FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD54 → Astro's Ladder

Astro's Ladder

By alec

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall603.9832
Fun723.8632
Innovation234.3032
Theme1343.8532
Graphics344.2532
Audio94.2032
Humor1083.1630
Mood513.8731

Comments

haydads 2023-10-02 09:27

Interesting game. I like the styling and graphics. I found the movement and shifting of the ladder hard at first, but got there. Great submission

dorren 2023-10-02 11:28

Very polished and clever use of theme, great job!

whaies 2023-10-02 14:25

Really fun idea and execution across the board. The level of polish you put into your submissions always elevates them :ok_hand:

almageddon 2023-10-02 17:22

Nice graphics and good execution!

pe7e 2023-10-02 17:23

Looks nice, had a hard time to get A to register. Always love a mute button :)

tal28 2023-10-02 17:26

Really fun game and arts! Great job :smile:

cheesepencil 2023-10-02 17:27

Made to the end and I had to "cheese" it a little bit by rapidly pressing buttons when I felt stuck. This is a great game, really cool effects in a TIC game! <3

bloodyaugust 2023-10-02 17:34

Didn't make it to the end, as I softlocked myself on "Put your hands up" by climbing onto the ladder accidentally in space, where I couldn't climb back down. Clever mechanics, once you figure them out! Shifting the ladder along its length took some figuring out, partially due to the strange keybindings, but this is a great little puzzle game with some tough challenges. Well done! :tada:

john-gabriel 2023-10-02 17:44

Awesome take on the theme! At first, it made me think of that one boss fight from Yoshi's Island, but it's very much its own thing. The music is nice and serene - which is very much appreciated, given that the controls are a bit tricky - and the sound effects are really endearing, especially the bloops when the player character is climbing the ladder. I had a _lot_ of slowdown, which is understandable, given how much maths must be involved in all this. I'm not familiar with TIC-80 as much as I am with PICO-8, but this makes me want to give it a look!

diadem-games 2023-10-02 17:52

It is a bit whacky with how the physics behave exactly at each moment, but that is part of the charm! Also really nice pixel graphics.

hotaloca 2023-10-02 18:29

A very interesting game concept. I really find it interesting (and rather difficult) to be able to think in this 2D space by taking the ladder so it works out. The graphics are really cool, and fit the game mechanics very well. I also think it matches the game theme really nicely. Net, a very robust entry, congratulations!

apophatique 2023-10-02 18:54

Once you've mastered the controls, you can fully appreciate the concept. The art direction is very polished, bravo!

zerbu 2023-10-02 19:18

I love the 8-bit retro vibe!

alec 2023-10-02 22:34

@bloodyaugust thanks for the review and report, sorry you got soft locked! I'll have to dig into why that would have happened :sweat_smile:

alec 2023-10-02 22:37

@john-gabriel thank you for the comment and report on slowdown! I also got some slowdown, but only on certain computers. I wonder if it could be browser dependent. The game is definitely NOT optimized, so that definitely is a factor.

In any case, I'll add some native builds for people to download which should run faster then the browser build.

alec 2023-10-02 22:39

@pe7e thank you for the comment! For what its worth, you can adjust the global volume on tic80 games by

1. hitting escape to bring up the pause screen 2. going to options 3. adjusting the volume toggle (0 is muted)

just in case you run into any tic80 games in the future :wink:

scottmakesgames 2023-10-03 04:11

I love this one. I love the art style, I love the gameplay, the character animation is very satisfying to watch. It fits the theme extremely well. This kind of traversal is very interesting, I'd love to see a more fleshed out prototype one day. Excellent work! 😁👍

I haven't run into TIC-80 before now, I guess it's similar in concept to PICO-8. I'm going to dig in and learn more later on today, I love this kind of thing.

Just a quick bug report though, probably more for TIC than you @alec but I can't get it to start at all in firefox. I get the white play button in front of the dark blue background, and nothing happens no matter I do. I was able to play it in Chrome however.

verysoftwares 2023-10-03 10:53

quite original concept with great visuals! also yay for TIC-80.

chompdev 2023-10-04 04:27

Really cool art style and satisfying controls! This has a nice Mario Galaxy vibe to it and the ladder system is really intuitive and smoothly animated. You can instantly tell how much polish and thought went into this one. Great work!

indivicivet 2023-10-05 10:35

I got stuck on "put your hands up", skill issue!

good: - very interesting and unique gameplay - great graphics and music; especially clear style for the art and it's all really polished, especially for a game jam

bad: - possible to get stuck on ladders you've hoisted up - physics/controls feel a bit janky/unintuitive (but I guess that's part of learning the game, and sort of fun, so maybe this isn't a real criticism)

nilan 2023-10-05 15:06

This game has some really interesting ideas, and the visuals and music are absolutely stunning. Although there are a few minor issues, like occasionally getting stuck after climbing up a ladder and not being able to come back down even when in the same position. Overall it's a fantastic game.

quasilyte 2023-10-05 15:22

I had major performance issues in Firefox, but Chrome showed some miracles and I was able to play the game with an adequate FPS.

I'm not sure I totally understood the rules behind moving the ladder when it's in the hands, but I managed to complete the game somehow. 😅 The ladder refuses to move sometimes and this can get frustrating. I had to restart the game once due to a softlock-like situation.

This game is quite clever in many ways. The sound design is one of my most favorite thing here. The puzzles themselves are somewhat simple in a sense that they usually can be completed by a trial and error without any real planning; but that's a very common issue with puzzle-like games that were made in a very limited time window. This game does show its main mechanic and that mechanic is quite impressive.

t-c 2023-10-05 16:34

Great game! The mechanics were very well executed and the levels were very interesting. Got a bit stuck on the last one, and trying to reposition the ladder while holding it was a bit rough, but I made it all the way through and had a great time. Well done!

gentoogames 2023-10-05 23:24

this is insanely cool! absolutely love the core mechanic, and the chip-tune is perfectly off-kilter to give it that out of space vibe. some really tricky puzzles in here, and recently, ive been loving anything to do with platformer puzzlers. fantastic entry!

6len 2023-10-06 13:10

This is my favourite game so far, great take on the theme IMO, graphics and sound effects are really nice (especially climbing the ladder) and gameplay is really enjoyable.

Sometimes the ladder wanted to do it's own thing but I was hitting it off everything :sweat_smile:

zealous-coder 2023-10-06 20:16

There seems to be a lot going on here and I like it. I think I got a bug hands.png

alec 2023-10-06 22:38

@zealous-coder that does not look like "Good Posture" to me :laughing:

krynxx 2023-10-07 08:45

This game feels super polished and I love the artstyle. Also the controls feel super good. Great game, had fun playing it!

wuppos 2023-10-07 14:17

This was a really cool little puzzle game! The asthetics and music/sound were great and really fitted the intruiging puzzley gameplat. Realy well done!

Maybe it was because I played on keyboard, but I had a bit of trouble moving the ladders where I wanted them. I especially did not know how I could move them up and down. The character seemed to just do that on their own sometimes. Pressing the up and down arrows sometimes helped, but sometimes did not. Anyway, I really liked the puzzle design, where you had to figure out how to get the ladder to the right place to get to the flag. I had a lot of fun :D

alexandru-barbanoua 2023-10-19 23:16

the graphics are unique and I really like the gameplay