4 Souls 2 Reap

calzone407 2023-01-09 21:59

First off, beautiful game. I really love the music, and the game play is impeccable. This is basically what I tried to make last time I did a game jam. The reaper doing platforming is a really cool idea and getting to throw your scythe! Chef's kiss. I think a game with this level of difficultly was exactly what I needed in order to properly calm myself from my own stressful game XDD.

If you released more game, I would play more game.

let's see, negatives... pretty much none, all around 9/10 (not 10/10 because there was only one song)

jaonewguy 2023-01-09 22:55

Wow. Amazing game, loved pretty much everything about it from top-to-bottom.

What stuck out to me: The level design. Esp in such a short amount of time. I knew I was in for a treat already by the 2nd level. Do you have any strong recommendations on level-design guides or tips? Or was this just a matter of experience?

Have to be really nit-picky for criticism, but if I dig deep, here are a couple: - For some reason, when transitioning from left<->right movement, it doesn't respond intuitively. It is slightly fast. - The black load screen. For a long load, instead of a black loading screen, perhaps add something to create an illusion of a faster loading time. - When getting scythe throw, it didn't mention slow-fall. Perhaps I missed the screen that taught me how to do it, but if I wasn't an experienced gamer, I wouldn't have tried out diff key combos or checked the pause screen.

Again, amazing, I think I'm gonna hop back on it later to try more :smile:

la-bread 2023-01-09 23:49

Game feels really good to control but the teleport mechanic bugged out on me sadly. Otherwise the game does feel pretty good to play.

kepsert 2023-01-10 00:10

@calzone407 Thank you for the very kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I did have plenty of level design ideas left but unfortunately not enough time to implement all of them next to my programming work :D Perhaps I'll release an extra-content patch in the future! No promises!

Also I do want to quickly defend our music guy a little bit here haha, there are in fact 3 separate, full songs, in the game! :D But the one track that plays during gameplay might be most noticeable as this is probably a longer game experience than plenty of jam games ^^ Once again, thank you for playing! I've added your game to my list!

kepsert 2023-01-10 00:13

@jaonewguy Thank you so much for the amazing review! I'm glad you liked the level design as well! Mind sharing what engine you use? Perhaps I can give you some pointers! I've actually been thinking about doing a little level building tutorial- for the last 2 years, but never got to it. I should do that one day.

For the transitioning movement, I'm not sure what you mean? Perhaps the thing where if you hold both left/right the character stands still and therefore it feels a bit glitchy if you swap quickly? If that's what you mean, would you have any suggestions on what would feel better?

As for the slow fall, it's mentioned upon getting the first soul, but it's directly underneath the throw explanation - I should've made it more obvious that the first soul gains both abilities haha, whoops!

Thank you for trying our game! <3

calzone407 2023-01-10 00:13

@kepsert I formally apologize to your music guy, I thought it was all one song :)

kepsert 2023-01-10 00:14

@la-bread Hi hi! Thank you for playing! Mind if I ask what part bugged out for you? If it's gamebreaking it's something we might need to look at :)

kepsert 2023-01-10 00:16

@calzone407 Haha no problem! Yea I guess you do spend most of the time in the gameplay itself! There's one song in the main menu, and another song in the intermission screens as well (I think the intermission one might just be my favourite haha)

deepfreeze 2023-01-10 00:38

The music and graphics are really nice, though there's a high-pitch clicking sound near the sound with some of the swings that drives me nuts. Physics are a bit weird, and its fairly easy to get stuck in the floor; sometimes only for brief seconds, other times until you find some spikes to die on. Otherwise, this is a really solid entry!

kepsert 2023-01-10 00:47

@deepfreeze Thank you for playing! The high-pitch sound, I just noticed this as well when playing through the webbuild, I'm not quite sure what it happens and still looking into it - it's not in the windows build which is the exact same build so I'm still a bit confused by it :(

