Biodome by 7Soul

made by 7Soul for LD23 (JAM)

We entered the Jam as Dead Pixel Games. We just recently formed this gaming group and this is our first game.
And we learned a lot, about the development process and about our weaknesses.

In this game you start as a girl who discovers a strange force field near her home, and then goes on a quest to find out what that means. On the way she meets two other strange friends, who join her.

The goal is to get all characters to the end of the level, using each unique ability.

Keys:
A - Move left
D - Move right
W - Jump
S - Special abilities
R - Reset level
1,2,3 - Switch character (when available)

An up to date browser is required to play

Credits:
Programming: Henrique "7Soul" Lazarini
Music and SFX: Lucas "X-wing9" Barcellos
Tilesets and Bg: Matheus "Mat" Leiras
Sprites: Renato "Reanto" Gusmao
Cutscenes: Thiago "Guax" Portella
also freesound.org
and Construct 2

Edited: fixed some of the music not playing
Edit 2: fixed yet another music bug

Web	http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3954039/Biodome/index.html
Timelapse	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X-BpRM-29M&feature=plcp
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=2958

Ratings

Coolness	36%	809
Overall(Jam)	3.30	81

Audio(Jam)	3.53	46
Fun(Jam)	2.69	142
Graphics(Jam)	3.77	74
Humor(Jam)	2.03	164
Innovation(Jam)	2.48	183
Mood(Jam)	3.09	86
Theme(Jam)	2.18	232

Feedback

leafo

24. Apr 2012 · 00:54 UTC

cool art style

Rybar

24. Apr 2012 · 02:12 UTC

Not a huge fan of "move the blocks" puzzles, but good platforming fun otherwise. setting blocks down was a little irritating, I don't feel I should have to jump to place one block on top of the other when visually, I'm more than clearing it.

jrasmussen24

24. Apr 2012 · 02:31 UTC

Lowered the overall score as I got stuck (I could not figure out how to control the taller male character/ switch characters). Otherwise everything else was great.

X-wing9

24. Apr 2012 · 02:58 UTC

@jrasmussen24, you need to press 1, 2 and 3 to switch characters. There's a small sign saying '2' on the second char's appearance, but we realized it looked too ambiguous only after uploading... D:

Aaron San Filippo

24. Apr 2012 · 03:28 UTC

Pretty cool! Good job with the artwork and the gameplay.
Moving the blocks back and forth get a little tedious, but it's steal a neat experience.

seagaia

24. Apr 2012 · 05:31 UTC

I thought the block placing was a little bit annoying, but it looks nice for a first submission! Might want to think abou checkpoints with a block puzzle game? What were the watercolors in the beginning? I feel like I skipped them.

rate my game if you would (uid 7853)!

NacMacNeedle

24. Apr 2012 · 07:07 UTC

+ really nice graphics, especially the characters look good, not to mention the intro screens
+ the game mechanics work well

- the controls feel kind of weird and the action is incredibly slow - dunno if that's due to the university box here or if that's full-speed-as-meant-to

Alltogether it's great for a first game here :-)

madpew

24. Apr 2012 · 07:40 UTC

too bad I got stuck where the second character got introduced. I jumped up with the taller one to the fruitbasket but couldn't do a thing. Tried 5 minutes to figure it out then gave up :/ Nice work on the game, good art (gdx and audio), (more ambience-sounds wouldn't have hurt but thats just me) Well done!

martensms

24. Apr 2012 · 08:30 UTC

Very nice art. I mean, wow! The game is so full of details... and that in such a short amount of time. Well done guys, you definitely got my vote :)

caribou

24. Apr 2012 · 08:41 UTC

I didn't get the the puzzle with the blue man, but i liked the level design.

Qaterknan

24. Apr 2012 · 09:28 UTC

Good graphics and between-level pictures. The game itself is standard platformer, but chaging characters makes it really intereseting. I enjoyed playing it.

Gareth Jenkins

24. Apr 2012 · 10:46 UTC

Enjoyed the feel of the game, and the amount of content is great. Found it frustratingly slow & some of the blocks positions a little too far away (one of those solves the other I guess).

Proch

24. Apr 2012 · 11:48 UTC

stunning graphics and nice gameplay! grats

Daz

24. Apr 2012 · 17:33 UTC

Same situation as madpew. Maybe a little hint if it's not a bug? :)

runsintowalls

24. Apr 2012 · 18:42 UTC

Pretty cool, mate. A little slow for my liking.

m3rlino

24. Apr 2012 · 20:34 UTC

I didn't post a game. A little slow for me too, but as the first game I liked the packaging and the puzzles idea. Keep on developing ;)

M3rlino
http://fourleafgames.altervista.org/

SusanTheCat

24. Apr 2012 · 21:25 UTC

I got stuck on the second screen by the "R" sign. :( Music and art were terrific.

TheGamingProject

24. Apr 2012 · 21:51 UTC

Pretty cool game overall

Woodpecker

24. Apr 2012 · 22:13 UTC

Mood was really great. I wasn't sure about what these beings were, but the atmosphere was so great it didn't matter. The puzzles became mundane almost immediately. I visually figured out a puzzle in 2 seconds, but I had to do more than 2 minutes of work to get to the result. Like asking someone what 2+2 is and then saying they have to spell out the answer with rice. The concept is great and I would love to play more. With the time constraint it's tough to design challenging and rewarding puzzles though ;)I got stuck on the first blue level with the fruit basket as well.

