Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Ghost Train
By koolruz
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 48 | |||||
| Fun | 49 | |||||
| Innovation | 48 | |||||
| Theme | 48 | |||||
| Graphics | 49 | |||||
| Audio | 47 | |||||
| Humor | 43 | |||||
| Mood | 47 | |||||
Love the momentum element, I really love the feel of needing to time those corner turns to keep speed so the ghosts can't catch up, and there's some great creativity in the level layouts to set up cool jump timings and patterns. Very fun!
This was way more fun than I expected (I even started a second playthrough lol). I am not a huge fan of the distortion crt fake shader, I think its a bit much in fullscreen, but other than that its a very pleasant experience. Solid balancing also and a lot of fun. I agree that the momentun is great, very satisfying. The movement felt well polished.
For the first levels I believed that the ghosts would chase you pacman-style, instead they were mimicking all the movements of the player! Racing-game ghost style :) It was fun and the world need more games with trains 👍
WOW such a creative movment mechanic. I really enjoyed the challange although i died a lot of times. Really nice work! Zrzut ekranu 2026-10-20 024955.png
Pretty awesome game, very nice graphics and sound effects, and a simple yet polish gameplay, really fun!
Really fun, and pretty difficult! It's a nice challenge.
Awesome game as always. Definitely not the direction I would have expected to take a train platformer but it was very fun and extremely well put together. So much so that my biggest gripe is that you often can't go fast enough to make the pop sound effect rise to crazy high pitches, cause it resets "too fast". The movement is super slick, game feel is awesome. There's also a lot to learn and get better at, with judging cornering while going very fast, and the very large jumps, and enemy manipulation. Went back to try a second time, those last couple of levels are tough to go deathless and fast at the same time. Great work!
You run from the ghosts, i break their ankles. We are not the same. Awesome game, loved the choo choo sounds especially. My only complaint: MORE LEVELS!!!
such a cleaver and fun idea!
Really fun, loved the train movement and nailing it, great graphics, thanks for making! PS So many more deaths than these other players from me 😆
Great job, your game is amazing! I loved playing it, super cool
DEATHpng.png 290 of those were probably on level 5 🫠
But seriously, I really enjoyed the game! It felt like a fully finished game rather than just a game jam prototype.
And I especially loved the graphics. I'm a big fan of this kind of minimalist pixel art.
Really fun, absolutely loved this. Admittedly I cheated on a couple of the levels, but they're really well designed, with a well thought out difficulty ramp.
I really love the game! great entry!
This is a great game! I should start by saying that these sorts of games really stress me out, so I cheatyfaced *mumble* times.
Did you ever play Super Mario RPG? This reminded me a bit of the Moleville train cart level. Also had some shades of the parts of Celeste when Badeline is chasing you and you have to time everything properly.
Some of the levels were SUPER hard but that made them really satisfying to beat. The difficulty ramp-up was good, the mechanics were simple to understand, and wow my heart really got pumping flying down the track away from those ghosties. I'm also a big pixel art fan, and the art here was super clear and simple while still retaining pixely charm. Almost Baba Is You visual vibes.
In terms of constructive feedback, sometimes the jump timing felt like it could use a little more wiggle room - I mean, I know that I'm bad at games like this and my reaction time is not as good as it was 20 years ago, but several times I got frustrated that I'd gotten through the whole curvy level and then aaaaaalmost perfectly executed a jump. Maybe that's part of the draw to people who are into these games, I don't know!
Overall this game is admittedly not my kind of game (I'm sorry! I'm a baby!) but it's really well-made and has an impressive level of polish. Lovely work.
I played your game and put it on YouTube!
https://youtu.be/zqpO8QUX4lo
I really liked this one! At first I was taking my time to try and pick the right path, but then I realized if I played it more like Pacman and just try to be a bit more reactive, I made more progress. Love the art too, great job all around!
