okuso 2025-04-08 04:14
I love the look and the controls feel really polished, but I literally have no idea what to do lol maybe a little more of a description ?
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → abyss
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 171 | 3.89 | 65 | |
| Fun | 371 | 3.46 | 65 | |
| Innovation | 103 | 3.92 | 64 | |
| Theme | 103 | 4.21 | 64 | |
| Graphics | 34 | 4.58 | 65 | |
| Audio | 428 | 3.18 | 63 | |
| Humor | 502 | 2.65 | 52 | |
| Mood | 255 | 3.86 | 65 |
I love the look and the controls feel really polished, but I literally have no idea what to do lol maybe a little more of a description ?
the intro is SO LOUD, but the game idea is awesome!
Needs some more instructions on what to do
This game looks gorgeous, the art is both beautiful and ominous, however its a bit confusing trying to figure out whats going on. In the end I ended up bugging myself with a couple of planks then getting yeeted outside of the map to a victory screen.
@okuso thank you very much! Yes it's not quite clear, you need to climb up outside the screen.
@katastudios thank you so much, that's great to hear!
@gabexiii haha, yes this bug needs to be fixed, thanks!
love it!
@sagan-rayner yeah, I agree, we didn't have time to make a clear start to the game.
Ahah, this one is pure art. Sound, graphics, idea and, for sure, ending, which I won't make any spoilers about, letting other gamers make their own way out of it pit. Bravo!
God this pixel art is awesome, you did an incredible job. How did you do those mechanics? It looks awesome, I love physics games
Absolutely beautiful art, very unique style, particularly in conjunction with the whole physics angle. Contrary to some other commenters I appreciate the lack of overly explicit tutorialization. The fundamental systems are intuitive enough to quickly figure out just by observation which ultimately leads to a more satisfying experience.
There's definitely some "UX barriers" with actually utilizing said systems (like buildings instantly breaking for no apparent reason) but the overall vibes manage to make even the jank feel charming :D
That being said, I made my way through the game by shamelessly bug abusing and superjumping off the windmill which probably shouldn't allow for infinite jumps while in collision :P
Probably the winner of LD57 for me, The art, the gameplay and the aesthetics here are huge!
The style is cool, the idea is too. My biggest request is step by step UI. Now it's overloaded from the beginning
I had a long face watching my imperfect bridge colapsing downthere, demolishing my only sawmill... The game is super fun due to phisics, beutiful and chalenging! Best gameplay of the jam so far. This is a winner for me.
I jumped on a stick and flew to God in the sky. 10/10
@petra228 unfortunately, it has been fixed already... No one will be able to.
I don't want to escape, I want to build my productive city there! I have no words for the pixel art, amazing! The silent ambience is perfect for the mood imo.
Minor thing, there seems to be a bug when pressing the ESC key, at least for me, I tried to cancel building but it "paused" the game with no way of returning.
Amazing game, a lot of work has been done, the elements look impressive. Thank you!
This is such a cool concept for a game! The art is great, especially the background and the icons on the left side of the screen - it's so moody! The jumping physics felt really nice to me too, the structures generate resources at a nice pace, it's all really thoughtfully done I think.
I also appreciate the hands off approach to showing the player what to do and gently hinting with the text on the right , although there are some things that would be nice like seeing the cost associated with each of the structures, as when I couldn't place a structure I wasn't 100% sure if it was because of the cost or I wasn't meeting a placement restriction.
I definitely want to come back to it though and can see it being a bit of a time sink - it seems like the kind of game where patience is rewarded. Really well done!
@is-a-hatbox thank you! We'll try to find the strength to make this game even better. Fixed the issue that you've encountered.
@plidomo thank you very much for kind words! Added cost info for all structures as you've mentioned.
I love the concept! Spent a long time building a (very non aesthetically pleasing) tower. Figured out the farming, which I love! I couldn't figure out the goal, sadly. I know it's there somewhere and I'll keep coming back to it until I do!
The art is *spectacular* and I did NOT expect things to break from falling on them too hard. That was amazing.
Definitely agree with the comment above mine: this is such a potential time sink!
UPDATE: I managed to get out! Had to take a peek at the GitHub repo. METAGAME!
LOVE the vibe of this one. The quiet soundscape and the harsh, synthesized sound effects really give the cavern you're stuck in an eerie air. A fun take on RTS style resource management too! It was fun to collect a whole pile of resources and then build a chaotic structure out of wood and stone.
I think my only nitpick for this would be to have a little bit of audio balancing options, but outside of that I really enjoyed my time! Thanks for sharing your work!
Oh snap, I remember seeing art for this yesterday! Beautiful game, and the physics system is really engaging! The answer is pretty straightforward, and this game could probably benefit from additional levels or environmental challenge - potential for a future version maybe? Excellently done!
