rezonanc 2026-04-20 22:06
naked c++ is huge bro good job. Unfortunately onlye programmers can understand how cool the game is
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Signal Slasher
By tkap1
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 546 | 3.41 | 31 | |
| Fun | 445 | 3.34 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 449 | 3.34 | 31 | |
| Theme | 603 | 3.34 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 566 | 3.44 | 31 | |
| Audio | 443 | 3.21 | 30 | |
| Humor | 504 | 2.54 | 26 | |
| Mood | 567 | 3.38 | 29 |
naked c++ is huge bro good job. Unfortunately onlye programmers can understand how cool the game is
Great technical performance I admit. On the game side, it could use some ui giving the number of extra move you have. else it's a good take on the crypt of the necrodancer vibe.
Indeed programmers are in awe in front of the game but it is very fun regardless. The dificulty progression is well crafted and the atmosphere is good. Impressed overall.
Damn, it was very reminiscent of a childhood game on an old phone, where you had to run past enemies in a straight line for a man. Nice graphics, the mechanics themselves are somewhat reminiscent of Tetris, but with a view from above. Very cool!
Love the graphics and music for this. Its feels like what would happen if an old school roguelike, an endless runner and a rhythm game had a baby. Its surprising hard in places but super fun. Great game
Здорово. Мне показалось это смесь ритм игры и сигналом - очень необычно ), радует что много уровней, было очень интересно.
I stopped at the room with multiple rows of just enemies. Only now I realize that you can attack whoops^^ Really impressive what you did in this small time frame I gotta say!
@xientra There is a tutorial for it at level 4, but you can beat it without actually attacking any enemies, which is my mistake!
Sometimes, when I approach the traffic lights, the action pauses and the character stops moving forwards on its own, which throws me off a bit, although in some situations it actually makes things easier.
Apart from that (which is understandable for a game jam) I find the game quite interesting; the mechanics are simple but effective, it looks great, and it makes you want to keep playing through more levels.
Well done! :crossed_swords:
@hagamosvideojuegos The movement stopping happens when you have a "free action" available, which you get from killing enemies or the powerups. I should have explained it!
Cool concept, really like the visuals — the dungeon and traps are charming.
What threw me off a bit is that the player and traps are tied to a grid/timing system, while enemies are fully real-time. If you get desynced with the first enemy in a chain, you’re basically guaranteed to die no matter your input. Might be better to sync enemies to a signals.
Also, auto-moving the player forward feels a bit off — I’d either penalize missed inputs or just ignore them, especially since the game seems to be time-based judging by the leaderboard.
I beat the game, though towards the end I felt it was getting a little too long. Some of the later levels felt like filler, in that they didn't introduce new mechanics or challenges really, and some bits felt just artificially difficult (thinking of "three portals, guess which one is the correct one!").
Similarly to Hagamos above I found the core mechanic a little confusing. Generally I guess I didn't really "want" to interact with the traffic signal because the timing was a little narrow and I could just use the auto-advance anyway (but of course I didn't know I was playing for a time-based leaderboard...). The blue gems were fine but it would have been nice to have an indication of the two free turns somewhere in the UI. ~~I got a bit more confused due to the enemies -- it seems like slashing and killing an enemy has the same effect as the gem in that I get some free turns? Or is it three turns when I kill an enemy?~~ Yup this is in fact explored but went by too fast x)
Unfortunately the free turns for enemies encourages one to just get close to the enemies, then camp to kill them all, then move on with the rest of the (possibly enemy-free) level.
Other than that I would like if the graphics were just a *little* bit more clear about where the grid is, so it's easier to plan jumps etc for farther tiles.
amazing technical entry as always :D I really enjoyed this one. My only issue was that the music lacking a beat so you can feel the rhythm and go along with it. Considering all the limitations, this is an amazing game
It seems like the game crashed at some point while trying to load the leaderboards or something and the context was lost. It's a mix of the classic Subway Surfers with slashing and an annoying rhythm semaphore but the music has no matching rhythm, I don't know what to say except that it feels off. Aside from that I liked the graphics and the music was very moody. 5/5 to the composer.
@aurel300 Very fair.
I set a goal of 20 levels and pretty much ran out of ideas around the last 5.
