pollykarm 2026-10-20 05:28 ♥ 1
Hey! I like it! I enjoing the game, thank you!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Torch Keeper
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 29 | |||||
| Fun | 29 | |||||
| Innovation | 29 | |||||
| Theme | 29 | |||||
| Graphics | 29 | |||||
| Audio | 29 | |||||
| Humor | 27 | |||||
| Mood | 29 | |||||
Hey! I like it! I enjoing the game, thank you!
Really fun—the visuals and feedback are fantastic, the bouncing feels great, and I absolutely love the style! I got stuck on one of the dotted-line platform in the first water-drop level and couldn’t move anymore, though. If there were a save or checkpoint system, I’d definitely come back and finish the game!
Really fun and challenging :D
The animations are insane!!! The color choices and assets are really simple BUT so pleasing to the eye. The only thing I could point out is that I occasionally got stuck in the corners of blocks, but aside from that, CONGRATULATIONS!
The mechanic is really cool. Being the genius I am, I initially missed that the torch points toward the cursor. I played using only the keyboard without moving the mouse and couldn’t figure out the puzzle because I kept putting out the torch when I jumped.
I really liked the idea of checkpoints being places where you can relight the torch. The jumping and movement feel great, making the game enjoyable to play. Excellent work.
I really liked it! It's relatively difficult having to coordinate the mouse and keyboard like that, but in a good way rather than a frustrating way. There are some small bugs, I got stuck on a platform at some point and couldn't jump off it. Very fun game.
This is a lovely game! The mechanic, once I realized how it worked, was really cool, and also quite tough to coordinate platforming and also using my mouse to keep the torch alive. I don't normally like platformers but this one was really fun. Great job making it actually feel good, too, I feel like a lot of game jam platformers end up feeling much jankier. Nice work!
interesting and unusual idea
The game is lovely, minimal graphics but still very atmospheric and functional. I love it's arcadey/platformer/puzzle nature. At the cost of stating the obvious having to walk on the moving platforms in order to stay on them is quite unintuitive but I guess it was more an implementation limitation than a design choice.
The base mechanic is simple intuitive and very well thought out, definitely makes the game really challenging but intuitive at the same time. I would say that maybe a little more leniency on when the torch goes out would have made the experience a lot smoother as sometimes the torch barely grazed the water or a wall and it still went out and it made the game a bit stressful.
I really liked this entry and I think you did an outstanding job for your second ld!
Amazing concept and clean nice visuals. The game fits the theme nicely and the gameplay is really creative. This feels like it could be nicer to play with a controller so one stick can be for pointing the torch and the other for movement but at the same time the cursors static aim creates some interesting challenges.
The physics are a bit slidey and rudimentary with the crates really showing the unity defaults. fixing the physics will make this a 10/10 small indie puzzle game in my books for gameplay. The fire smothering sound is great, the jump sound is... strange :). Adding a constant small flame sound could bring ambiance and maybe some background cave music would complete the picture.
Over all super amazing work.
Hey, just finished your game! NGL, it was really fun and entertaining Took me a while to understand how to pass levels from a laptop (It's really hard to play using a touchpad) The secret is that you have to figure out where to point the torch first, and only then do the platformer things
Overall, the art is cute, the gameplay is polished, you did a great job, and I think this game might be developed into something bigger!Screenshot 2026-10-20 at 3.56.40 PM.png
Really cool game! I love the torch mechanic, it makes the platforming feel fresh and keeps you on your toes. The visuals are simple but work really well. I ran into a few small bugs, but had a great time playing it!
The squishy animations and water waves are so cool!
Absolutely loved the torch concept
cool concept, completed and enjoyed! i'd rather make the torch collision slightly more forgiving as i frequently lost the fire when i did not even expect it to touch anything. overall, really solid!!!
I enjoyed playing this one! the torch is a very nice addon to the platformer mechanic. I almost gave up at the before the last checkpoint but eventually made it. Some kind of teleport to the last lit torch when you lose the fire would be nice. I thought the "walking back" part was a little annoying. Overall very nice!
This is such a lovely concept for the torch mechanic! The way you actually had to plan ahead where to move the mouse while performing jumps was very challenging (in a good way). Artwork is top notch as well. Kudos!
