Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Deliver to Whence you Came
By justcamh
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 12 | 4.40 | 93 | |
| Fun | 75 | 4.10 | 92 | |
| Innovation | 3 | 4.69 | 91 | |
| Theme | 455 | 4.03 | 92 | |
| Graphics | 247 | 4.19 | 93 | |
| Mood | 14 | 4.50 | 93 |
One of the best entries I've played so far! Solid game design with innovative game mechanics. You guys did a great job on teaching the player. At first I didn't know how to control the stage moving around, but as I was playing through each room/puzzle it became apparent how everything works and what I needed to do to control it.
This one is my favorite entry, because of how clever the design is.
these slugs are so cute
I had a great time! Getting the lure was a real wow moment and the levels are more and more reflective as they go (coding the pathfinding must have taken so much time omg)
the music was on point ! and i really liked the sounds made with the mouth. A great game, once again
really happy to see you've released a game for this jam! as usual, i really like your art mechanics ideas. throwing the ball was ok but shaping levels was **the** thing! sometimes, luring the rocks was not super intuitive and i ended up trying to launch my lure at various locations hoping that it would work. however, i managed to finish it, and it was a really nice and peaceful experience, great work!
Wow. This is breathtaking. I didn't see the screenshot and was mind-blown to see the world starting to move when I threw the lure for the first time. The worm movement is organic and a bit chaotic: it makes for really interesting puzzle solving and positioning. The only section I was somewhat mild on was the introduction with the orb alone, but it was worth it for the buildup. Amazing stuff.
This was a weird game xD Really unique idea, though it was really hard to get the "worms" to go the way I wanted them to. I guess that was the challenge, but it was quite frustrating at times. Also, it took me way too long to realize the bait only disappeared if they ate it or if a certain ammount of time passed. At times the AI would move in circles endlessly. The implementation was incredible though. The sounds really add to the feeling. Great work!
oh, this atmoshphere... best game, but this situation looks like so scary, I'm afraid that the environment around me will take me into its arms forever. This is cool game, and i miss my first ball, but I'm glad just he's back. image.png
I was so surprised by the core mechanic. Literally made me go 'wow'. Was in disbelief for a few moments. It's so clever, so beautifully revealed, and so emotionally rich: kinda scary, yet also super powerful, makes you feel both in and out of control. And it's well explored beyond that initial reveal.
The art and sound obviously elevated it. Such a strong atmosphere. Beautiful music.
Some of the best moments I've had playing a video game in a while. For a jam game to do that is quite the accomplishement. Incredible work.
ok, now I will scare everyone else, thank you, but I would like to become a green environment, why can't I choose?)
the reveal is sooooo cool! at first I wasn't sure what it was and then I realized the entire environment was slugs. Definitely getting points for innovation there I'd be curious how you came up with it. Definitely a little bit too unpredictable for my liking here but you should explore it further I mean it.
EDIT: played it further, I think the later levels do better with the unpredictable aspect, (also maybe a level where you use a slug to cross a big gap by riding it sorta would've been cool, idk I love that mechanic)
Amazing design decisions here. I still feel like the movements of the slugs/snakes(?) are a little too unpredictable, especially considering how precise you have to be with the ball sometimes
None the less, amazing level design all around. It's unreal how much you were able to communicate here just by showing and not telling. I wish I knew how to subvert expectations as hard as you can lol.
Graphics and audio were amazing as well along with the mood. The sfx for when you left a level were damn calming as well. I'm guessing that's you humming into a mike or something lol
Wow, was absolutely blown away when the mechanics combined, really clever and just beautiful. The mood and the innovative idea of this make it really worth a try, great job!!
Very cool combination of two uniquely different mechanics. Solid entry!
The mechanics is really enlightning, I wonder how u achieve that to let the map move like a snack.It seems like many Gluttonous Snakes are trying to eat your food.
No idea how you came up with this, I was fine with just the first mechanic of kicking, and then the floor started moving haha, great art too
Wow this is so cool! the mechanics are great and controls feel responsive. The physics aspect makes for lots of options when completing the puzzles.
The mood/vibe was great! Feels super polished! The first reveal was amazing
Downright insane game. Excellent gameplay, smoothness, puzzling, innovation -- like WOW. Pretty much ready for Steam at $1.99 as-is.
The game design is so innovative! And I also like the whole vibe from the visual, it fits very well with the gameplay. Great work!
Incredible! The ground is slug! Amazing innovations in the slug genre.
Seriously though all of these mechanics are super interesting, this is a really deeply engaging and dynamic puzzle platformer
once I got the lure it was all over, I was in FULL concentrate mode 5/5
How does one come up with these sorts of ridiculous game mechanics? It's so weird but it works. Very engaging all the way through!
Really amazing... came back to ldjam expecting it to have about 5 collaborators. Great work!!