Very nice pixel art! Very impressive!
really cool graphics!
Yay, LÖVE entry! I liked the pixel art especially. The game mechanics could be explained a little bit more, it took me forever to understand where I can build. Otherwise, quite polished! Thanks!
@marudziik Thank you! Yes I agree, should have made things clearer, unfortunately just didn't have time to do it all.
fin.png
Good thing I'm your subscriber. Wonderful pixel art! I'm glad I managed to understand what needed to be done - it completely changed my first impression of the game.
There's something very captivating in the game feel created by the combination of floaty player controls and object physics with the crunchy, crisp graphics and audio. The name "abyss" is fitting, the emptiness seems all-consuming due to its contrast with the tiny character size. The silence adds a lot to it, too.
The lack of any explanation is a double-edged sword: on one hand, it can provide a sense of discovery and a feeling that there is always more to the game's systems than you think (it was surprising (and pretty cool) to see that the wooden structures could collapse); on the other hand, the gameplay ends up being too confusing (Honestly, I couldn't get very far because there wasn't enough feedback on block placement requirements.). As others have said, perhaps with more work on the UX you could solve some of the issues without compromising that sense of discovery. Overall a very well done entry. Would be happy to see it expanded post-jam if you decide to do so!
P.S. онхор какой же вкусный у тебя пиксель арт, хрустит на зубах 🙏🙏🙏
Very nice art, I love this style of pixel art. True, the physics-based gameplay was a bit difficult. In the end, I built a huge economy and built myself a path from blocks of earth, between which I climbed on 1 board, because building a path from boards seemed almost impossible to me. Anyway, great job!
wow! nice art!
Very impressive art and physics. I had fun messing around for about 20 minutes. I could've beat it trivially by build a big tower of stone right to the top. But I was trying to make a bridge out of wood using a stone pillar a bit to the right of the cave exit. I found building with wood to be very frustrating as they seemed to only sometimes join together. If building with wood was more viable this would be great.
Good game ✨
Well made. Ending sound gave me a fright.
Love the pixel art ! Command are smooth it's nice to play. I find that it lacks a bit of challenge tough.
The artstyle is absolutely fantastic and I like the implementation of the physics and building mechanics. It wasn't obvious that you're supposed to just reach the top of the screen -I went out of my way to try and build a little castle towards the light and then kept going to the little mark at the top of the screen. When that didn't work, I just kept building ladders and made it out :sweat_smile:
Would be interesting to see how this could be expanded - maybe a darker twist on Lemmings or something.
woow the artwork here is insane!
@woe thank you a lot!
Wow! What a great game! I agree with many others, the art is wonderful! The idea of building to climb and escape is really cool; it’s similar to the concept in my own game. I couldn’t find a fullscreen option on the web version, and when I run it in LOVE, it doesn’t go fullscreen either, so the pixels look a bit small. Still, my sincere congratulations, this is an outstanding entry. Great game!
Some Loop Hero enjoyer here I see ? :D Solid proposition, lacking instructions maybe to be fully understandable. Very well done congrats !
Very creative and fun game!!!love the graphic!
Neat game! I made it to the above the hole and then jumped, thinking that I would win on contact with the hole, but I just fell all the way through.
Cool! Art looks sick! Wasn't too hard to figure out things although I thought the goal was to reach the "opening" as it seemed to be telegraphed that way with the light shining in. Once I had some production going I treated it like an idle game and left for a bit before coming back to build my way up. In a way the buildings might be a bit too productive but I appreciated it for a jam game since it might be tedious otherwise and time to spend on playing games is limited. It got the point across and I can see this expanded.
I just love the pixelart, it is gorgeous! Having a simple tutorial would not hurt, but regardless, this was pretty nicely done. Kudos!
I loved the artstyle, the colors and the pixel physics. Kicking around the destruction debris in this game reminded me a lot of the old Cortex Command game. I'm writing a comment after coming back to the game for the third time, on the first two attempts I pretty quickly lost all my resources, got stuck in that cave and quit. But this time I finally realized that buildings need a proper foundation to not collapse and also that you can build vertical ladders out of planks. So my winning strategy was to build up some blocks with production buildings on them in the empty space, and then to keep building a 2-blocks wide pillar to the sky. Screenshot 2025-04-10 220655.png I enjoyed the game quite a lot, and the only piece of feedback that I've got is I think there should be a lot more starting resources in order for the first time players to mess around and experiment and not immediately lose. P.s. The treasure island reference in the character bio was neat! :skull_crossbones:
@detectivelosos oh I love Cortex Command! That's where I started modding and making pixel art... Thank you for your warm feedback and for noticing the reference!!!
