mechanic, my highest was 542.

Great entry overall, adding the annoying voices to throw off your rhythm was truly genius.

pedro-cortx 2022-04-06 02:46

I'm...in love with this game

ursagames 2022-04-06 02:49

Oh my gosh so many comments! Thanks all for the feedback! I'm glad the ear worm is infecting so many people :grin:

Second guessing my choice to not be more explicit on telling people one of the core game mechanics or being a lot more obvious with it. There's hints from the combo text as you get more combos, but it takes time to unlock and most people in jams aren't going to run into it.

@bhughes We thought about that at first, but the issue is that we want to encourage people to spam the left/right quickly as well and there's no way to get that to look good animation wise without spending the whole jam on animation tech, so we settled on making the left/right increase/decrease your overall run speed.

@anoma1y Sorry about the random freezes, that's an issue with loading in audio for the first time in HTML5 that I couldn't find any solutions for. It should be smooth after things have played though, although mileage will vary based on your PC of course.

@nardandas You do indeed win as far as I've seen! My personal record is 2500 and you blew right past that, well done!

ursagames 2022-04-06 03:13

For those not figuring out the mechanic, I wrote a post with some more information about that here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/earworm-jam/on-making-mechanics-obvious

But, I do want people to have a chance of figuring it out on there own so do give it a try :)

thenerdster 2022-04-06 03:17

So creative and original. I love the music and the mood. Well done!

wavertron 2022-04-06 03:26

Bizarre :D

mrevilguy 2022-04-06 03:33

1811 is my high score. It's so relaxing to play. It's really the perfect concept. A giant ear listening to the distant drumming of desert music to channel its energy forward despite knowing its eardrum will rupture. God I wish I could sing like that!

proxy-games 2022-04-06 03:41

Wow, what a bizzare experience. *I love it.*

The graphics and audio are well-produced, and both fit together well in how absurd they are. The gameplay is fun in terms of seeing just how far I could get (the answer is not very-about 600 points was my highest). I did notice what you spoke about in your 'making mechanics obvious' with perfects causing more harm than good (so much so that the previously mentioned high score came from purposefully button-mashing and getting a ton of offbeats). Other than that quirk in the game design, I had a lot of fun being confused at the absurdity of this one. Good entry!

mrtroy 2022-04-06 04:09

This game is a real treat. The hardest thing to do is get back on beat after getting ahead of the worm. I can't get much further than 550. :( I'll keep playing and hopefully I won't be humming this when I got to sleep tonight. :D

marc-antoine-girard 2022-04-06 04:34

Welp, it sure was evitable, I mean, all the signs were there. The worm, the ear, the music, I should've known, but here we are, stuck with this catchy song in my head just before going to sleep. I can't imagine what kind of dream I'll have. Anyway, congrats on your game! The core mechanic was indeed hard to get, but the AAAH moment was worth it.

noisemaker 2022-04-06 06:39

I always admire anyone crazed enough to make a rhythm game for a game jam. The entire game is so absurd and I loved every second of it - definitely one of my favorite games I've seen from this jam. Only gripe is the juice boxes were hard to see against the sandy background, but it's a pretty miniscule issue. Great work!

spooderdooder 2022-04-06 12:04

Thank you everyone for your kind words! I'm so happy that so many of y'all have enjoyed playing our weird little game! However, I am very disappointed at the lack of Dune fans in the audience ;)

simba 2022-04-06 13:54

What a wonderfully weird game. Very difficult, but I loved the absurd character and the animations were really well done. Great job on this game!

Constructive feedback: adding gameplay depth via a hidden mechanic when gamejam play sessions are so short is a pretty big risk.

dining-philosopher 2022-04-06 16:10

Wow, the moment where the camera turns to bring the earworm into view really got me xD Hard to play but a very nice entry.

mike-baldwin 2022-04-06 17:51

Awesome game! Like others have said, I think the song will be stuck in my head all day lol. Top notch humor and gameplay. Well done!

forgin-bits 2022-04-06 20:28

Is the title a reference to Earthworm Jim ? Damn I'm gonna have nightmares about that ear chasing me... So wacky and fun, love it, great job !

