Beyond the Surface by Artylo

made by Artylo for LD29 (JAM)

Explore the vast new world of the void, always changing, always new.
You are a reality fractal, a voyager in this savage dimension!
Fight your way through the hordes of reality fractals, gone mad by the secrets of the void.
Get to the gate, to proceed to the next world, till you finally find out about the void.
But, you are not without proper tools. Focus your void energy and fire a beam at your foes or conserve it and use it to fly through space for a short amount of time.
As the game develops, I'll be adding more levels and better art over time.

Your goal is the explore the void, kill your enemies and destroy The Quadracube and free the void.

You can check more of my work on Tumblr:
http://artylo.tumblr.com/

Or even follow me on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/MageArtylo

Check out the soundtrack at:
http://artyllo.bandcamp.com/album/the-voidwalker-ep

Controls (Arrow keys also work bu may be weird at times):
================
AD - to move
LMB - to fire
W - to jump
Shift - Void Mode

/*
* VOID MODE CAN ONLY BE USED WITH A FULL MANA BAR
* THIS WILL BE CHANGED AFTER THE VOTING PERIOD
*/

(WASD or Arrow Keys to move in void mode.)

Leave a rating, as you feel like. I'd love if you leave a comment. Just to hear what you think about the game.
Thank you all, for another amazing jam, and see you next time!

Web (Not Very Stable)	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/207411046/LD29/bts.htm
Windows	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/207411046/LD29/Beyond%20the%20Surface.exe
Source	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/207411046/LD29/Source.mfa
Soundtrack	http://artyllo.bandcamp.com/album/the-voidwalker-ep
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=24959

Ratings

Coolness	68%	3
Overall(Jam)	3.00	491

Audio(Jam)	3.27	275
Fun(Jam)	2.59	576
Graphics(Jam)	3.22	437
Humor(Jam)	2.44	417
Innovation(Jam)	2.89	418
Mood(Jam)	3.06	373
Theme(Jam)	2.53	633

Feedback

gikdew

28. Apr 2014 · 23:29 UTC

awesome idea :D I will steal it for other games ... muhaha (evil laugh) >:P

Jason Lay

28. Apr 2014 · 23:38 UTC

I loved the graphics, and the sound effects were great. Control scheme took some getting used to. Might play better with a control pad?

eerongal

28. Apr 2014 · 23:38 UTC

Ok, maybe i'm not understanding something here, but i can't seem to get past the first tall tower thing, and shift doesn't seem to DO anything when i press it. (windows version)

kiririn51

28. Apr 2014 · 23:41 UTC

Interesting mechanic but somewhat confusing, aesthetics are hit or miss but good looking overall.

Secret_Tunnel

28. Apr 2014 · 23:50 UTC

I like it-- very well put-together intro and tutorial sequence. I think the game might be a bit glitchy for a puzzley sort of game though; if you can get past that, you'd have something really special on your hands.

Balloonsfor600

28. Apr 2014 · 23:57 UTC

Cool idea, but the controls are confusing. It's also just not very challenging.

🎤 Artylo

29. Apr 2014 · 07:16 UTC

@eerongal : That tower is a "switch gate". It is supposed to switch your movement type back to your platforming one. Shift is supposed to work with both the left and the right shift.
I cannot recreate this bug.

@Jason Lay : The control scheme doesn't really look bad. It's your standard keys (or WASD) with Shift and LMB.
I tried to make it pretty simplified.

@Balloonsfor600 : The idea was for it to not be very challenging, it's my take on the causal type of game, it's not really finished, due to lack of time, otherwise it would look very differently.

kyyrma

29. Apr 2014 · 08:00 UTC

The controls are a bit wonky, but I like the fact that you had an in-game tutorial. It's a sign of good design. I really wanted to have one in my game too, but I never had the time for it.

The graphics in the first level are very nice, especially the monochrome palette. I can see you were rushing to get the graphics done in the later levels but they are still serviceable.

