mrbamboo 2025-10-07 01:07
Nice concept! And nice renderer!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → Octrobat
By koolruz
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 78 | 4.03 | 54 | |
| Fun | 55 | 4.01 | 55 | |
| Innovation | 239 | 3.51 | 54 | |
| Theme | 723 | 2.85 | 54 | |
| Graphics | 151 | 4.21 | 54 | |
| Audio | 77 | 4.02 | 53 | |
| Humor | 369 | 3.06 | 50 | |
| Mood | 213 | 3.83 | 55 |
Nice concept! And nice renderer!
Really love the artstyle and the gameplay mechanics. Rlly hooked me up. I see this game as a full Steam release if you can make a good story for it! <3
Wow, outstanding visuals!!! Nice jump puzzles
I was super bad at this game haha but the music and graphics were amazing. Well done!
I couldn't make it past the level with the stairs leading down to two swingy guys below the high platform. Lush lo-bit art though and the seajazz slaps.
@vivid-hallucination Thanks for playing (and for the kind words!) - That level ended up being a difficulty spike that I didn't intend, because there's really only one way to swing your way up to that higher platform and the level doesn't give you much space to play around and get a feel for the movement.
I ended up putting up a post-jam version which switches the level order around and pushes that level further back in the list partially because of your feedback, so thank you! (Though I was very hesitant to do so, because I want folks to continue to leave ratings based on their experience with the original upload, and I'm worried that having the option of playing the rearranged series of levels might impact first impressions if anyone were to skip the original uploaded version and go straight into the post-jam version!)
Super cool!! I played the jam version and the rearranged version after a break, and it has a much more natural level progression. But on both versions I got stuck at this level, I don't know how to get enough momentum to go back from that crab (well at least I got that nice wall jump tech heh) octrobat-tech.GIF Skill issue aside, you did a great job here! I bet the speedruns will go crazy with movement as smooth as this, it's so polished!!
@denilseven Thank you so much for the feedback! :) I'm glad to hear that the rearranged version has a better progression!
That is some very slick looking wall jump tech! I actually had a different route to beat that level, but I like your way a *lot* better - It looks way cooler and feels great to pull off. I tried it out, and it looks like you can pop up swing back around if you catch the target just a little bit earlier, so that you carry the downwards momentum from your jump into the swing
wall-jump-tech-4.gif
For posterity, here's how I'd been doing it (you know, if I stuck the landing π )
tech-2-smaller.gif
This is a really good game! I think I got most of the way through it before having to cheat? As others have said though, the movement is really interesting, and the art and music fit really well.
My only real complaint would be that there were a couple places where I had trouble attaching to the right crab at the right distance, because it would try to attach to another nearby one instead (in particular, the level in the first screenshot on this page). That may have been my fault though. Hard to tell if I was just timing it wrong.
It's a pretty tough platformer; I only got through the third level fifteen times. And by the fourth, I completely gave up. I really liked the gameplay style, but I don't understand why the controls are so awkward. Pressing Z isn't very comfortable.
@kremlebot Thanks for the feedback! So that I can do better next time, what keyboard layout do you have, and what key is typically used as a confirmation button with the arrow keys with your keyboard layout? I picked Z because it's pretty standardly used for US-QWERTY (as it's on the bottom left of the keyboard), and seems to work *okay* with other QWERTY layouts, but I'd love to improve the controls for other locales, since I know QWERTY isn't used everywhere!
I actually had key remapping hooked up and working, but ended up cutting it because I didn't have the time to set up localization properly for all of the tutorial signage throughout the levels, and I thought it would be confusing to have a sign tell you to press "Z", if you'd remapped it to another key π I can add it back in to a post-jam build, though, if you're still interested in playing and just found the controls too uncomfortable to continue
Very difficult but very fun!
Thank you for bringing your game to the stream! As a physics platformer it was challenging and sticking with it rewards the player with the fun of mastering something interesting.
I appreciate the quick animation and reset after each death, it helped me learn through my 346 deaths how to carry momentum falling from different heights.