ursagames 2022-04-06 21:14

@forgin-bits that it is! Glad you enjoyed the nightmare fuel that we made lol

ukulelefury 2022-04-06 21:40

lol, this game is hilarious! Amazing concept! Great music! Great graphics! Great references to a classic Sega game. Really cool distraction worms playing off-beat tunes.

the-fazzo 2022-04-07 00:29

Excellent game. The sincronicity with the music as a mechanic is a wonderfull idea. Nothing to improve, congratulations!

not-tomo 2022-04-07 03:12

That was a blast! Fun game, simple catchy song! worm.png

ursagames 2022-04-07 03:55

@not-tomo oh dang, I think we have a new high score! Thanks for playing :)

dae-udain 2022-04-07 04:07

Earworm.png Rather fun game! I don't think I've gone as far as others here, but I had fun nonetheless. Certainly a 5 in audio! That tune will be burned into my brain for a while.

bekirtuncer 2022-04-07 07:43

dune part 2

thehan 2022-04-07 07:46

Why is this d*ckhead chasing me? As a result, it is really fun to play and it is much more enjoyable if you choose a different pattern instead of a stable rhythm. Don't say you heard it from me but WE ALL GONNA DIEEE!

shadow64 2022-04-07 10:27

Had a lot of fun playing this and it's a really cool and inventive concept that fits the theme perfectly. I did have some pretty major audio issues (in Chrome) and even reloading didn't solve them. Oddly having it open in another tab that I wasn't looking at caused the audio to play perfectly. Not sure if that helps you track it down, but hopefully it's helpful! Great job and congrats on finishing!

emaigualmc2-art 2022-04-07 16:12

Super hilarious and at the same time disturbing! xD I really suffered for my ears jajaja! The music is undoubtedly the best, the 3d art is very good, perhaps it does not run very well in the web version. Excellent work!

gamesplusjames 2022-04-07 17:14

This was amazing! Love the graphics and music! I never felt so happy about knowing I was going to die :D Great work!

nsadie 2022-04-07 18:57

A 1300 on my first run, was a fun experience!

The jumping felt a little bit janky, but the rhythm bits worked very well!

spooderdooder 2022-04-07 22:53

@nsadie I'll take the blame for the janky jumping. I'm still very much a rookie at character animation, especially with timing. The entire animation, including the verticality of the jump, was done by keyframe animation in Blender instead of having the vertical movement handled by code. I don't know why we did it this way, you'd have to ask @ursagames Also if it's any consolation, I hate the jump too.

asukanami 2022-04-08 01:10

Screen Shot 2022-04-07 at 9.10.33 PM.pngIs it just me?

nsadie 2022-04-08 03:46

@spooderdooder don't be too hard on yourself! I don't think it spoils the game, but look into using a tweening library and do the jump in code as it is easier to tweak!

vixenmink 2022-04-08 05:16

This game is hilarious. Who made up these lyrics lol max distance 1023.4

FYI:

Playing on Windows 7, Chrome browser and it took 5 reloads to get the game to start. It freezes from time to time as you hit the rhythm causing you to lose the rhythm but I will keep trying it to see if it is because I haven't loaded the sound effect before.

In other words, fantastic job making this earworm that will stay with me for days. I mist share this with my team lol It's inevitable~~~

ursagames 2022-04-08 05:34

Glad so many people are enjoying it so far! Thanks everyone for your comments!

@asukanami Not sure why that would show up, but the game does require WebGL and will run awfully without hardware acceleration on. I only have tested it on chrome personally, but I had reports of it working fine on edge and firefox as well.

@vixenmink Game does require hardware acceleration to run decently with webGL, also it should run better if you don't reload the browser but just play another round it should be more consistent. There's an issue with audio loading in Godot with multiple scenes on HTML5 export and having hiccups when loading the audio for the first time.

@shadow64 That's really odd! From what I've found there's some issues with audio loading in on HTML5 export in godot with multiple scenes, but once it's been loaded once it's in memory and should be smooth after that.

