jward 2023-05-02 01:02
I don't see any links to download or play your game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Elevander of the Emu Express
By honest-dan, brainoid and spacey3d
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 37 | 4.27 | 69 | |
| Fun | 170 | 3.91 | 69 | |
| Innovation | 85 | 4.06 | 69 | |
| Theme | 27 | 4.53 | 69 | |
| Graphics | 5 | 4.84 | 70 | |
| Audio | 59 | 4.22 | 68 | |
| Humor | 169 | 3.83 | 66 | |
| Mood | 68 | 4.27 | 69 |
I don't see any links to download or play your game.
The art is Extremely Cute.
I like the movement, it is different, allows for a lot of movement options and at the same time a bit challenging. If I have to complain, I would like a slightly faster recharge of "stamina," maybe 10% to 20% faster, but not much more.
Thank you for the game. Your entry is so good that I played it twice.
Yes, the link to the itch page has been added above now! We were just finishing getting it uploaded properly, as it is submission hour :) a few bugs but hopefully nothing game breaking, enjoy!
Pretty dang good! The graphics and music are superb as per usual. The gameplay was fun, though I found a few sections quite unforgiving and it seemed like there was too much lag between flapping and gliding. A few times it felt like it just didn't want to glide at all.
Overall, great game and could be excellent with a little tightening up on the controls and some adjustments to some map sections.
Nice work all of you!
I'm sorry, Mr. Salamander. If you wanted your mail delivered on time, you shouldn't live somewhere so remote and full of cactus.
As always, you guys knocked it out of the park. @spacey3d's character designs are consistently adorable and full of personality (particularly loved Elevander, the lizard, the mouse, and the giraffe). The environment is very well illustrated and has a great balance of detail and stylization. Music and sound effects were also very well-done.
Gameplay-wise, the movement is very novel and it feels very much like a "Getting Over It" sort of experience --- your task is relatively simple, but the unusual character movement makes it a challenge. The tutorial was very well designed to get the player accustomed to the controls. Once you start the full game, you're immediately thrown into the action and it comes with all the stress of your first day on the job.
I think there are a couple sections of the map that may be a little bit too punishing, particularly where there are low ceilings with a lot of cactuses. I had a hard time avoiding the cactus and kept bonking my head on the ceiling and falling into it, spewing my mail everywhere. However, a lot of areas you could avoid since the map often had multiple ways of getting between sections.
I drew Elevander and added him to the pixel fan art compilation on my profile.
fanart53.png
Thanks for making this, and good luck during the rest of play and rate!
Lovely game, the art, music and overall vibe is super cute and it feels good!
The unusual control scheme made it an interesting play but the stamina and collisions made it a little frustrating for me to play. After a while i remembered that we regain stamina while floating though :D Also loved the custom cursor that made understanding the movement a lot easier ;)
Thanks a lot for making it, enjoyed it a lot ! <3
As always, that's a darn good entry! It's gorgeous in every aspect, art, audio, design, gameplay and even the fact that the main character is an endangered species.
If there's one thing to work on it would be to improve the controls and add little leeway on the level design or colliders.
This is truly an amazing entry, I was immediately hooked by the graphics and the wonderful UI. The game feels nice to play and I really have nothing to criticise. Thank you for making this game!
nice game, very polished. A lot more challenging than it looks.
Graphics and music are top notch. Game play is unique and refreshing, though somewhat frustrating. Great submission!
The elephant in the room, the art, is just on point. The bird felt clunky at first, but it got better as I got used to it. The levels felt a little confusing though, I had to go and die at least once to understand where to go. But that's more of a personal issue than an issue with the game. But other than that, It got me engaged for quite some time, the art is stunning, the idea is fun. A great entry!
I liked it! I would love it if there was a kind of progression feeling though!
I love the cute characters in the game and the overall look is really amazing. The tutorial was very helpful in the beginning but I think the starting point where you get all the mail was a little too difficult. After much trial and error I could get few a of the letters to the correct animals, but it was kind of frustrating since you can't make that many mistakes before the time runs out. I could see myself playing it if there was easier difficulty since the game is so beautiful to look at with all the details :slight_smile: Nice work!
Great art. Overall a great rounded beast. Nice work and challenging.
this is the cutest version of dark souls I've ever played lol I let the beautiful art style foul me but the game was quite a challenge, doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it because I did! the mechanics are very enjoyable and the art is an easy 5/5 for me, seriously this is really well done, way too good for a jam game! question: how did you design the solid ground? it doesn't look like a tilemap, I'm curious how you achieved that
Amazing game, but controls and level design are overly complicated
the game is a bit hard, but also im just bad :D nice job on a 2D unreal game to look this good.