The portal thing is not a "guessing" game (though I didn't explain it at all). The way portals work is that they teleport you to the nearest not yet-used portal, so no matter what you do the first portal that you enter will teleport you to the one next to it, then the remaining one will teleport you to the one on the other side of the wall.
@andriybyelikov The leaderboard service I use can (rarely) go down, so I guess that's what happened, although it shouldn't crash afaik, it should just get stuck on "Getting leaderboard...".
As for the timing, I always try to make my games speed-runnable, and one of the ways I tried for this game was so that instead of a set timer, the earlier you "act", the earlier you get your next "action" (so tapping W on time is way faster than waiting for the auto-move). Unfortunately this meant that synching the "actions" to the music was not possible (or at least I don't know how to do it).
Good graphics and music. I also liked that there was a lot of unique levels. The leader board is very cool, I'll come back and see if I can beat my previous score.
cool 3d take on necrodancer style of gameplay. Though the character moves automatically sometimes and sometimes doesn't I'd wish to have more control over your rhythm.
I like the mechanic of only taking actions when the button is green, it's an interesting concept! I just didn't fully understand when the button turns green, is it time based? It might be good to use music to give a signal when the button turns green, like on every beat, so that it is easier to tell when it will happen.
Very addicting speedrunning game. Managed to get 3:19, which I'm satisfied with. Shaving off another 45 seconds seems insane.
The one level that I found more frustrating and feeling somewhat unfair (probably a skill issue on my part) is the one near the end, where there are rotating blades, each after two sets of spikes, following by some enemies. There must be a way to do that part consistently, but I haven't found it, so getting an unlucky starting cycle there just killed a lot of my attempts. Again, probably a skill issue, but I found that when the blades were aligned in a bad way and you had to "stall" for them to move, I wouldn't have the chance to make it to the other side, clear out enough enemies and move out of the way of the rotating blade.
Despite that one frustrating level though, I really enjoyed the game and grinding for a better time! It tickles the speedrunner itch in my brain.
Full of really well-designed levels! The idea is simple and original, love it!
@sariiger Not a skill issue! That level is badly designed. The enemies should be pushed back so that the timing is not so tight/unfair
I had fun. Having 20 levels to play is really cool. They're all relatively short and easy to complete, and they add enough variety to keep the mechanics interesting.
Small technical nitpick: using wav for audio bloats the download size.
If only we didn't get this signal theme. The game could be even better when being able to move freely.
At first I did not understand this at all. There's a lot to understand and you have to understand it all pretty quick because the game is pushing you forward into death.
I kept at it, though, and got into the rhythm of the signal, and really the turning point was when I realized you could swing your weapon to make the spinning saws move.
Once you get a feel for it, this opens up and becomes a good game with a high skill ceiling, which makes the leaderboard a great addition. It's great fun to slowly get better at something and climb the rankings, and you designed it really well so there's always something you could improve, if you just do one more run...
I think if you improved some of the initial experience to make it easier to get to the point where you "get it", that would really help. For instance:
1. At first I found it hard to look away from the action to the signal, and wished the signal was visible "everywhere"; like, maybe if it bathed the level in green or red light, or at least lit up your character red or green, or was attached to your character. As I got better, I stopped caring about this because I learned to just keep the signal in my peripheral vision, but as a noob it was rough.
2. It's hard to see the grid and judge exactly where you are, which leads to missed jumps and walking into stuff. The player floating slightly above the floor adds to this effect.
3. Perhaps some UI indication of your health and how many "free moves" you have. Though I guess keeping these hidden makes it require more skill, especially the free moves.
4. I'm not sure about the auto-move. It seems to function mostly as a time limit, where if you don't pick a move in time it fucks you up by pushing you forwards, often hurting you. Was this intended, or was it supposed to be helpful?
The level design I thought was great. There was just one part I didn't understand, with three portals in a row against a wall. It just seems to kill you? The only way I found to pass it was to touch the leftmost portal then quickly move right twice. You take damage but get through. I have no idea if this is intended or how you're supposed to approach this part.
Anyway, despite some rough edges early on, there is a good game in here, and it would just take a couple tweaks to bring it out.
(Also, programmer fist bump for writing this in C++ with no engine.)
