Search for hope by agmcleod
Given the theme, what i did first was listen to the song "Beneath The Surface" by Dream Theater. And that spawned the idea of a game, where as the player you need to find hope, and that hope might not necessarily be above the surface and immediately visible.
There is a current bug where if you hold the mouse down to dash back and forth, and combine it with a jump, you will go above the screen (whether under the surface or not) and get stuck. It's something I wasn't able to spend time on to fix, and i thought it was kinda funny. I hope to advance the level design in the future to combine usage of dash jumping.
Tools used:
Game Engine: MelonJS
Map Editor: Tiled
Pixel Art for map tiles: Pixen
Sprite art and backgrounds: Pixelmator
Music: Garageband for the iPad
There is a current bug where if you hold the mouse down to dash back and forth, and combine it with a jump, you will go above the screen (whether under the surface or not) and get stuck. It's something I wasn't able to spend time on to fix, and i thought it was kinda funny. I hope to advance the level design in the future to combine usage of dash jumping.
Tools used:
Game Engine: MelonJS
Map Editor: Tiled
Pixel Art for map tiles: Pixen
Sprite art and backgrounds: Pixelmator
Music: Garageband for the iPad
| Web | http://projects.agmprojects.com/ld29-release |
| Source | http://github.com/agmcleod/ld29 |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=15813 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 41% | 1669 |
| Overall | 2.54 | 1111 |
| Audio | 2.54 | 677 |
| Fun | 1.92 | 1213 |
| Graphics | 2.56 | 941 |
| Innovation | 1.96 | 1214 |
| Mood | 2.86 | 687 |
| Theme | 2.68 | 967 |
Dashing and jumping sent me through the roof, and I couldn't get down. There were also a few times when I ended up in a loop based on whether I platformed up or not--seemed a bit cheap. You could put a wall there and get the same result.
And then... I thought that dashing through enemies would kill them, but instead it just drained my health, and there seemed to be no reason for the dash other than being able to move quickly (which wasn't necessary since the game was so short and the character moved fast enough). Since it wasn't one-hit-kill, though, it would have really helped to have had a health bar.
I got to the end, though. It was interesting that the player character moves from one anonymous city to another, and I actually walked up to monsters a few times, wondering if they were the friends I was supposed to find ._. This was a nice effect, and a nice driving premise! Good job.
"I Feel Alone" and the sad keyboard tones gave
me chills like no other LD entry has.
But the feeling faded away quite quickly.
Please take the following as critiques, not
complaints:
- At first, I jumped and the user went through
the roof.
- The music kept restarting at each scene change;
It's kinda irritating, specially for people who
like to rush through a platformer.
...but the music was so awesome I decided to chill
around.
- Completely static enemies - come on, it's very easy
to add animations on melonJS. It would've made
a huge difference.
- I like how the lifebar is a counter that follows the
character.
- The ending was great; little fade out with good song.
Overall I think you put a lot of emotion on this game,
but it don't deserve to be given 48h only.
I really think you should work on it whenever you have
time - it's a great work of art and expression.
P.S.: High five from a fellow melonJS user! Thanks
a lot for contributing to it. :)