Coming from "Help, I cast the wrong spell!", and doing the LD this time! Nice concept and implementation! It reminded me a bit of Morkredd, but the mechanics are completely different.
Because of the title and the few empty screens after kicking the ball very far, I thought you'd have to go all the way back on the past screens, but apparently not. I don't remember if you had Lure at this point, so maybe those screens were meant to play around and test it, but since you could just run through them I didn't pay attention.
The environment/slugs are interesting and creepy at the same time. As others mentioned, move is sometimes unpredictable, and even when you put the bait very close to their head they do a weird complete turn. I realized only their head can "see" the lure glow, which sometimes makes it hard to get a slug rolled on itself to move. I feel like the mechanic is something that's meant for more organic shapes, but you managed to make it work with tiles.
The later levels cleanup the environment for a more puzzle feel with only a few slugs, I liked them! I wonder if you started by thinking about simple puzzles like this then added the more organic screens with slugs everywhere, or the opposite. I feel like the first levels could have been the ones with few slugs for a more traditional tutorial approach, but in this case you'd lose the "wow" effect of the whole environment moving.
Lovely graphics and the music you chose really set the mood. The lure mechanic is top notch - great idea. Overall really solid game and I'm a fan of how you integrated it into your itch page.
I think the main mechanics could have been explained better in general: at first I didn't know you could jump or that you had to drag the mouse to kick. Pretty nice game though! Really like the setting and the lure mechanic is really really cool, even though it's hard to know how the ground will change every time. Sadly I didn't get to the end because I kept being blocked. Cool experience regardless!
This game just has an incredible atmosphere. The gameplay is unique, and the kicking mechanic felt great. The luring mechanic was challenging to fully grasp, but it's one of the coolest mechanics I've encountered this jam. Love the art and overall mood. Excellent work!
Wow I think this is the best game I played so far ! Everything is neat, like the kick is satisfying (the sound design too), seeing the little slugs move is sooo cool. I really love how creative this is, I was really hooked and I truly loved it ! Congrats <3
That was an amazing game and experience. Love the puzzles!!! deliver.PNG
I loved this game. The mechanics are so creative, the mood is immaculate, and the difficulty is just right. Super well done.
took me 33 minutes but i got there in the end :')
Nice sound design. Cute graphics. And intetesting logic of bottle.
I really liked your game!
The idea and implementation are great. I really liked the narrative. How we walked on strange tiles, and only after using the bait it became clear that we had been walking on slugs all this time. The ending is awesome too.
I replayed it for the second time in the hope that the game has a second ending where you can kick from a safe distance :D You could just make a barrier from above so that the projectile that we kicked would fly, could not physically fly in a straight trajectory to the target. Then people would know for sure that there is no way to do it. Without invisible walls for this :D
Thank you for your game, work like this inspires me and give me joy!
What the heck, this was incredible! Beat in 14m 37s, but to the very end, I couldn't completely be sure which part of the environment would become a slug and start moving around. So atmospheric with such a simple art style. The gameplay was damn fun, and the physics of it all felt so satisfying. Amazing work, fantastic entry!
Beautiful game, I love the art style and the interesting game mechanic!
I can't explain it but the thought of the entire world being made out of slugs is horrifying somehow. Anyway, very interesting idea but slightly painful in some places, due to physics not being perfect, due to the slugs being a bit dumb, etc etc. Felt very atmospheric, the music fit nicely into the gloom.
Took me 25 minutes with pauses to finish and to deliver the "meal" as I got stuck in one room and forgot that I could reset the current room. I love the art and the mood, both support the mood very well!
Okay. this is seriously cool!!! Digging the mouth noise sfx ;) Honestly, just thoroughly impressed with this. Really original, great work!
What a clever interpretation of the theme, as well as main mechanic! Love when pixel art games give spooky/unsettling vibes. The sound was somehow creepy and funny at the same time?? The ending was unexpected and terrifying. Loved it.
Edit: Link to Twitch VOD https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1810045623?t=02h34m50s
Wow, super innovative! It's a very fun puzzle game! Great job! I love the art, and the animations are super cute!!
Love the slug concept. It was a little frustrating to get them where I wanted them, but if I could just drag them around with a mouse it wouldn't be as interesting. Great job with the ending, a nice touch of story telling! I was less interested in the ball/golf mechanics until it started to interact with the slugs. I wonder what other ways you could get these 2 to interact. (sleepy slug needs to be hit with ball before it moves? slugs that chase ball around?) Overall great job! Congrats!
I like the concept of the game and how you reveal it, really clever and fun.
I loved it. At first the game seems pretty straightforward, just kick to ball to the end of the level. But when the wall start moving that was really unerving and fascinating. As you progress you get a better understanding how to control them. Really awesome concept and level design.