The SFX fit really well too! I never would have thought of blowing bubbles into a cup under a blanket to get water sound effects, great job on the creativity. Its nice hearing about your process, and I hope your engine making goes great too.
Lastly ,the game also led me to laugh out loud a few times when I accidentally let go early to fall to my death, or flung myself into a ceiling or back where I started. Good times.
AMAZING GRAPHICS!!! very cool, i am not good at platformers but this was still fun :)
Hoo man this is really fun! At first I thought the movement felt really slow but once I got the hang of the momentum it was great! There's definitely a skill curve and I think some of the levels could do with being a little easier π. But the game was really fun! The art was amazing and the feel was just ππ
I don't know what I could say that hasn't been said, but this is seriously impressive for a game jam product. Fantastic work.
Really, really cool... but I suck at it so bad.
Awesome game, I love how you built on the simple mechanics. Also this would be a really good speedrun game
This game has so much potential and I have some notes on how I really think you could improve the user experience because seriously I can see this being a killer platformer. I think the movement at the moment feels way too floaty, and the lack of sensitive movement (especially when just moving left to right, there is a lot of drag) makes precise movements feel sluggish. I think that was what mainly made me frustrated at certain levels (even though I seriously adore this game and the concept), because I just didn't get the user input that I wanted since it was so floaty. I also think that it would really be helpful to have an indicator which shows the range of how far your tentacle will reach, so you have an idea about what nodes you are in range of. I also think it'd be nice to have some way of salvaging your progress even if you are stuck at a single node because swinging back and forth doesn't really preserve that much momentum, so it feels really sad when you're just stuck at a node and have no choice but to restart. This is one of my favorite games I tried this jam and has a ton of potential.
Really cool mechanics and looks great. The levels are very hard, though. I think some of them could be a bit less punishing - the reset and skip helped alleviate getting stuck, but that circumvents the problem instead of fixing it. Great submission overall!
Very tricky and hard 2D jump game! Can't believe the well polished graphic is made in 72 hours
@johncast123 Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! :) I really appreciate you taking the time to share, and I appreciate the kind words!
For the range issue, were you having trouble determining whether you were within range of a target, or were you having trouble determining which target you would grab? The reason I ask is that either option is great feedback, but if it's the latter I'd want to improve on the targeting logic. My goal is for the player to not have to think about where the tentacle is going to grab, and ideally for them to not notice the targeting system at all :)
@koolruz I would say it's more about the range of the target. I think if there was more player feedback or some way to visualize it, it would feel a lot better as a player. Good job on the submission!!
Cool physics-based puzzle with very coherent graphics and audio. Once you get a feel for how the hookshot and inertia work, it becomes a matter of solving the level, which is very satisfying. By the way, this game plays great with a gamepad if you have one!
The level of polish in this game is absolutely incredible! And it is also HARD AS NAILS haha, great game!
game is pretty fun, really difficult for me tbh I couldn't get past the third level :(
It's a cool game with a dynamic that I like. However, I sometimes had inertia when just jumping near the wall. I still haven't figured out if this is a feature or a bug.
@yatsu Thank you for the feedback! That's an intentional feature which is formally introduced in later levels - If you jump into a wall, you latch onto it and you can kick off in order to gain a burst of momentum
wall-kick-tutorial.PNG
I had considered disabling the wall kick until it was specifically taught to the player in level 6, but I thought that it would be more fun to let curious players explore and discover the mechanic on their own, and it would be more fun for folks replaying the game to have the option to use wall kicks in earlier levels :)
Brilliant game! The main shader and the touch-reactive seaweed look absolutely stunning! I really loved the fast respawn after death - it completely prevents any frustration from careless mistakes. The minimalistic controls and always clear objectives are perfectly executed. The music is pleasant and keeps things from getting boring. The physics feel excellent, especially the swinging mechanics and wall jumps. And the cheatcodes are an extremely welcome bonus for when you're completely stuck :) Outstanding work, well done!
Excellent game! Original mechanics, engaging levels, and a polished feel. I found it very hard though, and gave me an out of control feeling. One thing is that the physics do not always seem plausible, another is that the Z key is used for jumping, attaching, detaching, and pushing away from a wall. I was struggling with finding the precise timing to make the Z key do the right thing. I would have preferred having 2-3 different keys for these actions.
