Spark by fullmontis

[raw]
made by fullmontis for LD27 (COMPO)
What if your existance lasted only for an heartbeat?

As a short lived spark of life, navigate through the body of a man, aiming for the heart. Use the arrows to move.

Sorry for the barf graphics but I was extremely late and had hardly any time for putting in the tileset (which I actually drew, so it is quite a waste) and proper game design. The ending is also missing so when you reach the heart you can hang out with it for as long (or as short) as you wish.

Hope you enjoy it.

Made with Love2d framework and Moonscript.

Ratings

Coolness 46% 1229
Overall 2.38 1088
Audio 2.14 760
Fun 2.28 1019
Graphics 2.08 1026
Humor 1.44 953
Innovation 2.44 922
Mood 2.79 508
Theme 2.76 890

Feedback

Spaceoff
26. Aug 2013 · 10:05 UTC
Nice atmosphere: the heartbeat and darkening after 10 seconds work well. The movement is rather slippery though, which is aggravating. Pretty good overall though.
eckcz
26. Aug 2013 · 10:13 UTC
With some audio, effects and more levels. It will be a fun game.
josefnpat
26. Aug 2013 · 11:19 UTC
Very cool game. I got all the way to to bottom, and was stuck!

Oh well. This game could use more gui! Nice job! Solid controls.
sam1373
26. Aug 2013 · 11:38 UTC
Nice game, but here are my suggestions:
1) when you enter a new level, the room should relit itself, since you won't be able to pass it with the charge remaining from the previous level anyway
2) after you die on the green things, the respawn should be faster
Also, is the level with green walls all around the last one?
leafo
26. Aug 2013 · 16:31 UTC
Cool game, I like the idea. I like how death isn't that big of a deal so to learn the rules in the beginning you experiment.

I agree the room should relight when you first enter. Also I noticed some bugs, namely my character would sometimes start moving one direction really fast. Other times the spark would immediately fade out at the start of a level. They didn't happen very often though so it wasn't that big of a deal.
almightyzentaco
28. Aug 2013 · 01:33 UTC
I enjoyed the old school quality. Reminded me of playing the atari.
archaeometrician
28. Aug 2013 · 01:36 UTC
Wow this one is not easy ;) I love the game but man I can hardly make it to the fourth level
ZYXer
28. Aug 2013 · 01:38 UTC
It's nice to play in a maze you kind of already "know". :D It's impressive how the sound of a single heartbeat can create quite an atmosphere.
🎤 fullmontis
28. Aug 2013 · 10:24 UTC
Thanks for the feedbakc everyone! I updated the game, now the controls should be a little sharper and bug free. I have still no clue what creates the fading at the start of the level since I was unable to recreate the bug :/
hoqjed
29. Aug 2013 · 13:22 UTC
I know you were killing for time but some audio would have greatly improved the atmosphere here. Giving what the graphics couldn't do for the game in such a tight schedule. I liked the darkening of the screen, it reminds me of another game called "I CAN HOLD MY BREATH FOREVER" which is quite similar and what I can imagine this could have been.

Lets see... aside from that the controls were nice, but navigating the area wasn't very... "clean". The tiled approach didn't quite suit the organic nature of the body, and made traversing tight area difficult. That said, the game isn't too harsh on players so it's easy to forgive frustrations when it "respawns" you back on the same screen.

Would have been nice to see what you had planned for an ending to the game!
alts
30. Aug 2013 · 08:35 UTC
I did appreciate that changes to the maze would persist lives, and that the game wasn't punitive at all with regards to death. Nice work.
supermaximo93
31. Aug 2013 · 15:22 UTC
Good job! I really liked the feel of the movement, slightly slidey but not too much. I would have liked to seen a proper ending though
ZeppelinCaptain
31. Aug 2013 · 15:23 UTC
I liked the heartbeat sound, but the rest of the game was kind of lacking in entertaining challenge.
berkano
31. Aug 2013 · 15:27 UTC
This is a cool idea, wish you could have had more time to finish it off! Nice job though.
Latcarf
31. Aug 2013 · 15:30 UTC
I very often get the following error message when going from one level to the next one:

An error has occured that has caused Spark to stop.
You can notify Andrea Montagna about this at http://fullmontis.tumblr.com
zzForrest
31. Aug 2013 · 15:34 UTC
Really interesting game. I immediately noticed how most of the levels are designed to look like organs, such as a heart and lungs and a kidney that I saw. The game was too slippery so it ended up being harder than it should have been, but very nice entry!
Kragnir
31. Aug 2013 · 15:37 UTC
Like the heartbeat sound, the graphics are nice and fitting. Need a restart button, I spent a lot of time waiting for new life. Would have been nice with an ending. Also you get stuck if you exit the difficult screen to the right.
TobiasW
31. Aug 2013 · 22:12 UTC
In the screen after you introduced the green stuff (named "shot2" in your screenshots up there) it took me a while to understand that it kills me. I just thought that my sense of time is a bit fuzzy. It would've probably been clearer to me if only some parts were made out of green like in the later levels.

I really like the persistent switches that extend the current screen. It felt a bit exploratory :)