Really fun pacman-like game! It's a pretty simple idea, but you did a really good job of making the art feel good, and the difficulty curve throughout felt fun. I will say that initially it did present as a more puzzly sort of experience and I'd personally be more interested in that part of the game, but I do still love what you made!
Fun! Total time 7:22:603 with 28 deaths. Not too bad overall I think! Really like this twist on the classic pacman.
It was funny how quickly I got sucked in...
Great game! I had a lot of fun and found it very creative.
Cute and stylish! I'm not sure if you intentionally made the vertical gaps so tricky to jump across, but it definitely added to the retro feel! :D
What a great game! The Pac-Man style mechanics combined with the ability to jump is a fantastic idea. I found it really fun xD. The pixel art is simple but beautiful. great work! Congratulations!
@retrific Thank you so much for the kind words! It genuinely means a lot that folks would start up a second run!
I actually meant to add in a toggle for the CRT shader, and completely forgot to hook it up 😓 Something to remember for the next jam, if I end up reusing the shader!
@t-c You're absolutely right that I should have extended the pop timer 😭 If anything, I think that's my biggest regret this time around lol. I wanted to make it a fun self-imposed challenge for folks to try to keep their combo going, but there were a lot of places where you just can't go fast enough to keep it up
I'm also incredibly impressed by your time. My best time so far is around six minutes, so you officially have the world record, to the best of my knowledge!
It's always great to see you around each jam :)
@kristinamay Thank you so much for the review! Mario RPG is actually one of my favorite games, so I was definitely subconsciously (and consciously) inspired by the mole cart ride. I actually thought about letting the player jump off the tracks anywhere (just like they can in the mole cart ride), but I was worried that it would interrupt the flow of each level (plus I was running way behind schedule and wasn't sure if I'd have the time to test the idea out 😅)
The controls feel nice and responsive, visuals are pretty clear and the jump sound is awesome. As mentioned by other commenters, it does remind of Pacman quite a bit, probably thanks to the retro aesthetic as well. But as soon as I noticed that "ghosts" just follow your inputs it became more of a *Konigsberg bridge where bridges regenerate after a bit of time I guess pathfinding problem*-puzzle. I enjoyed plotting routes to clear the levels with minimum jumps required 😄
I've completed all levels. I got a little bit stuck on the level just before the last one. It was difficult to navigate the tracks that were this dense with this much momentum. Other levels felt easy and enjoyable to me.
I really liked the game feel - every game element felt dynamic. Also it's easy to read the screen quickly and understand what's going on.
I don't really know what to improve. Maybe you could insert some slower levels to break the pace a little bit and allow the player to rest for a few moments before another action-packed level.
I haven’t played this type of game like this in ages since Pac-Man. Adding a jump mech is such a fun twist (though I don’t understand why the ghosts have to learn to jump too haha).
I was wondering if it might help to have a little tip somewhere to indicate your overall progress through the level? I did get a tiny bit impatient towards the end, but that was mostly because I’m terrible at the controls lol. overall a really great game!
@joeshanahan Thank you *so much* for playing and recording yourself! I had a great time watching :)
I feel incredibly called out for my old Unity version, but I do have a good reason for it! Over the years I've built my own set of libraries that I use in most of my games (physics, rendering pipelines, editor tooling etc), which rely on low-level features whose behaviors have seemingly changed slightly in later versions, and I haven't had a chance to track down when those breaking changes were made and fix them 😅
I wasn't sure what to expect going in but omg I got so locked in playing it. The gameplay loop was just super solid and all of the levels felt really fun. It felt super rewarding to juke out the enemies lol
46 deaths! That seems not bad, maybe...?
Screenshot 2026-10-22 195419.png
In any case, had a blast with this one. The graphics are spot on, the SFX were good, the gameplay was quite engaging and had me both planning routes ahead of time and making split-second decisions to jump over ghosts that made me feel like I was way more awesome at the game than I probably was. It could've used some music, but if adding music would've cost the game some levels, then I'd rather not trade that because the levels were super fun. Excellent game!