I think the game is too difficult. I only made it to the 4th level. Are the physics somehow resolution or framerate dependent? I could not gain any momentum at all from swinging at fullscreen 2560x1080, which left me frustrated until I exited fullscreen and it suddenly worked. You could make this into a fun game with time and polish. And you should make it resolution/framerate independent if it is not. Good job!
I really want to play this game because I like everything about it, the graphics, the animations and the platforms... but I'm not at the level...
This game is very impressive, and I love the idea of the physics based platforming. I do think the game gets too hard too quickly though. I think if the game was longer and started simpler, and got slowly more difficult it would have been fine, but that's of course a difficult task in a game jam. Well done overall though, I think the momentum of the game feels great, and could definitely see a full game based off of this being successful!
Wow, this game is hardcore! I managed to beat like 5 levels (I skipped some) after lots of tries.
I love the movement in this game but it may be a little bit too hard to get the character moving. For example, if you lost all your momentum and just hang on a tentacle, you might as well restart because you are very unlikely to build that momentum again.
I mean, all precision platformers are like that: first you plan a route, then you execute your plan perfectly. Having single screen levels really helps to plan ahead. But in some other games, less momentum-focused, it's a bit easier to just wing it and recover from your mistakes, I think...
Another mechanic that adds to gameplay focused on routing even more is having to activate all tentacle-grabber-thingies. Even if you managed to propel yourself to the exit but missed one, you didn't beat the level. I think it could actually be fun to play this character but in bigger levels, with fewer constraints and spikes, just flying around and having fun.
Also, I think jumping and throwing a tentacle could be separate actions on different buttons. Sometimes I found myself wanting to throw a tentacle but can't do that because I'm stuck to the wall (and jumping off the wall has higher priority) which is a bit frustrating, because it's hard to move away from the wall with slow lateral acceleration mid-air.
Anyway, I actually really liked the game, just sharing my thoughts on it! π The game already feels polished, unique and clearly has a lot of thought and talent put into it!
@andriybyelikov Thanks for the detailed feedback - This was great and actionable feedback! :) I agree wholeheartedly that things kick up in difficulty far too quickly - I was deciding on an order for the non-tutorial levels in the last fifteen minutes of the jam, and level 4 ended up being a massive difficulty spike.
In terms of physics, the physics *are* framerate independent already, but level 4 requires you to make a precise transfer of momentum before you get a chance to become more comfortable with the controls, which makes the jump feel very inconsistent; you can't actually gain momentum by swinging, so you need to maintain your momentum by attaching to the tethers at the right time. I suspect that the change in screen size made the momentum transfer easier because it changed your timing slightly, and a small change in your angle of approach can have a large impact on how much momentum you preserve. Basically, the closer your momentum is to being aligned with the direction of the rope, the less momentum you'll preserve, as the rope will cancel any velocity moving directly away from it.
I've attached a gif showing the difference that the location of how you attach to the tether can make in terms of how much momentum you carry; on the first jump, I attach to the tether at the moment when my momentum moves tangent to it (at about 9:00, if the tether were a clock), and all of my momentum is all able to be redirected as I swing. In the second jump, I attach just a little later (at around 7:00), so that much more of my velocity is moving down away from the rope, and much more of the velocity is stopped against the rope.
momentum-difference-resize.gif
Similarly to the physics being framerate independent, the game is also screen-resolution-independant. It's actually always running and rendering at an internal resolution of 320x180 pixels, and gets upscaled to match the screen size as I apply the CRT and underwater effect. I'm very happy to talk shop about the physics or screen shader if you're curious - The underlying physics engine is actually a custom physics engine that I've been working on for awhile and eventually plan to open-source, and isn't running on Unity's sim physics at all, so I'm always excited to geek out about it lol (and I'm always happy to investigate if anything behaves in an unexpected way!)
