FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD56 → a tiny HUGE escape

a tiny HUGE escape

By ericns

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5853.5018
Fun6263.3017
Innovation1303.8617
Theme6443.5617
Graphics8583.0317
Humor3903.3216
Mood7543.2816

Comments

mmm1008fm 2024-10-07 18:00

Fun game, but couldn't get past this part image_2024-10-07_210021180.png

tuism 2024-10-07 20:10

The premise is really cool, and the controls I feel are pretty innovative, but there are some improvements that could really elevate the design. - Controlling 3 characters by guiding them with a single mouse pointer, and toggling them on/off is a really cool idea. - The toggles 1/2/3 doesn't heuristically map to the characters so it was super hard to know which one I'm start/stopping. I think Red = 1, Green = 2 Blue = 3 is the closest to something intuitive since RGB is an established acronym. - The interaction between the screen moving to follow the group and using the mouse to control movement makes for a very difficult to account for oscillation sometimes when precision is needed, and that's a pretty big problem. I think for the sake of gameplay, the mechanic would work better with a static camera - that is, each view of a level is static and the player characters move around in a level that doesn't pan around. This would make pointing the mouse exactly where you want much easier rather than having to account for the whole screen panning around. - Other than that, the platforming character controllers could do with a lot of tightening up so that they feel more predictable and responsive. - The art is okay, though the animation was very charming. The various elements could do with some unified design direction though, they feel disjointed when compared to one another.

ericns 2024-10-07 23:57

@mmm1008fm yeah sorry about that, some doors glitched and i didn't know how to fix them (it's just visual tho, the characters should be able to go through it)

ericns 2024-10-08 00:00

@tuism thx for the feedback! The static camera is actually a really good idea, i'll try it out later (won't post an update with it here tho) and some things are just a limitation of the program, like the controls being kinda mid and the art looking unconsistent (it completely blurried the background and idk why), i'll try to learn something like Unity for my next jam

kseniya 2024-10-10 21:43

Beauty! simple and interesting) I love it!

doublemintben 2024-10-12 02:31

Welcome to the chaos and awesomeness of ludum dare! Congratulations on submitting your first game.

I felt that the concept of the controls was really cool, but I struggled with the rubber banding effect that you get from having the screen move which makes the characters move. As someone with dyslexia, it was hard to keep straight which character was which number, might be cute at some point to take a page from Dr. Seuss and give them "thing 1" and "thing 2" shirts to help lol. I loved the idea of the team work, having each have their individual jobs to do, made it interesting. I love ibb & obb so puzzle platformers have a soft spot for me.

Keep it up, hopefully I get to see more submissions from you in the future!

ericns 2024-10-14 23:01

@kseniya thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed my buggy mess!

ericns 2024-10-14 23:02

@doublemintben thanks for the feedback! Tbh even myself got confused with what keys were for each character but I'll remake it some day adding the numbers and making the camera better, glad you liked it!

cassowary 2024-10-25 04:35

OK this is awesome, congrats on completing your first Ludum Dare! There's a lot of potential here and this is a super creative idea. I actually didn't super mind the mouse controls, but I agree it was easy to forget which number corresponded to which guy and giving them numbers on their shirts would probably help.

The main issue I ran into was inconsistent collision detection on the springs (it seems like maybe if you hit a spring once it doesn't work until you get sufficiently far away from it again, or something like that.) I also ran into a couple other bugs -- a visual bug a couple times where the door would appear to be closed even though it was open and you could walk through it, and at some point I encountered a level where the door wouldn't seem to open even with all 3 guys on switches:

the.PNG

I definitely love this though, it's got a lot of personality and charm. I hope you'll keep participating in Ludum Dare in the future! It gets easier the more you do it. :)

kobato-games 2024-10-25 19:25

Great game. Lively background music and cool how all the characters follow your cursor/you don't have to go back and fetch each character :)

ericns 2024-10-27 01:15

@cassowary thx so much for your feedback!! Most bugs come from limitations from the engine i used, but i still had a lot of fun, so next time I'll try to use Unity instead

ericns 2024-10-27 01:16

@kobato-games thx you so much! The mouse mechanic was one of the first things i thought of, and surprisingly it worked really well, so I'm glad you enjoyed it!