Wow this is really cool! I was so stuck at the beginning I couldn't figure out what to do. Managed to get it done.
Beautiful artwork here guys, I loved the concept although it took me a moment to work on what to do. I'm usually against tutorials where possbile, but some small one here would be beneficial.
Physics doesn't feel good, and I don't see the point of buildings, gameplay doesn't work together. Interesting overall.
@oddmes buildings are generating you resources to build everything and take up space on your blocks. Blocks are needed to build new buildings and make getting out of the abyss easier. So without buildings you will have no resources to build, but with a lot of buildings you will lack blocks that may be expanded to the top. Also buildings are destructible, so if you make a mistake while building you'll pay with your income. I think you probably had not much time to figure everything out. In our hand, we have planned a bit more and had no time to implement everything, but even in the current state it seems working pretty well.
Oh, no I wasn't clear enough, I understood all the mechanics. I meant that buildings didn't directly participated in building, just through resources, and because of automatic resource collection, only one of each building is strictly necessary, so the area cost isn't really an important factor, I think. So it feels like a side hussle in relation to the main goal.
cool game, but i haven't figured out what i need to do
Very cool art and I like the idea of the building mechanics and wanted very much to cobble together an escape. The game didn't tell me WHERE I should build toward, but I assumed the shining light area was the goal. Unfortunately I simply could not build past a certain point. I had all the resources I could want from the resource generation systems (easy, but also easy to soft-lock yourself because the mine needs stone...) but the planks I built would only ever have one nail in them, or one attached point. I tried to use stone and dirt blocks with planks to build a tower out, but at a certain height, it just tells me I can't place more. So I can get halfway there with blocks and a plank ladder, but I can't actually build plank scaffolding because it goes crazy and self-destructs when every other plank becomes a swinging pendulum upon placement, despite intersecting multiple other crossbeams.
A little frustrating, but impressive none-the-less.
@thesmellofoxygen thank you for the feedback! The game is about exploration, it's a sandbox system made to feel logical. So we assume that the player is the one who should find the exit and a way to get there using the tools provided. There are a lot of hints, and making any detailed tutorial will render the game pointless and boring...
To build blocks taller you need to provide more support, the game tells you explicitly. So your "tower" shouldn't look like one but more like a hill. It is possible to win using only planks, without even placing a single block. To connect plank with two nails you should start building a plank on another plank and end it on the second plank, it's pretty straightforward.
Heck, you can connect planks together? I didn't realize!
Honestly, I think you could make a workable game out of just the plank-building mechanics, no resource collection required. I struggled a bit making stable platforms (an ability to make planks "snap" to horizontal or vertical a la conveyor building in Satisfactory would've been appreciated!), but the click-and-drag to build was neat. It took me a bit to notice that there were distinct "pillar" and "platform" planks depending on the angle!
gorgeous visual style! my respects! gorgeous game, it lacked a small tutorial, but otherwise everything is great! I want to continue to follow the project!
Its a really cool idea but I found it too difficult to understand how it works. I think I need to just spam the resource creation structures at the start and forget about them. The stone blocks are my solid pillars I think? But I can very rarely place them where I want. The beams can be connected and set in place with the stone and other beams, but I rarely was able to managed to connect them between 2 places, often they just had 1 connection point and the other was loose, so I could not make any structures. Its a really cool idea and I wish I could have experienced it more.
sadmoment.png
moments before desaster...
I tried to do the minecraft trick, with the big difference, that here my woodwork crumbled into pieces. The result? I was stuck in this hole forever.
A really really cool idea, with fun physics and a super cool artstyle! Dunno what else to say than: Banger
Really like it, very innovative and the mechanics are quite deep, especially the way it combines resource management, building and physics. Very nice pixel art! The thing that I personally found lacking is player onboarding, while all the information is onscreen it's a bit unclear what to do and how in the first minutes of the game. But it's fun once you you understand and keep going! Would absolutely love to see the team expanding on this concept.
https://www.youtube.com/live/kSaTrhFTAjQ?si=9TiDbcI2BrchmXlm&t=2670
I struggled greatly! Love the art and the physics are really well done. Overall this game is super well put together, seriously impressive.
Here's my first strategy from before I knew what was going on which did not work at all abyssfailure.JPG
Annnd here's the winner Abysstower.JPG
@deadroach thank you for playing, it was fun to watch live! Really an informative and useful experience!
Реализация просто топ. Это практически готовый билдер: как выйти из пучины отчаяния, только трудом, только работой над самим собой. У меня не хватило терпения построить вавилонскую башню, но хватит терпения, чтобы написать заметку на ДТФ (с выше обозначенной красной нитью) : )
https://dtf.ru/indie/3725658
@yuri-antonov Огромное спасибо! Очень приятно читать ваши слова.