Thanks again for the great feedback - I *really* appreciate you taking the time to dive in deep and provide specific details about your experience with the game! :)
@woona Thank you so much for the detailed feedback and the kind words! I did struggle with determining the right balance for letting the player wing it from a mistake, because seat-of-your-pants improvisation can be a lot of fun, but I wanted the player to have to interact with the main tether mechanic to preserve their momentum throughout each level. I ended up erring on the side of not letting players rebuild momentum from a failed fling, but that can lead to feel-bad moments where you grab a tether at the wrong point and get stuck in a dead-hang, with no choice but to bail and take the death.
That said, reading your feedback made me realize that I can make the "bail and take the death" option feel less bad, without impacting the core experience! If the tether were to have (for example) a limited duration, that wouldn't ever impact players who successfully maintain their momentum throughout the level, but it would make it so that players who lose their momentum would have a game-enforced reason to restart, and wouldn't ever have to decide that they were in an unwinnable situation and have to give up (which feels bad).
I also agree wholeheartedly about splitting apart the jump and tether buttons, and wish I had thought to do that during the jam! I had originally been playing around with a very wacky control scheme where you had multiple tether buttons, tied to multiple jump buttons (so that you were behaving more like an octopus, and holding/releasing several inputs at once), and the current control scheme was a holdover from that original experimentation period, which went unnoticed as I refined the design. Thanks again for the great feedback! :)
@piero-pbes-studio Thank you for the kind words, and sorry for the massive difficulty spike early on! I was deciding on the level order in the last fifteen minutes before the jam ended, and it was very much vibes-based because of the time crunch π . About ten minutes afterwards, I realized I had massively underestimated the difficulty of several of the earlier levels, so the post-jam version *might* be a bit more approachable - It contains the same levels, but in a different order that frontloads more of the forgiving levels early on. (But obviously please don't change your rating based on the post-jam experience, if you do try it out! :) I just put it together to let folks who wanted to play more of the game have a smoother non-cheatyface-based experience)
I love this game! The graphics are great and are very well complemented by the music and bubbly sfx. It's waaay harder than I anticipated. I laughed my bum out hitting the strategically placed coral at the ceiling :D This small communication with the developer where he says "I know you will fail here" is precious! Great entry, thank you!
Wow, not bad, I like this platform game with a physics system!
It started to get a bit difficult as soon as the first double-hook appeared... Especially for someone like me who isn't very quick to react. I finally made it through the earlier trials, but then got stuck again at the swinging-hook section with multiple platforms.(Level 3 maybe, The first hook, if you don't use a jump to generate relatively high kinetic energy, can easily be directly locked downward by gravity; *I guess that's the reason.*) Each time I was just a little shortβwhat a pity!
I'm getting a connection timeout when trying to open the game on itch.io. Apparently something happened to the whole site. Will try again later.
@flying-dog-fish Yeah, itch.io has apparently been under a DDOS attack since last night :( It was up again today, then back down, and it looks like it's back up again now
Interesting and quite polished game, but I really suck at it. It's very hard to control in which direction you get slingshoted and even harder to carry enough momentum with you. I dig the retro vibe and the music fits well.
this is great! really nice art and visuals. the physics felt a little unfair at times but super satisfying otherwise. there are way more levels than i expected! and it's quite tricky, but i never got frustrated. really good stuff :)
@torcado Thank you so much for the feedback and for the kind words :)
If you get a chance, could you help me better understand when things felt unfair to you? That's *really* valuable feedback for me! :) I try to build precise challenges in order to give players the opportunity to fully engage with a game's movement, but I always want each death to feel like a learning opportunity that motivates a player to try again - I never want the player to feel as though any of their deaths were unfair or due to factors outside of their control!