Wow... so uh,.... I made it to the 3rd to last level, not knowing/remembering that you could attack.
I.... raged very hard at some level designs, because I forgot enemies could be killed.
Imagine trying to get past the level with the 10 waves of 3 enemies with just moving left/right and jumping....
yeah, I did that, somehow. And that's why I'm last on the leaderboard. It took forever.
Only by accident did I hit the left mouse button on the level where there are the two hallways with spikes, AND AN ENEMY IN THE MIDDLE OF THEM, and suddenly the levels became much easier.
Then went back to the tutorial after I beat it only to see that yep... it WAS explained! I just missed it.
On that note, very interesting game! The timing/signal thing was a bit odd to get used to, it's not like a necrodancer where the timer is on a consistent beat, but some actions have only a tiny recovery window. Sometimes if you die, the input isn't readily available, and it kind of throws you off a bit. Especially if you're trying to beat a certain level 1000 times because you aren't attacking.
Enemies could have also used a bit better aggro mechanic in general? I felt like a lot of the levels broke a little towards the end, cause every enemy that was supposed to be back there crept forward. But I think this is a quite impressive submission, and really did a lot of things quite well. Now, I need to chill out a bit, and maybe get my revenge on some of these levels later... by attacking!
@rogual Thank you, this is great feedback!
1) Makes sense. While developing I never really looked at the indicator. I got used to the "rhythm" over time, so I kind of forgot about how difficult it might be for others.
2) Agreed. I think if I did shadow mapping, that would have helped a lot with depth perception, but I didn't quite have time.
3) Agreed on "free moves". However there is no health in the game, though I can see why you thought there was. There are 2 aspects to this. When you try to perform an action on the wrong timing, I let you know by a red flash, this has no gameplay effect. The other thing is that if "lose" (you JUMP into the next level portal with a wall behind it while being only 1 tile away from the portal, which makes you "die" because you jumped into a wall), I play the "losing" effect, which starts a timer. During that timer, if you start "winning", it overrides the "losing", but you already saw the red effect. Hopefully that makes some sense. It's basically a programming skill issue.
4) I added the auto-walk as a way to have add some "pressure" to the early levels, where otherwise it would be basically impossible to lose. But the later levels are already difficult enough without it, so yeah, in hindsight the auto-walk is bad and be removed.
For the portal thing, I'll copy paste a previous message where I explained how they work:
The portal thing is not a “guessing” game (though I didn’t explain it at all). The way portals work is that they teleport you to the nearest not yet-used portal, so no matter what you do the first portal that you enter will teleport you to the one next to it, then the remaining one will teleport you to the one on the other side of the wall.
@t-c Thank you for playing!
You're not the only one who missed that you can attack. It's my fault for not FORCING you to attack by making the level impossible otherwise!
So i played through up until like the 5th or 6th mission and was like this is too hard and RQ, then saw people mention that you could attack, so i went back and wow the game became so much easier. The fact that all the other functionality had a form of tutorial really threw me off.
Overall a fun concept, i feel like there could have been more done with the signal concept, and potentially tied in some sort of audio que/music beat to make it feel a bit more engaging.
It would have been cool if the enemies moved on the signal as well, so there was a little bit more puzzle solving, i mainly just stood there and spammed my sword. Some nice sfx, moments where you collect a bunch of the orbs were really satisfying.
@sharky3188 Thanks for playing. The first level with enemies does have a "tutorial" (text in the top right corner that tells you to attack), but I should have made the level 1 tile wide so that you cannot beat it unless you attack. A lot of people miss it.
Thanks for playing mine. I think I echo a bunch of the things kuvi said. However, it's a fantastic entry. I'm surprised you were able to ship all these features in this game. Well done.
I forgot about mouse-click and completed ~8 levels without this skill lol, but it was really hard Good game with an interesting mechanic. I think this game can be so much better with music, something like rythm-clicks when music beats is playing (just an idea), but current version is good too, i like it
Great game - the first one in this jam where I actually rage-quit and hit Alt+F4 😄 It gets really hard in places, but it’s still doable. The character control feels interesting and unique. Visuals and audio are good, btw for a gameplay-focused game that’s not a dealbreaker. Overall, an excellent project.