I really loved the concept and execution. I think a controlled jump height could've solved most of my frustrations with the torch hitting the ceiling as I jumped though. I did find the backtracking to torch a bit too punishing. I also think the torch could be more forgiving.
Amazing concept and clean nice visuals. The game fits the theme nicely and the gameplay is really creative.
This was a pretty fun puzzle game. I will say I found the game pretty frustrating at times, specifically because the jump height was not really controllable and I kept putting out my torch on the ceiling. Maybe that's a good thing though, because you were going for a Getting Over It vibe, and I'm not the biggest fan of those games either. The fire effect and art direction was really well done though. Great job!
I've played to the end and climbed to the top. I like how the game takes a simple but unique concept and combines it with many common mechanics to create new and interesting situations.
I also like how clear everything is: it's clear which platform you can stand on, what objects does what even if this object is seen for the first time.
But I'd rather watch someone else play the game than do it myself. 😁 The fire is way too fragile and redoing the same sections again and again is frustrating.
Clear visuals, nice mechanic. Levels turned out to be quite nice as well! The water looks *smooth*, I wonder how you made it. There is a small issue with waves bleeding to the other pond through terrain on the level where you need to burn leaves to drop boxes down.
The game did remind me of Getting Over it at some point, like I tried to figure out if this is more of a foddian or not closer to the end. Reading the description afterwards cleared the uncertainty for me 😅 The inspiration is clearly there, I like it!
Cool mechanic! It seemed a bit frustrating sometimes, like when you need to make 180 around char when jumping to pass the section. I think at some times locker of torcs direction would help a lot. Graphics are nice: beautiful easy to read pixels! Level design is also interesting and mostly pleasant to get through(i felt like a genius when completig some). Overall great game!
Cool mechanic! It seemed a bit frustrating sometimes, like when you need to make 180 around char when jumping to pass the section. I think at some times locker of torcs direction would help a lot. Graphics are nice: beautiful easy to read pixels! Level design is also interesting and mostly pleasant to get through(i felt like a genius when completig some). Overall great game!
This was great, but also very frustrating! 😂
At first, I spent around 30 seconds or so in the first room not *quite* understanding the controls - In the beginning, I was rushing as fast as I could because I assumed that the torches kept expiring on an extremely short timer, but I pretty quickly figured out that walls were putting my torch out once I hit the second room. I had originally started rushing because I assumed that the jumping enemy at the gates was about to start chasing me, which prevented me from taking the time to fully understand the mechanics on that first screen. My initial rush wasn't an actual problem, and the second screen did a great job of communicating how the mechanic *really* worked :)
I loved the art style you used! It all looked very consistent and cohesive, and it was extremely readable at a glance. I'm a huge one-bit enthusiast, and it was used to great effect here. I'm also really curious about how you accomplished the water effect, because that's something I've been thinking about adding to my own games for awhile. Is that being done as a custom shader, or something else?
The level design was also quite readable! I never found myself unsure of what the game wanted me to do, which is really important in a brutally precise platformer :) I also appreciated the quick restarts and frequent checkpoints. Knowing that you'd never lose more than ten seconds or so to a mistake was very appreciated!
In terms of constructive feedback, there were a few tiny places where the game felt frustrating in seemingly unintentional ways (as opposed to simply being difficult and precise), and where a few small tweaks could have an outsized impact on the overall game feel.
The first point of friction was admittedly avoidable. At the end of every screen, I would jump to clear away the vines, and then immediately lose my torch to the ground/ceiling right next to them. This meant that I had to play each screen twice: once to burn the vines, and then another time to bring the flame to the next checkpoint. While I could have theoretically positioned my mouse better and avoided doing this, playing the same level a second time felt like busywork rather than an intentional feature (because it didn't provide any novel challange/new gameplay). Providing the player with either a checkpoint right before the vines or with a small immunity period while the vines burned would have made the flow from challenge to challenge feel much smoother.
The only other friction I encountered may very well have been an intentional design decision; every time I jumped near a ceiling, my platformer instincts kicked in and would release the jump button early to try to perform a smaller jump. Ordinarily, a variable-height jump makes a platformer feel so much more fluid and responsive and it *could* be a great option to add here, but I could also see it competing for space with the torch-carrying mechanic, because they both accomplish similar goals.