Thanks for your comment, I'll make sure to fight the other programmer and have him look into the collision code some more, seems like more people have been getting stuck in floors here and then :D

hypernoodlejon 2023-01-10 01:25

Really incredible game, had a ton of fun playing this, and this style of platformer is absolutely my go-to. Lovely art, controls felt responsive, and the mental math of chaining actions together to get through a segment was a lovely little challenge. Small nitpicks, I would love to have the camera zoomed out a bit further to make certain platforming challenges less a leap of faith. There were times where maybe I did a flashy double-jump because double jumping was fun, but five seconds of slowfall later I needed that second jump and now I have to redo it. Also I'd love to have to attack the spirits at the end of each zone to absorb their powers, instead of just a proximity trigger. That said this is one of my favorite LD 52 games so far, super fun and I can't wait to play more!

therealjtgill 2023-01-10 01:43

Overall I thought this game had a fantastic feel, a compelling game loop, engaging animations, and unobtrusive but mood-enhancing music. I gotta say the gameplay wasn't completely for me. Platformers are not my forte, I don't normally enjoy them. But that being said, I ended up playing for quite a while (got to the point where I unlocked double jump and had to quit because oh my god this is not my wheelhouse). I gave the game an overall 9/10!

Things I liked:

1. Skill evaluation levels instead of explicit tutorials

2. The music is fantastic

3. I took the animations and pixel art for granted because of how amazing they are

4. Even though some of the levels are difficult, the ability to replay them without penalty is fantastic (especially for someone like me who suuuuucks at platformers)

5. I could very easily see this as being a "share the controller" kind of game

6. Attention to small details - e.g. a thrown scythe won't fly through a wall

Things I noticed:

1. Pernicious difficulty

2. The keyboard keys are all grouped together on the left hand, which makes it difficult to complete some combos. I found myself fat-fingering the controls more than a few times. But the good news is that with the left hand being responsible for the controls I was able to keep a stress ball in my right hand the entire time.

3. It's hard to get a read on the fallen angel archers, e.g. it's a little hard to find a visual queue when they're getting ready to shoot at you

4. "I swear to Christ I wasn't touching that spike why the hell did I die"

5. Souls are reaped just by being... near... them... it'd be cool if there was kind of a boss battle, but this is a 3-day game and I understand that boss battles require a ton of supporting infrastructure (AI, boss attacks, health bars, much more complexity than can be expected for a LD)

auros 2023-01-10 02:25

Everything about this game is amazing. It's challenging, visually appealing, and polished. Really fun!

salmonmoose 2023-01-10 02:27

I feel like the white elements are useful and would be a good global signifyer of damage - things like spikes read somewhat as scenery rather than threat. Otherwise this was great.

jaonewguy 2023-01-10 02:36

> Mind sharing what engine you use? Perhaps I can give you some pointers! I’ve actually been thinking about doing a little level building tutorial- for the last 2 years, but never got to it. I should do that one day.

@kepsert I am just starting out with Godot, used it for this jam. I'm trying to be engine-agnostic so any pointers are nice. A level building tutorial would be sweet!

> For the transitioning movement, I’m not sure what you mean?

Sorry it's a bit hard to describe, but it's just when I'm moving left, and then switching to right (right away). So the switching of the immediate movement.

amarokczukay 2023-01-10 02:36

first of all, this is a very beautiful and polished-looking game, with lovely sprites, great animations, cool sounds…

overall ambiance feels very nice, and the diversity (and increasing difficulty) of levels is really good!

however, here are the two little issues i've found:

-i'm struggling with keyboard controls. maybe something like wasd + left&right clicks (for attacks)? or maybe triggering slowfall by fast double jump key? my hands were panicking at some time

-it happened twice that i got stuck on the floor, like i had only my torso out, and was unable to jump. a restart of the save resolved it.