@gamesplusjames Glad you enjoyed it! I had a blast making it :)

I'll try and get a windows version exported for people to play as well, the current issue is there's some bug in export that changed the lighting so we tweaked the game to look decent on web sacrificing how it looks on a standalone build.

shadow64 2022-04-08 06:13

@ursagames I think the hardware acceleration being turned off is what did it for me. I ran it in Chrome Canary with H.Accel turned on and that actually made it run great with the sound and everything. So I imagine that's what was causing my issues. Might be worth putting that on the itch page since I think a few people might have theirs turned off. Thanks for the info so I could come back and replay! :smile:

ursagames 2022-04-08 07:21

@shadow64 Good idea, I went ahead and added that to the itch page! Thanks for trying it again :)

shadow64 2022-04-08 08:26

@ursagames No problem! Happy to help and well worth it! :)

phillip-scott 2022-04-08 11:36

fun experience loved the song - I was bad at the game though!

autogibbon 2022-04-08 17:21

I was also terrible at this game! My high score was 300 I think. Trying to jump and walk both in time was surprisingly difficult for me :)

Love the song, and how happy the worm is when they catch you.

🎵You're goooonnaaa diiiiieeee🎵

potkirland 2022-04-09 00:50

very innovative take on the rythm games i think you guys created a veery interesting mechanic here thanks for sharing also since it gave me inspiration for my game too! well done on everything :smile: very polished too

osh-studio 2022-04-09 03:50

Hilarious game and great concept, can't really fault this game so good job. Great submission.

cyzaine 2022-04-09 12:46

Aside from jumping this was a marvel. Had alot of fun playing it, and obviously loved the vocals and audio references. Really didn't feel like the jump worked with the rhythm no matter what I did though.

badpiggy 2022-04-10 05:30

Loved this lol. I only wish there was more of an indicator for the actual distance between you and the worm. Still, alternating between sprinting and normal running and jumping is great. And the music ( oh gawd the music ) is damn good lol. I honestly couldn't help laughing at all the absurdity in this game lol. Especially the worms who were singing what I thought was the final countdown lol. Awesome entry all around

LDJAM50 (DEBUG) 10-04-2022 10_44_48.png

milan8890 2022-04-10 13:26

what

i don't know what i just played

Great game tho

eonarheim 2022-04-10 21:55

I need a link to that track haha! I just watched Dune so this really had me giggling.

borabee 2022-04-11 00:07

Really cool game!! The idea is super original, the song is so good it's, well, a earworm, the gameplay is really engaging and the humor+mood+graphics are priceless (so many little things going on in the desert <3) !! I had a ton of fun with it. Here's my high score!!!

chrome_IlMCFzRATC.png

shrillwhip 2022-04-11 18:15

Jeez, this looks really good. Not just "game jam" good, but just good, period. I'm a sucker for rhythm games so the gameplay loop really appealed to me as well. Maybe I just have no rhythm though, but I felt like the timing window of the key presses was too narrow. Maybe that part could be tweaked a bit to not be as strict.

Btw, that song is brilliant.

morricore 2022-04-13 11:24

For some reason I keep dying in the start, even if my rhythm has no errors. Game feels as high quality joke. And it's good one.

ursagames 2022-04-14 04:16

Spoilery Stuff for gameplay mechanics ahead!

@morricore Yeah, we definitely didn't make that aspect of the game obvious enough that this is actually an anti-rhythm game. Another huge joke as a Dune reference that's in there by just by hidden mechanics... well and one of the worms does reference Fatboy slim - Weapon of Choice when you walk by. The hint that the pink text combo messages are the big worm isn't very obvious especially since people tend to not pay much attention them.

@shrillwhip It's possible the delay is different based on your audio / video devices could make it desynced, but the window is actually probably more generous than it should be for the fact that it's an anti-rhythm game.

doot 2022-04-15 14:26

ok this was definitely weird and fun haha!

I liked the art, the sound, the overall mood here. The concept was a bit too cryptic for me and that was a bit unpleasant at first, even if losing was still fun because of those awesome animations and great music!

Great job on this it's quite something 🪱

martink 2022-04-16 15:01

I liked the graphics and the music was funny, you did well with the humor. I'm really not sure about deliberately misleading the player on how to play the game, it didn't lead me to an AHA moment as you mentioned in your blog post, it just annoyed me.

From a technical standpoint, it was a well put together entry. It's nice to see options and a tutorial in a game jam game.