Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Maze Bat
By oliver-day
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 918 | 3.11 | 52 | |
| Fun | 921 | 2.89 | 52 | |
| Innovation | 1031 | 2.38 | 52 | |
| Theme | 1010 | 2.75 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 761 | 3.27 | 52 | |
| Humor | 868 | 2.32 | 44 | |
| Mood | 821 | 3.18 | 49 |
Notes: I only have one tiny creature (the bat) but I hope that won't matter too much. If you have any feedback, or find any bugs please post them here.
Edit: I think the only significant changes I have made are to the messages at the top of the game. Also fixed player movement and some subtle bugs with the rain later in the week.
Love the ascii art style and the ^^bat animation!
Nice and chill.
This was very interesting since I like a good maze. I noticed the score was reset for each maze but, everything doesn't have to be a competition.
lovely art style and mazes. would have liked to also be able to collect other things than the Os.
Somehow I managed to get stuck twice on start of a new (second) level (after completing the first).
Love the ascii art!
For a game made solo, this is a very decent result. I like your ASCII style. Respect from me!
@xparker maybe in a later game. You probably got stuck because of a bug where the game stops accepting a particular direction (tried to fix). Sorry about that,
Also, I found it odd I'm getting so many votes on humour (does that category mean entertainment in this situation?)
Chill vibes, what a nice vibe break from the standard LD submission. It was nice to solve a maze with an animated ascii bat (PS: love the ascii bat! ^^) and just let the music play.
Ascii style is awesome! I'd like to see you continue this idea and add in more creatures. You've done extremely well though! Animating the ascii bat was a nice touch.
Ok, it's a simple game. But I think there is always a quite power in doing something simple very well. Map gen seemed really good. I liked the background elements that made reading the map non-trivial. Animation on our character was a good touch. Particle effects were an unexpected detail.
One time the two coins were right next to each other. I did get the "stuck" bug when I was spamming left while hitting the level end.
Congratulations on the game.
Simple game made wonderfully well, loved the chill music and the little character animation. Couldn't help but see a little guy laughing all the way through the maze! Well done :)
Quite a nice short game! The mazes seem to be very well generated, the graphics are an great take on ASCII art (and the bat is cute!).
I think I had an issue at one point where I started my third maze and despite a space being at the bottom, I couldn't proceed, but overall no big deal. Congrats on your first jam game!
A simple yet easy to get game without big instructions. This is what my mind needed. The art is coherent if that is the word [the smiley face is fun, it made me laugh a little], the music is calm and it feels not hurried. Though I do miss a growing complexity in the game to keep me from zoning out, but it also is the charm of the game! As for the humour rating question, I rate it when it is not disabled.
Not bad
Fun little game! I like how its like ascii-art but with modern twists to make the game feel more juicy! It's very appearent that the yellow things need to be collected. However, the first level I got one of those were in the middle and naturally I thought it was my character. I was confused for a moment there :sweat_smile:
I'm not really a fan of the music. It sounds too cooperate for my taste. I work in an office and have to hear that on a daily basis. But hey, at least there is music! I think music really adds to the mood of the game. I would have expected something more 8-bity in this one :-) The gameplay is cute, but I was expecting some new elements being thrown in level by level. Maybe I'm a bit spoiled by other LDers :-)
You mention that the level generator was coded by yourself, that's impressive! What techniques did you use to ensure there would always be a path to the exit?
Edit: I see this is your first entry! Congratz!! How has the LD experience been for you?
.... I was transfixed. Love the use of ascii assets. Music was good and I got in to the zone. I had vertical control break on me in level 3, not sure why. Really cool mood for this. Would love to see more some time if you continue.
@stormburpee, @wouter52, I'd have liked to add in a few more creatures like a `ooo` to chase the player and maybe a some items like a key `@-` (but didn't get time).
@wouter52, I think I just got a bit tired of 8-bit music after my last game (a pixel art platformer that didn't work) and wanted something else. I'd like to be able to customise the music to be both simple and not that fast paced so maybe I'll use something like BeepBox in the next game jam.
I coded the maze generator by moving around the "centre" deleting the wall in that direction and adding in walls as necessary; I started with a simple maze with a guaranteed single path from any place to any other place and added on to that (I can't remember the name heard about it somewhere online). I just moved it around randomly which takes a lot of passes and has a tendency to average out around the area it started; a more efficient algorithm might try to take an overall rout then layer shorter randomness on top of that.
I don't think the music fits, but the game is great! I liked the general vibe of it.
@fenderbate yes, It does sound a bit modern for an older style game, but I was trying to do something different this time.
Well done on making this game. I love the background music!
super!
Since this is a game with ASCII graphics, I love the animations! Maybe in the future a great idea is to generate the mazes from scripts for example. But overall, since this is the first event you've attended, this game is great! Congratulations!
@Planetary thanks for playing. Not sure what you mean by generate from scripts; I used Golang for the maze generation code.
Very relaxing little game. Impressive how much mood you can create with just some ASCII.
Nice little game. Loved the audio and graphics. Feel was really nice. A bit of preposition or narrative (just a touch) would have been nice, just so I have an idea what I am and what I'm doing in the game? Am I bat collecting berries or something? I really wasn't sure.
However, I enjoyed playing it. Not normally a fan of mazes, but the overall vibe of the game kept me playing for a few levels. Not sure if anything changes later in the game or not, but it was a chill experience,
the best kind of game is the kind where you can pretend to be productive while fooling around and solving mazes in another tab
@hi-im-greg I kind of wanted to get directly into the game but your right a bit of text would have nice. I couldn't think of anything good though. Would have liked to change up the levels a bit but only got a varying level style working.
Some people have mentioned that the bat looks more like a smiley face or a dragon. Interesting, even though that is not what I intended.
Cute little game. The "ascii" art is effective and charming. I would have liked the mazes to get bigger and more challenging though.
Nice little game. Was fun to try to to solve the different maze. Maybe adding an other incentive than finishing the level would have been great, like a timer or a movement count.
Great job anyway !
Cool game. A countdown could definitely spice the things up! Should be easy to manually set up if there's a small set of maps and spawn points for the coins, otherwise you could think of more dynamic approaches to avoid making the maps unbeatable, like fine-tuning the countdown by evaluating the minimum paths required to get to the coins and then out of the map. I'll come back later to check if there's a post-jam version!
@bashem maybe in a week, got exams at the moment and I would like to try out some other games after that. I was more thinking of being chased but a countdown would be interesting as well.
Nice relaxing game. Really like the simple visuals and the music. Controlled well and was fun to play!
Cute little game in Ascii, a little repetitive but cool and relaxing ^^
It's cool and nice, but it's just a labyrinth.
The way you used ascii characters to create sceneries is cool, and it makes a nice atmosphere. But some sceneries look like wall with a slightly different color, it's a bit confusing. I took some time to find a path in the first level because of that.
We just don't know what are those yellow circles we have to pick, and what is this final blue circle we have to pick/open.
I have tried a few different things with the soundtrack: decompressing the entire soundtrack at the start pauses execution on the web; if I stream as it decompresses, it cuts out every once in a while. I eventually decided to just load it at the start.
Obviously doing custom loading in JS and building a separate system for web and desktop would be more efficient, but I don't know much about doing that. Maybe I could try a different library though.
Nice little game, kudos for using Go for the jam project.
Love the music!
Pretty fun little game