Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Ghastly Tower
By crispypear
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 77 | 3.91 | 25 | |
| Fun | 134 | 3.67 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 22 | 4.30 | 25 | |
| Theme | 87 | 4.06 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 63 | 4.04 | 25 | |
| Audio | 6 | 4.22 | 24 | |
| Mood | 46 | 3.90 | 24 |
Cool mechanic, but I think that it would be much better with normal jumping. For me it's way too hard to coordinate rocket jumps with shooting mid-air in other directions. The artstyle is really nice and consistent, the music very fitting too. It's great that you made the effort to include the story cutscene. Good job!
Mechanic is pretty cool, just hard enough. Over time I was able to move like it was a normal jump! But it is so impressively hard to get a line that I still don't know if it is even possible! :joy:
Very cool game! The opening cinematic was awesome, and the game was a super cool twist on Tetris. I also really liked the music - it added a lot to the retro vibe. The bomb blocks felt a bit useless unless they were on the topmost part of the brick, since getting close to them had a very high risk of dying (most of my deaths were because I accidentally hit a bomb block up close) - maybe preventing them from killing you would've helped? The lack of an ability to rotate the blocks also made it very hard to get a full line, but that's probably not really the intention, as blocks reaching the top of the screen don't cause a game over anyway. Overall, I really enjoyed this - excellent entry! My highscore was level 6.
@frogman I agree on the bomb part. The hitbox is actually a bit bigger than other blocks, so it is possible to hit them by shooting straight down right beside them. This is in no way obvious, and I wish I had time to work more on the bombs. The player being immune is a nice solution, might try it out for a post jam!
(also didn't have time to implement rotation. damn you gamejam time limit!!)
Very nice graphics and the music was great!
really polished mechanics and i loved the art style. the gameplay is definitely in the easy to learn hard to master genre and i love that so much. lots of hidden depth. One thing i would like to see is to not have the bombs harm the player and make the radius a bit bigger so its easier to get those satisfying chain reaction events
@qayndecim oh damn you're right! Thank you for commenting, I never considered that having the player be immune to bombs would let me make the bomb area bigger!
The intro was super cool and I really like the artstyle! The gameplay is probably fun too but I really can't manage it, haha! Good work!
@sandra-c it's super fun (source: trust me)
I was hooked by this cinematic and by this rocket jump, although difficult to handle, it turns out to be very satisfying to execute. Our space is constantly being reduced again and again, the theme is more than respected. Bravo :D
Loved the intro (including the musing, but there was a bug and the music stopped when I switched windows)!
I liked the idea, very creative!
For me the control difficulty was maybe too much? Jumping could be a separate key or maybe some other control scheme (for me the mais issue was that I pressed space and arrow at the same time, and the order wouldn't always be registered correctly).
@christian-zommerfelds yeah the music thing is very strange, has to do with how web gl handles sound I think. Alt tabbing makes the music jump forwards, so in the intro cutscene this might skip the music completely. Shooting downwards as a seperate key is a nice idea. I'll try it out for the post jam version
Probably already mentioned above, but reiterating for the sake of data: The audio was maybe a bit loud and probably could use a bit of balancing.
That aside, I really like the interpretation of the theme here. The idea of Tetris platformers is not a new idea, but one where you can actually affect the environment is new to me. I will say that I kinda wanted to jump normal instead of using a bullet, but it pretty much existed anyways with shooting down. :)
The graphics were also not bad, giving me some Downwell vibes (you don't want to know how long it took me to remember what it was called) but with a somewhat darker undertone.
Overall, a really good entry! :)
@supergamersgames Thank you for the feedback! The shooting down mechanic was indeed a way to make the game feel different from other tetris platformers, while at the same time trying to make the shooting mechanic serve more than one purpose. I found that I would either have to add some second button to the mix, or make shooting upwards impossible without a jump to add jumping. I think I prefer it as it stands, as it felt like a more satisfying jump when I got used to it.
As for the mixing, that has been added to my list of skills to learn. I never quite get it right. Thank you for pointing that out!
Awesome gameplay, great tunes. Love that cinematic too. Wowsers! Also the perfect season for spooky games :ghost:
Cool idea! I like Tetris and I like platformers, and this game takes some ideas from each. It was a bit unclear to me how I was to clear lines. At first I thought I had to line up 10 in a row like in Tetris, and it took a bit for me to figure out that there were bombs on some of the pieces. Also, since it's impossible to move pieces away from the wall when they're right next to it, maybe a mechanic where shooting a piece that's against a wall will bounce it off of the wall would be cool.
