Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Smoke Operator
By cagibi
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 49 | 3.88 | 23 | |
| Fun | 45 | 3.78 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 151 | 3.38 | 23 | |
| Theme | 185 | 3.45 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 20 | 4.26 | 23 | |
| Audio | 25 | 4.04 | 23 | |
| Humor | 30 | 3.71 | 23 | |
| Mood | 80 | 3.73 | 23 |
A very comprehensive and polished game for Compo! Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the fan level, but apparently I'm doing something wrong.
Either way, it's a great interpretation of the theme and an excellent visual style!
@torte478 Thank you! In the fan level, you have to jump and use your inertia, so that the smoke of your torch crosses the wall into the smoke detector. (or if it's the jump across the cliff after that, it's a question of good timing. I should probably have added coyote time on the player character to help with that)
Great game! But it’s so frustrating when dying heals the boss.
Managed to beat it with a score of 74!
Anyway, this was really fun!! I'll admit that the initial difficulty threw me off a bit - those horrid vultures! - but once I got used to it, it was great! The highlight for me was the second area, really loved the vibes there, and the levels in it were really good! The boss fight was also awesome, I did not see the Angry phase coming and it was a lot of fun getting used to its patterns :) I also super appreciate that dying only healed it a little bit and didn't restart the fight!
The main smoke mechanic was pretty frustrating at times though, especially against the vultures & the boss. It was really hard to defeat the vultures without dying, and even when I managed it, a stray egg usually killed me anyway afterwards. With the boss I think it had some hitbox issues, a lot of times it looked like I hit it but it took no damage, while in others it took damage for seemingly no reason. Lastly, I actually loved the fan level and kinda wished this mechanic returned once I figured it out, but was completely stuck there initially and needed your hint in the comments to complete it - maybe adding it in a dialogue there would've helped?
Other than that, the graphics, writing & music here were all super awesome - especially in the second area again, loved the lighting!! Overall really cool entry!
@frogravity wow, thanks! :D I guess I should add "eggs can bounce once" and "the boss' weak point is its somewhat conspicuous antenna" to the shelf of bad ideas, but I'm glad you enjoyed the game anyway!
@rinevard thanks for the feedback, sorry about that. Boss healing was so that your death still has meaning, it was a bit of an afterthought / inspired by one of my previous LD games, though maybe I could have done +1 HP instead of +2 this time.
This was a great experience both gameplay and style checked a lot of boxes for me. I also liked the little story that was happening on the side, the smoke did seem to sort on top of the text which made it hard to read sometimes, but not a huge deal at all.
Looking forward to seeing Walter steal the volcano's job in the future!
Nice puzzle game! The mechanic was pretty original and the mood was cool :)
Great job on the platformer! Movement was a bit slippery for my liking, but everything else was pretty solid! The roomba had me worried that I would have to no-hit it with it's huge health-bar. Very relieved once I say it only regenerated part of it's hp.
Incredibly creative and engaging. The art style is spot-on, and the platforming controls are super tight. I really hope this gets a full release!
Screenshot 2026-04-22 003021.png
Not sure if I've ever seen this sort of torch mechanic. It's a pretty cool interpretation of the theme as well. That said, I have some qualms with it.
Before that though, I just wanted to say that I loved the overall presentation of this game. The way you used the colour pallete was great and pleasing to the eye. Especially loved the chunky art style as well. That said, I think the readability of some things could've been a little better. At first I didn't really notice the yellow eggs of the vultures since they kinda just blended into the yellow background. Same with the spiders. I kinda wish they had a different colour to stand out from the background of the cave.
All that said, I think my biggest problem with the game visually came to the smoke clouds that cause harm to you. Since they're the exact same sprite as the smoke that your torch emits, it made the sections with the harmful smoke more annoying than they really should have been. Not a massive deal breaker or anything, but still something worth noting in my opinion.
As for the actual platforming, I thought it was pretty solid overall. Admittedly I don't think I really would have beaten the fan puzzle without the hint you posted in these comments though. I thought the boss was great though. Pretty solid fight with clear telegraphs and the floating platform definitely helped make the fight more dynamic. That said, sometimes a cloud did damage to it, and sometimes it didn't. I do think that that could've been more consistent all things considered.