nataku92 2023-01-10 02:51

Really challenging, but super rewarding when I finally beat it (that last level was brutal for me, took me like 20 tries)! I can tell a lot of thought and testing went into the movement mechanics and level design. I feel like I barely scraped by; it'd be really cool to see a speedrun video from someone who's mastered the mechanics!

ghostbomb 2023-01-10 04:23

Really cute game! Love the art for all the characters! The keyboard and gamepad controls are both kind of unintuitive. I really like to use home row keys for games that also want me to use shift and spacebar, and for the gamepad, I naturally have my fingers on the shoulder triggers so having to use the buttons instead is a bit awkward. This also makes the later levels very hard because there's a bunch of different inputs you have to chain in a row correctly in the right order.

We did get that fifth soul though! <3

aurailus 2023-01-10 06:44

This game is maddeningly impressive. I would buy it, right now, in its current state. I streamed playing it on Twitch, and it entirely derailed the rest of the stream because I wanted to finish it. The controls are fluid, the abilities augment the platforming well. I love the aesthetic, and the levels were *so* well designed. You've created a nearly perfect the precision platformer in three days. Stop it! You're scaring me. Your team did absolutely amazing, and I 100% want to see more from you if you choose to continue this game's development. Thank you so much~

If you want to watch my gameplay, I uploaded the VOD here: https://youtu.be/mwYiD6fR8PE (gameplay of this game starts at 1:42:09)

error 2023-01-10 07:39

I would have liked to see space double as a hover button. I was finding myself running out of fingers on some puzzles when having to hold shift, w, press space, and throw with x. But that might be because this wasn't designed for keyboards. The music was a good choice, I liked the combat and loop of getting to the end points. All in all, good game.

moonizz 2023-01-10 08:06

@error @amarokczukay When you get the later mechanics, holding jump for slowfall didn't work out very well. It limits you in the movement you can do. Which is why we opted for another solution here. On keyboard you should be able to hold up arrow for slowfall if you play arrow keys, instead of W.

@jaonewguy @kepsert I think the transition problem mentioned is because the character sprite is slightly offset in X, and turning around offsets in the other direction which makes it feel like it moved a lot faster than it should.

Thanks for playing our game :)

chevalbancal 2023-01-10 11:22

Really awesome game. The graphics are amazing ! Had a blast playing it. I think the controls are a bit tough to handle though

xeke-death 2023-01-10 11:39

VICTORY IS MINE! That last bit was tough, but I got there! I liked all the extra details in the world, the plants on the platforms, the extra bits on the sides. Great touch.

rincs 2023-01-10 12:46

Very well done!! I wish I could rate the theme higher but I liked the game and the music and overall look!! I gotta finish this sometime!!

lila-pause 2023-01-10 14:58

Awesome game with great graphics and music. The levels were very satisfying to play and the difficulty was just right for a quick but challenging playthrough. The only issue I had was that the keyboard controls for the abilities were really unergonomic. Something like ASDF might've been better. The scythe swing was also kind of useless after I got the throw, so I had two unneeded keys between dash and throw on my 105 key keyboard. That said, this game should definitely be played on a controller, especially if you don't have a keyboard with n-key-rollover. It's just unfortunate that there didn't seem to be controller support in the web version.

moonizz 2023-01-10 15:12

@lila-pause I am able to play the game with a controller on my side in the web version, using firefox. I'm sorry that you weren't able to use the controller, as the game currently plays a lot better on controller IMO.

Thanks for your feedback and thank you for playing our game! :)

kepsert 2023-01-10 15:15

@lila-pause Thank you for playing and thanks for the comment, as well! Mind if I ask what browser and controller you were using?

