Dovetail by jofra

[raw]
made by jofra for LD35 (JAM)
Dovetail is a challenging fun endless runner where you try your best but you don't succeed and you get what you want but not what you need.. i forgot the rest.

Fell free to share your HIGHSCORE.

Our Highscores:
97 - (dev) Vasco (Oh yeah baby!!)
81 - (dev) Francisco (you suck!)
35 - radmars
24 - Marjie62

Highest negative score:
-360 - Phil


Have fun!

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Controls:
A or left arrow -> move to the left
D or right arrow -> move to the right
M -> enlarge
N -> shorten
ESC -> pause


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We notice the game doesn't run the same in every computer. Now we see why most of you feel the gameplay is borderline impossible which is a very diferent experience from ours. Sorry about that :( we will try to fix it soon!


Credits:

Programmer:
- Vasco Franco

Artists:
- Francisco Martins dos Santos
Page: https://www.behance.net/Francisco_Santos

Ratings

Coolness 71% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.38 402
Audio(Jam) 3.62 165
Fun(Jam) 2.98 662
Graphics(Jam) 4.00 184
Innovation(Jam) 2.76 781
Mood(Jam) 3.33 359
Theme(Jam) 3.48 427

Feedback

Lancelot Gao
19. Apr 2016 · 02:04 UTC
The graphics are beautiful. Great work!
Otixa
19. Apr 2016 · 02:12 UTC
Was pretty good, but I feel like it would have been more fun with mouse controls. Liked the graphics
alsantour
19. Apr 2016 · 02:16 UTC
Phil got highest negative score -360
kleinzach
19. Apr 2016 · 02:56 UTC
That is a very hard game. I love how many different parts of my brain are firing when I play this. Great presentation and I feel that it can be an interesting concept. Maybe build a little more before the intense difficulty, I never really had the chance to acclimate.
Pantelis Petsopoulos
19. Apr 2016 · 13:32 UTC
amazing game amazing graphics
meek
19. Apr 2016 · 13:51 UTC
Stunning graphics. Best I've seen on here, and I can't say I've seen graphics this well presented in a while.
CluelessGames
19. Apr 2016 · 14:17 UTC
The game is pretty and the concept is really good. You made the game unnecessarily too hard though.
psychomonster
19. Apr 2016 · 14:18 UTC
Very minimalistic graphics style.. I love this. Challenging gameplay. Great job... maybe good enough for a post-LD-Version?
Hyoga-3D
19. Apr 2016 · 16:40 UTC
Very nice concept, I like that each time the colors change, this helps a lot in the replayability.
Ghust1995
19. Apr 2016 · 22:20 UTC
The sound, art and mood are amazing. It could've been one of the best games I played if it wasn't the thightness of the hitboxes, it made most of my deaths feel unfair more than some mistake of mine =(. If you adapt this to a two finger mobile game (making just a tiny bit more fair) it would be amazing =)
jcmonkey
19. Apr 2016 · 23:22 UTC
This game had a pretty good shifting concept.
schizoid2k
20. Apr 2016 · 00:49 UTC
Very nice! Great job
samlo
20. Apr 2016 · 00:57 UTC
Awesome graphics and what a bumpin' soundtrack, but unfortunately I don't think it's very playable. There's too much easing/velocity on the character for a game that rewards high precision, and I'm almost certain I ran into a few tunnel configurations that were unbeatable.

I'd consider increasing the minimum vertical spacing of the tunnels about 2x and implement some sort of difficulty scaling - it's hard to enjoy getting good at a game when its only very very hard from the outset.

I know that probably sounds a bit harsh but the game seriously has awesome style and I'd love it if you did a polished release after LD :)
Odyssey
20. Apr 2016 · 01:05 UTC
Graphics are beautiful. Well done
Sean
20. Apr 2016 · 01:09 UTC
Really cool visual style, especially with the random colour palettes. I found the gameplay was waaaay too unforgiving though. I rarely got past the first couple gates and got frustrated pretty quick.
curtamyth
20. Apr 2016 · 01:39 UTC
This is too hard but it looks and sounds good. Ease up on the difficulty and this could be a decent game :)
andyman404
20. Apr 2016 · 01:59 UTC
Beautiful game. Super challenging though. No idea how you got those high scores. Could you add a much slower "beginner" mode to the post jam version?
Phobos001
20. Apr 2016 · 02:03 UTC
I could play this for hours! It would help if you disabled collisions with gates after you're already inside them though. I can't tell you how many times I've clipped a wall while trying to line myself up for the next gate xD
GrimGary
20. Apr 2016 · 02:19 UTC
I for some reason I couldn't get it to run. It does look nice though.
icefallgames
20. Apr 2016 · 04:41 UTC
Look really nice, but incredibly difficult. Maybe because it ran somewhat sluggishly on my computer - felt kind of non responsive?
sumguy67
20. Apr 2016 · 05:08 UTC
Very cool game! Also very difficult.
mrStrings
20. Apr 2016 · 05:11 UTC
Hello! I would love to see a Mac or Linux build (yeah... having no current access to Windows is a really bad thing for gaming) - or maybe a WebGL version.

