allie-vera 2025-04-08 05:27
Cavedude is so cute!!! I'm sorry for all the torment I put them through trying to figure out the second level ;o; Great work!!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Cavedude
By field-of-king and sleepyfikou
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 303 | 3.71 | 34 | |
| Fun | 135 | 3.85 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 508 | 3.12 | 33 | |
| Theme | 766 | 2.82 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 551 | 3.42 | 34 | |
| Audio | 264 | 3.60 | 34 | |
| Mood | 526 | 3.43 | 34 |
Cavedude is so cute!!! I'm sorry for all the torment I put them through trying to figure out the second level ;o; Great work!!
A very interesting little game with a certain level of difficulty and simple operation. Some intricate designs really trapped me for a while. Perhaps it could be more in line with the theme!
This was a fun retro throwback, and tough as nails! I kept really wishing I had checkpoints part of the way through each screen, maybe at the points where I was standing on steady/stable ground? Either that, or sliiiiightly more forgiving platforming, maybe a hair less gravity accel (or a lower max fall velocity).
Thanks for sharing your game with the community, I had fun with it!
I like it, but it's hard. maybe the balance would be more checkpoints on one screen For such a complex game the controls are a bit complicated for me, it's not always obvious how to jump or hook in Thanks anyway, well done
What a nice and simple mechanic! It makes the game appealing, though I lost many attempts beefore noticing that my character changes colour and recharges.
Nice! The overall look and mechanics remind me of the pico-8 version of celeste
Holy smokes this was difficult lol. After many trials and tribulations, I was able to get to the third level, but by that time I was just too beat down to continue any further lol. I watched the youtube video of your playthrough and the levels afterward looked insane! Dev is definitely a kaizo enjoyer lol.
One small feedback point, but it would be nice if there was a coyote jump timer to give a small amount of leeway when you run off a ledge. Maybe there was one, but it felt like it was very very short. (very noticeable when you dont have your second jump and you are on an inert platform).
Really cool work and I loved the character sprite and overall responsiveness of the movement.
I like the DA and we see that there are plenty of gameplay ideas but a few save points would not be refused... or else make smaller levels with only one difficult jump... in any case it makes you want to but I must not be the right audience
Pretty fun little platformer! I like the unique take on a wall jump mechanic, felt like you really got a lot of milage out of it. Having the sound effect + the character palette changing was a smart indicator, the sound in particular really helped me time my jumps. Very though little game, but pretty rewarding to master. Made it to Tricky Wall Jump 2 before calling it quits. Overall, enjoyable and well made. Nice work!
Boy, this was HARD! I've never played any of those I Wanna Be the... games, so I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.
cave2.png
Tricky Wall Jump 2 was definitely the hardest of the bunch. That last jump, man, I'm still not sure how I did it. Coyote frames, input buffering, I really missed these when they were gone. The tiny bit of leniency I'd ask for is this typical platformer thing:
cave3.png
where if you're moving away from a spiky surface, they don't damage you, like when you're trying to jump around a spiky corner like this. But anyway, super fun game! Nice work!
EDIT: oh god there's more
Very nice platformer, Clever use of walls as a game mechanic.
I spent 40 minutes but still couldn't get past the first level XD
Too hard for me, but it was fun
Nice little platformer, quite precise tho it makes it not so easy hahaha. it took me some time to figure out how was working the double jump refill, graphics are cute !
Thanks for the comments everyone. We truly appreciate the feedback and love you are sending us. We had so much fun working on it and are very glad you all are trying it out, even if you only make it to the first few levels. I hope the challenge brings you satisfaction, my co-creator did a great job making it very hard.
@caeonosphere I think that specific thing will come in a post-Jam update. Either that, or the controls will be adjusted to allow for the jump to be recovered without having to hold against the wall. Thanks for the feedback. Also, that edit, haha. Good luck if you challenge them. I couldn't beat them, only Sleepyfikou could.