Pixelulsar

24. Apr 2012 · 23:14 UTC

I liked the art and music, and some puzzles were quite good. A downside was it was a bit slow paced.

kato9

24. Apr 2012 · 23:17 UTC

Wow, very complete, solid game. Great music and artwork, and the switching players puzzle solving mechanic works very well.

I'm not sure if this was a bug or if I got the end, but the last screen I saw had these two strange house icons and I couldn't do anything.

Anyway, very good game, surprising amount of content for 3 days work!

X-wing9

24. Apr 2012 · 23:52 UTC

Thanks for the coments everyone! :D

Apparently, people said the game had a slow pace. Just curious about this statement: the gameplay itself felt too cumbersome or the actual game's FPS ran low? Because if the issue was FPS, it's mainly because of HTML5 (we made the game on it), which is not nicely supported by some browsers yet, at least when it comes to games. Most games made with Construct 2 *might* not run at full speed on some browsers/computers, and we're sorry for that.

But yeah, the gameplay itself was also somewhat slow-paced. We didn't plan that out very well. ^^'

Mrnewt

25. Apr 2012 · 01:07 UTC

Graphics, and sounds were quite nice. Found the slopes a bit annoying. Over shot the well, stuck...

Cake&Code

25. Apr 2012 · 09:08 UTC

I really loved playing through this! It took me a second to figure out that the signs meant keys since 'w' wasn't listed and I could jump with it. Once that was out of the way I got down to the puzzle solving and it was fun despite the slow pacing. I wish the first character moved a little faster but that's personal preference.

Nice job!

gnx

25. Apr 2012 · 13:09 UTC

I liked the visuals and the music. Gameplay however wasn't very engaging and it is unintuitive to have to jump to place crates. Also I don't quite see how this fits within the theme of the Jam.

FrederickK

25. Apr 2012 · 15:17 UTC

For the exception of the controls, move the blocks should be another button, loved everything about it.
I think you guys definitely should finish it.

Super Soul

25. Apr 2012 · 22:10 UTC

Enjoyed the cutscenes. Impressive how much content you all got into the game in 72 hours. Nice work!

chambers

26. Apr 2012 · 02:24 UTC

Best music ever. Not to mention the art and character design. I find it interesting how the girl is the strong one, and the man is the agile one (unlike most videogames). I wish I could get to see the 3rd character but couldn't pass the sewer stage with many metal gates (I think the second stage with sewer pipes) I'll definitely try and play it again later though >_<

evilseanbot

26. Apr 2012 · 04:40 UTC

My computers not fast enough to run it, but the screen shots look great!

Alink

26. Apr 2012 · 17:03 UTC

Impressive arts. The gameplay is sometimes a bit tedious and the block placing fiddly in some cases. Bot otherwise, nice job.

spooks

26. Apr 2012 · 17:49 UTC

Great design! I enjoyed the puzzles, the one small thing I would like is the movement to be a bit faster. Good work though! :o)

Catman

26. Apr 2012 · 18:18 UTC

The start music reminds me a lot of the prelude from Final Fantasy ;)

The intro is really cool!

The game is solid, good job!

ChronoDK

26. Apr 2012 · 18:56 UTC

The art is very nice and the game play idea is great - I'm a huge fan of the three characters concept (you should check out Voodoo Friends on Chrome Webstore too - it's a game with three characters that I designed). I also found the music really pleasant to listen to - it certainly made me play longer. I did wish you had introduced the other characters earlier - that first part with the boxes felt longer than it should.

schattenkind.net

27. Apr 2012 · 12:35 UTC

A lot of levels and a nice graphic style. I wished the ingame graphics where also watercoloured.

rik

28. Apr 2012 · 12:12 UTC

Great art and music. I reeeally hated the controls. Still, a very beautiful game, well done!

strega

28. Apr 2012 · 16:42 UTC

Cool game! The intro stage was a bit annoying though, rather than picking up 4 blocks to advance I would have preferred with just one block and then slowly advancing. The art was fantastic! The characters sort of reminded me of pokemon. :)

gritfish

29. Apr 2012 · 03:55 UTC

Art was great, but I completely agree with rybar about the block mechanics.

Tom 7

29. Apr 2012 · 21:46 UTC

The mood and music and art are super. The gameplay was really frustrating for me, because most of the puzzles were tedious (obvious what I had to do but lots of back and forth to do it) and it's so hard to get blocks stacked in this game! Some more work on that and making restarting less punishing would have made it more fun. But it's a nice looking and sounding game!

Evil Sandwich Studios

30. Apr 2012 · 06:46 UTC

Nice mood with the sound and cutscenes. The controls however...
I also noticed that the game runs a different speeds in different browsers.

🎤 7Soul

30. Apr 2012 · 18:53 UTC

Unfortunately, I made the bad decision of using physics to create the platforming, so the game got kinda cpu intensive, which creates that big gap between browsers

jimmypaulin

06. May 2012 · 17:06 UTC

Wonderful entry, the surprises kept on coming in terms of the controllable characters, the environments, the puzzles and the rewarding (and beautiful) watercolour cutscenes. Excellent music and presentation throughout. This is a very accomplished entry

Wyzfen

07. May 2012 · 09:55 UTC

nice graphics and sound.
the multiple characters made me think of the lost vikings.
the music cuts out after a while on each level.
I got stuck just after getting the blue guy.

Christina Antoinette Neofotistou

12. May 2012 · 22:00 UTC

Love the audio, loved the puzzles!