It's aways good to see fellow Portuguese speaking devs with great material to share :)


And hey! If you are interested, our entry is in my teammate's account: you can play WolfBit here:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=87729

Salve do Brasil, até mais!
Raptorij
20. Apr 2016 · 05:56 UTC
great
Weeping Rupee
20. Apr 2016 · 07:03 UTC
Firstly, great use of color and randomness. It looks beautiful for something so simple.

I found myself playing this with a controller in one hand (using stick) and they keyboard in the other to grow or shrink. I still found it very very difficult for two reasons: 1, the controls are a little over responsive for my taste and 2, not only walls but collisions within tunnels cause a death state.

I found myself just being as skinny as I could because its so hard to begin with. Better controller support and an input sensitivity would help this.
aemiliu5
20. Apr 2016 · 08:12 UTC
nice concept, but you should have made it easier for the first 4-5 obstacles. the music and art are really cool! keep up!
ploerre
20. Apr 2016 · 09:12 UTC
looks interesting but no mac or web version.. :(
DuckTieTeam
20. Apr 2016 · 11:59 UTC
Sound and minimalistic design are amazing in this game. I loved how they change each time you play, but the game itself is pretty hardcore. Simple, but entertaining mechanics. Also I experienced a little lags, game was not that smooth, not 60fps. Anyone has noticed that issue?
Ithildin
20. Apr 2016 · 17:14 UTC
Presentation was awesome, but precision was too tight and it made the game a bit frustrating to play. Perhaps a more gradual difficulty could help getting used to it. Still, you've done a great job! :)
Pestel Crew
21. Apr 2016 · 07:56 UTC
Great colors! Nice dinamic gameplay, but some layers are just too close to each other. I argee on mobile verion and smaller hit boxes.
Marjie62
22. Apr 2016 · 03:43 UTC
I played this game until I wanted to cry and then I kept playing it. :P High score 24

Amazing graphics and sound track!

I would have greatly appreciated lower difficulty options. Also, at the rate at which you die in this game, not cutting the music when you die could have made this a much smoother experience. Finally, I experienced some screen tearing, which I think made the game a lot more difficult.
radmars
26. Apr 2016 · 01:23 UTC
Cool but really difficult! The fact that the controls are a bit slide-y and that you're discouraged from being small made it really tough at the beginning. Still, pretty fun once I got the hang of it. My high score was 35. Ran fine on my machine btw.
Alphish
02. May 2016 · 15:15 UTC
Wow, that's some fast-paced game. Perhaps you could want to slow it down a little?

I rather liked the general concept, though; there seem to be a few endless runners that use changing shape to go through variously shaped gates, but yours is the first that makes the mechanic more nuanced than "get the exact shape or die". As in, if you pass by a little margin, you get more points than if you gained by playing it safe, and you even lose points if you just go completely thin - I find that to be a pretty good idea to balance the gameplay.

The game is still rather hectic and difficult, and I'm not sure if there aren't moments that make the game nigh impossible (e.g. going from the wide gap all the way to the left to the narrow gap all the way to the right), but it seems to be pretty fun while it plays. A bunch of different soundtracks the game randomly picks from is a nice touch as well, and the game gives the feeling of polish.

Pretty cool job, overall.
TheCain
03. May 2016 · 03:59 UTC
Really difficult!
Jupiter_Hadley
06. May 2016 · 22:25 UTC
Super challenging! I included it in my video compilation series of Ludum Dare games, if you’d like to check them out :) https://youtu.be/bGsPoPIYpCs
lanestp
07. May 2016 · 01:40 UTC
It was a nice game but amazingly difficult and to my mind only fairly fun. I do think it could polish up into a great mobile game!
Larzan
07. May 2016 · 11:12 UTC
Can't play it, so i can't vote, but i absolutely love the art style in the screenshots, clean, simple, beautiful.
Wow!
flummox3d
08. May 2016 · 07:40 UTC
Really nice music choices. Glad to hear you'll try to fix the unintended difficulty for some users. Great work! :)