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Earth Below
Earth Below
By whateverdat
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 132 | 3.50 | 45 | |
| Fun | 138 | 3.37 | 45 | |
| Innovation | 59 | 3.77 | 45 | |
| Theme | 72 | 3.88 | 45 | |
| Graphics | 101 | 3.72 | 45 | |
| Audio | 174 | 3.10 | 40 | |
| Humor | 85 | 3.19 | 43 | |
| Mood | 181 | 3.24 | 43 | |
Comments
liam
2025-04-08 15:35
Cool mechanic, good sprites and concept. Found it pretty tough to get going on the 1st level, appreciate there was the training intro though and I thought the plunge into the depths at the start so I had an idea of how far I had to climb was great. Wish there has been some audio effects.
Had a lot of fun making it all the way to the end even if I did resort to a bit of spam clicking at points and building a safety layer in the 2nd to last screen so I wouldn't plunge too far!
Really fun game, well done!
atsh
2025-04-08 15:36
I liked the art, and the fact the you see all the places you eventually climb to - very cool. It was also cool that each level had it's own challenge
I'm not sure the idea of placing blocks was really needed, as it make things more frustrating - for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to place block in the next level, other than placing my mouse at the bottom of the screen. Couldn't figure out how to use shift
I did finish the game and it was nice - with audio and gameplay tweaks this can be even better
Spacebar stopped working a couple of times, and that first screen is very unforgiving, I like the graphics though, I wish I could have played with the concept more but I just kept losing rapidly
I like the cool mechanics and graphics in this game. Where are the sounds?:) If it's retro style, then yes, I like retro style.
Thank you very much everyone for your feedbacks!
@liam and @follusior, unfortunately I couldn't find the time for SFX, which is a bummer...
@atsh the original idea was to build the levels with limited number of blocks and then play, but I had to scratch that out. That's why level transitions are non-existent, sadly...
@scott-r-howell I've not encountered with issues with spacebar but it is used to write tilemap data into a file in debug mode, might be related... I'll look into it!
yvanor
2025-04-09 08:01
This game surprised me so many times, as soon as the first run (thinking I would climb up, and see myself falling to hell and getting beat up by the devil himself was a nice experience)
It was rough at the start but with a bit of planification and understanding the pattern it's actually fairly doable and rewarding.
It was really demanding to pass step of devil and when I saw the second boss literally spamming projectiles I was like "oh no", but actually the rest of the game wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
I see that you wanted to add more "strategy" by limiting the blocks but couldn't because of time. Actually, I think the game is fine as it is; A big intense rush that become so thrilling that it's funny in its own way.
Great work !
This game has some really interesting concepts! It was a bit tricky with a laptop trackpad, but eventually made it to the top:
heavens.png
It was a little confusing at first when you fall through all the platforms, and it took a bit to figure out what was going on or what the goal was. But once I figured it out, it was neat having to dodge and build platforms in realtime. The pixel art is really lovely!
This was a really well done game. I enjoyed the mechanics of jumping and placing blocks while trying to dodge the various "bosses". The platforming was smooth and the variety of patterns kept things fun. I accidentally pressed down at the start and that was extremely surprising, but enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the parallax background on the starting level. I'm not sure if they all had that because of the chaos on the other screens :)
One thing that was a little rough was having the bosses immediately attack when you went to a new screen. Especially with the lightning boss, this gave you very little time to get your bearings on the new screen before being ejected back down. Maybe some kind of smoother transition between screens would have helped with this also, but it was a little jarring.
Great work overall, thanks for sharing.
ljg
2025-04-10 01:16
Cool game! I wish you didn't have to fall all the way down every time you restart, but the core system was pretty cool!
Made it to the top, finally. I liked the graphics, there are quite a few assets here but the player probably doesn't have time to admire them because of how quick the gameplay is. It's actually the main problem for me - the game was so quick that the only way to finish it for me was to spam-click and jump in a straight line. I think you could slow down the gameplay but introuduce some sort of penalty for what I did. Anyway, it's obviously a great entry, especially for the compo! Great job!
chuckiee
2025-04-10 18:01
Pretty nice game, I assume it'd be hard if I didn't cheese it :smile: Having a "boss" per screen is super cool idea. Also minecraft crouch made me smile :smile: Such a shame sfx didn't make it in. Well done regardless!
torte478
2025-04-10 18:07
It was a real challenge, but I did it! Great game =)
shp
2025-04-10 18:09
I love the concept, the things that tricks me the most is how I have to move cursor when crossing screens, but other than that it's great!
dhim
2025-04-10 19:09
Interesting mechanic! Extremely frustrating mechanic! Both at the same time! Well done! Really innovative. Took me a while to understand that I was in the Intro, then not understand the falling trough at the beginning ! Maybe a visual effect like a fading to/from black with falling streaks would help.