Really innovative function with being able to bait the environment around in different ways.
10min 2sec on the first try, there's a neat physics thing you can do once you get the lure where you jump as you place it under yourself and launch yourself sky high, once you know that the screens are basically just trying to line up a kick to the end then launching yourself across (the last few you have to clear a path first). More to it than looked at first, a good puzzle concept, some of the screens were mildly annoying as you basically just had to move a few tiles at a time but still good.
This is a really innovative gameplay mechanic. I really enjoyed the creativity that I felt as a player, that I have not seen in platformers.
My gameplay was really slow (compared to the numbers in other comments). And I love the concept. Surprised me by emotions. My play session https://youtu.be/UEcqvckFdSY
Absolutely fantastic! One of the best I've seen this game, the world shapeshifting was amazing and the whole atmosphere and gameplay was spot on! I did get sometimes stuck in the terrain when it shapeshifted but nothing the R button couldn't fix! Honestly loved this, one of the best to wind down after a long day, not too difficult neither! Just the right balance of skill and fun. Loved it!
Great entry again Camh! Clever and unexpected mechanics. Nice to have a puzzle game where there isn't 1 perfect solution, more that the puzzle is more fluid and just a task to manipulate the environment to meet your goal. I liked that the ball turned into "lure" whilst in movement, added that extra dimension to it.
very nicely done, it's so polished and innovative. the art and music of the game really adds to the mood as a whole. I personally think making a fun puzzle platformer is very challenging as it could very quickly turn into some repetitive mess, be you did a great job not to fall into that. great great game!
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I love the mechanics! great execution and definitely a genius idea! i can see this excel and become a long lasting game! great job!
Very unique mechanics! I had fun playing! I think it was hard to tell which side was the "head" and which side was the "tail". Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. But I feel like it could've been highlighted a bit more. But hey, it was a compo game!
This was really fun to play I loved the mechanics and the art and it is so wild to me how such an amazing game can be done in such a short time! Amazing
Really great and unique game mechanic! I don't know if I've ever really seen anything like that before... it could feel a little fiddly at times, but I can imagine with some fine-tuning you'd really be able to make some incredible puzzles with it!
The atmosphere was really nice. Part of that was of course due to the robotmeadows music, but the art and sound did a lot too. I think if I had a complaint here, is that it was sometimes difficult to tell what was move-able ground and what was blank space because a lot of the tiles were so dark.
It's cool to see you progress over the past few jams. Really nice work!
This is an excellent example of what I think of as the "classic LD game" genre: a platformer with competent pixel art, a genuinely novel and fascinating mechanic, a series of well-designed levels that can be completed in 15ish minutes, and some sort of narratively satisfying conclusion. I love it!
Very nice! This is a very interesting and cool version of "make your own platforms" mechanics. But this time, the platform wants to eat you :wink:
I really enjoyed playing it and in the almost-last level I just kept throwing lure around to see what interesting patterns I can make the earthy worms make. Everything seems thought out and super polished, and the music fits perfectly. The ending is very creepy (in a good way) and fitting. Superb job!
I managed to bug an earth worm once. I threw a lure near the ground and the poor wormy guy was just thrashing around trying to get to it and eat it. He finally unbugged himself and managed. Must have been quite a tasty morsel :wink:
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Awesome game! I'm enjoying lure-the-snake mechanic, very clever! Music and sound provide the best vibe. Good job!
Wow, the ??? ability is so clever! I love what a twist that adds to the game, although I'll admit I got stuck later in the game on a screen because I just couldn't make the ground do what I wanted it to do 🤣 It was still a fantastic, really unique experience! And I'm excited to see how it ends, I'm super curious where the game is going 👏
damn this was one of the most creative games I've seen even this late into the rating week! the moving tiles idea is so creative it made my jaw drop the first time I saw it, definitely gonna try to implement that on my own for the fun of it! the ending made me go WTF, I love the level design and overall mood, I wish there were more levels to this, would love to play a lot more of this game! everything works together pretty well, I enjoyed this a lot!
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Great game, nice mechanics and enjoyable atmosphere. Really, great job! And I made it to the end!
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I already said what I said on stream, the only thing to add is "it's whither not whence". Promote your games!!!!!
wave of 5*s, expecting medals, definitely deserves at least SOMETHING for such a lovely implementation of the core mechanic, such a lovely thoughtful artstyle and such a great soundtrack, and tone. it's just all around a banger, what is left to say.
again, the only criticism I have is that it feels like the design on SOME parts (though not all parts) was "I just threw a bunch of slugs down and the level turned out like this and it feels kinda good so cool this is the level now" while others are specific puzzles that have a clear and usually cleverer solution than the ones where you're just throwing out balls until you randomly get a working path. but it's hard to call that a criticism when it isn't even like it's poorly designed, the levels did turn out pretty good and that is a valid design method, just those levels turned out marginally lower quality than the more thoughtful levels (but still better than 95% of the games this jam)
good luck is all there is to say, hope the voting roulette goes in your favour
Just as everyone mentioned before, I love the uniqueness of this mechanic. Not only that, but its natural, almost 'organic' feel, like you don't really have control over the slugs, and can only gesture towards the general direction where you want them to go... it really makes the game feel alive. The atmosphere, delivered expertly with its sound effects and soundtrack, is sublime. I loved this game.