I found that sometimes my Xbox Series controller wouldn't work on Chrome- I'd have to reconnect the controller, refresh the browser, then make sure I didn't tab out or clicked outside of the actual embedded Unity screen. It was weird and I'm not sure what the problem is there! It might be worth seeing if my "fix" works for you as well :)

kostas-nik 2023-01-10 18:10

Great art and animations and a nice combination of colors . The music is truly amazing!!! Great job! The X,C, and shift buttons didn't work for me though. I think a little bit of acceleration and super meat boyish movement would fit the game. Good job.

reed-molbak 2023-01-10 18:35

Really great entry, I love these kinds of games. The art was excellent and the level design was really well-done. One of my favorite games I've played from this jam. I think it was at its best when it was focused on the movement levels, where I was managing several move options and trying to figure out which ones to string together when.

I was playing this in a browser with a keyboard, and as others have mentioned that made things pretty tough. I ended up stopping on a pretty late level, where I think the right combination of moves involved a hover followed by a horizontal scythe-throw and a teleport that had to be done quickly before falling, and it felt like the kind of thing where the controls were working against me. I made a platformer w/ a similar throw/teleport mechanic once and found that a WASD setup w/ mouse aim can be really helpful, but obviously that's a lot of added scope for a weekend jam.

I also found the combat pretty hard to predict, and I wonder if the game needed it at all (maybe enemies are more environmental hazards rather than something to kill). The hitboxes seemed finicky, especially on a couple where you needed to jump followed by melee. I often felt like there was a good amount of chance in whether I got hit or not

My last thought is that maybe the respawn checkpoints could be shorter in some places. There were some cases where it was fun to replay an early challenge I'd mastered, but a lot of the time I'd die on a challenge late in a level, and I wanted to try another approach (maybe a dash instead of a jump or something). When I have to play the whole stage first, it kind of disincentivizes trying new stuff because death is more expensive. This seems like the kind of thing that gets more important the harder the game is, so some of this might just be that I was using a keyboard so it was harder than intended.

keenao 2023-01-10 22:00

Pretty cool entry. It scratches that technical platformer's itch. Quite a bit of levels too. I had a good time.

zakku 2023-01-11 10:31

Great job ! A lot of content for a short jam like this, loved it, the level design is great, the art as well, music fits perfectly !

elflashor 2023-01-11 13:54

I was surprisingly invested in that game and was force to leave to stop, so pretty good! The music was geting a bit repetitive after a while, but that's nothing unsolvable with just a bit more time :)

I felt like the mechanics would probably fit better in a metroidvania than a simple level-by-level platformer, but for a gamejam it might be trickier to pull off. But good job, remappable controls would have been amazing, and I couldn't try with a gamepad but it would fit perfectly, so I hope you've added support for it! :) Congrats on the jam :)

rulrite 2023-01-11 14:13

Really nice game! I had to stop after I earned the teleport - I watched a video to find out what to do, but I couldn't find a way to throw the scythe upward on my controller (I was playing the web version). Perhaps I'm just being silly. But regardless, I really enjoyed my time with this game. The graphics are very pretty, the music is moody-yet-whimsical, and it's just plain fun to play. Congrats!

lukski-lukilj 2023-01-11 14:19

Really cool game! I love the mechanics and how you have to combine them to get through the levels. However when playing on a controller I had the problem that I could only throw my scythe left or right and not up/down

kepsert 2023-01-11 14:23

@rulrite @lukski-lukilj Hi! Thank you both for playing and dropping a comment! Seems like you both had similar issues with not being able to throw the scythe upwards; may I ask which browser you were using?

Usually you have to hold the up button (W/Up arrow, or left stick up/d-pad up on controller) and then press the throw button, but I assume you tried that, I'd like to investigate further ^^

rulrite 2023-01-11 14:29

@kepsert I was using the Brave browser (and a Switch Pro Controller, if that matters. I think Windows reads it as an Xbox controller, so I've no clue).