Damn it looks cute but it's surprisingly hard! Funnily enough, we have the same take on the theme, but ended up with very, very different games. Graphics are amazing obviously, and the level is interesting to fly around.
Yeah a challenging game until you really master the controls. Important to learn that cursor position is KEY, so you can control how far you "flap" or "dash". Also, choosing to flap (cursor above chicken) or dash (cursor below chicken), along with learning how to control your glide will make a big difference.
@0x-void-x0 so we ended up avoiding a tile map. as we were just doing the one level, we ended up designing it as one big asset, and iterating on it a bit before giving the "shape" to our artist to make a "proper version" of.
@theartifacts there was a bug where you couldn't flap if out of stamina, which stopped you from gliding after running out of stamina. This hopefully has helped with what you described, but its still very much a non-intuitive controls game!
@jeremy-ryan we are honoured, again! You've done Elevander proud! You are very right to say getting over it style. initially we didn't plan for it, but I think the restrictive controls combined with a challenging intricate map lead to that experience. We wanted "easier slow ways" and "faster master ways", but I think we did it a bit too tight.
@lex yeah the controls we like but people find them hard. It may work well on controller, but we wanted to try a one handed mouse approach. On a less restricted map it may not feel so harsh.
@nani thanks for the feedback - its okay if mail gets delivered late, but I can see how it can still feel like a negative experience.
@kirkami yeah we wanted it to be something you really need to learn and master, but indeed its a challenge if the game becomes less fun / frustrating during that learning process. Thanks for feedback
Another 5/5 breath-taking taking game by you guys ^^ my score on the hard mode download \o/
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This was on the "hard mode download too".
Some bugs people are finding, if people do the score chasers with this we'll need to fix up a few things!!
Really wonderful design, and interesting controls! The collisions were frustrating/maybe too punishing at times, but the aesthetic and level design kept it engaging. :)
i played the super hardcore mode (not for beginners) of course because i am a legendary gamer
elevander.png
This is super cool. I want to play more, for sure. Mr. Frog is the best and the chillest.
mail.PNG
The game is good, but really it was impossible to add the ability to just walk on the ground? Feels unfair
@firinor we decided we wanted it to be part of the games "original feel". Not sure if you figured it out, but clicking below the chicken while grounded makes you do a "hop" on the floor, similar to walking. if your cursor is close to the chicken, it'll be a short hop, if its further away (left or right) from the chicken, it'll be a longer hop. So you can effectively walk with that. Tricky controls and we've seen a few people not pick up on the nuances of it. If you haven't fully understood the controls, I agree the game would feel unfairly hard.
Great game and amazing art style! I'm happy that you did not went Jump King route with this one and it is fun and somewhat chill experience :D Awesome job as usual :)
Really finished and polished game. Nice job! Maybe there could be a alternative controls for keyboard (i am really bad at using mouse only).
I'm jealous of your UI + webpages, it's so clean, very appealing --- tuto works well --- it's pretty original to remix floppy bird mechanics --- it's original we have to deliver letters both ways from and to the patrons --- I dinn use gliding so much, truth be told I feel the level design doesn't work that great with the bird and its mechanics --- I think it's a bit too cramped, for gliding in particular --- also I was getting gynormous A Short Hike vibes, am I right or? :-P --- that being said also I felt the character a bit unappealing --- he feels like he's constantly out of breath --- it's kinda cute... but a bit frustrating coupled with all these cacti on the map haha --- maybe I'm just not hardcore enough --- very well-polished and beautiful game, well done :-) :sparkles:
Everything looks so polished for a jam game, the art and music are so good. The game itself is fun and challenging, but agree with others that gliding doesn't really seem to have an impact. I think extending the game controls to use either mouse, keyboard or game controller would be nice for us lazy types.
Thanks for feedback! @harami / @furtive-pygmy Alternative controls is something I've been thinking about. The cursor location controls what type of jump you do and how far you jump, which made the controls hard to translate to keyboard whilst giving players the same level of control. I have been thinking about controller though - it could work with analogue stick.
@strangeryann I loved a short hike! We are curious how a big level would feel with this game. The cramped level ended up being a bit more "getting over it" than "a short hike". but we were really torn on how to design the level, thanks for the feedback.