Thanks again! I really appreciate it :)
Beautiful game, rage inducing too xD Thanks for coming to the stream, here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2594438646
@koolruz maybe "strict" would be more apt than "unfair". specifically with the swinging momentum, there's no leniency with the resulting velocity based on your incoming angle, so if you happen to be coming into an arc a little off from the tangent you'll lose a large amount of momentum as you get hard stopped on the other side. while this may be physically accurate, it would feel nicer if some amount of your incoming speed was preserved so that even if i didnt hit the grapple right on the tangent i would still swing with more or less the same momentum i would have if i did. (or a different way of thinking about it, if your grapple rope wasnt perfectly rigid you wouldnt lose 100% of the momentum in the incoming angle when hitting the arc.) i still think if you go straight through the center of the grapple point you should get hard stopped, but if you're close to the edge then i think the game should help you a little. anyway, that's a lot of words just to say that most of my time was spent trying to hit really precise tangents rather than maneuvering through the stages, not necessarily a bad thing but i personally prefer the latter :) (looking back at the gif you posted in response to andriybyelikov, i think that's a perfect example of what im talking about. i feel that the second jump should still result in a similar swing. maybe not with as much speed, but not hard stopping you like it does there.)
It was pretty fun! But pretty hard also :crying_cat_face::thumbsup:
What a delightful game!
The art is delicate and beautifully crafted (I loved the animations and the details of the moving plants). The old TV filter adds a touch of charm to the image. The challenges are just right. Not too easy, not too difficult. The music, even when looping, doesn't get boring. It's completely immersive and in tune with the game's rhythm. Definitely one of my favorites from LD58. And the fact that it was made by a single person leaves me astonished. Truly excellent work!
Congratulations!
LD58.png
Ok this game wins it for me regarding the graphics. It not only looks like a CRT; it *feels* like one too. I don't know how you did that, but I praise you for that (as someone who's got a CRT as their daily driver). Really cool! How did you do that? Could you maybe make a community post teaching us? :-) Even the sound / music feels authentic to the game!
The game is brutally hard though. Even with the GIFS you provided I cannot finish it sadly. Also, I'm sorry, I don't see the theme in this one really. Sure, I collect pearls in each level. But it does not feel like "collector" if you know what I mean. Maybe multiple pearls per level would have been better. As right now it's more a mechanic to end the level
Don't get me wrong, I had lots of fun though! It brought a smile to my face and in my opinion that is the most important aspect!
@wouter52 Thank you so much for the kind words, and the great feedback! I also *love* the warm fuzzy feeling of gaming on a CRT, and wanted to make something genuine to that experience, so it makes me really happy to hear that it hit correctly! :)
I'll see about putting together a community post going over the shader that I wrote for the CRT effect in detail, but the long and the short of it is that I suspect a good portion of what makes it *feel* so right is that the game is genuinely running at an underlying resolution of 320x180 pixels, which then gets upscaled to fit the screen the game's being played on. The CRT effect is then being applied after upscaling. This means that the image being drawn is locked to a low-resolution pixel grid as would happen on a genuine CRT, but I have a higher resolution and sub-pixel control when drawing CRT artifacts such as scanlines, horizontal deflection, convergence artifacts, pixel bleed, etc. The low resolution input is important because it more accurately simulates the data being transmitted to a genuine CRT (a genuine CRT can't render anything smaller than a full pixel, so if the player sits at a half-pixel coordinate, that position will be rounded to its nearest whole-pixel value when being drawn), but the sub-pixel control over artifacts is important because CRT artifacts aren't all locked to the pixel grid that the TV is rendering - As an example, scanlines need to be much thinner than a single in-game pixel, and should be placed at the halfway point between two in-game pixels.
Once I had the low-resolution render being upscaled and run through my shader, it was a matter of writing simulations for different CRT artifacts, and using a light touch in deciding which ones amplified the feeling I was going for; I didn't want to over-exaggerate things and end up with a caricature of a CRT image! π I've got a Sony Trinitron in relatively good repair that I love the look and feel of, so I wanted to write something relatively accurate to that, with a few choice degradations inspired by childhood TVs I remember playing on which were in more poor repair. The only place that I chose to exaggerate the CRT artifacts for effect was that I intentionally amplified the horizontal deflection (causing slight waves to run down the screen) and added a wave of over-exposure running across the screen over time, because those artifacts helped give a subtle shimmery watery feeling to the scene, while also reading "true" to a well-loved CRT.
