Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Searching for Signal
By philstrahl, frank-gevaerts, balimaarthebassfish and Bizzybee
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 579 | 3.35 | 33 | |
| Fun | 630 | 3.03 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 815 | 2.38 | 33 | |
| Theme | 367 | 3.85 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 332 | 3.91 | 33 | |
| Audio | 290 | 3.60 | 32 | |
| Humor | 283 | 3.19 | 31 | |
| Mood | 311 | 3.81 | 32 |
Interesting game. Like the concept, and the art's beautiful. Jump seems a bit overpowered, but I guess that's just because the platforms had to be so far apart. A minimap of some sort would've been nice (maybe with a FOW effect), so backtracking would be easier.
All in all, a solid and fun effort -- well done!
@digital-bacon thanks for the kind words. I agree a minimap would have been a good addition and was on my to-do list personally but in the end had to make a call thanks to time running out. Glad you found the game fun!
very good game, graphics especially. MC looks like david from cyberpunk edgerunners. The game needs some improvement tho, like coyote time, background objects being more distinguishable from the frontground one's, and after completing the robot quests, please dont spawn me at the beginning of the level, instead spawn me next to the door i entered through. Make more games <3
@myezko Everything you say was on the to-do list but when we crossed what proved to be the last task we could complete there was only a couple minutes left. We had a number of larger issues that had to be ironed out (oof!) and those items didnt quite make it. Thanks for playing our game and giving us your feedback. As to whether we make more games together? That's a question. Whether we do something or not outside of Ludum Dare is TBD.
Thanks for playing, @myezko! I did think about the "go back" spawn location, but that was during the later phases where thinking becomes hard and extra features risk introducing bugs... I haven't played a lot of platformers myself and I think I spent most time on the code, so I'll take responsibility for missing coyote time and similar. Next time!
This was a lot of fun, and you can tell that a lot of effort went into this! Great entry! The artwork was beautiful and the atmosphere was on point. The camera could have been zoomed out a bit, so that you can better tell where you are landing after a jump.
As a heads up: I got killed while in dialogue when collecting scrap and it soft locked my game. And I only found out afterwards that you can shoot with the mouse...
@parkuhrmd yes that issue we found very late in the jam and we just didnt have time to patch it out without breaking rules. The death issue is a result of an unfortunate integration between two plugins and this an edge case we didnt discover until too late.
Mouse shooting is mentioned on the help screen in game and on the jam page, but we may need to make these things clearer for future entries.
Thanks for playing our game! We put a lot of effort into the overall look and presentation. The programmers really tried to ensure that any efforts from the two people who actually know what they are doing ( :D ) didnt go to waste.
Movement feels good, and the writing is on point. I sometimes struggled to differentiate between foreground, background and level elements. But that's a minor nit-pick. The game and atmosphere is beautiful. Fantastic entry!
I think I had that "Aikon" model when I was a teen lol. Very nice entry, it really seems that you guys put a lot of effort into it. And very nice take on the theme, I love the "refusing to hang up when the world keeps dropping the call" thing.
Great job!
Best part for me is definitely the visuals. Reminds me of old-school Sega titles and that classic Blade Runner atmosphere
to be honest, there’s a bit too much dialogue and text. i get that it’s important for this kind of game, but i really wanted an option to skip it all at once instead of clicking through line by line. show, not tell.
the gameplay feels nice though, and the visuals are charming!
@orjan I'm very happy to see that the package as a whole was atmospheric AND fun. I was largely responsible for most of the dialogue with my team mates chipping in for the "quest complete" dialogues. I confess to being the one responsible for the NPC names though haha. Bizzybee is a hecking genius with the audio and gave us a way to do subtle things like change the music if an enemy was nearby. Phil is a magician I swear... his art is wonderful as it is and then he waves a magic wand with the positioning of lighting and suddenly im looking at a scene I worked on last night and wondering if I pulled from the wrong github lol
You're right about the graphical elements, we could have done a better job with the z levels of our textures.
@sylvic Thank you for the kind words! A lot of work and effort went into this game and I love that the ending resonated with you <3
@stormdrill Phil certainly poured a lot of effort and love into how the game looked. It was great to go to bed and wake up in the morning to see what magic he had pulled with the graphics :)
@half-animal-half-beast Thanks for playing!
Finished! I love the cyberpunk vibe of the game. Graphics and lightning do a lot, but other parts like music or story fit well too.
If I had to give one piece of feedback, I’d make the main character smaller (and zoom out a bit) so I can better see where I’m jumping. Sometimes I have to cross my fingers and take a leap of faith. Lights at the ends of platforms helped a bit, though. Also, if the character were smaller, I wouldn’t bump into ceilings as much :) I think this would also help with orientation in the level, so there might be no need for a minimap, as someone suggested.
But that’s just nitpicking (or rather an attempt at constructive feedback). The controls felt good, so it was fun. And kudos for finally adding this *ancient technology* to an LD game ;) Even if it’s a slightly different model.
Screenshot 2026-04-23 at 19.55.39.png
Thanks for playing, @jiri-hysek ! If you think bumping into ceilings all the time is bad, imagine doing that when there were still many more spikes there :)
Maybe in hindsight we should have zoomed out a bit, you're right. I didn't like the blind jumps in early builds, but then when the levels got refined things did get more visible and by then I also got used to them, so I kind of stopped noticing, and I suspect the rest of the team may have had the same experience...
@jiri-hysek thank you for playing :)
essentially +1 to everything Frank said. I confess to falling into that sort of dev trap of becoming used to the hidden quirks of the game therefore concealing some things that detract from the experience. with my previous entry with Frank I had managed to get an early build out to a couple friends to ask for immediate feedback which helped with a couple level design flaws I was overlooking. This time around I just didnt have the time to do that.