Gliding in the game does feel harder in cramped space, but it ends up being a tool to make difficult jump sections but also allows you to replenish stamina while travelling - so at times its a big time saver!
Finally, regarding the character - thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it may not be appealing, but our aim was to have a bird that "can't fly very well", as we wanted stamina mechanic meaning only N max flaps in a row. So we found a bird that doesn't fly too well. We initially thought of a really fat bird! So the idea of looking always out of breath is I guess what we were going for. But not the hero you wanted :( haha.
Wow this is so impressing! It is extremely polished, I can't even imagine how you did all of this in 3 days. Incredible! You did such a wonderful job, I love the animation and the style of the game :heart: One of the best entries I've seen so far.
2869 (nice) on my second attempt. Lovely game! Really loved the art. Could be a bit brutal at times when you bonk off of multiple things or lose your mail falling down several platforms, but that's just how these types of games are!
The game just looks amazing and the dash/fly mechanics are perfect imo. I did not like how often I hit my head on things, it would have been nice to have a little bit more head room in a few spots for me. But on the flip side, feeling like a lot of punishment up front makes you learn fast. Despite seeing several other people play it first, it was still very engaging to play and fun figuring out where and how to get the deliveries done. Scored 6,333 on first Normal play.
Stellar graphics, and I'm amazed at how the whole movement thing works so well. I felt like bumping into places was my own fault rather than the physics, and gliding around felt so good. After a while, you start memorizing the spots and routing better - but the game sure does get hectic! Love it, def one of my favorites. Great job!
I really liked it! The graphics are cute and cozy and the music is really nice. The controls are easy to learn and hard to master.
However, I wasn't able to glide mid-air a lot of the times because it was being recognized as 'flying upwards' which resulted in me hitting my head on some platforms and falling down. I am not sure if it is intentional.
I really liked the gliding mechanic and the graphics. What did you use to make art? Are those vectors in illustrator? The only thing I'd improve is stamina, would be cool if it instantly filled when on the ground, because waiting seconds to retry jumping was a little annoying. Also the bird jumped up when the cursor was too far right/left which was weird.
Such a gorgeous game very impressive
@Pomo get rekt
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A lovely game, very wholesome and super cute artwork, feels clean and polished! Great job!
Your art is so good. Design clean and to top it of no bugs found. good jam ~guys!
@jatinstic-gaming - so you aren't the first person to mention it. Its not very intuitive, but instead of seeing "hold click to glide", see it as "if you click and hold, you will jump THEN glide". If you click to jump, you can't click again to start gliding - because clicking again will trigger another flap.
it may have felt better having glide on a separate button to jump, as quite a few people struggled with it.
@kgurniak91 - @spacey3d could give more info, but I think it was photoshop hand drawn, not vector stuff. Good feedback about the stamina replenishment - we wanted to try and encourage people to glide more (since you replenish while gliding), but it can feel bad indeed when you have to stand still for 2 seconds to replenish! As for the cursor too far left or right, this might be a bug - we can look into it!
Really fun, movement felt a *bit* clunky, I feel like sometimes you don't know where you're going and the glide starts a bit late, still though, everything was sooooo cute, and the music was quite nice. Lovely work!
Giraffe hates me :( Well maybe he should move to somewhere easier to get to.
This game is SO good! The art style is so well done, it's bright and colourful and endearing! The controls are simple and easy to get used to! The pigeons gliding face is so adorable and I love the cute sounds too!
A restart button might be useful as when I started level 1 I immediately got hurt and dropped my letters into the sea! :( I'm glad the froggy comes back with more letters after a while thought!)
Overall this game is pretty epic, I hope it ranked really high or even win, honestly!
Oh my god, I'm so bad at this kind of game, and yet I managed to have fun with it. The atmosphere and attention to detail in the graphics make it a solid submission! And who doesn't like controlling a little pigeon? Definitely not me :)
Thanks for submitting your game on the stream! Was fun watching the bits I could catch of the development, gonna give it another go now that I don't get fired by the neutral mood residents! :smile: Amazing art and really fun game! Great work and congrats to you all for an awesome entry!
Here’s the stream if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts (timestamps in the description to jump to your game!) [youtube link](youtu.be/urgNg4JO17M)
I really liked the art and this page's design, they look really cute.
It looks really adorable and cute, however gameplay wise I can't say that I love that much :sob: Probably my hands are just really slow (or fast) and I didn't find enough time to get used to controls, but really I think that it might be a little bit more forgiving for player.
