FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Below the Machine

Below the Machine

By holysparks

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2732.8526
Fun2742.6426
Innovation2892.3526
Theme2632.7726
Graphics2452.9126
Audio2312.4125
Humor2242.1626
Mood2842.4326

Comments

oadt 2025-04-07 09:31

Liked that you have to collect the dash and dive ability. But gameplaywise it was to hard for me :smile: The dash felt a bit too slow and I wasn't sure about its range

lindote 2025-04-07 21:29

Proud of you, @holysparks! The game nice, and fun. I Liked the dynamic of the movement (dash, etc) and the enemies. The only this is... it seems that I am playing Dark souls, level hard...hahaha.

zichemerr 2025-04-09 12:12

Cool idea

the3rdhunter 2025-04-09 13:34

Well done to create a mini-Metroidvania during a compo! I'm a big fan of that genre. Collecting abilities that give you more access to the map is just such a nice feeling natural progression. And I like that you've randomized the location of the abilities on each run to give the game more replay-ability. I liked the character designs, although the attack animation could be a little faster, and some destruction animations for the enemies would make killing them much more satisfying. But I understand that getting those levels of polish into the game is time consuming, and hard to do during a compo, especially when life gets in the way. Great work!

jeremyfa 2025-04-09 19:00

Damn, it's hard xD I though Dash wasn't working, then understood from a comment here you need to find it in the level, which I finally did. Didn't go very far because I'm not very good at it, but that's a good COMPO entry! One minor thing: the WASD keys won't work on a non-qwerty keyboard. Ideally, to solve that, you'd need to use keyboard layout-independant codes (scan code) instead of key codes, but I don't know how that translates with the engine you are using. Nice job anyway!

thomas-bringer 2025-04-10 08:10

Cool game, i love the concept and the upgrades! Unfortunately the game just feels impossible to play, there are hazards everywhere, quite impossible to dodge them all. With a bit of balancing it could be really fun!

daandruff 2025-04-10 12:25

The controls together with the slippery physics made it quite hard to play. Together with the slow attack-speed it felt just weird. This is a case of something that isn't wrong per se. It's mostly a question of fine-tuning the movement and speed of things. Nice entry though :)

torte478 2025-04-10 18:41

I really loved the dash mechanic and the different attack animations. And overall, the visual style turned out very appealing!

ljg 2025-04-11 19:37

Cool game! Does the dash not go through enemies? I think some music would have really made it. The art was neat, well done.

byebye 2025-04-12 20:10

Nice game! I missed having some checkpoints every 2-3 items picked up.

agraffs 2025-04-12 20:26

Nice concept, interesting physics like the dash. Would like to see how it ends up if continued after the jam (with graphics and UI at their best). Gg !

flying-dog-fish 2025-04-12 20:49

Why are the Roombas after me? Anyway, a solid platformer. The special abilities that you collect are a nice touch.

henk 2025-04-13 19:24

I had to give up after getting too frustrated. Even after several tries, my success on each run largely seemed at the mercy of the random enemy/item placement and randomized shooting directions of the turrets.

The slow back-swing feels similar to the whip from spelunky, but spelunky's whip is waaaay faster than that, allows you to turn around between the back and front swing, and has no gap between the back and front swing during which you can't deal any damage.

Additionally, in spelunky the enemies are less frequent and have more predictable behaviors, the viewport is much larger, and the game has multiple ranged weapons. All of these features together allow the player to plan paths through the level without taking any damage, despite the whip's limitations. By contrast, in this game I see no way to reach the bottom without taking _some_ damage, barring some stroke of luck.

kiv 2025-04-14 05:13

Nice and fun game, tha dash is super cool!

eugenik 2025-04-14 08:09

Nice job! This game is awesomely innovating.

ammonit 2025-04-15 10:04

What are these awesome sounds?)))) They totally lifted my mood!

atsh 2025-04-15 13:05

Very fun game, I really liked the animation for such simple sprites, both for attacking and dashing

The hardest enemy in the game is the cannon that shoots everywhere, it felt a bit random sometimes. The health pool was generous, but it was a little disheartning to lose dash if you're dead

Great entry overall

ace17 2025-04-18 11:19

> What are these awesome sounds?)))) They totally lifted my mood!

Is this game supposed to have sound?

koalabear 2025-04-23 17:17

Fun idea !

untitled-studios 2025-04-25 20:21

Fun! Really cool art. I felt that it was a bit too punishing to have to fully restart when you die.