Really cool mechanics of moveable terrain. There's no fine control so you can get stuck sometimes. With more clever level designs this could be a unique platformer for Steam. For a jam it is super impressive.
Really creative idea, I don't think I've seen a mechanic like this before!
I am terrible at puzzle/platformers but I found this quite easy. I was able to beat it by spamming the bait and exploiting the physics getting propelled by the slugs. Good atmosphere and interesting mechanic, but I didn't have to engage my brain or do any puzzling. Which I'm fine with as it's not my kind of thing, but if it's to be expanded in future I think it would need to be tweaked quite a bit to make sure players have to engage with the puzzles. Screenshot_52.png
Whoa! This was one of the most original takes on a platformer I think i've ever seen in a jam. Crazy concept and it's insane that it works so well.
I LOVED the kicking mechanic. It was super fun to do and felt skill based throughout my playtime. The reveal of the worm-platforming was mind blowing. Something I always find invaluable in a jam is being able to create moments like that. Seriously, amazing props for handling that so elegantly. I enjoyed the music and atmosphere a lot as well. Super well put together.
My only gripe with this game is that the level design tended to fall a little flat when the challenges weighed in favour of populating the screens with more worms rather than creating discrete puzzles for the ball and the player. Tight level design that increases in complexity is hard to do in a jam at the best of times, but especially when the mechanic is as fluid as yours. At its worst, this lead to scenarios where I felt like I broke the level without knowing what I should have done in the first place. So my only feedback there is to lower the number of moving parts so as to showcase your level design chops especially in the later levels.
Outside of that, this was a really special entry. Props for making it, and best of luck in the jam!
I think the word I kept repeating on stream while playing this game was "organic".. What a unique mechanic that lends itself well to emergent solutions and challenges!
It took me longer than I would like to admit to figure out the exact nature of how the worms were moved by the bait, and I never got a full grasp on the jar's effect, but that didn't get in the way of having a good time. I felt like maybe some of the levels could have come in a different order, as it seemed solid walls with fewer worms made for better learning grounds, at least for me. There's something to be said about the wow factor of frontloading some levels with plenty of worms too, so it's not necessarily an issue if I do eventually learn it.
This game left me wanting more. Very well done!
Really enjoyed the mechanics and had such a 'wow' moment when the floor started moving! Great game! Here’s the stream if you wanted to watch initial thoughts (timestamps in the description to jump to your game!) [youtube link](youtu.be/Y-lHyYRQspI)
Heya mate, really cool concept. The worms were cool and I liked the ending :v: All of your entries are quality, though I thought it lacked a bit of the challenge of your previous entries. I liked the music, the whole atmosphere and the worm "behavior". Sorry, that I did not play it on stream this time, but at least I was still able to give it a rating in time. :v:
Cool game, but I don't want to be eaten. The movements of the worms look very natural. I would be interested in the algorithm. It was fun.
extremely cool concept, fantastic atmosphere and shout out ROBOTMEADOWS amazing musician person
Very interesting game ideas ! i love the mood and the art ! Capture d’écran 2023-05-20 220259.png
Wow! The surprise factor of this game is through the roof. Love the ambient music (hi @Robotmeadows) So unique and fun!
Oh... woooW! I cannot believe this has place 12 overall... it has the most amazing atmosphere and the music fita perfectly... Did I mention the wormy-moving mechanic is which **deservingly** brings you a very high place in **innovation** (for me even just this bumps your rating much higher...). And it exactly is somewhat extremely soothing... (bravo). The final transformation into a worm... reminds me of a concrete sci-phi novel (in at least several ways)... one of its parts, maybe you know what I am talking about. :)
I passed the whole thing in 20 minutes. Thank you for this amazing experience!
Very nice!
I like how you try out unique ideas like this. The mechanic can be a bit frustrating in the more complex levels.
This segment in particular was quite tedious, and I even got stuck just before finishing!
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But I endured and managed to beat the game!
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With some adjustments and tweaks the mechanic could become even more fun.
I bet you could use it in many different ways, so I'll hope you continue experimenting with it further!
just wanted to say that i showed this to a friend today and we finally beat the whole thing, still an absolutely incredible concept and atmosphere. great super memorable game <3