kepsert 2023-01-11 14:31

@rulrite Ayy thank you! I'm going to hook up my switch pro controller and give it a try myself during the weekend, thanks for the headsup! :D

lukski-lukilj 2023-01-11 14:40

@kepsert I was on chrome and using an xbox one controller. And good that you mentioned it, I have only tried it using the left stick so far. Tried it using the d-pad now and with that it works

his-the-unknown-painter 2023-01-11 16:39

Oh my, Where is my 1 hour? Really enjoy this game! but, One problem is.. The Control. controll is kinda difficult to use WASD keyboard.that is the most complaintment thing. Other things, Well done! :D

rickylee 2023-01-11 17:19

Amazing game as always! ^^ great work 5/5

thiradil 2023-01-11 20:02

Like some others peoples i had some troubles with my azerty keyboard and the controls but it's still a beautiful game; congrats!

konrad 2023-01-11 21:03

Amazing game guys but at this point I expect nothing less from you :) You're always one of the first LD pages I check out after the jam. Was already expecting to get Path of Pain: The Game™ xD I'm a big fan of the "You get a ton of abilities and then chain them together"-platformer concept and you executed it quite well! Each ability can be found in some different well known game but merging a certain number of them can make a game unique again.

The level design is great as always, I like the approach of figuring out the base gameplay and then consecutively exploring all possibilities and each order to use your abilites in in each level.

Also absolutely love the piano and strings arrangement.

Now there are some sayings about putting how clean your mechanics are under a magnifying glass if you make your game difficult because every little mistake gets more noticable, if it costs you your life, so there are a few things that could be improved.

If you stand directly next to a wall and throw your scythe directly up, it will get stuck, not very fun. The controls on shift, z, x, c, space don't feel very comfortable on keyboard (and keyboard is for that reason generally much harder) but on a controller you can only angle your scythe with the D-Pad, which is okay for me but a lot of people would prefer to be able to use the joystick. It's also hard to teleport and immediately jump while using a controller.

By far not all but some of the difficulty is due to jumps being pixel-perfect. I don't mind difficulty itself, you could have made the game even more difficult for all I care but there are other ways. If I get stuck at a passage it should be because after thinking about it, I should know what I must do but I'm not good enough to execute it. In this game I found myself sometimes wondering, whether what I'm doing was cheesing the level and later found out it was intended.

And as a final thought, this isn't always true, but sometimes it's less frustrating to put a difficult jump that you need to adapt your muscle memory to at the beginning of a level and not let players go through an interactive loading screen (the rest of the level) to reach that point and fail again (looking at you, last level).

I hope this wasn't too negative sounding, overall I loved the game and gave you a really good score too, it's just that exactly because of that, little blemishes stick out all the more. The most important part however is to keep doing what you're doing xD

moonizz 2023-01-11 21:14

@konrad As the main programmer, and actually my first LD (new to this team :smile: ), I'm happy about all the information we're getting! Thanks for enjoying the game!

Could you please tell me what controller you are using? I've seen others have the same issues with analog stick not working for vertical throws and I, myself, use an analog stick on my controller to speedrun without any issues. Does it go diagonal instead or just straight horizontal?

Thanks for playing our game!

yorsh 2023-01-11 23:19

Really nice game ! It's classic but it's well done, the mechanics are fun and gently introduced in smart ways. The one thing that could have added a lot for me is more animations on the character. Imo you could have saved some time by making less levels or simpler menues. I mean those are cool features to have if you can, just less impactfull on the overall game I believe.

kepsert 2023-01-11 23:26

@yorsh Thank you for playing our game! We appreciate all input <3 I do quickly want to point out that the levels and menus were done by me, and me alone, while I could've possibly made less levels in return for more animations, I don't think you'd want me (as a programmer) to work on art haha. I'm glad you enjoyed the game nonetheless, and we'll definitely see how we can spread out our priorities a bit better in future jams!

melektaus 2023-01-12 00:11

First off, very clean and awesome game with crisp controls. The graphical style fits like a glove. The music is a bit repetitive, but still doesn't get annoying.

The pacing is spot on, especially I love that you get new moves step-by-step and don't get overwhelmed in one fell swoop.