This is a very moody (in a good way) game with nice, matching audio. Personally, not the greatest fan of jump&run, but very enjoyable nonetheless.
Absolutely solid entry!
@xparker Thank you for playing :) Our GFX and SFX wizards did amazing work indeed. My personal favourite thing with the audio was with how when you get close to an enemy, danger music blends in and fades out again when the enemy(ies) are killed and the normal music resumes. Then the GFX... it was a real treat to wake up in the morning to see what Phil had done with the lighting. I remember ofc what it looked like when I went to sleep. Then wake up, pull the updated build from the github, hit play in Godot and wow... to the point of "is this the same game?"
it was ofc. its just incredible what the right lighting can do isnt it?
Checking the other comments, I guess I don't have any feedback that wasn't already given, so I'll just say I loved the groan-inducing puns 😅
I think I made it to the top. At times I had a difficult time knowing where to jump, but then I found positive clues at times that really helped, like the lights showing where the edges are so I knew where to jump to make the gap, THANK YOU FOR THAT DESIGNERS. Sometimes I just didn't know what was a ledge and what a was a light causing me to fall many times down. I figuring out how to kill things helped immensely. Thanks for the tower climb. 2026-04-25 15_26_10-Searching For Signal.png
@balimaarthebassfish Absolutley. Phil must have really polished the heck out of it :laughing:
@wendel-scardua Tim Burr would like to advise you that he had no say in his name, it was his builder Carp N Terr!
Funnies aside, I'm glad you liked them. I blame @frank-gevaerts for exposing me to 5+ years of puns and wordplay. Its rubbed off on me :D
@commanderstitch Yes some of the level design could have been a lot better. I had a tough time on my last coding shift which chewed up a lot of the time I would have spent on further testing levels before handing them off to the rest of the team. This game was hard work but I am proud of what we have managed to build.
@xparker He really did. That man is blessed with skills!
Congrats on your entry! I especially enjoyed it in terms of narrative, graphics and music. The platforming was a bit on the wonky side, the general level of challenge a bit low, and the two enemy types a bit underwhelming. But all in all, this is an enjoyable and well-polished experience.
@gurkenlabs entirely fair. those areas did receive most of our attention. The platforming and level design is largely my domain. I'm afraid my final shift was terribly inefficient for all sorts of reasons and then the stress of feeling the inefficiency and time falling through my fingers was terribly frightening. The platforming really shows the missing couple hours that would have otherwise been invested purely in that as a focus.
Bizzybee and Phil did an amazing job with the SFX and GFX respectively. This entry wouldnt be half of what it is without them, thats for hecking certain!
A cool jump-and-run game. I liked that you get to choose how to respond during conversations. A nice touch alongside your core mechanics!
Awesome work! Absolutely loved the hand-painted art style. The atmosphere reminded me a bit of Oddworld. The soundtrack was also phenomenal. Stellar entry!
@redphoenix2412 hehe thank you! The dialogue was largely myself along with Bizzybee who wrote a lot of the quest complete dialogues. It was my idea to give players some choice on how to respond. Early on I had some ideas for a mechanic that would change how NPCs responded to you depending on how you responded to others. Slight tweaks to the ending were also planned. Just did not have time to implement it fully.
@geraldfingburke Ahhhh Oddworld! Thats the exact game I kept trying to think what our entry was reminding me of. Thank you for playing!
Good game! I really like the setting. I had a similiar problem as someone else and I was solftlocked after I got shot during the dialog.
Thanks for playing, @le-don . Yes, that's an unfortunate bug to have left in. We kind of were aware of it and decided the easy thing to do was to make sure there were no enemies near any dialogue, but then we forgot to check that...
incredibly stunning stuff! encountered a few soft lock bugs but overall incredible work for such short time!
Thanks for playing, @plutonicrock ! Yes, some silly bugs left in...
@le-don and @plutonicrock
Thank you so much for playing our efforts <3 That particular issue we uncovered quite late and unfortunately there were worse issues to iron out. Also Frank and I had decided early to prioritise tasks that highlight the hard work of our epic team mates who did the GFX and SFX!
Nicely done with this one!
The mood and music is really nice. Dynamic music is something *very* rare in jam games, but is done well here. Low intensity tracks shifting into higher intensity tracks always makes things feel much cooler. The SFX are also crisp and fit in well.
The environment is quite well done, the last area in particular has a great aesthetic with the lights. I think the hub area would've done well with some added lights, as it felt a little too dimly lit. There were also a few times in the game that I wasn't sure whether something was solid or a background/foreground element, though understandably it's hard to get an art style perfect in jam time.
Character design was good, I liked the choice of yellow shoes on the player character. They stand out well against the environment so it's easy to tell exactly when you're about to land. The animation is nice too.
I think having the jump only trigger when space is first pressed would've felt a little bit more responsive to player intention. Even though there's no variable jump height in this game, I think it's just a natural reflex to hold space longer than you have to, which can lead to unintended jumps.
Good job to the programmers as well for pulling everything together, it's harder to compliment all that hidden work, but I understand very well how much has to get done in the limited time.
Overall fun game! Well done to the whole team. And rest in peace Boulder.
@kahztein Thanks for playing and thank you for honouring Boulder in your review. He was the best of boys and my companion for 15 years of his life :'(
I swear I had the jump coded to "just pressed". I guess it was changed later, I never really noticed because my brain always assumed it was still that way.
I agree the hub area would have been nice to have the attention paid to it in lighting but time didnt allow it. We prioritised the 'actual' levels for the lighting treatment as the hub was only intended to be a brief pass over. We simply ran out of time for the hub im afraid!
And thank you also for shouting us coders out :3