Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Umbrage
By jnur
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 264 | 3.75 | 31 | |
| Fun | 157 | 3.81 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 410 | 3.27 | 31 | |
| Theme | 503 | 3.58 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 354 | 3.85 | 32 | |
| Humor | 507 | 2.64 | 30 | |
| Mood | 640 | 3.21 | 32 |
The animations and general game feel were quite nice here. I liked the dual use of the umbrella as a floating device, and an attack.
Would have loved a little more leniency on death; starting over each time was rough. Nice work on creating a pretty solid platformer in so little time, though!
@magnesiumninja Thanks! Yeah, even I myself couldn't consistently get to the end every time :sweat_smile: The game is quite short, an efficient run through takes less than two minutes, so the one hit kills and some very slight randomization (the pieces of the singular level are shuffled on death) are there to give it a bit more meat on the bones
umbrella mechanic is very nice! I wish you could kill the enemies though, I was so ready to down stab one of those goo monsters but it killed me instantly lol
You earned my second 5.0 on fun! Love the diving animation and the controls are really well done
Awesome platformer, simple but effective! Overall I had a pretty smooth experience and eventhough I died multiple times I still wanted to try again and beat my previous score! I would add the fact that you can bounce off balls and enemies if you dive on them in the control description! Awesome work!
@katastudios Thanks! You can kill the blobs and the flying daggers by diving onto them, but hitting them properly can be a bit finicky
@based-on-life Thank you!
Really neat concept!! The controls felt nice and caught on that you could bounce off of things with the umbrella pretty quickly. Using the same item to switch between going down really fast and floating down slowly definitely added some extra things to juggle during the more precise section which made it extra fun. Great work
Thanks @gabexiii! Making the game smooth enough that you'll gladly keep retrying it was a big goal, so very nice to hear that
@jnur ah cool, I'll try again then!
Excellent entry! Love the animation and the look of the player character, the umbrella such a cool item to build the game around. The level art and music tracks are good as well, there's a pretty consistent style and I didn't really get bored of either by the time I finished. There's clearly also a very high skill ceiling, because there was a whole lot of those collectible things I didn't even get near, and I was already plenty challenged. Speaking of challenge, the randomization of the level is a nice touch, it made learning the different kinds of hazards more fun, as you weren't just running against one specific wall again and again, it was a much more smooth difficulty curve. The idea of *diving* into the *depths* is a fun take on the theme too. Well done!
Thanks @neon! I did try to place some of the collectibles in places where they attract the player to try harder things. And I did verify that all them are reachable without dying :wink:
Super fun project! I love a good main character with an umbrella :smile_cat: The layout of rooms (?) are fun to navigate and leave the little coins in just tempting enough places to push me out of the easy route. The part of me that has played a lot of platformers wishes I had control over the jump height (being able to hold the button for a higher jump and vice versa), but I know that implementing that sort of mechanic often comes with it's own balancing problems. Really enjoyed my time overall! :confetti_ball:
Loved the animations, and flying felt great. Had some good challenge and I died many times (because I suck! :laughing: ) but you had me hooked for quite a bit!
Very nice game with nice animations of the main character. True jumping and gravity seem very unintuitive for ptaformers, but otherwise - good job!
@dylan-shumway @greenradiation Thanks! I agree with both of you, plain jumping doesn't feel very good. It's pretty floaty and lacks some usual platformer features (like the "hold jump to jump higher" stuff and coyote time), making good jump physics that feel nice is pretty damn hard :sweat_smile:
@clymm Thanks! I have to admit that I spent way too much time on the animations, so nice to hear that you liked them
nice game!!! <333
This was a lot of fun! The mechanics of jumping on enemies heads always works very well as a platforming mechanic and I think you executed it really well here. I also thought the visuals were incredibly simple, but so effective and charming. I really need to learn how to make 'simple' styles like this look good. I also disagree with you that the jumping didnt feel good. It took some getting used to, but I did not mind it at all. I also felt the levels were made in the right way, with this floatyness in mind.
I was also surprised to see that the levels were semi-random :D This gave it a flavour of variety which made every run feel fresh. I liked this compared to conventional platformers where you are always bashing your head against the same level (although I like those as well sometimes :P)
Really great job! This was a fun one :D
in the genre "character who falls into a hole and everything wants to kill him" it's my favorite proposition of the ludum, I like the use of the umbrella to glide and bounce on things... the minimalist graphics all in pixels I also really like
@wuppos Yeah I don’t think the jump feel is that big of an issue in the end - you shouldn’t be spending much time airborne without floating or diving anyway :wink:
I had much bigger plans for the randomness that I didn’t have time to really flesh out, but it turned out well anyway as it did indeed make the level much more pleasant to repeat and retry, even if it just ~6 short segments that are arranged in slightly different orders.
Thanks for the feedback! I’m afraid that I can’t really give in depth tips on making simple graphics look charming, I’ve always done them mostly on vibes. For this one, I made the animations with a stick figure first and then fleshed it out until it looked somewhat natural. And for the hover & dive animations I positioned the umbrella first for each frame, since that’s the important part of the motion. In general I just tried to use as few colors as possible and slap outlines on everything to make them stand out.
Love the concept! Smooth animations, nice sounds ^^
Really well-made game! I loved the graphics and animations—they looked great. The music complemented the gameplay perfectly, and the overall design was spot-on. A strong and polished entry!
What an impressive entry! A neat little platformer with fun and easy to learn mechanics, but still difficult enough to take a while to beat! Not a huge fan of 1-hit deaths and resetting to start at every death, as that gets frustrating easily. So perhaps some form of checkpoints could have been nice. Might just be a skill issue, though :smile:
Great work, one of the best I've played thus far!
Honestly a very fun concept, everything is intuitive and I liked the challenge. Personally not a fan of the level randomization as it makes retrying inconsistent. Music was cool but the hihat was way too loud!
@margo @anderson-job-loeffler Thanks!
@toilari Yeah I agree that checkpoints would be pretty important if it was longer. As it is, checkpoints - and especially some kind of HP system - would've IMHO made the game way too trivial to beat, but it's a hard balance to strike. My past LD entries have been way too easy, so this time I prioritized challenge a bit more. Thanks for the feedback!
@mayrakissa Heh, seems like that's a divisive topic then :sweat_smile: I wanted to keep the players at least a bit on their toes when they retry the singular, short level, but I do get your point. I'd personally find retrying the exact same level again and again from the start to be more frustrating, but the best option would obviously be to either go all-in on the procedural generation or do traditional levels with checkpoints and stuff. Thanks for the review!
it's fun to play. the random level seems just shuffle of segments of handmade level, which made this playable and interesting. tried some times, all dead at a long fire channel from right to left :
Pretty fun and well-designed, the concept and animations for the little guy with the umbrella are really nice, would have liked some checkpoints but that's a personal preference. Good job!
I like this game! ^^
The art is great, the mechanics are interesting. Ricocheting with an umbrella is cool but not very convenient, but you can learn how to use it. I like flying on an umbrella more.
The music is awesome, it really conveys the atmosphere! :о
And yes, I did it!
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Whoa this is cool! Reminds me of a flash game, the animations are very smooth!
I think this would benefit from some checkpoints so you don't have to start over from the beginning when you die. The game would also benefit from some sound effects which would really tie everything together. Also I think the character could fall faster when _not_ using the umbrella. But those are mostly nitpicks, this is really well put together, thanks!