Easy 5/5 for graphics. Charming, readable, nice palette, nice subtle CRT.
The first time a red guy started on a corner piece, that was a nice piece of game design, because you can't jump over him, so it teaches you that you don't need to jump them as I had been doing up until then.
The pitch rising on the coin-collect sound was a nice touch of polish.
At first I thought the red guys would pathfind towards me, but they don't, they just follow the same path I took. When I realized this, the game became a lot easier.
I almost cheatyfaced at the second-to-last level. I don't have the dexterity! But I eventually figured out a strategy and managed it.
Original, simple, fun... this is classic LD, well done. I really don't have any complaints except perhaps no music? Anyway, great entry.
Decided to come back to this one for fun. Still a bunch of room for improvement on a handful of levels. Sub 3 is 100% doable
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10/10 game, only complaint is lack of music.
Absolutely love the pitch black background with vibrant colored sprites. The train's jumping animation is particularly juicy.
Screenshot 2026-10-22 205225.png loved the game. some of the sounds are a bit harsh for me but the game play and lvl design is great. one of the most fun games i played this jam for sure.
This game really hit the sweet spot for me on difficulty. So many jam games are either to easy or too difficult, but this was just right. The arcade graphics and sound effects were perfect for this type of game. I just wish it could have had some music as well to tie it all together.
For some reason the jumping felt incredibly satisfying. I enjoyed jumping over the ghosts whenever I was in a difficult situation.
I was puzzled when I read maze meets platformer but after playing it I get it. It was fun tracking along the tracks while avoiding and jumping ghosts.
Once I realized the game was a route-planning puzzle, everything became much easier. However, in some levels, I found it difficult to judge the train’s speed and time my turns accurately, which was a little frustrating. Jumping felt more like a safety net, and I didn’t really see it playing a key role in the gameplay, especially in the puzzles. Still, it’s a great game!屏幕截图 2026-10-23 214630.png
This was so awesome! The handling was awesome and the characters were cute! Very polished.
I had a real blast playing this one. What a great way to start the stream. I found your concept unique and creative. I had great difficult trying to land jumps when going up, i think this was because I could no longer see the track end. A wider portion near the jump off may help or an isometric implementation (but like gawd that would be a ton of effort...)
Thank you for sharing your game.
https://www.youtube.com/live/751Mtc-0IKI?si=M7Wxntn_t7wHLIhg&t=1328
Yay what a fun game this was! As stated last time, I love the CRT effect. So kudo's for graphics I guess ^^ I like the 'learn as you go' method of teaching the player what to do. The jumps were a bit brutal at times, and oh gosh that second to last level I almost gave up haha. Not that the puzzle was hard, but just pure skill issue. That's something I also like: its a puzzle/skill/strategy game I feel. Going along certain paths can make it easier as the monsters will do the same thing. Which can be very useful
I enjoyed yours ❤️
I had a bunch of fun with this. My favourite bit is that train jump animation combined with the sound effect, its honestly perfect 😭
There's a good variety of levels. I liked the later levels, where the criss-crossing tracks had me manage where I was moving so the ghosts wouldn't be in the way.
I found myself not using the jump as much after the first few levels, mostly relying on managing my speed to slow down the ghosts. (though I did like when it was used in the one level where you're forced to jump over your ghosts)
Screenshot 2026-10-24 113803.png
That was fun! It got way easier when I realized the ghosts were mimicking my movements and speed and not just chasing after me at full speed (which I only noticed because they jumped when I did, that was a nice touch!). The second to last level was _rough_ for me, probably spent half my time on that one. I just couldn't corner reliably. I really appreciated the last level being a "victory lap". I think I would have liked a little more Pac-Man-y controls, I often found myself holding a perpendicular arrow and sliding to a stop _just_ before the corner, and, of course, dying there... maybe if momentum was kept a bit more or something. The art and sound were simple, but charming, came together nicely!