Short, bizarre, but I had fun!

🎤 Artylo

29. Apr 2014 · 08:20 UTC

@kyyrma:
Thanks, I wanted to make more levels but school took it's toll and I had about 6 hours to fix everything from the previous day.

Pitoum

29. Apr 2014 · 08:28 UTC

I don't know why but SHIFT does not seem to work on my computer :(

🎤 Artylo

29. Apr 2014 · 08:53 UTC

It may be because you need a full mana(void) bar to use your power. Mana regenerates over time, while not shooting or using your power.

local minimum

29. Apr 2014 · 14:50 UTC

I really enjoyed the mood of the synthetic speech. I would be happy if that was a constant voice over. Nice game to play through, could definitely get expanded on.

The controls were a bit unintuitive at first. If I understood void correct, it only worked when blue bar was full? It would have been nice to have a 'V' icon next to the two meters showing up when voiding was possible.

It also seemed like I could climb the pillars, but didn't fully grasp that mechanic.

An interesting glitch happened during the intro, when I upped the sound (loosing focus of the window), text continued scrolling but sound paused. When I clicked the menus, text stopped but sound continued.

Over all a nice game. Nice with an easy platformer for once -- to once in a while be able to complete an LD-game.

bebopbraunbaer

29. Apr 2014 · 19:55 UTC

nice game! i took me quite some time to get over the first obstacle and even now i do not rly get what shift does.

i managed to kill the "boss" though and had quite some fun getting there (- :

Thorig

30. Apr 2014 · 07:58 UTC

The looks of the game are nice. But shift did not work for me.

VikingWarriors

30. Apr 2014 · 08:07 UTC

This game has a great aesthetic but I was thoroughly confused while playing it. There isn't a whole lot of feedback on enemies hitting you so it doesn't quite feel impactful. I think it definitely has potential with only a few minor tweaks, though.

Also the last line of the title crawl should be "its". Yes, I went there.

kbm

30. Apr 2014 · 11:41 UTC

very cool idea, well executed! nicely done! <3

teambrookvale

01. May 2014 · 02:49 UTC

Cool use of the theme! Graphics are fine to me! Nice game

ArcturusDeluxe

01. May 2014 · 17:55 UTC

Neat game. I like the atmosphere, its very mysterious. Decent graphics and sound. Some gameplay aspects are a bit obscure and maybe need explaining a bit better (like the shift key mode). Good job though!

Neonlare

01. May 2014 · 18:01 UTC

Interesting concept, controls were a bit fuddled for me but the sfx were good. Graphics had highs and lows, the scaled pixels of varying sizes didn't really help with the look of it. Was an interesting jaunt!

someone

01. May 2014 · 18:15 UTC

Still no idea what is going on, feels very glitchy. Half the time pressing shift seems to do nothing and I kept randomly getting stuck on nothing. Fell through the floor on the third level.
Also the sounds don't work properly for me but that is due to running it in wine.

GarethIW

01. May 2014 · 18:16 UTC

Weird trippy exploration game, I liked the aesthetic. Once I figured out that void mode was activated only with a full mana bar, the rest was pretty simple.

Jupiter_Hadley

01. May 2014 · 18:17 UTC

I really liked this game! I included your game in part 6 of my Ludum Dare compilation video series! http://youtu.be/K5ATRciKj24

StudioWolfox

01. May 2014 · 19:31 UTC

I had some issues with the void mode. It was not clear that it would require energy and that it was the reason why I couldn't use it. I was stuck at the beginning for quite some time. Almost "rage" quit :) but I really like the art, especially the first level! I like the balloons and the columns. After that part, it is quite short and the boss was quite easy. It was not clear that you could just pass by the dudes in the fire level. Also the whole game could almost completely be completed by just rolling and rolling until you warp to the boss. That was a bit too bad. I liked the story :D

dector

04. May 2014 · 23:54 UTC

Nice aesthetics but can't gen into gameplay. I think some text description will be very helpfull.