Awesome game I hope I can play some more of it but so far I could het here. Nice jumps! Screenshot 2025-04-09 120350.png
Thanks everyone for the comments. The game was designed to be hard, but some of the sections have been more difficult for people than we expected. We have an update in the works we're planning to release after the jam with some changes, with one of the big ones being that jumping next to a wall no longer requires you to push against the wall to restore your double jump, which should mitigate a lot of the frustration in some of the levels people have been struggling with, like Tricky Walljump 2.
And just to be clear, the bonus levels are specifically designed for experts and are not intended for most players to finish. The difficulty level is significantly higher than the main levels, to the point where beating them is pretty much out of the realm of possibility for the average platformer player. If you beat all the main levels, you already did an excellent job, so don't stress too much about the bonus levels! That being said, they are not impossible, and I've beaten them all a few times just to ensure that. If the looping music is getting a bit grating after a lot of grinding, you can press M to mute it.
I loved everything about your little game! I honestly think you should make it into a bigger one, this mechanic has a lot of potential! It felt for me like Celeste meets IWBTG, and it really feels great! There is a lot of juicy in how the controls are fast and responsive and I can feel a lot how meticulously crafted were all the level designs, creating this really great flow. The music is also quite good and the pixel art is really charming!
I didn't manage to get through the whole game (even after a whole hour of gameplay), but I really loved overall to the point I got (i think the 5th screen, but maybe i lost the count XD).
I wished a little for a bit of time in a coyote jump to make things a little bit more fair, sometimes I felt that i was losing a lot (speacially in the 3rd level, that took me much more than the others) in this few frames ;-;
Overall, a really solid entry, very clever level design, nice controls e super cute pixelart. Really great! :)
The mechanics of the game remind me of the pico-8 celeste. It was a fun game and how did you determine that the levels are possible. I think I was better at it because I played pico-8 celeste before. -J
Pff, too easy.
No but seriously what a great entry. The difficulty is brutal (too brutal for me, but I understand that there's a range of players which will master and speedrun this), and I used to play VVVVVV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVVVVV) long time ago, which is what this title reminded me of. I like everything about the entry, the graphics are consistent and music is great. Awesome, congrats!
So hard for me.... :(
Really cool platformer, the jumps are maybe a little tight, but it's very doable with a little practice. Great game for a jam.
Damn that was brutal, took me around an hour (excluding bonus levels because ..nope) :sweat_smile:. A lot of levels and nice design. Presentation is great too. I definitely felt the lack of coyote time but in other ways it feels good to play and you get into like a zen mode after a while.
Loved this! Had some of the most fun playing this out of all the games I've played so far this jam, but some of that may be genre bias.
You know what's funny? I like precision platformers, but I _hate_ I Wanna Be The Guy. Half of that game is just remembering when the unpredictable hazards will pop out and kill you. I don't find that fun; it feels like the game cares more about _being hard_, in the abstract, than actually being challenging in an interesting way. There's nothing interesting about something randomly flying from the sky and killing you. It's just a guaranteed death your first time through (or a careless death later on if you forget, which is still extremely frustrating). A good precision platformer, in my opinion, should never force you into taking a death. It should be entirely based on your technical skill at the game, not on your ability to memorize asinine hazards.
Luckily, this game is the former, despite apparently being inspired by IWBTG. I suppose it just happened not to take inspiration from the elements I dislike. The controls feel good overall, and the levels are well-designed and explore the mechanics nicely. My final time was 23:49.48, with 179 deaths, which I don't think is too bad. I attempted to complete bonus 1, but while I was able to get past the first half of the level after probably over 100 deaths, I gave up after that. With longer levels like that, it becomes very difficult to practice later parts of the level due to how much must be completed before reaching them, making those parts nearly impossible to become consistent at. I knew there was no way I would ever possibly finish that level if I could only try the second half one out of every 20 or 30 attempts, and since my wrists were starting to hurt I was forced to stop playing for my own health. I'd maybe recommend some kind of practice mode, to allow later parts of levels to be played without the prerequisite parts before them. I don't think it would be at all possible for me to complete any of these bonus levels without such a feature, as much as I enjoyed the game overall.