Please don't let the long post make you think that I didn't like the game - The opposite is true, I really enjoyed it! The fact that you had such a well executed vision makes it easy to comment on the nitpickiest details, because you obviously put a ton of care into what you made. Very well done, and thank you for sharing! :)
I really liked this! The graphics are clean and pleasant to look at, the sound design is minimal but pleasant, and I like the splooshy water. The ending had a satisfying little payoff as well as well. The mouse-based control system was a little frustrating at times, but in a fair way. I feel like puzzle platformers are the genre I most mentally associate with game jams, and Ludum Dare in particular, but I hadn't come across any yet so far this jam (not that I've been getting around to playing that many games this time), so it's nice to find a good one. Great work!
I love the palette and aesthetics!! The art is so well done!
The mechanic was pretty interesting... and I grasped it very quickly, but was insanely difficult to master. Which is a good thing, but also feels like trying to pat your head and rub your tummy. 😂
There were a few jumping spots where I put out my light so many times, I ended up rage quitting. 😅
This is a such a great entry though.
Screenshot 2026-10-24 080255.png
This was so much fun! I mentioned on the discord that I thought the visual style was great, but want to reaffirm that here: the color palette works super well. I adore the contrast of the flame against the black and white tower, but it also helps the other game elements be easily identifiable, too. The visual effects for the fire are spectacular as well.
The gameplay was super frustrating, which I fucking love. I am a huge Getting Over It fan, so maybe that explains it. The important thing about frustrating games is that they feel fair, and for the most part it did feel like it was my fault when the torch went out. There were a few points where it felt like it was extremely difficult to avoid (Koolruz's awesome writeup mentions some), but the levels were small and self-contained enough that I wasn't too frustrated by having to go back through them again.
Under most circumstances I'd be sad that a game doesn't have music, but the ambient fire crackling was perfect. The rest of the sound design was quite satisfying too, with special emphasis on the torch sounds.
I think I experienced a unique satisfaction at the game's ending, because for whatever reason I chose not to read the instructions on this page first. I went into it with zero context for the story, and when I saw the guy attacking the door I just thought "oh cool, maybe we'll encounter this guy later." Then I completely forgot until I got to the end and realized "OHHH, this is a signal tower!!" and that we were warning about the attacker in the beginning. Though the general satisfaction of seeing all the towers light up in the mountains was shared by everyone, I'm sure.
Overall, this is an awesome entry. It would be so much fun to speedrun (I really should rate some other games, but...)
Unfortunately my two runs of this game ended badly and I did not manage to finish the game.
The first time I got softlocked between two screens inside the three bushes at the top right, where it is also hard to manipulate the direction of the torch because the game screen ends there and in the page the game canvas is also glued to the top to add insult to injury.
Screenshot_20261025_021426.png
The second time I was at the left side of the vertical room and while I was falling down sliding across the side of a wall, the framerate tanked and then it crashed. I assume that whatever collision resolution algorithm was running failed miserably at its job and gave up the ghost.
Was there much game left after this run? If you can link a video of someone playing through the game I would like to watch it.
A thing that I absolutely hated about this game is that I have to do the job of moving alongside the moving platform manually. Was it that hard to reparent the player character to the moving platform upon contact from above and to reparent it back to the global frame upon jumping? When the player character and the moving platform are in contact they cease to be two independent objects but become one.
Overall I think the idea was well executed but I don't think that the game design was a good idea in this aspect: I don't think the torch orientation mechanic gives enough precision and room for error. For starters I think that you should have not the torch follow the line from itself to the cursor but rather I think that you should have hidden the cursor and used the mouse to change the orientation of the torch independently from where the cursor is at the moment. This would also solve the game canvas being glued to the top of the screen problem.
These are my thoughts. I hope you receive them well and that you manage to find a video for me. Good job for making it through the jam.
Just finished the game, and honestly, I think it's brilliant. Your 2D physics is a bit limited (character not moving on moving platforms, character stuck on platform edges, no wall jumps, ...) but event with those limitations, I found the mechanics really well exposed and the level/puzzle design is perfect. It's hard but never punishing, and lighting a torch on a wall feels like a true reward every time. Really good platformer game, 5 stars it is!