I have added you to my github list! Go check it out and star the entries you like ! https://github.com/stars/dhmmasson/lists/ludum-dare-57-compo
This game is really cute, I love the art and the backgrounds! It would be cool if you didn't have to scroll the mouse from the top to the bottom of the screen when jumping from one screen to another, it's a little awkward. And I didn't really find a use for the SHIFT key since you have to be fast to avoid the projectiles. But the game was enjoyable. Well done!
I really like the game's art style; my compliments to the artist. The objective of the game is very clear, I quickly grasped what I needed to do.
Placing platforms and jumping simultaneously felt a challenging, but that might just be because I was playing using a touchpad.
xpoho
2025-04-11 13:18
изображение_2025-04-11_201756124.png
I did it! Very intresting game with very fast tempo!
Simple, innovative and fun. The platform placement was tricky at first especially when you click an existing platform by accident and it disappears :smile:. But I managed to overcome that. I found that building platforms while transitioning between levels made things a bit easier.
33333.PNG
Interesting take on the theme.
It might've been good to have an unbreakable layer at the bottom to stand on, as it's pretty difficult to figure out what's going on when you first drop down and start getting stuff thrown at you 😅.
cure
2025-04-12 09:06
Fun jam game with a pretty unique concept and nice art!
`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFk44q7aTqE&t=11567s`
Made it to the end as well after skillfully dodging the lightning, it took a couple of tries, but my strategy of jumping through the lightning, then rebuilding just in time as the lightning has passed worked out perfectly! Going straight up on every screen was my ultimate strat, the second screen with the flamethrower attack nearly broke it though, I got really lucky there.
What a fun game! As you could tell from the first paragraph, I got really immersed in trying to come up with different strategies to beat it. Since rounds usually were pretty fast in the beginning, you could immediately jump back in and try to improve or make it farther, learning from the previous runs. That gave it a great sense of progress. Super fun! Music and art were nice as well, the pixel art was expressive, especially for the devil giggling away as he's hurling rocks to destroy my platforms. Great game, very well done!
Really nice entry for a COMPO!
Good job! :clap:
Fun game with clever block-building mechanics! The different boss challenges on each level kept things interesting. I found it pretty tough to play on a touchpad though - placing blocks while dodging attacks was challenging, but i like it. Good job!
sangheli
2025-04-14 21:53
The graphics are good. But this feels like the Dark Souls of platformers — a bit too hard for me, so unfortunately the frantic platform clicking gets a bit frustrating. Also, there’s a bug where platforms from the first screen stay on the second one.
Thanks everyone for playing and giving feedbacks! I will definitely be playing your games as well when I get the time.
@sangheli I couldn't reproduce the bug, but all the maps aside from the bottom one has the same initial layout--if the blocks you mention are the two on the center of the map.
really quite hard! :D but lovely concept and sprites
alvaron
2025-04-17 16:22
Thanks for dropping the link to me! It was pretty hard for me. Seems I can't devide my attention well. Couldn't jump AND make platforms at the same time XD
Also, muscle memory made me press space to jump a lot of the time
Thank you for submitting your game to the stream! You didn't catch me in time to play so I played it off the stream.
Very nice short game with some fine pixel art. I like that it's not overly punishing and once you start building as many platforms as you can it's easy to progress and beat the game.
WTAlSWJHmj.png
I agree with basically everything said by @empyreans right above me. Took me a second to figure out exactly how it works, but once I got the hang of it, game felt really fair. Cute pixel art, sound that fit pretty well and wasn't just loud or obnoxious. Great job!
missfire
2025-04-24 15:29
Love the concept—just drop the player straight into the depths! Fun, energetic, fast-paced, and full of humor :D For a Compo entry this is fantastic work.
If you ever expand it, I’d look at the level rhythm; slowing it here and there would give players a moment to think. Right now I had to dash upward almost without looking, panicking at every screen transition.
That’s just food for thought, though. As it stands: great job, thanks!