As for the theme, you have absolutely got me there lol - It's a very fair criticism. I had originally started building towards a maze-chase-inspired style of game, where you were swinging around non-linear levels collecting the tether targets as you went (removing them from the level after you detached from them), but it wasn't coming together quite how I wanted - Literally collecting each target made the flow of those open-ended levels feel less open, let you play with the tether mechanic less, and ended up making each level feel more like a logic puzzle than a way to let the player explore their movement options. That made me pivot into the more traditional platforming style where each level had a distinct start and end point, and you had to "collect" the targets by latching onto them and simply changing their state, which made for a more fun experience but significantly weakened the throughline to the theme.
I think there's probably a version of the maze-chase style where each target was holding a pearl, and you were collecting those pearls instead of the targets, but sadly I didn't get there in time during my initial experimentation. π
Thank you again for such great feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, and hopefully this gives some useful insight into how the CRT effect works! If I have time this week, I'll put together that community post and go into more specific technical detail!
Always a blast seeing and playing what you make for each jam. My biggest feedback would be to highlight whichever octopus? thing you'd try to latch onto if you pressed the z button. Oftentimes I found I would press the button, hoping to target one, but instead try to grab one that seemed completely random. And although I know these are momentum based games, with how crazy different of arcs and speeds you get based on how close/far you are from the target when you press z, having the grab process maybe be faster could help a bit in feeling like you have a bit more control.
Sprite-0001.png
All that said, your games are always super fun, look great, sound great, and play very well. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next LD!
@t-c Always great to see you each jam! I'm glad you had fun! :)
Making the grab process faster is such a great idea to make things feel more consistent and to make the player feel more in-control of their momentum, and I can't believe I didn't experiment with that at all - Thank you so much!
For the targeting logic, my goal was that it should invisibly work without the player thinking about it. Unfortunately, the logic needs some work because it isn't necessarily picking the best choice when there are multiple targets that are close to one another π¬
Thanks again for playing, and for the great feedback! :)
@koolruz Funny, the same thing happened to me this game jam. Something I put in that's central to the game, I just didn't think about adjusting it almost at all. And it's the biggest point of criticism. Didn't even think to change it when making the game :laughing: It just goes that way sometimes!
Yeah, getting targeting logic that's THAT smooth is a huge task indeed! For someone like me, you'd almost need to get an eye tracker and just always target the one I'm looking at, because I'm all over the place in what I expect/hope haha.
Very hard for me, I can't even finish the second level, but I can recognize a good game when I see one, so: very well done!
Such cool visual design! Plating is really smooth and engaging, it shows how much experience you have and you know how to use it to make what you do so good!
@koolruz whouw, I appreciate the long answer you gave to me (and the community)! That is some great insights how you managed to do that. I was surprised about the resolution of the actual game. It felt to me that every pixel would render as, for instance, 4x4 pixels and that the movement / animations would be "subpixel" based too. I thought that because the game feels so smooth. After reading your comment and trying out your game again, I can see what you mean
The effects are really well balanced I think. We all have some rose-tinted glasses about having a CRT/Trinitron set and how that would look like. The exaggerated aspects are indeed exaggerated, but in the good kind of way. I checked my own television set to see it up-close but then I realized I don't have a Sony Trinitron :sweat_smile:
Thanks again for the explanation. Maybe next LD I will try to recreate the feel in my own little javascript-thingy :-)
4.2 stars for graphics, that is very well deserved! Congratz! β
@wouter52 Thank you so much! I'm still going to try to put together that more in-depth community post going into detail about the CRT effect, and to get the shader cleaned up and open-sourced so that folks can reference it, learn from it, and build on top of it :)
I'm (and I think the rest of the community too) is looking forward for that, thank you! :heart:
@wouter52 Sorry this took so long to put together, but I finally set up a public-facing github account and open-sourced the CRT shader! I also went through the shader and added a large number of comments explaining exactly which parts of it apply which effects, and what's going on with each line of math. I might still put together that community post, but I wanted to at least get this out to you as soon as possible, since it's been so long already! :)
I hope it's useful, or at least interesting! π
https://github.com/Koolruz/crt-shader-example