Liked it a lot. Very reminiscent of Underwell.
Nice tetris style game. Had a hard tune trying to work out how to clear blocks, but got there. Struggled moving some pieces, but had fun. Good one!
@duckwings ah that darn bounce of wall mechanic. The code's all there, but i never quite managed to make it work.
Great character and controll ! Love the game feedback you given
Really unique and fun game! Definitely struggled with the controls a bit, and figuring out how to actually clear lines, but once I got it it was very enjoyable. Nice twist on block clearing games, also good audio and visuals.
This was a really fresh concept! It was a bit hard to get into, and I feel some of the difficulty is "unnecessary" (e.g. shooting down to jump, pieces along the wall can't be moved(?)). It would be neat with a way to rotate the pieces, like a charged shot or something, but all in all this is a great idea that's well executed.
Brilliant stuff, really fun an innovative, although I wasn't very good at it!
Awesome reversed tetris! And the mood kick off from the start) At first I thought that there is a bug and I cant jump, but when I figured out how the mechanic works. The game is pretty hardcore, intense and fun. I liked the art style, combined with audio it makes wholesome atmosphere. And on top of that you even have an opening cut-scene, awesome small game)
@fredspipa Thank you for your feedback! I like the idea of a charge shot to rotate pieces. I just might steal that. "Unnecessary difficulty" is also a really great phrase. Simple phrases like that make playtesting much more intuitive.
I absolutely agree that the inability to move pieces away from walls is unnecessary. I just found out that the bounce-off-wall mechanic I'd made to fix this didn't work because of ONE LINE OF CODE. Oh well, the post jam version of the game will have this issue fixed.
As for the shooting down to jump, I don't really find it unecessary, though I get how it might be frustrating for some players. It does raise the skill floor, but I found that it makes of for this in several ways:
Firstly, it reduces the amount of keys, as using W would make it impossible to shoot upwards without jumping. It also rewards landing on falling pieces, as you regain your ammo further up. It makes double jumps and triple jumps more intuitive, as the UI for ammo is already there. Lastly, I found it much more satisfying than jumping when I started mastering it, but that might just be a me thing.
Do you think adding an optional button that only shoots downwards might help? The button would basically work as a jump that also shoots a bullet. I've also made players immune to explosions, so landing on a bomb will no longer doom the player (which was absolutely unecessary difficulty).
Thank you again for your feedback, and for reading my wall of text.
Cool! really liked the concept, music and art in the game. The intro was great too.
I love the art style and the effort put into developing a narrative context for it. I found it very hard to do any good. Shooting down to jump just made everything far more difficult and I'm not sure it adds much since shooting the blocks to position them makes it hard enough already.
I do think it is a really well made game with excellent music and great visuals, though. Well done!
@human-writes-code Thank you for the feedback! I've gotten a lot of similar responses, so it seems the game has a difficulty problem. Shooting down does raise the skill floor, but it also: - Reduces the amount of keys needed (W to jump would make aiming upwards frustrating) - Makes the amount of available jumps more intuitive, as you can use the ammo UI to see how many jumps you have left - Rewards landing on falling pieces, as you regain the ammo used to jump at higher points - Feels way cooler than a jump when mastered (but that's super duper just my opinion) - Makes the game more replayable, as the skill ceiling is also raised considerably
I think reducing the difficulty in other ways is the way to go, giving the player time to learn the controls instead of being overwhelmed by them. In developing the post jam version, I've made the player invulnerable to bombs, made pieces stuck to walls bounce off when shot, and changed the difficulty curve a bit. Maybe simply adding a button that shoots down by itself might help mitigate the problem? It would in essence work like a jump button that also shoots a bullet, keeping the advantages of reduced ammo when jumping.
Let me know if you have any thoughts!
I remember seeing your devlog of this in my feed! Visuals and audio are very impressive, especially the intro cutscene. Gameplay took a bit for me to get the hang of but I like it! It's like taking tetris and putting a very unique and cool spin on it. I'm not sure how I feel about using recoil to jump, it felt a bit clunky, but that might just be a me issue.
A really impressive entry, I'm just so bad at it :cry:. The music and art is on point, and it feels great to play too. Great jam!