Also, I was peeking into your stream on day 3. Personally, I probably would have put more focus on alternate controls on that day. And possibly put tweaks in one or two of the animations or polished the level transitions a bit more. But otherwise... Beautiful game!

Nevertheless: I'll re-map the controls, because I usually play with [W][A][S][D] ...and [Z][X][C] is a bit impractical. Haha! I think I am addicted!

jumpirate 2023-01-12 07:01

It's a very interesting platform jumping game. The graphics and music are excellent, and the game runs smoothly and comfortably. Although the various abilities of the characters are unlocked for players to use as the level advances, the overall game mechanism is still a little bit complicated. It has a relatively high difficulty of operation. I think maybe it is more suitable for players who like difficult challenges.

tanis 2023-01-12 21:55

That's a very solid game. The art is super good. Nice music. It's got a real good level design and it's difficult but well balanced.

I found the controls with the keyboard a bit unpractical due to being all clumped together on the left side of the keyboard.

Nice one!

lomby 2023-01-14 03:25

Thanks for submitting your game on the stream! Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/qbBq_nBKk5k?t=15012

Really enjoyed the mechanics and controls! Nice work on such a great entry!

hawkin 2023-01-17 01:37

This is a solid challenge! I should pull out my gamepad and try it there, because I have a feeling it'd play even more easily than with ZXC (i've never been good at that combo).

The mirrored level is a doooooozy. I just couldn't get the last jump to reach the portal XD But consider me absolutely impressed, playing a solid 20 minutes to get there. The difficulty curve and speed at which you introduce new mechanics and challenges was perfectly set. On top of that, the visuals and sound design was great.

My biggest gripe (and maybe this was just a keyboard thing) was that I didn't seem to be able to double-jump _while_ holding an arrow key (left or right). Not sure if that was intentional, but that was the cause of a significant number of deaths!

moonizz 2023-01-17 07:20

@hawkin not being able to double jump when holding an arrow key is probably your keyboard since you should be able to move at the same time as you double jump!

I believe what you're experiencing might be keyboard jamming/ghosting, there is more info about that in this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_rollover

I'm very happy you enjoyed the game and thank you for playing!

hawkin 2023-01-17 12:05

@moonizz you're probably right! I'm on my laptop this week, so I'll test that out with that in mind!

konrad 2023-01-18 17:28

@moonizz Dang, I'm guessing you're not new to programming then because that's some really good work for a first LD. I was using an xbox one controller and when using the analog stick and not the d-pad, only horizontal throws seemed to be possible in general.

melektaus 2023-01-18 18:11

As a seasoned try-hard, I made a Speedrun, like I did for your game [**Holospecter**](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/holospecter/holospecter-speedrun-mode)!

**Edit:** Optimized the run (**02:48**)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qawnN4_Z0W4

moonizz 2023-01-19 10:11

@konrad I had never touched programming before this jam! :laughing: Just kidding, Been a dev for 10+ years, haven't done a game jam in around 10 years, I think I did one in 2011 and one around 2013. That's about it!

I will have to look into that for potential future games, to see why it's not reacting as it should. @kepsert is using an xbox controller I believe and can use the analog stick.

@melektaus Wonderful! You beat @kepsert's run! I see some smaller optimizations that you're missing. That would save a second here and there! I will try and beat this run and upload it :smirk:

moonizz 2023-01-19 11:27

@melektaus I did a thing! (2:46)

I had some terrible deaths in this, and I didn't do the dash wall clip (I cannot get out on the other side :laughing: ) But I managed to do some other things quite cleanly!

https://youtu.be/IeGrAGI7lBY

kepsert 2023-01-20 18:34

@melektaus As usual, very impressive haha! I love watching your runs, it's people like you I built in a speedrun timer for :D

itsboats 2023-01-27 05:15

Sick game! That last jump was hard as heck xD The level design does a great job of testing your mastery of the mechanics in clever ways and I loved the character designs and color palette<3