All in all, I'd say you made a very solid game here. Good stuff
@badpiggy thanks for the details! The boss' weak point is its antenna (not explained at all lol). And originally your own smoke would hurt you, but I kept dying by jumping too high or had barely any jumping ability. Maybe I should find another smoke color that works both in the desert and underground.
So polished compo game! I really love the adventureous BGM, the juicy fx and the beautiful colors. The difficulty curve is also very pleasant, I'm so enjoyed in the adventure. Although the final boss fight is long, thank you for setting up checkpoints, making this fight difficult enough but still joyful. And I think a larger attack box can make the boss fight experience even better.
"Run to your job interview" - immediately setting the mood, that's such a fun play on itch.io's "run (insert what it is)" box x)
The visual style is great and fits the game so well! It's fun and cartoonish, the palette is tight and consistent, creating a specific atmosphere. Music is fun, too! I was really enjoying myself, but, unfortunately, got stuck very soon - with the fan :(
fan.jpg
I've looked through the comments and tried many many many times and I did activate the signal 2 times on pure chance/accident, but I didn't figure what exactly led to this and how those physics work, and both times I died immediately on the spikes :')
That smoke mechanic by itself is pretty cool though! The concept is great, maybe I am just too stupid and there needs to be more explanation of the mechanic / physics to stupid players like me :D
*Also, that's a huge amount of work for just 2 days, wow!
@kanity thank you! For the itch.io box, I almost ran into the character limit for that one :p You're not stupid at all! The mechanic idea sounded good at the time but is a bit too obscure. After the rating period I guess I'm going to increase the smoke inertia and/or move the smoke detector a bit closer.
@cagibi I think maybe a little tutorial / graphic / explanation of how the mechanic works would help as well ^^ Let me know if you tweak it, I would love to try again, even after jam :)
Very atmospheric game! I loved the art style and music. The mechanics were also cool, but the platforming was a bit clunky.
Loved the art, loved the audio. Could've benefitted from better player on-boarding. The fan level could've been more intuitive for the first introduction to the mechanic. Overall really neat project!
Great style. For me the controls are on the "a bit too slippery" side of things. In spite of that, I liked the "indirectness" of the smoke mechanic, and actually enjoyed its trickiness (I mean, it's smoke, of course it's going to be tricky to control).
Such a nice pixel art. Very cool audio. And funny story. I like the smoke detector idea. Nice game.
Really charming game! I was also stuck at the fan level - turned out, jumping from right to left to give the smoke some side movement did the trick. I was really laughing when the dude had his suit on - that was quite funny! LAstly I did stop at the boss, as I felt he takes too many hits and losing all the progress with just one hit was a bit too punishing. Maybe this game would really benefit if the player could take 3 hits or something instead of just one to be less punishing.
@le-don Thanks for playing! Hmm, I could make the suit be an extra hit point (Mario did it before after all). Maybe even a suit power-up. The boss should not regenerate completely when you get hit, it's supposed to only regenerate 2 hits, is that what happened or maybe you encountered a bug?
@cagibi Honestly, maybe I haven't paid enough attention and the boss might have only regenerated 2 hits.
Everyone, thank you for the 20+ ratings! Now I'm going to try to focus my playtesting to games in the Danger zone, and I'll post the v1.1 changelog here and on itch.io after the results.
Very charming! Bit disappointed I got too frustrated with a few small annoyances (around the smoke dodging level) to see it all the way through (previously being stuck for a while at the fan level, having not realized yet that smoke could go through walls, until I read the comments here.) Realized on the spider level that falling dead enemies can still kill you... which felt pretty bad to me at first, but on the other hand does add an interesting dodge to it once you know.
I published the post-jam version on my itch.io page, with most of the issues fixed. Thanks again for the feedback!
Also, for some reason I can't see the results anymore. For the record this game is 49th overall out of 367 compo participants, not bad.