However I would like to say that the art style is making this one a really great game despite of everything else. Really appreciate how you designed characters, tutorial, locations and even project pages here & on itch. A huge respect for that!
I LOVE visuals, they are fantastic. Gameplay wise, it's good, but extremely hardcore, even on a normal difficulty. I can say one thing, Pomo's game is easier than yours to play!
Lovely Game! I love it!
The graphics are amazing but the bird is very frustrating to control.
Screenshot 2023-05-06 221959.png
controler is actually op wtf
@honest-dan @brainoid That 13k run took me 20+ minutes, I do want this game to be my submission for the tournament and it probably will be anyway (that dsnt guarantee is gonna be played!), but at 20 minutes a run is a hard sell and the rules for it would need special care so that the people who survived for the 20 minutes that is usually allocated per game get tied for first! Lets talk on discord to see if theres changes that could be made to make it more tournament friendly!
EDIT: The vod for this run is on twitch, and I think I got the duplication bug once, not sure how detrimental it is or how easy to replicate it is, but knowing these people... they will find a way to exploit it LUL
Wow, what a clean submission. This is super polished! I liked how simple the controls were, and how easy it was to just, get it. Including outbound mail was really cool, as to mix up gameplay a bit. Environment hazards that make you drop all your mail was great too. If there is any kind of critique I had, maybe it would be to perhaps add some kind of variation in the gameplay, as endlessly racking up points can feel tedious (my game is similar in that regard ;D). One super simple thing that could look good in this game would be to add (probably minimal) parallax- I feel that it could give a little bit of depth to the game, but also I could definitely understand if you'd want to keep a more entirely flat look to it. Great submission!
@brainoid @spacey3d @honest-dan very good game. I like it.
Thanks for submitting your game to be played on the stream! If you wanted to watch my reaction again here’s the vod timestamped to your game https://youtu.be/iOvkquUaMjs?t=15740
@droo-shayne thanks for the good feedback! I do know what you mean, we've been trying to think how to improve on the formula - it feels like *something* is missing and we aren't sure what. We did start implementing "package weight affects flight" during the jam, but didn't enable it as we felt it'd be confusing having jumps feel different based on how much you're holding. We also had idea of fragile packages, which would break when dropped. but ultimately it'd just be high score chasing. Be fun to have a "completion state", we are open to suggestions.
As for parallax, I agree but I think I am happier with how it looked this way. I actually did a small 5 min devlog on this that shows the difference: you https://youtu.be/lFj0dVD1beQ
@pomo thanks for checking out the post jam controller build. Any feedback on how the controller feels / button layout? We are thinking about how to shorten the game, but yeah - sadly its not easy as each "delivery" from start to finish takes some time, so wholesale changes may be needed. We'll have a think anyway.
@tricky-fat-cat @erlioniel @ludumdaredevil thanks for feedback - it is appreciated. its a shame that it was frustrating / hard for you. When we decided to go with controls that have a high skill ceiling and weren't super intuitive, we knew we would risk alienating some players unfortunately. We just felt if we made the controls have A and D to walk and space to jump, it would have felt just like any other platformer. Our gameplay is relatively simple, its mastering the controls to survive that make it hard.
This is a good game, and I am bad at it :smile:
It first I thought that I don't like it, but give it a try. Very good graphics, sounds, and controls! Easy to learn and hard to master! Great job!
It needs a lot of practise to be good at this mails delivery :)
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Such a cute and charming game! The controls felt frustrating at first, but I felt myself getting better at it as I went. The adorable art kept my rage at bay while I slowly learned haha
Can't think of anything to say that either wasn't already mentioned, or you haven't already addressed on the post-jam update 😅... like, the art is great, the controls are very original (but hitting my head on stuff felt like an unnecessary extra difficulty point)...
Ok, one small thing: I feel like the Emu Express logo should be a bit more prominent, we barely see it on the transition between tutorial and game
Great work, the game looks amazing, and feels great to play! The controls were very intuitive and I feel like the layout of the map was very easy to pickup, I never felt like I was lost within just a couple minutes of playing. Even with that, I feel the camera was a little bit too close and I think there would be more flow if collisions didn't bonk you and stop your glide. I dont know if this was intentional or not too but you regenerate stamina fast enough while gliding that you can continue flying upward indefinitely
All around awesome work though! I'm always amazed by the amount of stuff you get within your guys' games!