I didn't make it to the end (and did not manage to use the cheat code), but it sure was very fun, and it feels polished (graphics and sounds are simple and yet fits well the mood), I think I may give it another try, I want to pass this level - the one starting with two ghosts on top-left, and all the other ghosts could stay quite if juggling correctly the two firsts, but I sucks at managing speed and accuracy at the same time… Well done!
A delightful game! It’s a great one to play while listening to music, or to enjoy with young children.
I’ve never really liked the mechanic where an enemy follows you by mimicking your movements, but in "Ghost in Train," it didn’t bother me at all. It feels intrinsic to the game—an organic part of the experience. It’s actually better than something like the ghosts in Pac-Man. Your game feels a lot like a segment in *Yoshi’s Island* where Yoshi transforms into a train and travels along tracks drawn on the wall. It’s a cool take on the theme. The graphics are beautiful and well-crafted, and the old-school TV texture adds a nice touch of nostalgia. I did find myself wishing for some music; perhaps because I’m a musician, the silence felt quite stark. The sound effects (SFX) are great, though. When the train picks up speed, it gets a bit tricky to handle the curves without losing momentum. Is there a way to avoid that?
All in all, a fantastic game—simple, clear, and focused.
Congratulations!
I had fun since it was not too hard. The acceleration feels nice, the controls feel snappy, this was especially noticeable in the all rails around one coin level with 4 columns of 5 rows of coins, and the spirits are dumb enough to follow your traversed path, so you can gaslight them pretty easily. Good job!
@euler-moises Thanks for playing, and for the great feedback! :)
I also wish I could have added some background music, but I'm currently still an *awful* musician 😂 I'm working on it, but the music that I'm coming up with right now would have been a net negative on the soundscape 😅
You *can* keep your momentum around the turns! :) You can start making your turn early as you're coming up on a corner, you'll snap into place with your full momentum once you're in position. If you time it right, you can even cut the corner a little bit to make the turn more quickly, in the style of Pacman and other maze chase games of the era.
@jimbly Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
I actually played around quite a bit with more traditional Pacman-style movement, where you were constantly running forward regardless of whether or not you released the arrow keys, but that limited character control works well in Pacman because traditional maze chases are testing the player's control over the space of the maze; Pacman gives the player limited control over their raw movement, and replaces that control with a dense variety of branching paths to navigate and outmaneuver the ghosts within. For Ghost Train, I wanted to invert that a little bit and experiment with bringing platforming design sensibilities to the maze chase genre, turning the game into a test of the player's ability to control their *movement through* the space of the maze. Traditional Pacman auto-running ended up being at odds with the idea of testing players on their character control, because the auto-run took away a lot of player agency over the thing that was being tested.
Knowing that you were having trouble cornering is really good feedback, though; I think one thing that maybe wasn't successfully communicated were the affordances which try to make navigating the tight corridors feel good. For example, you can both queue up inputs and hold down multiple inputs as you approach a turn, with the game automatically applying whichever input would cause you to take turn, so that players would (hopefully) never experience what felt like a dropped input due to a mistimed switch between keys. Similarly, I added in my own version of Pacman's fast cornering; you can make an input a little bit too early (or late) for a turn and snap into position anyway. In Pacman, that snap is used to cut corners and gain some distance from the ghosts, but here it serves the purpose of making it easier to preserve your momentum around the tight turns. I never intended for these affordances to be mechanics that the player needed to be consciously aware of, but maybe I should have put in a level which forced the player to rely on them in order to teach them that they *could* rely on them in later challenges.
What a fantastic game! The retro aesthetic caught my eye immediately, and I was not disappointed. The pure arcade fun of the gameplay kept me hooked for the whole ride! The gameplay is simple, satisfying, challenging, and charming. Pretty much perfect as far as jam games go. The only thing I was missing is music. Amazing work!