Another issue I had with the game, though this is more than acceptable for a game jam project, is that the controls have very little lenience. This manifested in two major problems, from what I could tell: - There is no coyote time. This isn't relevant for all levels, but I particularly found it frustrating on the "Watch your head" ones. This can cause you to jump off the end of a platform, then realize the game has already taken your double jump. The timing difference between jumping _right_ at the end of a platform and just off the edge is so small as to be nearly impossible to become consistent at (unless this game is intended for people with millisecond-level timing accuracy, which I'm afraid to say is almost nobody). - This may be an intended mechanic, but I found it quite frustrating: jumping off a wall while keeping your double jump is, to me, not very fun. The game essentially just forces you to add a _very_ slight delay to your horizontal input, since to keep your double jump you must be actively pressing into the wall when you jump off. Again, that timing interval is just too small for me to possibly become consistent at succeeding at. This is the main reason bonus 1 was so difficult for me.
I may have been a little harsh there at the end, but I did really enjoy this game. It's very solid, especially for a game jam. Other than the issues with lenience, the controls felt better than a lot of other platformers I've played. Usually, deaths felt like they were my fault. Keep working on this and I bet it can become even better!
@python-b5 Thank you so much! Really appreciate the detailed comment, and I'm really glad you liked it. To respond to a few things, you're right, this game does not really resemble the original IWBTG that much. It was more inspired by the fangames. IWBTG has a huge fangame scene, and many of them focus less on the unfair traps and more on precisely navigating complex spike patterns. That was really the main inspiration for this game. Actually, if you liked this game, I might recommend checking some of them out!
And regarding your second issue with control leniency, we totally agree. That was actually something @field-of-king noted before we released the game, but due to the 72h time limit we weren't really able to address it. The current version of the game, which we plan on releasing after the jam, has a fix for this issue, and you will now preserve your double jump without needing to push against the wall.
@sleepyfikou Thanks for responding! I look forward to trying the new version. Perhaps I will be able to complete the bonus levels when I do...
The core mechanic of the game (touching stone walls to regain your mid-air jumps) kinda feels like it's a bug that got turned into a feature. Which is in no way a bad thing. The platforming felt challenging, but rewarding. The game definitely needs a bit more feedback and maaaybe less button mashing? It really depends on what you want to have in the end, though.
Overall - a memorable entry that left a very good impression on me. Thanks for the game!!
Great entry!
You know, I thought I was somewhat good at platformers. Now, some 48 minutes and 584 deaths later, I am not so sure :) I got to the bonus levels and decided these are not for me right now, but watching your walkthrough is quite impressive. Is that a reference to classic Ogmo I see in bonus 4?
This is all very nice. The gameplay is tight and unforgiving. The mechanics aren't original--maybe with the exception of touching ceilings to regain double jumps? I haven't seen this one before--but they are tuned well and the levels nicely introduce them with a mostly smooth difficulty curve. (Maybe with the exception of the sideways jump from a 1-block tall gap in "Secret of the Blue Key"? It was nice that that jump was completely isolated to this level and not punished, I guess?) Showing the timer across level transitions and *only* across the level transitions is enough to make the player think about not being TOO slow (assuming they can survive the level ...) but not pressure them throughout the game.
The graphics are simple but cute; though I think the palette in the bonus levels looks a bit less pleasant. The music is neat and doesn't really get old; the intro to one of the lead passages reminds me a bit of some of VVVVVV's music.
@aurel300 Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed the game! I just had to respond to say yes, Bonus 4 is a reference to Jumper. The Jumper games were my introduction to this genre and I had to pay homage :P glad someone caught it!